Call to Worship for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

Where is the Christian life lived out?  That’s another way of asking where is the truth that we read in this book given application?  Where do all the ideas that we formulate concerning God, and our relationship with Him, and what He has done for us, and what He wants us to do for Him find their testing ground?

Well let me state the obvious.  It’s not here in this sanctuary on Sunday morning.  If you were faithful to attend church every Sunday morning for the entire year, you would spend less than 1% of your life sitting in these pews.  Even if you stayed for coffee hour and offered to clean up afterwards you would only be able to build it up to 1.5%.

Somehow that makes us feel uncomfortable.  You may have been a member of churches where people felt that their life did not have meaning unless it was within the context of doing something at church.  So churches add evening services, Wednesday night services, special bible studies, seminar series, weekend retreats.  They get so specialized that I used to joke that in some churches you could find a bible study or weekly gathering for single unemployed men with beards.

But the reality is that most of our life, the majority of our life is lived out in the workplace, in the marketplace, in schools of learning, in our homes and neighborhoods.  And those places are hard places sometimes full of darkness, brokenness, selfishness, and failure.  But they also happen to be where the majority of the people that the Father has created for good live, they are not here today because we don’t have room to contain them all if they showed up.  Jesus attended the synagogue when He was growing up, He went to the temple on those days recorded in the law, but most of his life was spent being obedient to His parents as part of a household, in working with His hands at a job, in recognizing authority within his home and community, in going to weddings and mourning at funerals because that is what it means to be human, to live in this tremendous world that God has made.

We’d like to stay here sometimes, because it seems safe to us, we are gathered together with like minded people, most of whom like us, we find encouragement here, maybe even some wisdom we can use...this motivates us, reminds us of our purpose, makes us feel like maybe we are worth something after all.  But if we spend too much of our time in these walls we become very much like one of those hot-house nursery grown flowers that really looks great, but try taking it and plopping it in the ground in your front yard, and after one or two crisp Vermont nights it is going to look pretty shabby.  That’s why you harden off flowers started inside when the snow is still on the ground, because they are designed mostly to be outside flowers, to be planted and thrive out there.  Exotics may look great, but they are the exception, not the rule, and so are we.

Furthermore, going to church is not the same as being the church.  It may be hard for us to break years of habit, but we do not need a building or committees or organs or sermons to do what God has called us to do.  Why is that so hard for us to understand?  The gospel message is not a hot house flower that has to be protected and cultivated inside warm safe places like this sanctuary.  It is robust, it is durable, it is the power of God for the deliverance of the world and the gates of hell itself cannot and will not prevail against it.  And believe it our not but your life, lived out there, not here on Sunday, is the way in which God chooses to make himself known to your family, your friends, your coworkers, even just the strangers you interact with each day.  I want to be the church, not just go to church.  I pray that we put this time to good use this morning since we are here anyway and let God show us the difference.

A Call to Worship from the 12th Sunday after Pentecost

Why am I here this week?  I thought that I finally figured it out last week, but now that I’m here this week I’m not so sure again.  I mean, I’ve seen glimpses through this week that God is still at work, but frankly my week has been hard and there is so little in the daily news that makes me confident that what I am doing here today means a hill of beans in the long run.  It’s easier to be a skeptic this morning than a believer.

Now I don’t know why that happens, but we are so quick to forget what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what we should be doing with our lives.  But fortunately that is something that is common to every person and so the Church throughout its history has tried to do things that help us on our journey.  One way is the yearly church calendar, and the second is the lectionary of scripture readings.  I preach out of a common set of readings that have been put together so that over a three year cycle pretty much everything that is in the bible has an opportunity to be read and studied.  That way we don’t get stuck in a rut or concentrate on things that we like to hear while ignoring things that are harder for us to deal with.  The second thing is the annual calendar in which we cycle through the great works of God on our behalf and then are given a chance to respond.  The year starts in Advent and we begin the story of our deliverance by remembering all that the Christmas season announces.  Then there is a short period of time when we concentrate on the work of Jesus Christ as He proclaims to us the coming of God’s Kingdom.  Then there is that intense time of Lent and Holy Week, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost.  By then the story of what God has done for us has been told with power.

But then there is a long period of time called Ordinary Times marked by the green altar cloths.  And we mark the Sundays in this period as the Sundays after Pentecost, after the sending of the Holy Spirit to us as the promise and power of God.  We do not concentrate so much on what God has done for us, or the recording of the story of His salvation…..this is our season, and the question put to us in this time is this….if God has done all of these things on your behalf, if He has given grace, forgiveness, deliverance, freedom from bondage, and the promise of eternal life...how are you going to live because of it?  Has it made a difference in your life?  What has God given to you to do with this new life He has freely given?

That’s part of why we gather on the Lord’s Day each Sunday.  To be reminded that we are not the people that we used to be.  We may still struggle each day we live, but the fact that God has acted on our behalf makes us different and gives us purpose, direction, and a job to do on His behalf.  We just need a little help to remember what those things are and find the encouragement together to move forward one more week in the name of Jesus.

This is the part of the year where God does not work for us, but God chooses to work through us.  To us is given that amazing task of doing God’s work in our homes, in our communities, in our workplaces.  Let’s open our hearts to hear what it is that He will give us to do this week.

A Call to Worship from the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

If you are part of my generation or older, you may have unconsciously dressed up this morning before coming to church.  That is one of the habits that we learned as part of our Christian journey.  But what else have we picked up along the way that affects how we should look and act when we enter this sanctuary every Sunday morning?  Each Sunday I ask myself  Why am I here?  What do I expect to find in this gathering?  What am I obligated to give as a participant in this assembly?

Just like putting on a good set of clothes to come to church, I can fall into the habit of putting on my good appearance of Russell Rohloff.  I can come into the presence of God and sit in the pews next to you pretending that my life is all put together just right.  I can sing songs expressing that ideal picture of God and my relationship with him, I can lift up my hands and smile, I can pray prayers that are all structured around the way I would hope things are and none of you would know that what is inside of me is any different from what is outside....but I would know, and so would the God I claim to worship.

I know that I can put on a nice set of clothes and a smiling face, but it does not fully cover the brokenness that is in my life, it does not make all of the hard times I faced this week trying to keep my head above water as my finances go south go away, or make me forget about facing one more disappointment from friends or family or coworkers.  A nice set of clothes can dress up but can’t hide the failures and doubts and fears that hide just under this tie.

So why are we here this morning?  Well, I hope each of us discovers the reason throughout this morning, but one thing I know is that there are two or more of us gathered here in the name of Jesus and He has promised to be here among and with us, and that whatever we may have brought into this sanctuary under our Sunday clothes, He has declared that He will be to us a merciful deliverer full of forgiveness and grace and love, and that He will never, ever let us fall from His hand.  And that is as good a reason as any to begin what we do this Sunday in His Name.

Love Songs to Jesus, a Confession

I want to confess that I find it difficult during Sunday worship or in special church settings to emotionally respond to songs that exhort me to "celebrate Jesus" or "love Jesus".  Heck, I have basic problems with the call to "worship and adore" Him.  It's not that I don't know the truth that is contained in those exhortations, or can't explain the great gulf between the supreme worthiness of God and sinners saved by grace.  I understand the theology and biblical teaching well enough to articulate it.  The problem lies with me and the fact that I don't really know Jesus, at least not like I know my wife, or my grandchildren, or my boss at work.  I know the truth and can pretend that He lives inside of me by the Holy Spirit but right now I react to my world about 90% physical and 10% spiritual.  The fact of the matter is I can't see Him, touch Him, sit across from Him or even talk to Him face to face, and no amount of bible quoting lifts me one foot higher towards His throne in heaven.  I don't mean to sound blasphemous, but it is difficult for me in the temperament I have to relate to Jesus in the way that is expected of a typical Christian believer.  Talking into the air or cutting the pages of scripture is not very much of a conversation for me.

I don't receive special revelations; when faced with a choice I weigh it as long as I dare to before choosing what seems right.  I rarely feel that I have been divinely nudged, I don't see every moment of every day as a divine appointment and rarely can I really say that something that happened was a "God-thing".  Being surrounded by people that do respond that way makes me feel out of step, on the fringe.  All that I really end up doing is seeking to faithfully do what the prophet said, I try to act justly towards all, to seek to move in mercy not judgement, and when it comes to spiritual stuff, to humbly do whatever it is that seems to lay in front of me.  Or as my wife is fond of quoting, all you have to do is "love God and love others".  Somehow I feel that there may be more substance in a life lived in this manner than some expressive emotionalism for an hour each Sunday.  We'll have to wait and see how that all sugars off in the long run.

Seasonal Givings Slump

We must be right in the middle of the seasonal charitable givings slump.  The not-for-profit NGO that I am treasurer for has seen a slump in giving, the ministry my wife works for has been touch and go on payroll for the last month, and the radio preachers on almost every program have been beating the bushes for support day after day.  I even hear it on Sundays at church buried in announcements and such.  We are a semi-numbers church.  We don't post weekly attendance, but we have been running the box score on what we need to take in week by week to meet budget (usually thousands of dollars) and what we do take in (usually hundreds of dollars).  The only objection I have to this annual hand-wringing time is the tendency, when a group or church or individual finds themselves in a financial crisis, to respond by stating or exhorting that we only need to trust God to provide.  I've heard that all my life, and frankly it is based on the assumption that what we are doing is what God wants us to do.  I have seen too many ministries where maybe God was drying up the storehouses of heaven to say that the purpose for your existence has been served and you are no longer needed.  But Christian ministries and churches are hard to kill off once they take root.  An appeal to the general Christian guilt factor or to history or to calling is most often enough to squeeze enough to squeak on by.

But it leaves the question hanging unanswered.  Are all the struggling churches, radio ministries, outreach programs, etc. really doing the work of the kingdom and therefore could be inclined to believe somehow that divine intervention will allow them to continue, or are they just afraid to face the fact that in the grand scheme of God's activities on earth they are not really needed.  Just for the record, I have never heard a ministry say "Well, giving is down, and we are taking that as a sign that our work is complete.  We are liquidating what we do have and reinvesting it in some other ministry that is growing."  Just because we do Christian things is no guarantee that they are God-called things.  That's why older churches in New England are more prone to turn into museums of past glory rather than a tabernacle of God's abiding presence.  They become centered on keeping the doors open and no longer impact their communities with the gospel.  The summer slump should be a time for inner reflection and honesty, not stepped up appeals and fundraising schemes.

Revival

Yesterday at church some of the praise songs and part of the sermon was devoted to the concept of revival and I found myself thinking of that quote from the famous philosopher, Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."  And I found that I could not really do a credible job of defining it.  It must have something to do with the Latin verb "to live" and the "re" implies somehow a revitalization, a restoration, a reinvigorating, perhaps a new birth?  But it is a biblical concept or something we have cobbled together along the way to deal with the reality of a holy God and our own seeming lack of spiritual maturity.  Why do we pray for it in our churches week after week?  What do we expect it to look like if and when it comes?  Is it something God expects us to do for ourselves or are we looking for an easy out of self discipline by waiting for God to step in and do it?  Again I concludes that it does not mean what we think it means. 

I can't find the word "revival" in my concordance, and there are probably less than 20 places where "revive" is used depending upon the translation.  And when I read those verses, mostly in the Psalms, I get the sense of God lifting a heaviness or a weariness, almost a feeling of hopelessness from the psalmist who finds himself overcome by life and all it brings his way.  And so he cries out to God for relief, for the ability to lie down believing that tomorrow could be different, and wake up knowing that even if it is not that the day will not be lived outside of the grace of God.  And somehow that is enough to put one foot in front of the other and continue the journey faithfully.  That prayer for revival seems to me to deal more with consistently living each day by the grace of God, being faithful where we are able, and being aware that the love of God still holds us even when we fall short.  It is not a flash-in-the-pan that brings emotional response and spiritual blessing and complete change over night.  I don't have a good conclusion for this discussion, I only know that I have become more acutely aware of the baggage I have inherited in my own spiritual journey and that somehow the church has made the whole Christian life a lot more complicated that I think it was originally meant to be. If true revival came as the evangelical church seems to define it you would expect to see a lasting effect, something transforming, a kingdom of God on earth moment, but things seem to go on pretty much the same way they have always gone on.  I think true revival only comes on that final day when all that is dead is made alive again and death is finally swallowed up forever in victory.

I See Men as Trees

I am facing cataract surgery in August and the whole process of aging (a more palatable form of describing the process of slowly dying or decaying) brings fresh perspectives into this interesting time of life.  Cataracts are probably different for each person who experiences them, but for me I see men as trees walking.  Everything is blurry all of the time, and nothing I do can improve the focus.  The light simply enters into my eyeball lenses where it is diffracted all to hell and never quite hits the back of the eyeball on target, or at least all of the light does not hit the same place at the same time.  I am starting to better appreciate my physics about not really seeing something but rather seeing the light reflected from that something.  In my case I lack the properly calibrated equipment to collect and focus that light, hence blurry has become my way of life.

Now as you age, you learn to live with things, things like joint pain, difficulty in sleeping, having to fight against gravity, loss of muscle tone, and more of all that.  I used to think that you could get use to most anything, that over time what is abnormal would become normalized, you just learn to live with it.  But constant blurriness is difficult to live with.  Oh, I've adapted to it, I can drive but not read highway signs until they are right in front of me, I can still read books and papers but may have to adjust the lighting, computer screens are now my nemesis with their own light source but somehow I get by typing...you get the picture.  But I don't like it, it's more than a nuisance, it affects everything that fills every day and gives me a headache by the end of the day.  I can't get used to it, never will.

And somehow I thought there might be a parable in all of this because as I have aged, my spiritual vision has likewise gotten blurry.  I thought it would sharpen with time, but I find that I no longer see those clear, crisp lines between black and white, I see a lot of grey.  My eagle-eyed vision that used to catch every jot and tittle and nuance now seems content to just try to take in the big picture and make some sense of that at least.  I know that some would use words like "lukewarm" or "left your first love" or "compromise" to describe my condition.  But I don't think that's a fair assessment.  What cataracts have done for me is make me appreciate the miracle of sight and become really fearful of what my condition might be if I ever lost it.  And I thought that was probably true for me spiritually as well.  I need another touch of Jesus' hand; seeing men as trees walking may be better than darkness all of the time, but for one that was used to seeing clearly it is a step down.  But here's the hard part to put into words.  I don't want to return to the way I used to see things around me, I want to see the light reflected from all of those things, to believe again that the world was created good, that man is redeemable and life has direction and purpose, that God has not abandoned us to futility, that the gospel is still good news, and that in the end of all things in His light we will see light (Psalm 36:9).