Saturday, May 2, 2009

A brand new same old-- Rethink Church

A brand new “Same old”

RUMC

May 3, 2009

 

How confused can one man be?  John writes “I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning.” Not two sentences lager he is writing “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you”

In one breath John is God has not changed from the first day of creation until now.  God's hopes for humanity have not changed; God's love for you has not changed.  God has loved every bit of you since way before you were just a two-celled bag of potential.  And God's love for you will last long after the cells that make up your body have returned to the dust and ooze from which they came.  There are some things that never change. 

Yet, John goes on, “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you”

Kind of like a bride at a wedding your know, “Something old, something new.”  But how can this be an old command and a new command at the same time?  In order to understand that, we need to know what the command is.

 

In the preceding verse, makes t clear that the command is to love.

In creation God wanted nothing more than Adam and Eve to love Him enough to respect his wish and not eat of the tree.  That didn’t work out so well.  Then there is Cain and Able the first brothers- brotherly love- well that didn’t work out so well.

The story of God’s love and man’s failure is a constant theme in the Old testament- well in all of history and our lives today.  How many times and in how many ways did God say, “All I ask is love me and love each other. There is nothing new about the idea that we are to love God and love Neighbor.  We first see them paired up in the 19th chapter of Leviticus.

What clearer message of love could God have given us than his son Jesus.  Even Jesus didn’t bring a completely new commandment he so said himself in Matthew 5:17 "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I didn't come to destroy them, but to fulfill them,”

Not to destroy, or abolish or replace the law, or the commandments or the loving nature of God, but to fulfill it.  To be the living model that is filled full of the truth of God's commands and God's love.  And that is where 1 John picks up and writes that “if we are in God, we must walk as Jesus walked” we must “live as Jesus lived” We must love as Jesus loved.

 

So the next logical question is “How did Jesus love?”  He didn’t love the way people expected him to love. 

·         They expected Jesus to love the children of God- the Israelites and he did--but he loved the foreigners too.

·         They expected Jesus to love the ritually clean, and he did, but he loved the leper and the woman with the hemorrhage too.

·         They expected him to love the upright and moral, religious crowd, and he did—but he loved the tax collector and prostitute too.

Jesus’ love was grounded in the age old love of God, but it was not confined by the norms and expectations of his day.  Even though many churches cite it as scripture, you will not find Jesus saying “But we’ve never done it that way before” anywhere in the Bible.  

Instead you find Jesus saying things like:

·         I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

·         You don’t put new wine in old wineskins

·         You must be born again

Jesus brought that age old, love of God and he set it free! He took the stale old rules that men had built in order to contain it and smashed them to smithereens.  He exploded the rigid old traditions people had constructed in order to control who was lovable and who was not.  He picked up all the limits human beings had put on God's love and went (blow) blowing them away in the wind like so much dust.

 

1 John is pointing us to what it left.  John says the commandment is very old, but:

·         It is new every day when it is lived out in the lives of God's people. 

·         God's love is New for every generation as it is set free from their parent’s norms and expectations to reach people in a new way. 

·         God's love is new in every single congregation as it is lived out in the lives of the unique people who gather to worship and serve at that time and that place.

Ø  When was the last time you had a box lunch social?  Maybe you had one for nostalgia sake, but it has been years since that was the way to show God's love, and that’s OK

Ø  You used to serve the Bahamians lunch in the basement of the church, why don’t you do that anymore?  Because times are different and that’s OK.

Ø  You used to have to open the windows and turn on the fans in order to keep people comfortable in the summer- why don’t you do that any more.  Because there is a better way to say we are glad you are here- it is called air conditioning. And that’s really OK.

Ø  You used to have youth group on Sunday night.  That was the totality of your youth program.  When transportation became safe and affordable and flannel graphs and crafts didn’t hold the attention of the youth you started confirmation trips and mission trips and service projects.  And that’s great.

Ø  You used to leave the building unlocked, to say you are welcome here.  Now you can have the technology to be open to anyone who needs in and still be good stewards protecting the beautiful building and stuff God has given you. And that is good too.

Over the years you have done a wonderful job adapting to changes in society and improving the building as it became feasible.  Over the years you have done a wonderful job adapting your ministry as the needs, skills, and desires of the congregation and community changed.  And that’s great.  Not every church has done that!  You are progressive and ahead of the curve.

 

Now the denomination comes out with a new campaign called “rethink church” that is asking you to keep doing that, but now --do it on purpose.  You may have seen as I have TV commercials in the last 2 or 3 weeks that talk about open doors and end with – the people of the United Methodist church.  And if you are like me you hear that tag line and that’s when you start listening and wondering what that was about.

What it is about is this...  it is about --Just like John says-- knowing that we have a very old commandment:  LOVE.  Love God and love one another.   But just as Jesus brought it to life by living it new ways; just as Jesus made the commandment new by rethinking love we are called today, not just by the denomination but by this scripture, and I would argue by Jesus himself to step out of our comfort zone and rethink what it means to be God’s church in this place.

It is time to step forward and say “We’ve been thinking about what faith means for people today and here’s what we need to do differently.”

“We’ve been thinking about our neighbors and friends and here’s what we think it means to love them today.”

“We’ve been thinking about what the church should be doing—we know we’ve never done this before but here’s where we are going to step out in faithfulness.”

The church in general has settled into a “field of faith” mentality, if we build it they will come.  I say today we can’t wait to build something and wait for them to come; because our neighbors, friends and family so desperately need to experience the reality of this old commandment in their hopeless and hurting lives in new and grace-filled ways.

I challenge you today- and I will continue to challenge you in the coming months and years to:

Ø  Rethink God's love.

Ø  Rethink what it means to be God's people here in Reinbeck.

Ø  And Rethink church.

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