EMPOWEERING LIVES THRU TENacious DISCIPLESHIP

Before I talk about the sermon topic, I want to make a promise and a request. We are going through a time of transition. During the last few years our membership has been declining. It is not just our church that has been losing members. It is a national and international phenomenon. About 4000 churches are being closed every year in the USA. In many European countries, churches have been turned into museums.

The bottom line is that we cannot afford old ways of doing church. Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So, I think we need a paradigm shift.

Paradigm shift means a “fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.” An “important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new or different way.”

Let me give you a example. Let's say you are sitting in the waiting room of the ER at Coral Springs Medical Center. You are sitting there looking at the TV or reading a book, or just trying to close your eyes. You notice two small children running around the room, climbing on chairs, spilling water from the water cooler, being noisy and disruptive. And the mother of this children is sitting in the corner, with her head down, and not paying attention to the unruly kids. She is not paying any attentionr to her children. And you are fuming. You are totally irritated. Under your breath, you are cursing the kids and judging the mother.

And then you find out that the young mother was sitting there processing the bad news that her husband had died in that hospital. That explains everything.

When you become aware of that new piece of information your thinking suddenly changes. You undergo a paradigm shift from a judgmental and irritable mind to a compassionate and loving mind.

Paradigm shift in religion is something like that. It is also called awakening or enlightenment. In the coming weeks and months, what I am going to propose is a paradigm shift in the way we think about God, and Jesus, bible, church, salvation, prayer, heaven, hell and christian spirituality in general.

And I know change is hard. And it will be harder if what I say challenges you to re-examine what you may have heard in a baptist church or a Lutheran church or Calvary chapel or from a TV preacher.

There could be some confusion and sense of loss. For example, if what the pastor says about God in Calvary chapel is right, then, what I say in this church might be wrong. If what I teach about heaven and hell is different from what Pat Robertson is teaching about the same topics, then one of us have to be wrong. Robertson is on TV, he wears expensive suits, he has millions of followers. I have none of that. So he must be right and I must be wrong.

Not necessarily. Let me tell you why. There are 30,102 verses in the bible. They were written about 3000 years ago, in a language neither me, Pat Robertson or any living pastors speak, in a culture none of us has lived in, from an era far removed and foreign to what we are living in today.

So it is not a question of who is right or wrong but how you interpret it. According to World Christian Encyclopedia, there are more than 33,000 Christian denominations in the world. That means there are 33000 different interpretations of the bible. If there was only one interpretation, there should only be one church.

There is no way we can examine the rightness or wrongness of the theology of that many denominations. We don't have to. What I am interested in is how to live by the one and only commandment of Jesus...love god and love your neighbor. How can we become loving, compassionate, joyful, peaceful human beings who experience the abundant life that Jesus promised and how to share that life with everyone we come into contact with. That is all I am concerned about.

So to prepare you to be open to new ways of being church, and to make sense of life in the midst of so many competing claims and contradictory interpretations, I promise you one thing: that everything I propose and implement will be based on three basic criteria.

Number one, it will be based on the New Testament especially the gospels because that is what our denomination, the DOC focuses on.

Number two, it will be fully faithful to the mind of Jesus. If anything I say here is against what Jesus would have said, I want you to challenge me.

Number three, everything I say and do will be in keeping with the theology of our denomination which is spelled out in this little book which I have studied. The more I read about the theology and practice of the Disciples of Christ the more I like it.

Along with my promise, I have a request of you. If you feel challenged by what I say, please come to me directly. Don't stand in the corner and complain. I am one of the most approachable people you will ever meet. Approach me via phone, text, messenger or face book. I will be happy to sit with you here in the office, at your home, at my home, at Starbucks, or anywhere else, to explain and clarify what I said. May be you will teach me something. May be I will return the favor. Let us grow together spiritually as one community.

Every successful organization has a vision. As proverbs 29.18 says: “Without a vision people perish.” Not having a vision is like driving without a map in a foreign country. You have no idea where you are going. Usually a clear vision can be often captured in one phrase of sentence. For example, our founding fathers envisioned the essence of this nation in just one powerful phrase: E Pluribus Unum (from many one).

15 minutes could save you 15%..you know which company that is without even mentioning its name. “The Ultimate driving machine” for 40 years BMW has thrived on that vision. “The happiest place on earth” (Disney) “All that is fit to print (NYT) “Democracy dies in darkness (WAPO)

In this day and age, when people have short attention span and no patience for more than 140 characters, we need a short phrase to express and explain, what we are about as a church.

After a lot of praying and meditation, I came up with this phrase:

Empowering lives through TENacious Discipleship.

A lot of Christian messaging I have heard about over the years, is about enslavement not about empowering. We are described as unworthy, wretched, sinners living in depravity.

Our plight is to somehow endure life on earth which is a valley of tears, and aim for salvation after we die. In that paradigm, we feel like victims, so powerless to do anything about our plight in life.

That is not what God wants for his children.

The primary purpose of the incarnation of Jesus into this world is not to die for our sins, but to empower us to be children of of God. That is what today's reading says: (Read John 1: 10-13)

To those who believed in him, Jesus gave them, the right, and the authority and the power to be children of god, children born not of human descent, but born of God. Jesus is saying to you today that you are born of God...either we don't pay attention to its meaning, or it is too much to bear...to think about ourselves as born of God.

Last week I told you of the story of Jim who found it extremely hard to believe that he was created in the image of god.

Today, let me tell you the story of another person who finds it hard to claim his divine potency. This happens to be my brother in law, John, one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Two weeks ago, I had posted a message on face book requesting blessing for my new role as interim minister. And this is what my brother in law wrote:

You certainly have my prayers. As a layman, I don’t know if I’m qualified to give you a blessing unless you sneeze, so I’ll assume you did. Bless you Paul!

John is operating from the hierarchical system of the Catholic church where you have the Pope on the top, then you have the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons and lay people at the very bottom. The lay people have no merit, or status or capabilities. In that thinking you feel less than the priest or the pastor, personally unworthy and spiritually powerless.

Jesus did not call his followers lay people or servants. He called them friends (John 15:15). Jesus made no distinction between clergy and laity.

Jesus told his disciples to follow him. In order to follow somebody, we have to have the basic capacity within us to do that. For example, a cat cannot follow a bird, because the cat does not have the capacity to fly. For the same reason, a fish cannot follow a cow.

Let's say I have to take my car for repairs to a dealership in Coconut Creek. So I tell my wife Judy to follow me to the dealership. I don't expect her to walk behind my car. It is assumed she will drive her car because she has the capacity to do that.

When Jesus asked his disciples to follow him, he knew that they are capable of doing it. They did it with the power that God gave them to do it. That is what made Apostle Paul to proclaim: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13)

We can do it too, but we have to engage in tenacious discipleship, which means, persistent, tireless, steadfast, untiring, unwavering, unyielding discipleship. In addition to that meaning, I have used tenacious as a play on words.

Tenacious discipleship has to be a conscious discipleship. We have to make a conscious choice to follow Jesus, through consistent practice of prayer, meditation, scripture reading and communal worship. There are ten principles that will make our discipleship tenacious and conscious. That is why TENacious is typed with TEN in capital letters. I hope to explain each of those principles in ten upcoming sermons.

Let me end with these parting words of Jesus: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12)

Jesus wants us to do greater things than he hid. And we say, no way, that is impossible, because we are sinners. And Jesus says, yes way, because I am going to empower you to do that.

This week, I like you to repeat these words several times, every day:

I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me.

YOUR DIVINE DNA

Today I like to talk to you about the meaning of that sign at the entrance to our sanctuary. Welcome Home. If you came here looking for God, realize that God arrives when you walk thru the door.

Understanding, believing and living the meaning of those words could change your life...it changed mine.


Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Haven as a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, in his joy, he went and sold all he had and bought the field (Mt.13:44). It took me 45 years to find the treasure and buy the field. Life has never been the same.


Notice the words: it is a treasure; it is hidden and you have to find it. Until you find it, you will never let go of what you are holding on to.


Until about the age of 45, I was like that man holding on to things I had—lesser quality treasures like occasional happiness, transient peace, momentary pleasures, temporary satisfaction etc. Peace and joy were not default settings of my life. I was cutting and pasting them depending on daily experiences and events. Everything would be okay, until something bad or negative happened to me or around me. Then my world would fall apart. And I would go into this depressive mood of being under the spell of a pervasive sadness and irritaton about life. And it would last for a few hours or few days depending on what had precipitated it. Then I would be happy again, until the next shoe of negative experience drops.


That changed when I became aware of the divine DNA within me. I am now mostly joyful and peaceful all the time, regardless of the circumstances in my life. Just like you, I am exposed to the misfortunes and tragedies of the world such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, poverty, gun violence , wars, racism, terrorism, and everything else on cable channels. I can think of at least half a dozen personal things in my life that should erase the smile on my face and drain the joy out of my heart, and cause me stress and anxiety. But I am not stressed out. I m not anxious.


I am talking about having the peace of Christ that passeth all understanding, the joy that supersedes the sorrows of life. It comes from a deeper place where my inner being is connected to the Supreme Being. Where the divine spark within me removes the shadow of sadness. Where the power of the Higher Self snubs out the sinful inclinations of my lower self. Where my individual soul is intimately connected to the Universal Soul. In that scenario, nothing can wrong because I am living from my soul, not from my ego.


It is available, and attainable to all of you. I like to teach you how to unlock the power that is already within you by acknowledging, accepting and celebrating the divine DNA. You don't have to work hard to attain union with God, because you have already got it. You don't have to establish a relationship with God, you only have to be aware of it. You don't have to go to god, you are already there.


It won't happen with one Sunday sermon. For some it might happen, but I will be here Sunday after Sunday talking about this at least for a year, and if you are open to the Holy Spirit, one day it will hit you and your life will never be the same again. The welcome sign was designed with that goal in mind. It is an invitation to come home to yourself, the dwelling place of the Holy.
So how do the words of that welcome sign radically change your life? Before I get to that, let me tell you how excited I am about it. As part of articulating my vision for this church, it was the first thing I talked about in our elders meeting, and I was not officially the interim minister yet. Alice knows about it because I put a little pressure on her to get the sign done before my inaugural Sunday, and she made it happen. When I texted Alice, thanking her for her efficient work, she texted back: “don't get used to it.”


The elders approved it on a Monday night, Alice sent it to Steve Sikora on Tuesday morning, and Steve delivered it Thursday after noon and Thursday evening Alice and Daryl put it up there.


I am so excited about its meaning because it tells you that you come to church not to meet god who is waiting for you here, but to awaken and celebrate the god who is already within you. It is a reminder that you are a part of god, not apart from God.

In John 10:34, Jesus answered them, “is it not written in your Law, “I have said you are gods?”

In the 4^rd century, St. Athanasius, a Father of the Church said this: “God became man so that man might become God.” German mystic Meister Eckart calls it deiformity, the conformity of our lives to that of God's.

There are many people who think that it is a minority opinion bordering on blasphemy. In our elders meeting Mike brought it up. He said, that is a tall order. I cannot see myself as part of god, because I know my sinfulness and my weaknesses. Mike is not alone in this. In fact 99 percent of Christians feel like that.


Let me tell you a story to illustrate how difficult it is for people to acknowledge and accept the truth that they are part of God.


Yeas ago, I needed to make a personal website and being computer illiterate, I had no idea how to do that. I heard about this guy, his name was Jim, who had this special affection for married priests like me and he offered to design a website for me as a favor. I was so appreciative of it and so I invited him for dinner to our house. So Jim and his wife Maria came for dinner. Jim was a retired engineer and Maria was a retired high school teacher.


We had a great visit, during which we talked about faith, family, church, religion, bible, spirituality. Both of them are former Catholics but called themselves NPCs. Non Practicing Catholics. I gave them a copy of my book titled God is Plural and that generated a discussion of its own. They were very curious about that title because they always thought that there was only one god. That is a whole new sermon I have to preach one day. At the end of the dinner, Maria asked me: “So how do we see God's image in everyone, especially in people who irritate us, such as bad drivers or annoying neighbors?”  I told her that she had to read the whole book!

So my dinner guests thanked us, gave us big hugs and went on their merry way.  The next day, I got a nice e-mail from Jim thanking me for the sumptuous dinner and the warm hospitality.

I wrote back, once again expressing my gratitude for designing a free website, and I ended the email with these words: In my thinking, Maria and you are two more images of God consciously added to my collection, to make my image of God larger and more complete.


I was sad and surprised by Jim's response the next day: He wrote: I never thought that Maria and I or ANYONE for that matter, could be images of God--although I have heard that phrase, “Made in God's image--my whole life...thinking about that brings a smile to my lips.


Here is a 67 year old man, very intelligent and highly accomplished. He was a systems engineer at IBM for 29 years, and a senior engineer at Boeing for 15 years; married for 46 years with three children and ten grand children. He has traveled extensively and lived in several cities due to job related transfers.  Born and raised Catholic, he was baptized as a baby, received first communion at age 10, was confirmed at 14, and attended Mass faithfully every Sunday. He has listened to thousands of sermons, read the bible a few times, and read several spiritual books. We are not talking about an “average religious Joe” here.


And yet, and yet, he never thought or believed that he could be an image of God! You know what?  If you don't consider yourself an image of God, you are unlikely to see people around you as images of God because what you see out there, is a reflection of your inside! Like philosopher Nietzsche, if you believe that “hell is other people,” you are likely to see hell in front of you, and create hell for others. If you believe that other people are images of God, you are likely to treat them with respect and compassion.


Why didn't Jim who is a very religious man, a life-long Catholic, never thought he or his wife or anyone could be images of God? He admits to hearing it thousands of times. Why didn't he believe it?  Why is it so hard to believe that, for many people?


One reason is that many pastors don't believe it or preach about it. The fact that we are part of God is too good to be true. It is a frightening possibility because they are focusing on the mighty God of Moses who appeared in the burning bush, refusing to show his face or reveal his name. They are not thinking of the God of Jesus who is a loving father who shares his divine genes with us his children.


To prove that we are weak sinners, unworthy of god, they quote Augustine's theory of “original sin.” They quote Calvin who talked about our “total depravity” or Martin Luther who wrote: “Humans are like piles of manure, covered over by Christ.”


I am not denying the existence of our sinful self or discounting our propensity and capacity for doing evil things. There is definitely an aspect of our humanity that is weak, dark, frail, fickle, faithless and faint. But there is another aspect to our humanity that is beautiful, wonderful, magnificent, something that is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” I invite you to focus on the latter without ignoring the former.

Your primary identity is not that you are a sinner; your primary identity is that you are a saint; Awaken to it, own it; manifest it; your life will change.


Almost every letter of Apostle Paul begins with this greeting:
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi:
To the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colosse:


Paul could have addressed them “my brothers in Christ,” or “my fellow disciples,” or “my dear servants of Christ,” or “my dear Christians.” But he didn't. He called them saints. Paul knew that there were bad people in those communities. In Corinth for example he had to deal with people who were idol worshipers, institgators, liars and cheaters. He still called them saints...


If apostle Paul were to write a letter to us today, it would begin with these words: To all the saints at Royal Palm Christians Churh in Coral Springs, Florida. It is an aspirational title. We are not there yet...but we should not stop from aspiring to get there. Believing that you are callled to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, is the first step of that journey.


So you can focus on your sinful humanity and live like a victim, feeling badly, struggling endlessly and suffering needlessly. Such a life will be largely devoid of joy, and filled with irritations, frustrations, and lack of fulfillment.


Or you can awaken to your innate divinity, acknowledge your identity as a spiritual being and celebrate that divinity displayed all around you. Then you will be living the abundant life that Jesus promised.


Christianity is not the only region that teaches the unity of god and man. According to the Hindu scriptures, there is no duality between divinity and humanity. The Hindu phrase Aham-Brahmasmiti (Brahman is within me) points to that truth.


I like to end with the words from a letter that Rabindranath Tagore wrote to a friend after his visit. Tagore was an Indian poet and mystic, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He wrote to his friend: “After you had taken your leave, I found God’s footprints on my floor.”


So, the question this morning is this: Do you leave God’s foot prints where ever you go?