Marks of the Church: I'll be Apostolic for Christmas

Happy Advent and Merry Christmas everybody! As the carols play, the shopping intensifies, and the stockings are hung by the AC Unit with care, it's easy to forget what it is we're doing all this for. Santa gets more “air time” than Jesus these days. And it calls us back to the need for a good witness this holiday season, in reminding people of this Baby born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

Of one of the many familiar sounds during this season is the carol, “Deck the Halls”

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol, Fa la la la la, la la la la.

They require some translating for modern ears, though they are as popular as ever. Some words (gay, troll) have changed meaning since the song was written, others have almost disappeared entirely (when did you last wish someone happy Yuletide?). And so although many folks know the song, they sing it without delving into it's meaning.

Many aspects of Christmas end up becoming like this song...familiar, but without their original meaning. Even Santa Clause was once Saint Nicholas, and a model of Christian giving. But now, he more represents the fulfillment of our wishes for possessions. We managed to get our message into the culture, but in the process of things, it got garbled a little bit.

As we've been talking about the historic marks of the church over the past few months, Apostolic is the last on our list, following One, Holy, and Universal. It has a few different meanings historically. The Apostles were original disciples of Jesus who were the first to spread the message of salvation (and the term later became more broadly applied, as Paul and others took on similar roles in the church). The origin of the word is literally “Sent Ones,” those who have been sent to spread Christ's word. Alternately, those of you with some Catholic in your background may recognize the term Apostolic Succession, which implies that the leadership of the church (in one form or another) is tied back to those original disciples, with the implication that the faith is consistent down the ages. One is directly tied to reaching out, the other tied to heritage and preservation. And ironically enough, these two meanings embody one of the most ancient conflicts in the church...the nature of mission.

The question is this...how do we communicate a timeless yet ancient message to ever changing cultures? How much do we change in order to make it intelligible, and how much should be kept iron clad? Over the centuries, we have often battled back and forth with these two. At times, we have used the ways of the culture (Christmas is a great example of this, as are Catholic saints and Christian television) to try and communicate the message. Sometimes, we go to far, and water-down the Gospel in an attempt to win listeners. On the other hand, while we make great effort to protect the simple truths of the faith, sometimes we get so caught up in the ancient that we forget people don't know words like “Hark” anymore. We make an make a particular worship style or Bible translation the gold standard of our faith, regardless of whether modern ears can understand it. At worst, we get focused on preserving the institution, in a desire to pass down the ancient faith, but in the process turn inward and forget to share it with others.

Either extreme is dangerous. At one end, you loose the message, at the other, the potential recipients. But if God's Word really is inspired by Him, then no matter how ancient it is, it bears relevance to modern life, even if the language needs updated now and again. It is important for us to remember, especially at this time of year, to keep these two meanings of Apostolic in a precious balance...we must not neglect God's truth, but we must also make it intelligible to our community.

And one of the best ways to do that, my friends, is to live it in love. Because love transcends language barriers, and is hungered for in every culture. If you love others, you'll want to share the Message you know they need, but in a way that they can hear. If your truest purpose is to share God's love with others...not preservation or being accepted...then you will find the balance. And if there's anything that people need this Christmas...with a crazy economy and the stress of the holidays, it's someone to love them unconditionally.

Where we are not reaching out, and are only about ourselves, we fail to be the church. But where we are also not protecting the integrity of the message, teaching it, nurturing folks with it, learning how to dig into it and live it out, we also fail. We are not called to reach the lost with pop-psych, nor to protect the word just for us. We are called to reach out in love, offering the healing message of Jesus Christ. And that's a gift that never goes out of season.

<><

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

Jesus was once offered a chance to take a stand on an issue of sexual immorality.

It was a rather cut and dry one too: adultery Since the beginning of the Jewish faith, the sinful nature of adultery had never been ambiguous. You don't do it, and when you do, there are clear punishments. And they had caught this women in the act. No gray areas there. Never did the Pharisees pitch the ball so clearly up the middle as they did here. All Jesus had to do was swing.

But He did something shocking. At first, He said nothing.

...which, frankly, could not have irritated the Pharisees more. It only seemed to confirm to them that he was simply a rabble-rouser. That He would do anything to undermine their authority with the people.

So they pressed again. Mind you, the woman is standing right there. And the punishment at this time, if you haven't read the story, is death by stoning. There are better ways to go.

Annoyingly, Jesus' silence continued. Instead, He was doing something in the dirt with his finger. I would give good money to know what it was He was drawing or writing. Many have theorized. But apparently the gospel writer didn't think it important. Or maybe he couldn't see what it was either.

In any case, Jesus finally pauses. All of the Pharisees heft their rocks, ready to stone either Him or the women pending His answer. But He hits them in the gut instead...

“If any of you hasn't sinned, go ahead and throw your rock.”

...and He goes back to His sand.

Amazingly, one by one, starting with the oldest (who apparently had the most regrets) and ending with the youngest (who hadn't accumulated as much sin...yet...), they dropped their rocks and left. Only the woman and Jesus remained.

Jesus, Master of the Rhetorical Question, asks her, “Didn't anybody stick around to condemn you?”

Her response is obvious. His is not. “Then neither do I condemn you. Go home...but leave your sinful lifestyle behind.”

DOH! If the pharisees had just rounded the corner and listened, they would have heard it...He didn't shy away from the issue! He didn't want that life for her. He was just as certain as they were that it was against God's plan for her. But His approach was different than theirs. He first earned her trust. He saved her life. Rescued her from the consequences of her actions. But then, having gained her trust, He showed her the full depth of His love. He pointed her to a better way. He was not ambiguous on the nature of her actions.

Many centuries before, His Father had done the same for Israel. He saved them from Egypt, rescued them from bondage and slavery. And only then, after showing His love to them, did He invite them into covenant relationship, and give them His commandments. Likewise, Christ's love does not leave someone in bondage to sin. But it does rescue them, give them an opportunity to be set free from it, in a loving, grace-filled manner.

Scripture is clear about what God considers sin. Earlier in His ministry, in the right context, Jesus had spoken about adultery. He even challenged people to take it to the next level, weeding unfaithfulness out of their minds and hearts, as well as their actions. But in this passage, Jesus saw a better way to handle things. The conviction that God has laid on my heart, both personally and for this congregation, is to live out the full love of God in all situations. Not omitting our conviction of sin, but seeing God's heart for those who are caught up in sin, and offering His love to them.

When we are willing to love first, God is better able to use us in ministry. Sin of any kind is difficult to overcome. And all of us need someone who can come alongside us to both encourage and challenge us to live a life of holiness. It's easy to say “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” It's another thing to live it out, inviting fellow sinners into loving relationships, and walking with them on the path to righteousness.

Jesus neither came down hard on this woman, nor ignored the presence of sin in her life. His answer to her was more beautiful than music, more profound than art. “Neither do I condemn you,” AND “Leave your life of sin.” I may spend the rest of my life trying to understand how He did that. I have yet to perfect my heart in this matter, and I don't expect you to master it tomorrow either. But I believe the journey into Christ's love will be a worthy pursuit for us both. Will you travel it with me?

Father God, give us your heart for the sinner, for the broken, for the lost. You have rescued us from our failures, and drawn us into a loving community. Help us to do the same for others. Let our zeal for Your holiness always be tempered with Your Grace, and vice versa. For You are both Just and Loving, as you showed us in Your Son Jesus. Mold us in the image of His love. Through His Name we pray, amen.

I'm a Mac...no, I'm a PC...no, I'm a Mac...

This is outside the normal purview of this blog, but it struck me the other night, and I just had to say it...

I listen to several of the TWiT podcasts in my free time, or when I'm doing more mindless tasks, and there's been a whole lot of bandwidth spent lately on figuring out Microsoft's latest ad campaigns. Starting this all has been the Seinfeld campaign (1 & 2), which may or may not have been dropped after 2 commercials (and Jerry's contract canceled), and then the more recent "I'm a PC" jab at Apple's wildly successful ad campaign.

Could it be that MS is floundering in the Marketing department, the once Achilles Heel of Apple? (This being said by the former owner of a MacTV, an OS8 machine with a built-in TV tuner, which I bought on clearance because they only marketed it to campus bookstores.)

Actually, I've got a great theory...and it involves the single interpretive key needed to make sense of the two Seinfeld commercials, which at first glace appear to be "a commercial about nothing." The key is this...Jerry is Apple. Why else would they hire a guy who, in his own series, always had a Mac on his desk? Plus, you needed a hip and funny guy to off-set Gates, in the same way Mac and PC play off each other in the Apple ads.

Now it's an interpretive leap, perhaps, but stay with me here...MS is symbolically saying in these commercials that Apple over the years has had some very inventive ideas. While MS ignored them at first ("Churro?" "I'm good."), they're starting to understand now (both seen eating churros at the end of the 1st ad). Some ideas were really out there (showering in your clothes), but some made a lot of sense (breaking in the leather shoes by repeated bending). Even the way in which Apple has learned from it's customers, (the second ad)and given them products that are all about user experience, MS is saying they've learned from that as well.

And so, MS has learned a thing or two from Apple, and has a few innovations of it's own in the works as well (the repetition of Jerry's ending question in both ads about what Bill's got in the works).

And no sooner do they pull these ads, than they prove my point...The newest ad campaign takes Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads and spins them, attempting to prove that not all PC users look and sound like John Hodgeman (himself an avid Mac user, ironically). And the real irony is, the commercial was most likely made on a Mac. More evidence to back up my otherwise seemingly outlandish theory.

So expect some new stuff, which will probably be code-named "churro", to be coming out any time soon. Maybe it's Windows 7X, maybe a zPhone (with built in water gun), maybe it's just another ad campaign which will be airing soon, talking about how all Mac users are slacker artists, while the real producers in our society are slogging away on PCs like any good American. Maybe it really is edible desktops and ready-to-make pet websites out of the box. I dunno, but it's good enough to make Bill Gates shake his shorts. :-)

This post, being typed by an avid Mac advocate...in exile on an HP laptop running Mojave...I mean Vista.

What is the Church...Catholic???

This month, we pick back up with our discussion of the marks of the church...one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. So what does it mean to be catholic? Ever wonder why we say that in the Apostles' Creed? Why we claim to be “one holy catholic” church? Well, for starters, the word means something beyond Roman Catholic. The word catholic actually means “universal,” such that when we claim to belong to a catholic church, we are saying that we belong to something larger than Methodism...we belong to a world-wide movement. One that is bigger than our denominations. Even when we divide, we are called to be Universal.

When colonial missionaries went out to the New World, they often brought with them more than Christianity. Many of them mistakenly thought that in order to convert the “savages” (who were a LOT more sophisticated than the Europeans realized), they needed to give them European culture, values, and language, in order for them to understand Christianity. They had confused the culture with the faith. They had forgotten the lesson of long ago, when men like Peter and Paul told their ancestors that you didn't have to become Jewish first to become a Christian. Because, as Paul wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Christianity, from the word go, was something beyond your culture. It applied to and united all people exactly where they were at, no need to become something else first.

The universality of the church means it overflows the cultural boundaries we want to put it in, and finds expression in a variety of contexts. Contrary to what some of those missionaries thought, Christianity is not contained by western culture. It is not contained within any era of human history, pre-modern, medieval, modern, or post-modern, but has expressed itself somewhat differently in each time. It defies definitions of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, time, language, territory, political party, and technology. It has spread by word of mouth, pictures, ritual, print media, and now electronic means. It does not fit nicely into our neat boxes.

Now of course, there are some things that are rock-solid, as we talked about near the end of August. The humanity, divinity, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ are what define us, what unite us in our universal diversity. In the absence of these things, I hesitate to say that what we are talking about is an expression of the Universal church. Because these are the things that, despite cultural and even doctrinal differences, bind us together in the Oneness that also is a mark of the church.

But having said that, the church takes on many different forms in it's universality. The gospel is spread in English, Spanish, Swahili, Navajo, and Korean. It finds expression in the unique musical stylings of each culture. Preachers from different cultures speak in different rhythms. Different bread is used for the same Lord's Supper (and indeed, different drink as well). But all express the One True Savior, in their own individual ways.

We are linked to people very different than us, who dress different, talk with a different accent, or in a different language, whose families function different, whose ways of understanding and testing the Truth of something may vary from ours. We are united in a common of of a savior. I love that the youth in our church have begun to build bridges with other churches in the area. I love that the pastor from the CMA church down the road has been known to fill-in here. I love it whenever I see boundaries overcome in the name of Christ. For in Christ, there is neither black nor white, Hispanic nor Asian, Baptist nor Methodist, Pentecostal nor Roman Catholic, rich nor poor nor middle class, male nor female, Republican nor Democrat. Christianity finds a home in all of these diverse peoples, and those differences remind us that Christ makes us all one. Let's look for ways to express that as we move forward in ministry in our communities, celebrating the wonderful, cross-cultural universality of our common faith.

What is the Church? Holy...

We started last month talking about the Marks of the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. This month, let's talk about what holy means. Holiness is usually talked about in terms of how good or bad someone is. Someone is thought of as holy if they do good things, avoid bad, etc.

But this is not a Biblical definition of holy. The first time the word shows up, it's in regard to the Sabbath, a day set apart for rest, in Genesis 2:3. In Exodus 30:32, it refers to a special anointing oil that is not to be used for any ordinary purposes. And elsewhere in Exodus, it refers to places and furnishings in the Temple which are apart from ordinary use. Leviticus 10:10 finally defines it for us, when God says to Moses, “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean.” (ESV) Holiness in Scripture is defined by being different than the ordinary, being set apart from the common for God. Goodness does play a role in holiness, but goodness is in the service of being set apart to God, not the other way around. Especially when the word is so often used to refer to inanimate objects, it's not just about the presence of lack of sin.

But when God sets things apart, He does so for a purpose. Take the Levities. God sets them apart from Israel, but to serve Israel as it's spiritual leaders. And when Abraham's descendants were set apart, God said they would be a blessing to the nations. (Gen 12:3) Even the Temple furnishings I mentioned before, they weren't just set apart to look pretty, but to serve as a sign and witness to the people.

We just got back from the Celebrate Jesus mission trip, where in essence the 8 of us were set-apart for a purpose. We did not live like the rest of the world. For starters, we were sleeping in a church. And not during the sermon... :-) And we were doing other things that made us different than other people. We were going door-to-door, and standing outside stores, giving people something free, whether it be a gift, or an initiation, or a prayer. Who does that? Most folks didn't know what to do with us...they're used to stuff like that being followed by a catch, or a sales pitch. But instead, we just gave what we had away...even the party was free, and you didn't have to sit through a sermon to attend. We just wanted to show people God's kindness and love, which also comes with no strings attached.

Others participated while in the midst of normal life. But the teams were specifically set-apart to go out in ways the normal parishioners couldn't, or at times they couldn't, or with a single-mindedness they couldn't, because we had no worldly affairs to worry about for the week. We were set-apart from our normal lives to serve this single purpose.

This is the essence of holiness. Being set apart for a purpose. For service to God. For a mission. Holiness as a church is not total disengagement from the world, but rather separation from being identified with it, so that we can more closely identify with our heavenly Father. Remember, forward progress in holiness also means we are more like Him, which means there is also more of Him we can offer to the world. So that they can see that His love for them is different than other love, that His kindness is different than that amongst friends.

So who are we as the church? We are holy, called to be and do a little different than the world, so that they will know our God is not just one more hobby, not just one more story, but is Someone amazing and unique. Come, let us show the world together our Holy God.