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.
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