Date: Feb. 8, 2009.
Title: Become them, until ‘they’ becomes ‘us’.
Themes: Incarnation, love
Text: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Note: You may have to turn the volume up in order to hear. Our sound system doesn’t seem to like me. :)
Video Here
You and I both know Christians who are so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good. On the other hand, we all know Christians who are so earthly minded that if God picked them up and dropped them in heaven they wouldn’t believe they were there. The problem is Jesus was a radical, and we’re not. When Jesus first spoke words like “born again” and “kingdom of God”, they were shocking, even dangerous words. Why do you think they killed him? All he did was talk. And yet today, when someone starts throwing around phrases like “born again” and “kingdom of God” we don’t even listen. Those words, once so powerful, have become catchphrases for a subculture.
Jesus wasn’t interested in creating a subculture. He was interested in changing lives. He saved his harshest words for the Pharisees, and yet they had a lot going for them. They studied the scriptures. The prayed a LOT. They always showed up for services. They gave generously. Their families were solid. Their language was clean. You could tell just by looking at their clothes that they were religious. You could shut your eyes, talk with them for two minutes and you’d know. And that was the problem. You see, no one is that good. The only way you look that good is if you’re hiding something. And by hiding something not only do you prevent any healing from happening your own life, but also in the life of your family. And everyone around you who’s buying into the lie now feels guilty for not keeping up. That’s the problem of religion as subculture, and Jesus railed against it.
Jesus wanted to radically change lives. Your old self has to die so that your new self can live. It’s like you’re being born a completely new person. But that’s difficult, dangerous, terrifying. We’d rather pretend everything is ok. Or if we have to change, we’d rather change by degrees. A little nip here, a little tuck there. So we make a promise to ourselves. “I will never do that again. I will never do that again.”
But it doesn’t work. You know why? Because if you’re arguing with yourself, you’ve already lost. Your brain knows that your resolution is at least partly a lie. If it weren’t you wouldn’t have to make the resolution. No one has to psych themselves up to go get ice cream. If you’re arguing with yourself, then your will is fighting against your appetite. Unfortunately, will power is finite, but your brain’s ability to rationalize is not. So the outcome is a forgone conclusion. You will eventually give in and do the thing you hate.
You have to become a new person. The old person has to die so that the new one can live. And what does this new person look like? Simplest terms? “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Let’s break that down.
Love God with all your heart. Jesus looked at this world and he wept. He saw the abuse of power, the twisting of religion, and he was enraged. Do you think God expects us to be happy happy, joy joy, 24/7? God is not surprised by our feelings. There is no need to hide. How can God heal your heart if you won’t give it to him? We come her on Sunday and put on our best clothes and our best faces. And part of that is OK. It’s respectful, it’s even helpful. When I was a teenager, I really made my mom angry one Sunday because I had been obnoxious to her all week, and then we came to church and I was all sunshine and roses. She thought I was putting on a show, but the truth is it was easier to be nice to her at church. I felt like my best self at church. With the clothes, and the songs, and everyone watching, it was easier to be good. So some of that dress-up is ok, but honestly folks, who are we trying to fool? If you’re carrying a load of anger on the inside and smiling on the outside how does it heal? If you’re in pain, or afraid, or depressed and you smile all though church and go home to whatever habit you’ve adopted that helps you numb out, how does it ever get better? You know where that road ends? God wants to heal us, but that only works if we love God with our whole hearts, even the broken parts.
What about your soul? Love God with your whole spirit? Well, let’s put it this way. Suppose you’re in a relationship and the only time you ever talk to your significant other is for 30 seconds at meal times? What kind of relationship is that? Or suppose you talk to each other, but all you ever do is complain about your life and ask for stuff? How long is that relationship going to last? Now imagine if you only showed affection for your partner once a week. One day a week you’re all lovey dovey and the rest of the week you haven’t got the time. You see where I’m going with this? Paul says to pray without ceasing. Devote yourself to prayers so that it becomes a part of you, like breathing. You don’t even have to think about it because it’s the habit of your life to seek God.
Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Ever since the enlightenment, we’ve carried an argument in our heads that says there is an inescapable conflict between faith and reason. Reason is what’s real, it’s the stuff we can prove with argument and evidence. Faith is for all the rest of that silly religious stuff that we still cling to because it helps us feel better. That’s a misrepresentation of both faith and science. If God made the world, then it has some sort of order or rationality at its root, which means it is understandable. If God made the world from scratch, then it’s contingent, it didn’t have to be this way. Which means reality is not self evident, you have to go out there and look at it. You have to admit that you don’t know, and immerse yourself in the thing you don’t understand until its patterns become clear. You have to live with it, live right in it, until your imagination finds a way to grasp it, your intelligence finds a way to name it, and your wisdom finds a way to apply it. That’s real science, the art of finding things out, and faith conflicts with none of it.
But finding things out is only one of the magnificent things your mind can do. It can also make stuff up. We are miniature creators, made in the image of our creator, and the process of creation mirrors the process of discovery. We begin in the imagination, but instead of discovering the connections that are already there, we make new ones up. Then we use our intelligence to make that new thing real. And once it’s real, we use our wisdom to make the best of it. Loving God with all your mind means discovering and creating as an act of faith, as an act of worship.
Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Feeling close to God is wonderful. Praying with God is wonderful. Thinking Godly thoughts is wonderful, but it’s not enough. You have to physically do something.
Up until the steam engine, the average person had two options. You could do agriculture, or you could learn a trade. If you work is physical like that, then this whole thing plays out pretty clearly. You bring your whole heart to your work and it becomes and expression of your emotions. You bring your whole spirit to your work and the work itself becomes a prayer. You bring your whole mind to your work and the work becomes art. You bring all your strength to the task before you and when your strength is gone, you rest. That all make sense when your work is digging a ditch, or planting a garden, or making a violin. But what if your job is implementing diversity, increasing sales, or finding a way to keep 125 people working in spite of an economic downturn. What does loving God with all your strength look like then? I don’t know for sure, but I have two ideas.
First, it helps me to remember that every project we have, no matter how abstract ultimately breaks down into physical next actions: pick up the phone, dial the number, send the email, draft the memo. I can’t get my head around the whole project, but I can do this next one thing well. The second trick that helps me is to remember that strength, time, and energy are all part of the same equation. In a digital world, we can only rarely bring strength to bear on a given responsibility. But time and energy? Those we can control. For many of us, loving God with all your strength means we’re spending our time and energy on things that honor God and draw us closer to him.
Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. The obvious question then is how do you love yourself? You take care of your needs. Food and shelter. Security. Belonging. Respect. If Maslow is right, then our highest need is to experience meaning and purpose, to realize our inner potential. To love your neighbor as yourself, meet their needs. Imagine a world where we spent more money fighting poverty than we spent on cosmetics. Imagine a world where no one had to wonder when the next bomb was going to explode. Imagine a world where great teachers received more respect than mediocre basketball players. Imagine all the human potential that will be forever wasted in the next minute being applied to a cure for cancer.
An amazing vision. How do we make it real? How do we meet people’s needs? Well, one thing is certain. We can’t force it on them. God doesn’t force his love on us. If God chose to, he could reveal himself in a way we could not ignore. But then we wouldn’t be us anymore, would we? And whatever we felt at that point could never be called love. Maybe awe, maybe fear, but never love. So God chose another path. He came to us, identified with us. What is the primal scream of the Old Testament? What do the prophets cry over and over again? “How long, O Lord? How long must we wait?” And then we hear the words of Jesus as he cries from the cross, “My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me?” He became one of us.
So we follow his example. We become like those we serve, we identify with them, until there is no “them” anymore. There’s only “us”. Paul says, “Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”
So what, should we all just go convert to someone else’s religion? No way. Jesus did not come here to blend in. He was one with us, and he hid from nothing. But everywhere he went, his presence was living critique. He didn’t fear the Romans. He did admire the Pharisees. He didn’t curry favor with the Sadducees. He was light and life, and everywhere he went brokenness became whole, hidden things became visible, and death and sickness lost their power. If you’re talking to someone and they can tell in the first minute that you’re a Christian, there’s something wrong. On the other hand, if they can work closely with you for a year and not know you’re a Christian, something is wrong.
Perhaps our problem isn’t that we need to learn to speak the culture’s language. Perhaps we speak the culture’s language all too well. Perhaps our problem is we never learned to speak our own language, the language of faith, hope, and love. True Christianity is infectious. It is caught, not taught. I have never met a person who was argued into heaven, and I’ve met very few non-Christians who give a slightest care what the Bible says. You are the only Bible they will read, the only sermon they will hear. But how can they read it in you, if you haven’t read it yourself? How will they see something different in you if you’re just as stressed and scared as they are? We need to be transformed. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Then love your neighbor as yourself.
