It all starts with Connection

Do you remember that first moment you felt connection with your spouse or SO?  The smile, or laugh or brush of a hand that made your heart race and you knew there was something there  - it feels so good to find a connection with someone.  It feels good because this is what God created us for - connection.

When God created the universe, God took the formless void and divided out the light, the land, the water, plants, animals and finally humankind.  Everything was created from the same mush, by the same hand of God.

God said, "Let us make humankind in our image"  As Christians we see this verse as confirmation that from the very beginning God was a Trinity - both diverse and unified at once.  God - Creator, Savior, Sustainer - is one God and yet at the sometime distinct, different and multiple.

God created us in this image - we are distinct and different but yet we are one human family.

What we see around us with all the problems in our world regarding race, religion and politics is our human tendency to see our differences and assign greater importance to our difference than to our sameness.

It is after the fall, after Adam and Eve eat the apple that division and disconnection enters the world.  All of a sudden they hide from God.  They are disconnected from God.   And they blame and shame each other - they are disconnected in their relationship.  Disconnection is a result of sin and fallen-ness.  Our pointing fingers, blaming and shaming one another is a result of sin.  God created us for connection and relationship without blame and shame and sin.

Every white skinned person has (after a certain age) sun spots.  Those dark spots on your skin prove that you have just as much Melanin as the darkest black person from Africa.  Melanin, the chemical that gives our skin our amount of darkness, is all there in white people - it just isn't switched on.  Sun damage switches it on and viola we have dark spots.  So if blacks, browns, and whites all have the same amount of the same chemical in our skin, why is skin color so important to us?

We've been taught.  We have been taught that skin color is important and associated with all kinds of other traits - thick lips, thick noses, laziness, musicality, sports ability, low intelligence -- all these things are stereotypes that have nothing to do with skin color.  They have nothing to do with each other at all.  Except that we have been taught over generations and generations that they go together with a shade of skin.  It is a result of sin, of disconnection, that we look at our differences and assign blame and shame because of them.

God teaches us that we come from the same family, the same Creator, and that our sameness is more important than our differences.  Our differences are meant to help us complement and teach each other different perspectives.  But our sameness is meant to hold us in unity as one family of God.  We are created for connectedness and unity, while complementing each other with our individuality.

Its not easy.  Our political views get us arguing with each other and soon we are dismissing each other.  I struggle with this.  I have a friend that I really like, but some of the things he posts on Facebook make my blood boil.  I was ready to unfriend him this past week, but after a day of cooling down I decided to take another tactic - I decided to go on a prayer campaign, praying for him as often as I can.  I'm putting post-it notes around my house to remind me.  I'm not praying he changes, I'm praying God blesses him and loves him and that he finds peace and joy everyday.

It is not easy, because we live in a fallen world where sin and shame are all around us.  We are taught to look at our differences and assign greater meaning to them.  But we can also unlearn this.  We can learn to look more to our sameness and our unity as people of one family, created by one God.

Learning to Love

How do we learn about love?

We learn first from our families, our parents and siblings and the people closest to us.  But then we learn from Disney movies about naïve, helpless princesses and heroic princes and happily ever after which ironically always ends immediately after the wedding.  We learn from soap operas where love is always a game of possession, lies, and traps.  We learn from sitcoms where one parent is the responsible adult and the other is a big kid who makes everyone laugh.  Is it no wonder we struggle to have healthy strong relationships in this modern age of media? 

As people of faith our learning about love comes first from looking at how God loves.  God’s love for us and humanity is the pattern for our loving.  How Jesus loved, caring for the hurting, the poor, the rejected, the sinners and accepting all as precious is our example of love.  And our first place to practice this love is in the church.  How wonderful would it be for parents to bring their kids to church expecting them to learn about love from watching church members?

When Paul writes what is called “The Love Chapter”  1 Corinthians 13, he isn’t writing for a couple of lovers.  He doesn’t write it for romantic love at all.  In fact Paul doesn’t really thing romantic love is all that great – his preference is for Christians to stay single and celibate and focus their lives on God and on service.  (this standard continued for another 1,300 years, Christian churches/pastors weren’t involved  in weddings at all until that time)

Paul writes The Love Chapter for the church.  Specifically a group of house churches, at this time there were no church buildings, who were quarreling with each other comparing and trying to one-up each other all the time.  Paul first writes chapter 12 – how we are all given a gift from the Holy Spirit and we need each other like a body needs both hands and feet, eyes and ears.  We are the body of Jesus and we need each other to work together. 

Then Paul switches on us with Chapter 13 – but even though we may have these gifts, they are nothing without love.  We can have talents and skills but if we don’t use them with love its pointless.  The quality of how we interact with each other matters.  And the first quality should be loving. 

Then Paul fleshes out what loving looks like.    Patience, kindness, not keeping score or wrongs, not flying off the handle, not being self-centered, forgiving, hoping for better, believing, trusting.

It’s a long list.  It’s a list that when I read it at weddings, I feel bad because it’s a tall order for two people mad about each other.  It’s a really tall order when we realize this is how we are supposed to love the people we sit in church with and sometimes kinda like.  It’s a tall order when we are supposed to love the people at the church down the street with this love.  When we are supposed to treat every person we meet with this love.

This week we have seen a lot of un-loving actions in the world.  And what are we supposed to do?  It may seem naïve, silly, pointless, even stupid, but Jesus says we are supposed to meet persecution with love, rejection with love, hurt with love, we are supposed to respond to hate with love. Because God loves us that way.

Its not easy.  Its not supposed to be easy.  But God calls us beyond what our society, our culture and our human guts say (all those things would let us focus on revenge and getting even)  God calls us to a higher standard, Love.  What does look like this week, of all weeks?  Like this:

New Sermon Series: Summer of Love

"All you need is Love" -- The Beatles

Summer 2016 is going down as a summer of bombings, shootings, racism, terrorism and a whole lot of social media fighting.   What is Jesus' answer to all of these problems? 

It may sound naive, simplistic and maybe downright dumb yet the answer Jesus gave us over and over was this:  Love one another.

How can we as individuals and as a church in Arnolds Park, Iowa help change the world?  By striving to love one another all the more.  So this summer lets talk about love.  Platonic love, Agape/Godly love, Philo/brotherly love and yes romantic love as well.  We'll go to all parts of the Bible and talk about many aspects of love and how we can act more loving. And in loving we change the world.

Faith on the Street

Jesus talked about people who live their faith so that other people can see them.

Jesus said: Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.    Matthew 6:1-6

Sharing our faith is a tricky thing.  On the one hand we are told to go and share the good news of Jesus with the world- we believe we have something beautiful to offer others.  On the other hand we are told to be careful of practicing our piety before others - if we share our faith the wrong way then we can easily turn people against religion.

We have to ask ourselves, "Is this way of sharing our faith focused on us or on the receiver?"      Because its easy to share in the way we want to share, its harder to figure out how does the unchurched, the receiver, want to hear?  

Its fun to share our faith in a way that shows the world how good we are, how holy, how nice.  Its a lot harder to go into the places where unbelievers hang out and just be with them - the way Jesus was with them just eating and drinking and hanging out, showing that  he wouldn't judge them but came to love them.  That was Jesus' evangelism plan - hanging out and loving people as they were.  When Jesus was on street corners he was healing people, touching them, answering their needs that they brought to him.  His public preaching was mostly outside the city, or in the synagogue -- places where people had to choose to go to hear him.

So it troubles me that our Iowa governor has made a declaration that the Bible should be read publicly in every county in Iowa in the next few weeks.  

This troubles me for a few reasons, 

1. its a violation of church & state -- a principle that protects churches as much as it protects the state and individual rights

2. Jesus says not to do stuff like this and I'm a follower of Jesus.  This is standing on the street corner showing how good, and religious we are -- its designed to make us look good, and not to serve others or make the world a better place.

3.  The most important reason is that its not good evangelism.  Reading the Bible out loud to people going about their business on a beautiful day isn't an act of hospitality, it is an interruption. Its annoying.  It makes us look like crazy people, religious zealots, and unchurched people don't want any part of that.  When I pass by the guy who reads the Bible on the street corner in Spencer, I feel the same way - he looks crazy to me and I am embarrassed by him.  

I won't participate in this event, and I hope that the rest of the ministers in Dickinson County and in Iowa will not participate.  I hope that instead of reading the Bible out loud, we can organize days of service and caring.  Hand out free cookies on the street corner quietly.  Clean up the beaches or trails together as churches.  

The Power of Stillness

"Be still and know that I am God"

God commands that we do what is good for us - to be still and be with Him.

Stillness is counter-cultural in our world that values constant communication, motion, accomplishment.  Yet all that busy-ness, all the going can keep us from truly feeling our feelings and letting God be at work in our hearts.

Be Still, God says.

Just Be.

Be still, and in quiet listen to God.

Connect with God.

Let God open up your heart and be at work inside you.

10-15 minutes a day

1 hour a week

1 day a month

2-3 days a year

Be still and be with God

Need a guide to get started?      Michael Hyatt has a simple guide here

Want someone to walk you through some guided meditations?  UCLA Mindfulness center has some great guided meditations here.  They are from a secular, health perspective

Here are some Christian guided meditations  from a faith perspective.


Ready for a day-long retreat?  here is a great website that will walk you through a whole day with God!  I also have some books and other resources for taking a personal retreat day.

Want a great place to go on a personal retreat?  Wellsprings Farms (formerly Clare's Well) is a wonderful place to get away by yourself and its not too far away.

What does a Christian Look Like??

Paul the great church starter goes to Galatia among Pagan peoples, converts a group of leaders and helps them to start a church and then moves on to another area.   Jewish Christian missionaries come some time after Paul and are trying to convince the people to become more Jewish in their religious practice.  To be circumcised, to follow the kosher food laws, etc.   Paul writes this letter called "Galatians" to the people in Galatia and this letter and this point of view becomes the basis for which Christianity begins to reject its Jewish roots.

In chapter 5 Paul asks:  What does it look like to be Christian? 

How do we know we are being led by the Holy Spirit?  

For the Jewish Christians it is being circumcised, eating kosher, and believing Jesus is the messiah prophesied in the old testament.

What does it look like to be a Christian?

It is a question that is always being asked again.  Can Christians have tattoos? Piercings?

At one point in our Methodist history being a Christian meant not drinking, not dancing, not playing cards, going to church in a suit and tie if you are a man, or a dress and hat if you were a woman.

Over time these outward marks change with our culture and we are always asking again - what does it look like to be a Christian?

Paul’s argument is that narrow definitions of religious practice don’t work.  Having a check list or a picture of a “Christian” doesn’t work.  Outward habits of not doing this or always doing that are not the true signs of faith -- they are cultural definitions of who is "good" but have nothing really to do with our hearts.

What is really defines our faith is our connection to God through the Holy Spirit, allowing God’s spirit  work in us to make us better people.   The marks of being a Christian are in how we interact with people.  

The practices that we take on – service, Bible Study, prayer, small groups are opportunities for us to grow and develop these qualities within us.  But they are not the ends in themselves.   Being a person of faith means cultivating the inner qualities that bring us closer to God and help us love our neighbor.    Being a Christian is defined by our hearts, our attitudes and the habits of our minds.

When we meet a loving, joyful, peace-loving person who is good and kind and gentle and controls their temper then we know we have met a person led by the Holy Spirit.

When Christians get it Right

We've talked about how Christians get it wrong the last 5 weeks.

But what does it look like when Christians get it right??

It looks like Pentecost!

First -- On Pentecost the followers of Jesus focused on telling the story of Jesus -- how Jesus lived & died and rose again to give us freedom and life and love.  

When Christians get it right we are focused on Jesus’ story, how we live it in our lives and sharing it with others.  That’s getting it right.

Second -- On Pentecost the Holy Spirit Wind blew open the windows and the doors sending us into the world.    The Holy Spirit oriented the disciples outward to the world, not inward to the group of insiders.

When Christians get it right we are far less worried about navel gazing and inner circle stuff than we are about how we can engage the world.  The new church should not be a resting place for used up rockets but a launch pad for sending followers of Jesus out into the world.  The church is not a car museum where everything is perfectly shiny and preserved but a NASCAR pit stop where the grease, fuel and the wheels are flying into us so we can get out there again to do the work of the church.

Third -- On Pentecost involved speaking in tongues, other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave ability.  Which is a little weird for mainline Protestants in subdued Iowa.  Think of the speaking of tongues as God's radical hospitality -- making sure the people heard the Good News in the way they would best absorb it.  

We are not called to share the Good News in the way we want to hear it -- We already have heard it!!   We are called to share the Good News in the way others might best hear it.  That means asking ourselves what kind of music do people in the world listen to??  What kind of hour do people in the world enjoy??  Who are on the edges of our society and how can we connect with them?  In the way they want to hear it. 

These three things:

+Focused on Jesus' story

+Outwardly Oriented

+Sharing in the way others can hear

Are hallmarks of how Christians can get it right -- how we show love non-judgmentally for God's people.