Southminster Presbyterian Church

I guess it’s inevitable that conversation turns in this direction, given the spate of dangerous weather in St. Louis over the past few weeks, the astonishing outbreak of tornadoes in the South yesterday, the earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, the rising unrest and violence in the Middle East, so on and so forth.  It’s only a matter of time before people begin to talk about the “End Times” and the return of Christ.

Nevertheless, I was a bit surprised to find these two blog posts come across Twitter on Monday.  The first is a post by Walt Mueller, president of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, titled Only 26 Days Until Jesus Returns! . . . ..  Walt tells of a billboard (not the one in the picture) he saw over the weekend that promised - no, guaranteed! - Christ’s return on May 21, 2011.  Which is a major bummer, because we’re supposed to recognize and honor our graduating High School seniors the very next day.  Oh well, guess we can return all of those gifts we bought.

The second is a post by Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University in Chicago.  He writes about an ABC interview with Rev. Franklin Graham (Son of Billy Graham), who wonders if the biblical passages that say ‘every around the world eye will see’ Christ when he returns will come true thanks to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  I have no idea  if that’ll be the case, and I imagine REv. Graham was just offering lighthearted speculation, but I’m certainly a bit more interested in the interview, now.

What’s most interesting to me in all of this is how quickly we turn to thoughts of Christ’s return whenever the economy crashes, or the weather turns violent, or natural disasters happen back-to-back, or whenever life just gets hard.  This kind of thinking is so prolific that a reporter for The Weather Channel yesterday even said, “This is not the End Times, folks.”  Granted, this isn’t without warrant.  After all, Christ says in Matthew 24 that,

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains. - Matthew 24:6-8

Of course, we’ve had wars and rumors of wars innumerable times since Christ ascended into heaven.  We’ve had natural disasters and severe weather outbreaks that make what’s happened so far this year seem almost insignificant.  And the birth pains part?  Paul reminds us in Romans 8 that “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:21-22).  

Unfortunately, we often tend to forget a few other things Jesus and the apostles said about his return.  Things like him coming back like a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43, 1 Thessalonians 5:2), that we will not know the day or hour (major bummer for the bulletin board dude above, eh? Cf. Mark 13:32), that God’s time is not our time (2 Peter 3:8-9).  So what are we to do?  2,000 years after Christ ascended into heaven and promised to return, what are we to believe?

I think these passages of Scripture provide a helpful guide of what to do in the “already/not yet” of Christ’s second coming.  As we seek to live out the Kingdom of God while we await it’s consummation, these passages can be our guide:

Since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.  For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.  He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.  Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. - 1 Thessalonians 5:8-11

What kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.  But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.  Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. - 2 Peter 3:11-15

Basically, we aren’t to worry about the whens of Christ coming, or even the hows.  But rather we’re to live as Christ calls us to live right now, seeking to invite as many as possible into the Kingdom of God.  We should always be prepared for Christ’s return, whether there are signs of his coming or not.  And we should be thankful that he delays, so that more might be welcomed into his Kingdom.

And all the while, we Christ’s promise and John’s hopeful response:
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” 
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
- Revelation 22:20

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” – Anne Lamott

Truth sometimes comes to us in the strangest ways.  How often do you hold or carry a grudge, refusing to  forgive the person who wronged you?  And have you ever considered that it is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die?  Anne Lamott definitely has a way with words and images that casts a fantastic light on life.  I recommend her books to you.

But this post isn't about Anne Lamott.  Instead, it's about conflict and forgiveness.  If there is one thing we Christians are good at doing, it's fighting.  And we're best at fighting with ourselves.  Which is ironic, because we follow One who said, "You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."  No, when we've been wronged, we want to make sure we have opportunity to hit back - usually with greater force.  In fact, things get so bad at times that we begin to refer to our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ as our "enemies" (I've actually heard an elder say this in reference to other members of the Session - crazy!).  Really?  Our enemies?  If we are all following the same Lord and King, how can we possibly be enemies?

But we are.  And we treat each other that way.  And every one around us knows it.  But we can't stop, because the wrong they perpetrated against me is too painful, too harsh.  And it must be paid back.  So in the best of situations, we call an uneasy truce.  We smile nicely at each other in the halls and say to each other on Sunday morning, "May the peace of God be with you" while we mutter curses under our breath.  Which is ironic, because we just asked God's peace to be with them.  Hmm.

The problem, though, is that Anne Lamott is exactly right.  When we let conflict fester, when we don't take the steps to initiate forgiveness and reconciliation, it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick.  Of course, they don't.  And we then become more sick.  And then we become miserable, and misery loves company, so we begin spreading the poison around.  And pretty soon the whole church, the body of Christ, is filled with poison, and everyone is sick, and no one knows why, and the church begins to die from the inside.

I think that's why Jesus said, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift."  How can we worship God fully and truly if we are carrying around grudges and conflict?  If we try and do so, our worship will become stale and flat.  We'll wonder why we feel so distant from God.

I don't know what the grudges are that you are carrying around.  I am sure you have very good reasons for holding them and that the wrongs committed against you were deep, and painful, and severe.  And I'm truly sorry that happened to you.  But I know that holding those grudges is hard.  And I know that the work of forgiveness and reconciliation is harder still.  But I know this: Should you choose to embark on that journey, you will not walk that path alone.  For Christ will walk it with you - he who was wronged more deeply, betrayed more painfully than we ever will - he who hung on the cross and asked his Father to forgive those who put him there.  If you need someone to sit with you as you begin that process of forgiveness and reconciliation, let one of the pastors know.

"I appeal to Euodia and to Syntyche to agree in the Lord."
- Paul, Philippians 4:2

It won't be easy, but I promise the rewards of healing, forgiveness, restoration and reconciliation are more than worth it.  Notice what Paul said: He urges Euodia and Syntyche to "agree with each other in the Lord."  Nothing here about agreeing with each other.  Rather, to agree "in the Lord."  It's about submitting ourselves to our Lord and King, Jesus Christ.  It's about realizing that, more often than not, we are as culpable in the situation as the other person.  It's about humbly admitting that we might just be wrong, too.  It's about realizing that, most of the time, we can probably agree to disagree and still serve our mutual Lord side-by-side.

I had an opportunity to do this just last week.  Not only was my relationship with this other person immeasurably improved, but so also was my relationship with God.  Was it hard?  Very much so, and humbling too.  But absolutely worthwhile.  As you celebrate our Lord's sacrificial work that enabled us to be reconciled to God, how might you begin the sacrificial work of being reconciled with someone who has hurt or wronged you this week?

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked,
“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?
Up to seven times?” 
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
- Matthew 18:21-22

Two interesting things happened last week that had me pondering the idea of "blessings" and being blessed by God.

The first happened last Thursday when I visited our local Christian bookstore in order to purchase bibles for our Confirmands.  This store puts several items at the checkout counter that are discounted to $5.  CDs, books, etc. As the cashier is ringing me up, he asks, "Can you be blessed with any of our $5 items today?" That whole idea of being blessed by having the opportunity to spend more money really caught my attention.  I'm just not sure that's how "blessings" are supposed to work.  And to have such a magnificent biblical truth reduced to a marketing slogan really bugged me.

The second happened the next day when I drove from my house in South County to a church in Clayton, a distance of about 9 miles.  Green lights, all the way, baby!  I had to have passed through two dozen intersections.  To put it in perspective, I made it well over halfway home with green lights, then stopped at every one of the remaining 6 lights.  That's a little more typical.  On the way to Clayton, as I'm delighting in this green-light situation, the thought passes through my mind, "Wow, God is really blessing me today.  He must love me."  Really?  So God loved and blessed me less on my way home?

But that's how we think, isn't it?  When things are easy or good, God is blessing us. So what are we to do with verses like James 1:2, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." Or the Beatitudes, where Jesus lists out those who are blessed by God: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted.  Maybe using "blessings" in marketing slogans or in reference to green lights is severely cheapening our understanding of blessings.

In fact, these passages together with 1 Corinthians 9:22-23 ("To the weak I became weak...I do it all for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its blessings"), seem to indicate that it is our suffering and our struggles - particularly when we suffer for the sake of the Gospel - that indicate that God is blessing us.  And a look at the word used for blessing in the Beatitudes bears this out.  That word, makarios, means "to be a privileged recipient of divine favor."  I don't know about you, but I certainly don't feel like a privileged recipient of divine favor when life gets hard, or when I'm struggling, or when I catch a lot of red lights.

The apostles really did see life this way, though.  The more they suffered for the Gospel, the more they were blessed by God.  Why?  Because they knew that the more they suffered, the more like Christ they became - Christ who suffered more than any of us ever will.  And there was nothing they wanted more, no greater blessing, then to become as much like Christ as possible, even if it meant dying. Paul makes that explicitly clear in Philippians 3:10-11: "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."  Wow.  Sharing in his sufferings.  Becoming like him in his death.  All in order to know Christ and attain resurrection from the dead.  In other words, all in order to be blessed by God.

And we think we've been blessed when we get a raise, or catch a big sale at our favorite store, or get green lights.  Maybe the problem is that our idea of "being blessed" has been corrupted by our modern, capitalistic, materialistic, consumerist desires.  Our need for stuff, our pursuit of the "American Dream."  I wonder what would happen if we were to turn our thinking around, if we were to embrace a more biblical perspective of "blessings."  Maybe we'd find something better than a good deal, and a fulness of life that we'd otherwise be missing.

Next week is Holy Week, the time between the joyous and triumphant -and short-lived- celebration on Palm Sunday and the joyous and triumphant -and eternal- celebration of Christ's victory over death and sin on Easter Sunday.  Of course, the path to that ultimate victory was traced through betrayal, and humiliation, and suffering, and abandonment, and pain, and even death.  Maybe the fulness of God's blessings come through a similar path for us also.  The apostles certainly thought so. Are you bold enough to ask God to bless you in this way?

May God bless each one of us -in the fullest and truest sense of the word-  as we continue to seek His face and be formed in the image of His son, Jesus Christ.

Over the course of the Lenten season, on Wednesday evenings, we are walking through the seven letters Christ wrote to the seven churches of Asia Minor found in Revelation 2-3. In preparing for this week's message on the letter to the church in Pergamum, I came across Eugene Peterson's thoughts from his book, Reversed Thunder, that seemed quite worthwhile.  I hope you find them worthwhile as well.

The church is the place where we come to find out what we're doing right.  As such, it's a place of affirmation.  The church is also the place where we come to find out what we're doing wrong.  As such, it's a place for correction.  The church is also the place where we come to hear the promises of God.  As such, it's a place of motivation.  No Christian community can do without any part of this message.  We need affirmation, we need correction and we need motivation.

 

In the church we're always in process of being affirmed.  We find those parts of our lives that are working well.  Discovering them gives us zest, confidence, and assurance.  We're also always in process of being corrected.  We find those parts of our lives that aren't working well.  There's a relentless quality to the Word of God that insists on training us to live a victorious Christian life.  The training takes place in seven areas: We're trained to love (Ephesus), to be suffer (Smyrna), to tell the truth (Pergamum), to be holy (Thyatira), to be authentic (Sardis), to be in mission (Philadelphia), and to worship, using things to praise God, receiving gifts to serve him (Laodicea).

 

The church is the community of people who explicitly and consciously submit themselves to the direction and training of the Holy Spirit so that excellence is pursued in these seven areas.  Strengths are recognized and developed; weaknesses are exposed and corrected.  We get encouragement (no one is all bad); we get correction (no one is all good); and we get motivation, acquiring the energy to endure to pain of growth to the joy of maturity.

 

John neither complains about his churches nor glorifies them.  he accepts them as facts.  They are God's means for calling people together so they can realize who their Lord is and who they are, and develop the relationships that are coherent with those identities.

 

The churches in Revelation 2 and 3 show us that churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests.  They are messy family rooms.  Entering a person's home unexpectedly, we're sometimes met with a barrage of apologies.  John doesn't apologize.  Things are out of order, to be sure, but that's what happens to churches that are lived in.  They're not showrooms.  They're living rooms.  And if those living in them are sinners, there are going to be clothes scattered about, handprints on the woodwork, and mud on the carpets.  There's no evidence in the pages of the New Testament that churches were ever much better or much worse than they are today.  A random selection of seven churches in any century, including our own, would turn up something very much like the seven churches that John was attempting to give pastoral advice to.

 

For as long as Jesus insists on calling sinners and not the righteous to repentance (Luke 5:32) - and there's no indication as of yet that he has changed his policy in this regard - churches are going to be an embarrassment to the fastidious and an affront to the upright.  John sees them simply as lampstands - places where the light of Christ is shown.  They themselves are not the light.

 

A corrupt church still functions as the church.  Dirty lampstands don't extinguish Christ's light.  Of course, it's better that it be neither of these things, neither tarnished out of neglect nor polished out of vanity.  It's better that it simply be there, inconspicuously receiving and unselfconciously sharing the light of Christ.

...the church bears a marked resemblance to the incarnation of Jesus, who, being God, was equally real human flesh and life.  It is no accident that the church is called the "body of Christ."  It continues as an incarnate expression of the life of God.  But no less than for Jesus, this expression means that the church always takes particular form, shaped according to the cultural and historical context in which it lives.

Darrell Guder, Missional Church, pg 14

I'm not a big fan of flat tires.  Not that many people I know are - except maybe for tire repair shops - but I really don't like them.  I've been fortunate that I've never had a flat tire on my car, and the last time I blew a tire on my bike was at least 15 years ago.  Well, I almost had a tire blow out on me a month ago, but I caught it before it did.  So that doesn't count.

 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

- Hebrews 10:23-25

It seems that there is a high level of anxiety in our country right now.  From the slate of natural disasters that have come our way over the past several years, to worries about personal safety due to international and domestic violence, to fears about the economic situation not just in the USA but also around the world, people are really nervous and worried.  On top of that, we are getting ready to choose a new president to guide and lead our country for the next four years.

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

 

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

- Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34

Our thoughts and prayers go out to our neighbors to the north in Kirkwood today, following the shooting of 6 people at a city council meeting last night.

Even though I walk

    through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil,

    for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

    they comfort me.