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9 years ago
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Eve's Second Birthday
A short video from Eve's 2nd birthday party, in Jacksonville Beach, FL, on August 17, 2007.
Eve's 2nd Birthday
Eve's 2nd Birthday
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Sermon: Conspiracy of Kindness #3: Good News for the Poor
Conspiracy of Kindness: Good News for the Poor
August 3-4, 2007
by Don Bromley
[Day of Kindness update]
This weekend I’m giving the third and final sermon in our Conspiracy of Kindness series. We’ve been examining how kindness and compassion can demonstrate the love of God more persuasively than words can.
I’d like to show a little video clip that to me really demonstrates the Kingdom of God invading the Earth through an awesome act of kindness and compassion.
Jason McElwain video clip – about 5 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY
I love that clip. I love the way Jason’s teammates and the crowd are so wildly enthusiastic for this kid to make a basket and have his chance to shine. So wonderful.
I think that what we’re watching in this clip is evidence of the incalculable worth of a single life. It’s an idea that sometimes gets lost in our world.
This is a little group of people, and they give this one guy, who’s likely to be passed over or overlooked, a chance to belong and a chance to contribute and a moment to shine.
I think this clip moves us because it’s a little picture of the way that God intended for human beings to relate to one another. I think it moves us, because in God’s Kingdom, nobody is left out. In God’s Kingdom, nobody is overlooked. In God’s Kingdom, nobody gets passed over. In God’s Kingdom, everybody matters. God wants to point to everybody and say: I want you and you and you and you to play a role in my Universe for good and great things.
Now, in this kingdom, in this world, not so much. So, today as I talk about kindness and compassion—about God’s love for justice and mercy to prevail in human relationships—I’m going to talk about one of the greatest pictures of the Kingdom of God in the Bible. It’s so rich. It’s the Old Testament picture of what was called the “Year of Jubilee.” It’s kindness and compassion done on a huge scale.
As you know, in the Old Testament, the number seven was considered to be a kind of divine number. Every seventh day was to be sacred to God–a Sabbath Day. Every seventh year was to be a “Sabbath Year” —a sabbatical year—in which the land was to rest. It was an expression of God’s concern for his creation and of God’s concern for the poor.
Then, after seven times seven years came the really big deal—a particular year. In Leviticus, God says:
“Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty–nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
(There’s a bell in Philadelphia—the Liberty Bell—that’s to remind us of freedom and liberty, and it has the inscription of this verse on it.)
Jubilee was a very rare word. It was the Hebrew word for a ram’s horn. The Jews were instructed to fashion a trumpet out of the horn of a wild ram, and this was to be so sacred that it was to be played only once every fifty years. Then there would be Jubilee. During Jubilee, three things would happen.
First, all debts were canceled. Anyone who had been living under bondage of debt would be freed. This expressed God’s heart for the poor. Usually, in the kingdom of this earth, we give preferential treatment to people we think we can get money from. We want to get them “in debt” to us.
I received a letter this week. I get them periodically, and so do you. I told you about one of them a couple of years ago. This is a new one:
Dear Mr. Bromley,
The road to financial success has many milestones marking how far you’ve come. You have just reached one milestone.
You are pre-approved for our card. (I’m not just approved. I’m pre-approved! I haven’t even done anything yet, and they already approve of me. My own mother doesn’t pre-approve of me, but they do.) You should know pre-approval status is not easily achieved, but with your history, our decision was really very simple. We want you as a card member. (They want me. They don’t want you. They want me.)
Now, what are the odds that if they get me, and I get into debt with them big time, they would write me another letter and say “Jubilee” on the outside of the envelope? Or go on to say:
We love you. We care for you so much that we’re canceling your debt. We want you to know this is the year of Jubilee for you.
What are the odds that that will happen? I’ll wait a long time for one of those letters, won’t I?
In this world, generally the way that it works is preferential treatment goes to people we all think already have money and have power.
In the Jubilee Year, God says there will be a fresh start for those who are poor—for those who are likely to be sitting on the sidelines. In case anybody missed the intent, or might try to circumvent it, or think it was just a matter of mechanics, God goes on:
If anyone is poor among your people in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your people and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. (Deut 15:7-10)
In the Jubilee Year, debt is forgiven.
The second thing that happens in the Jubilee Year is all prisoners are released. Now, in our day, this doesn’t sound like good news, because we think of people who are in prison for really bad things, and we’re not sure we would want them all to be released. In the Old Testament days, about the only thing they locked you up for was debt. For almost anything else, they would stone you. (If you talked back to your mom and dad, they’d get the stones out.) Jubilee Year meant the prisoners were going to go free.
Third, in the Jubilee Year, all the land was supposed to go back to its original owner. Now in the ancient day, far more than in our day when economics are much more complex, wealth was tied to land. If you were in a family where your dad or your grandfather had become sick, or done something wrong, or made a mistake, or been the victim of injustice and your family lost its ability to own land, that was it. You were out of luck. Jubilee meant hope for the poor.
You might wonder, what was the rationale for all of this? This is what God says:
The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. (Leviticus 25:23)
We don’t like to think of ourselves as “foreigners and strangers.” We like to think of ourselves as owners. We’ve worked hard. But God has this pesky idea that just because he thought of the Earth and made it and sustains it and gave his Son to redeem it, it all belongs to him.
Injustice and greed and apathy and turning a blind eye to the poor kind of tick him off. It kind of makes him mad.
The Torah declared that there should be a Jubilee Year. The Torah was good news for the poor.
Where else in the ancient world do you find an idea like this Jubilee Year? Nowhere else. It’s unprecedented. Only Torah ...only in Israel. Before the Israelites go into the Promised Land, God is laying out the plan, and he says something remarkable:
However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)
Now remember, they were coming out of Egypt as impoverished, oppressed slaves. They knew what it was to be poor and enslaved. We forget the full dimensions of that. And God says:
However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)
Imagine a community where there are no needy people. This is good news for the poor.
There is only one problem with the Jubilee Year. They never actually observed it. The best we can tell, it was never actually observed. For some reason, when people get a hold of stuff, they just get kind of grabby. It doesn’t make us happy being grabby. There isn’t any jubilation in it. It just kind of scares us to think of letting go. We forget that we are “foreigners and strangers,” and that it all belongs to God, and that we just manage it for a little while.
So, they never actually observed Jubilee. But when the Prophets would speak to the people, they would say: “You know, God hasn’t given up on this Jubilee idea yet. It’s a good idea. It’s God’s idea. We can’t pull it off ourselves, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen when Messiah comes. When Messiah comes, he will proclaim the Jubilee, and he will make it stick.”
For instance, the Prophet Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would say:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me (That’s Messianic language. The Messiah is simply “The Anointed One.”) to proclaim good news to the poor…to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor (Isa 61:1-2a)
That’s Jubilee! When Messiah comes, then Jubilee is coming!
And they waited. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century ...they waited.
Finally, this rabbi named Jesus comes. He’s going to give his very first sermon. He goes back to his hometown and enters the synagogue. The people are all gathered; they’ve known him since he was a little kid. He takes the scroll, turns to these words in Isaiah 61, and then he reads them to the people:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor ... to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)
Then he rolls up the scrolls. The Scripture says that all eyes are fixed on him. Then he sets them aside. He sits down, because that’s what rabbis did. He says:
Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke 4:21)
What he’s saying is: Jubilee is finally here, and I’m it. It’s arrived on this planet, first of all in me ... in my body. And it’s come in some unexpected ways. Not only is it here for Israel. He makes it really clear that it’s also here for their enemies, the Gentiles.
Jubilee has come. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Jesus is good news for the poor. Jesus talks a lot about the poor. In one story, Jesus says that if you want to look for him, then you have to get around the least of these ... the poor.
Jesus says that when you embrace the poor—when you give clothes to someone who is destitute, when you go to prison and visit somebody who is alone, when you give food to someone who is hungry and they don’t have anything to eat, or something to drink to somebody who is thirsty and their village doesn’t even have water—when you do these things, Jesus says:
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25: 40)
He talks about this, and then he forms a little community. There has never been a community like this. Some of them are fishermen; some of them are slaves; some of them are tax collectors; some of them have some wealth, some resources; some of them have nothing at all. He teaches them, and he pours his life into them. He goes to the Cross, and he dies for them. Then he’s resurrected and the Holy Spirit is poured out on them.
Then look at what it says in the Book of Acts about this community. There’s never been a community like this:
There were no needy persons among them. (Remember the promise God made back in Deuteronomy?) For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:34-35)
What’s that sound like? It sounds kind of like Jubilee, except he’s gotten the idea into people’s hearts. Jesus said that it was coming. And it came. And it was good news for the poor, just as he said it would be. There’s never been a community like this.
Paul gives instructions to Christ’s followers in Corinth about the needy people in Jerusalem, a long way away from them ... people they had never seen. Paul says:
On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income (1 Cor 16:2)
Ordinary people of no great wealth were to systematically gather what they could and send it to people they didn’t know, were not related to ... not even of the same ethnicity ... who Paul calls “brothers and sisters.”
A Yale scholar by the name of Wayne Meeks as he writes about this says that in the ancient world this had never been done—ordinary people systematically saving to give to those they were not related to . . . who were not even of the same ethnic group. Jesus was good news for the poor.
This so overwhelmed the ancient world that an Emperor in the 300’s named Julian the Apostate, who was not a Christian (hence the name) and who was concerned that Christianity was spreading so rapidly felt the need to try to stop it. He wrote to a priest of Roman paganism and said it would be necessary for those who followed Roman religions to create “hostels for immigrants and foundations for the poor,” because “the Christians have by such means won their present dominance.”
Yes, we’re talking about money and resources. I know, talking about money in church—yuck. I actually ran across a church website where they proclaimed “At our church we don’t talk about money.” I get where they’re coming from—I don’t like it when other people talk about me and my money.
But Jesus talked about money all the time. Jesus, the one whom we follow, says:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24)
There’s just something about money. I know that tug, and I know that you know it too. There’s just something about it that wants to be God. Jesus said that it takes a miracle of God to be free of its pull.
The One we follow said:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21)
The question about money is: Where do you want your heart to be?
Let’s say that you’re going on vacation. Wherever you end up at, you decide to stay at a Motel 6. You’re going to stay at a Motel 6, and the rule is that anything you get for your room at the Motel 6, you can’t take with you when you leave. It has to stay at the Motel 6. You can’t take anything with you. How likely would you be to take all your money and spend it decorating your motel room? With Van Gogh’s, or velvet paintings of Elvis, or whatever you’d like to have up on the walls? How likely is it you would spend your money decorating your room at the Motel 6?
You’re not going to do that. Why not? Because it’s not home. You’re only going to be there a little while, and then it will stay there, but you’ll be going home. You want your stuff to be available at home.
This ain’t home. This is Motel 6. You’re just here a little while. Jesus says:
For crying out loud! Enjoy it. Enjoy the beauty of it. If you have a home and you love it, that’s a good thing. But don’t stay up nights thinking about better and better and better and bigger and nicer and newer and more expensive ways to fix up Motel 6!!
The one we follow says: “For crying out loud, store up your treasure in what is eternal! And what lasts is God and people.”
Some of you are really good with money. That’s great! Make it! Make lots of it! Stay up nights thinking about ways to release it, so that the Gospel of Jesus becomes once again Good News for the poor. Think about ways of liberating it and spreading it around so it doesn’t create dependency, so it doesn’t dis-empower people, so it creates strength and points to people who are sitting on the bench right now and says: “OK. You and you and you and you, get in the game.”
God will help us with this. God will change our hearts.
----
You know, sometimes when we look at the Kingdom of God and see the beauty of what it is that God intended, and then they look at how things are going down on this earth, we get mad. I love the old King James translation of the Jubilee:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me …To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18a, 19)
Now, if the Jubilee year is the acceptable year of the Lord, then what is every other year? Unacceptable. Just the way that things are running on this earth: materialism, greed, envy, selfishness. Jubilee people look at this gap between the Kingdom of God where God’s will is done, and then how things are on earth where his will is not done. They get mad, not in a self-righteous or judgmental way, but in a way that makes them just want to get up out of their chairs and do something about things! It makes them want to just say: “This is not acceptable!”
The Gospel of Jesus is not the Minimal Entrance Requirements for Getting Into Heaven After You Die. The Gospel is that through Jesus—no other way—through his life, through his teaching, through his death, through his resurrection, through his Spirit, the Kingdom of God is coming to this world.
And God will make you into the kind of person who will change the world into the kind of place he intended it to be when he created it.
People who pray:
Your Kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. (Matthew 6:10)
In other words, we can become agents of Jubilee. One of the ways that you can know where God is calling you is that, not in a self-righteous way, you will get all fired up inside. You need to pay attention to that. Oftentimes, God is speaking to you through that.
First, Jubilee people get free from bondage to money. They make a decision somewhere along the line: “You know, I’m not going to invest most of my treasure fixing up Motel 6.”
Second, Jubilee people get mad when they see the gap between God’s Kingdom and the way things are. An anger that moves to action.
And third, Jubilee people have joy, because they have Jesus. This is very, very important. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. Without Jesus, the church turns into a social services agency. Social service agencies are great, we need them—but they’re no substitute for a Spirit-infused church. Here’s why…
You may have noticed from the text that we read together at the beginning of this message. Jubilee was proclaimed on a particular day once every fifty years. Jubilee was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement. It was proclaimed when the forgiveness of sins was proclaimed. When people recognized their need for a sacrifice to be right with a just and holy God. If God doesn’t come to clean up the mess inside me, he cannot use me to clean up the mess in the world all around me.
Jesus is Jubilee. Jesus is the Day of Atonement. If you’ve never become his follower ... if you’ve never invited him to become the forgiver and leader of your life, you can do that today. This can be the Day of Atonement and the Day of Jubilee for you.
How do you do that?
Jesus of Nazareth, I acknowledge before you my thirst for what you have to give. I surrender myself--whole and entire, what was, and is, and is to come--to you. Plunge the wrongs I have done and the wrongs done to me in your fathomless mercy. Receive me as I am today, and make of me what I am meant to be, and let me walk in the path of your new creation.
Without Jesus, there can be no Jubilee. Only Jesus can clean up a human heart. He can do that for you, and he can do that for you today. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. You can’t have Jesus without Jubilee. Without Jubilee, the church just turns into one more religious group trying to win an argument, and the world has enough of those. But our Jesus came, and he said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
This is Jubilee time. We are a Jubilee community. You are called to live a Jubilee life.
[Ministry Invitation. Communion. Worship]
August 3-4, 2007
by Don Bromley
[Day of Kindness update]
This weekend I’m giving the third and final sermon in our Conspiracy of Kindness series. We’ve been examining how kindness and compassion can demonstrate the love of God more persuasively than words can.
I’d like to show a little video clip that to me really demonstrates the Kingdom of God invading the Earth through an awesome act of kindness and compassion.
Jason McElwain video clip – about 5 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzyhnkT_jY
I love that clip. I love the way Jason’s teammates and the crowd are so wildly enthusiastic for this kid to make a basket and have his chance to shine. So wonderful.
I think that what we’re watching in this clip is evidence of the incalculable worth of a single life. It’s an idea that sometimes gets lost in our world.
This is a little group of people, and they give this one guy, who’s likely to be passed over or overlooked, a chance to belong and a chance to contribute and a moment to shine.
I think this clip moves us because it’s a little picture of the way that God intended for human beings to relate to one another. I think it moves us, because in God’s Kingdom, nobody is left out. In God’s Kingdom, nobody is overlooked. In God’s Kingdom, nobody gets passed over. In God’s Kingdom, everybody matters. God wants to point to everybody and say: I want you and you and you and you to play a role in my Universe for good and great things.
Now, in this kingdom, in this world, not so much. So, today as I talk about kindness and compassion—about God’s love for justice and mercy to prevail in human relationships—I’m going to talk about one of the greatest pictures of the Kingdom of God in the Bible. It’s so rich. It’s the Old Testament picture of what was called the “Year of Jubilee.” It’s kindness and compassion done on a huge scale.
As you know, in the Old Testament, the number seven was considered to be a kind of divine number. Every seventh day was to be sacred to God–a Sabbath Day. Every seventh year was to be a “Sabbath Year” —a sabbatical year—in which the land was to rest. It was an expression of God’s concern for his creation and of God’s concern for the poor.
Then, after seven times seven years came the really big deal—a particular year. In Leviticus, God says:
“Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty–nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.
(There’s a bell in Philadelphia—the Liberty Bell—that’s to remind us of freedom and liberty, and it has the inscription of this verse on it.)
Jubilee was a very rare word. It was the Hebrew word for a ram’s horn. The Jews were instructed to fashion a trumpet out of the horn of a wild ram, and this was to be so sacred that it was to be played only once every fifty years. Then there would be Jubilee. During Jubilee, three things would happen.
First, all debts were canceled. Anyone who had been living under bondage of debt would be freed. This expressed God’s heart for the poor. Usually, in the kingdom of this earth, we give preferential treatment to people we think we can get money from. We want to get them “in debt” to us.
I received a letter this week. I get them periodically, and so do you. I told you about one of them a couple of years ago. This is a new one:
Dear Mr. Bromley,
The road to financial success has many milestones marking how far you’ve come. You have just reached one milestone.
You are pre-approved for our card. (I’m not just approved. I’m pre-approved! I haven’t even done anything yet, and they already approve of me. My own mother doesn’t pre-approve of me, but they do.) You should know pre-approval status is not easily achieved, but with your history, our decision was really very simple. We want you as a card member. (They want me. They don’t want you. They want me.)
Now, what are the odds that if they get me, and I get into debt with them big time, they would write me another letter and say “Jubilee” on the outside of the envelope? Or go on to say:
We love you. We care for you so much that we’re canceling your debt. We want you to know this is the year of Jubilee for you.
What are the odds that that will happen? I’ll wait a long time for one of those letters, won’t I?
In this world, generally the way that it works is preferential treatment goes to people we all think already have money and have power.
In the Jubilee Year, God says there will be a fresh start for those who are poor—for those who are likely to be sitting on the sidelines. In case anybody missed the intent, or might try to circumvent it, or think it was just a matter of mechanics, God goes on:
If anyone is poor among your people in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your people and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the LORD against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. (Deut 15:7-10)
In the Jubilee Year, debt is forgiven.
The second thing that happens in the Jubilee Year is all prisoners are released. Now, in our day, this doesn’t sound like good news, because we think of people who are in prison for really bad things, and we’re not sure we would want them all to be released. In the Old Testament days, about the only thing they locked you up for was debt. For almost anything else, they would stone you. (If you talked back to your mom and dad, they’d get the stones out.) Jubilee Year meant the prisoners were going to go free.
Third, in the Jubilee Year, all the land was supposed to go back to its original owner. Now in the ancient day, far more than in our day when economics are much more complex, wealth was tied to land. If you were in a family where your dad or your grandfather had become sick, or done something wrong, or made a mistake, or been the victim of injustice and your family lost its ability to own land, that was it. You were out of luck. Jubilee meant hope for the poor.
You might wonder, what was the rationale for all of this? This is what God says:
The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. (Leviticus 25:23)
We don’t like to think of ourselves as “foreigners and strangers.” We like to think of ourselves as owners. We’ve worked hard. But God has this pesky idea that just because he thought of the Earth and made it and sustains it and gave his Son to redeem it, it all belongs to him.
Injustice and greed and apathy and turning a blind eye to the poor kind of tick him off. It kind of makes him mad.
The Torah declared that there should be a Jubilee Year. The Torah was good news for the poor.
Where else in the ancient world do you find an idea like this Jubilee Year? Nowhere else. It’s unprecedented. Only Torah ...only in Israel. Before the Israelites go into the Promised Land, God is laying out the plan, and he says something remarkable:
However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)
Now remember, they were coming out of Egypt as impoverished, oppressed slaves. They knew what it was to be poor and enslaved. We forget the full dimensions of that. And God says:
However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the LORD your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. (Deut 15:4-5)
Imagine a community where there are no needy people. This is good news for the poor.
There is only one problem with the Jubilee Year. They never actually observed it. The best we can tell, it was never actually observed. For some reason, when people get a hold of stuff, they just get kind of grabby. It doesn’t make us happy being grabby. There isn’t any jubilation in it. It just kind of scares us to think of letting go. We forget that we are “foreigners and strangers,” and that it all belongs to God, and that we just manage it for a little while.
So, they never actually observed Jubilee. But when the Prophets would speak to the people, they would say: “You know, God hasn’t given up on this Jubilee idea yet. It’s a good idea. It’s God’s idea. We can’t pull it off ourselves, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen when Messiah comes. When Messiah comes, he will proclaim the Jubilee, and he will make it stick.”
For instance, the Prophet Isaiah wrote that the Messiah would say:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me (That’s Messianic language. The Messiah is simply “The Anointed One.”) to proclaim good news to the poor…to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor (Isa 61:1-2a)
That’s Jubilee! When Messiah comes, then Jubilee is coming!
And they waited. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century ...they waited.
Finally, this rabbi named Jesus comes. He’s going to give his very first sermon. He goes back to his hometown and enters the synagogue. The people are all gathered; they’ve known him since he was a little kid. He takes the scroll, turns to these words in Isaiah 61, and then he reads them to the people:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor ... to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)
Then he rolls up the scrolls. The Scripture says that all eyes are fixed on him. Then he sets them aside. He sits down, because that’s what rabbis did. He says:
Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke 4:21)
What he’s saying is: Jubilee is finally here, and I’m it. It’s arrived on this planet, first of all in me ... in my body. And it’s come in some unexpected ways. Not only is it here for Israel. He makes it really clear that it’s also here for their enemies, the Gentiles.
Jubilee has come. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Jesus is good news for the poor. Jesus talks a lot about the poor. In one story, Jesus says that if you want to look for him, then you have to get around the least of these ... the poor.
Jesus says that when you embrace the poor—when you give clothes to someone who is destitute, when you go to prison and visit somebody who is alone, when you give food to someone who is hungry and they don’t have anything to eat, or something to drink to somebody who is thirsty and their village doesn’t even have water—when you do these things, Jesus says:
Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25: 40)
He talks about this, and then he forms a little community. There has never been a community like this. Some of them are fishermen; some of them are slaves; some of them are tax collectors; some of them have some wealth, some resources; some of them have nothing at all. He teaches them, and he pours his life into them. He goes to the Cross, and he dies for them. Then he’s resurrected and the Holy Spirit is poured out on them.
Then look at what it says in the Book of Acts about this community. There’s never been a community like this:
There were no needy persons among them. (Remember the promise God made back in Deuteronomy?) For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Acts 4:34-35)
What’s that sound like? It sounds kind of like Jubilee, except he’s gotten the idea into people’s hearts. Jesus said that it was coming. And it came. And it was good news for the poor, just as he said it would be. There’s never been a community like this.
Paul gives instructions to Christ’s followers in Corinth about the needy people in Jerusalem, a long way away from them ... people they had never seen. Paul says:
On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income (1 Cor 16:2)
Ordinary people of no great wealth were to systematically gather what they could and send it to people they didn’t know, were not related to ... not even of the same ethnicity ... who Paul calls “brothers and sisters.”
A Yale scholar by the name of Wayne Meeks as he writes about this says that in the ancient world this had never been done—ordinary people systematically saving to give to those they were not related to . . . who were not even of the same ethnic group. Jesus was good news for the poor.
This so overwhelmed the ancient world that an Emperor in the 300’s named Julian the Apostate, who was not a Christian (hence the name) and who was concerned that Christianity was spreading so rapidly felt the need to try to stop it. He wrote to a priest of Roman paganism and said it would be necessary for those who followed Roman religions to create “hostels for immigrants and foundations for the poor,” because “the Christians have by such means won their present dominance.”
Yes, we’re talking about money and resources. I know, talking about money in church—yuck. I actually ran across a church website where they proclaimed “At our church we don’t talk about money.” I get where they’re coming from—I don’t like it when other people talk about me and my money.
But Jesus talked about money all the time. Jesus, the one whom we follow, says:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24)
There’s just something about money. I know that tug, and I know that you know it too. There’s just something about it that wants to be God. Jesus said that it takes a miracle of God to be free of its pull.
The One we follow said:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21)
The question about money is: Where do you want your heart to be?
Let’s say that you’re going on vacation. Wherever you end up at, you decide to stay at a Motel 6. You’re going to stay at a Motel 6, and the rule is that anything you get for your room at the Motel 6, you can’t take with you when you leave. It has to stay at the Motel 6. You can’t take anything with you. How likely would you be to take all your money and spend it decorating your motel room? With Van Gogh’s, or velvet paintings of Elvis, or whatever you’d like to have up on the walls? How likely is it you would spend your money decorating your room at the Motel 6?
You’re not going to do that. Why not? Because it’s not home. You’re only going to be there a little while, and then it will stay there, but you’ll be going home. You want your stuff to be available at home.
This ain’t home. This is Motel 6. You’re just here a little while. Jesus says:
For crying out loud! Enjoy it. Enjoy the beauty of it. If you have a home and you love it, that’s a good thing. But don’t stay up nights thinking about better and better and better and bigger and nicer and newer and more expensive ways to fix up Motel 6!!
The one we follow says: “For crying out loud, store up your treasure in what is eternal! And what lasts is God and people.”
Some of you are really good with money. That’s great! Make it! Make lots of it! Stay up nights thinking about ways to release it, so that the Gospel of Jesus becomes once again Good News for the poor. Think about ways of liberating it and spreading it around so it doesn’t create dependency, so it doesn’t dis-empower people, so it creates strength and points to people who are sitting on the bench right now and says: “OK. You and you and you and you, get in the game.”
God will help us with this. God will change our hearts.
----
You know, sometimes when we look at the Kingdom of God and see the beauty of what it is that God intended, and then they look at how things are going down on this earth, we get mad. I love the old King James translation of the Jubilee:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me …To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:18a, 19)
Now, if the Jubilee year is the acceptable year of the Lord, then what is every other year? Unacceptable. Just the way that things are running on this earth: materialism, greed, envy, selfishness. Jubilee people look at this gap between the Kingdom of God where God’s will is done, and then how things are on earth where his will is not done. They get mad, not in a self-righteous or judgmental way, but in a way that makes them just want to get up out of their chairs and do something about things! It makes them want to just say: “This is not acceptable!”
The Gospel of Jesus is not the Minimal Entrance Requirements for Getting Into Heaven After You Die. The Gospel is that through Jesus—no other way—through his life, through his teaching, through his death, through his resurrection, through his Spirit, the Kingdom of God is coming to this world.
And God will make you into the kind of person who will change the world into the kind of place he intended it to be when he created it.
People who pray:
Your Kingdom come Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. (Matthew 6:10)
In other words, we can become agents of Jubilee. One of the ways that you can know where God is calling you is that, not in a self-righteous way, you will get all fired up inside. You need to pay attention to that. Oftentimes, God is speaking to you through that.
First, Jubilee people get free from bondage to money. They make a decision somewhere along the line: “You know, I’m not going to invest most of my treasure fixing up Motel 6.”
Second, Jubilee people get mad when they see the gap between God’s Kingdom and the way things are. An anger that moves to action.
And third, Jubilee people have joy, because they have Jesus. This is very, very important. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. Without Jesus, the church turns into a social services agency. Social service agencies are great, we need them—but they’re no substitute for a Spirit-infused church. Here’s why…
You may have noticed from the text that we read together at the beginning of this message. Jubilee was proclaimed on a particular day once every fifty years. Jubilee was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement. It was proclaimed when the forgiveness of sins was proclaimed. When people recognized their need for a sacrifice to be right with a just and holy God. If God doesn’t come to clean up the mess inside me, he cannot use me to clean up the mess in the world all around me.
Jesus is Jubilee. Jesus is the Day of Atonement. If you’ve never become his follower ... if you’ve never invited him to become the forgiver and leader of your life, you can do that today. This can be the Day of Atonement and the Day of Jubilee for you.
How do you do that?
Jesus of Nazareth, I acknowledge before you my thirst for what you have to give. I surrender myself--whole and entire, what was, and is, and is to come--to you. Plunge the wrongs I have done and the wrongs done to me in your fathomless mercy. Receive me as I am today, and make of me what I am meant to be, and let me walk in the path of your new creation.
Without Jesus, there can be no Jubilee. Only Jesus can clean up a human heart. He can do that for you, and he can do that for you today. You can’t have Jubilee without Jesus. You can’t have Jesus without Jubilee. Without Jubilee, the church just turns into one more religious group trying to win an argument, and the world has enough of those. But our Jesus came, and he said:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
This is Jubilee time. We are a Jubilee community. You are called to live a Jubilee life.
[Ministry Invitation. Communion. Worship]
Conspiracy of Kindness #2: Developing a Heart of Kindness and Compassion
Conspiracy of Kindness #2: Developing a Heart of Kindness and Compassion
July 29, 2007
by Don Bromley
This weekend I’m giving the second of three sermons in our “Conspiracy of Kindness” series.
I’m picking up this week where Donnell left off. Last week he talked about how kindness can break through our defensive barriers and demonstrate that God is loving, caring, and compassionate. Sowing acts of kindness is our way of joining the Father in what he is already doing.
This weekend I’m going discuss how it is that we can develop a heart of kindness and compassion—and how it involves going out into our world.
But first, I want to show a 12-minute video clip called nooma, put together by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church. You might know Rob Bell as the author of Velvet Elvis.
In his sermon last week, Donnell shared some evangelism strategies that we find don’t work terribly well in our context. It made me think of this video, and I think it’s a good jumping-off point for my sermon.
[video nooma 009—Bullhorn 00:10 to 12:27 www.nooma.com]
I love the question that Rob Bell asks. What happens when the “good news” doesn’t come across that way? When it doesn’t appear very loving?
The Bible’s greatest command: Love God and love those around you. The defining mark of a Christian is love.
Jesus is saying that the ultimate mark of a transformed life is a compassionate heart. The writer named John, on of Jesus’ followers, writing to the early church says: “If you say that you love God, and you don’t love the people around you, you’re a liar.”
That’s a hard statement to hear! It doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect in order to claim that we love God—but it really illustrates a key point of the Bible: we love God insofar as we are loving other people.
The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor’s mission statement is—“To humbly bear the transforming presence of Jesus into the heart of Ann Arbor through Jesus brand spirituality, community and works of compassion; to steadily reproduce reproducing churches in southeastern Michigan and beyond.”
From the moment we launched this church in Ann Arbor, back in 2000, we resolved that works of kindness and compassion would be hallmarks of who we are and what we are about.
That’s why we have what we compassion ministries, which we highlighted last weekend: single moms ministry, homeless ministry, Sunday meal, 313 ministry.
If we don’t make kindness and compassion—loving those around us—an integral part of what this church is about; then our gathering together to worship—expressing our love to God—lacks genuineness.
So how do we as individuals develop a more compassionate heart? I want to give you one thought. This comes from a man named Jim Wallis who is one of the great Christian leaders of our day.
He’s written a book recently called "Faith Works." And he gives a kind of starting point for people who want to build compassionate hearts. So I want to tell you the phrase that he offers and then kind of unpack it. "The place to start is here: You’ve got to get out of the house more often." Here’s the idea: We all tend to live in a little slice of the world where we feel comfortable.
I go to school. I shop. I work. I go to church. I play with people who are like me. Our society just divides people up that way. It puts all kinds of really subtle barriers in between different kinds of people. And as long as I don’t get out of the house, people who live in other conditions, people who are different from me–different language, different accent, different skin color, different economic conditions–they’re just not on the radar screen. They’re just not in my mind and heart.
[personal example]
Most people who are deeply committed to the ministry of compassion, who are building bigger hearts and trying to extend themselves as Jesus did, most people in that condition will trace their own transformation to some time when they went to a third world country or had a cross-cultural experience, or went to a neighborhood in the city and had some real experience with some real people who had real names and real faces.
Usually what transforms people when it comes to this business of developing compassionate hearts, is not a great talk, not a good book, not a powerful documentary or a really moving film. It’s a real life experience that grips your heart and seizes your vision and immerses you into the life of a real person. You’ve got to get out of the house.
If you'll do that, if you’ll get outside your normal world, if you know to serve and pray for a real person with a real name, your heart will be touched. God will work in you in that way, and you will want to extend your hand. You will begin to think about how you might do that, not because somebody is trying to make you or because you feel like you ought to. It will come from inside you.
Something happens when you get out of the house. Something happens in the world and something happens in you. In the book by Jim Wallis that I mentioned, he tells about a lawyer named Dale who was into big deals. He had an income in the high six-figures. He helped negotiate the contract for Dolphin Stadium in Miami.
But he began to get out of the house one day, and it changed his life. He started working at the Good News Soup Kitchen in Tallahassee, and this is what he writes.
[reading from book]
"I showed up every day in my three-piece suit to help from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. They assigned me door duty. My job was to make sure street people lining up to eat waited in an orderly fashion. Every day I stood at the door for an hour chatting with the street people waiting to eat.
"Before I came to Good News, street people was a meaningless term. It defined a group without defining anybody in particular from the comfort of my car, my suburban home, my downtown law office. Street people were just those people out there somewhere. Then one day an elderly woman named Helen came running to the Good News door. A man was chasing her and threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him back his dollar.
"’Tell him he can’t hit me because it’s church property,’ she pleaded. In true lawyerly fashion, I explained that Good News is not actually a church, but he still couldn’t hit her. After 20 minutes of failed mediation, I bought peace by giving them each a dollar. That evening I happened to be standing on the corner of Park and Monroe, and in the red twilight I spied a lonely silhouette struggling in my direction from Tennessee Street.
"’A poor street person,’ I thought, as the figure inched closer. I was about to turn back to my own concerns when I detected something familiar in that shadowy figure–the red scarf, the clear plastic bag with white border, the mismatched shoes. ‘My God,’ I said in my thoughts, ‘that’s Helen.’ My eyes froze on her as she limped by and turned up Park. No doubt she’d crawl under a bush to spend the night.
My mind had always dismissed the sight of a street person in seconds. I could not expel the picture of Helen. That night as I lay in my $1,500 deluxe temperature controlled waterbed, I couldn’t sleep. A voice kept asking, ‘Where is Helen sleeping tonight?’ No street person had ever interfered with my sleep. But the shadowy figure with the red scarf and the plastic bag and the mismatched shoes had followed me home. I made a fatal mistake. I learned her name."
---------
That’s what happens when you get involved. You learn somebody’s name. And when you learn somebody’s name, you’re never quite the same. Why is it that one name, one face can be so powerful? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s the face of somebody made in the image of God.
Mother Theresa used to send members of her community to a home for the dying. She wrote of a young woman from a well-to-do family who spent three hours caring for a dying man brought in from the streets who was covered with maggots. And Mother Theresa said to this young woman, "You be very careful. You be very loving as you touch him for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise."
That’s why when you get out of the house and learn a name and see a face something changes in you–for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise. Now that’s why we are utterly committed to building a community of women and men who extend themselves in works of compassion. This is just core to the message of Jesus.
So I’m here to give you just one challenge–just one. Get out of the house. I don’t know what your next step is—there are any number of ways. Two weeks ago we listened to stories from our various compassion ministries. Maybe it will be getting plugged into those.
Or maybe it will begin by participating in our Day of Kindness next Saturday, August 4. [describe Day of Kindness] That’s a low-risk, high-grace way to get out of the house and demonstrate compassion and kindness on an individual basis. It’s a simple way that we as a church can go beyond these walls and sprinkle some grace in the life of someone who might never be interested in visiting a church.
For everyone here who’s a parent, I want to make a very strong plea. Get your kids involved with you. They need it. We need to form our kid’s hearts by taking them to places where hearts will say things like, "I care. I weep. I’ve got to give. I’ve got to serve. I’ve got to make my life about something bigger than just my own comfort and success."
I promise you at the end of your life, you will not regret one act of kindness or compassion. You will not regret one moment that you spent, one dollar that you gave, one tear that you shed. You won’t regret any of it because this is Jesus’ way of life. And every one of us who knows and follows him has been on the receiving end of his compassion.
Jesus looked around at this world and saw all the needs and the hunger and the aloneness and the sin and the guilt and the poverty. And Jesus lived at the right hand of God in unspeakable glory and splendor. But Jesus said to himself, "I’ve got to get out of the house." And he crossed every barrier and boundary to extend himself in love to every human being who would receive him.
He came to the city, and he came to the suburb. He came to the hood, and he came to the barrio, and he came to the mall. He came to needy people like me and you. Jesus comes to us, and then he says, "Now why don’t you do what I do? Why don’t you devote your life to developing and building a kind and compassionate heart?
[ministry invitation]
[worship & communion]
July 29, 2007
by Don Bromley
This weekend I’m giving the second of three sermons in our “Conspiracy of Kindness” series.
I’m picking up this week where Donnell left off. Last week he talked about how kindness can break through our defensive barriers and demonstrate that God is loving, caring, and compassionate. Sowing acts of kindness is our way of joining the Father in what he is already doing.
This weekend I’m going discuss how it is that we can develop a heart of kindness and compassion—and how it involves going out into our world.
But first, I want to show a 12-minute video clip called nooma, put together by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church. You might know Rob Bell as the author of Velvet Elvis.
In his sermon last week, Donnell shared some evangelism strategies that we find don’t work terribly well in our context. It made me think of this video, and I think it’s a good jumping-off point for my sermon.
[video nooma 009—Bullhorn 00:10 to 12:27 www.nooma.com]
I love the question that Rob Bell asks. What happens when the “good news” doesn’t come across that way? When it doesn’t appear very loving?
The Bible’s greatest command: Love God and love those around you. The defining mark of a Christian is love.
Jesus is saying that the ultimate mark of a transformed life is a compassionate heart. The writer named John, on of Jesus’ followers, writing to the early church says: “If you say that you love God, and you don’t love the people around you, you’re a liar.”
That’s a hard statement to hear! It doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect in order to claim that we love God—but it really illustrates a key point of the Bible: we love God insofar as we are loving other people.
The Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor’s mission statement is—“To humbly bear the transforming presence of Jesus into the heart of Ann Arbor through Jesus brand spirituality, community and works of compassion; to steadily reproduce reproducing churches in southeastern Michigan and beyond.”
From the moment we launched this church in Ann Arbor, back in 2000, we resolved that works of kindness and compassion would be hallmarks of who we are and what we are about.
That’s why we have what we compassion ministries, which we highlighted last weekend: single moms ministry, homeless ministry, Sunday meal, 313 ministry.
If we don’t make kindness and compassion—loving those around us—an integral part of what this church is about; then our gathering together to worship—expressing our love to God—lacks genuineness.
So how do we as individuals develop a more compassionate heart? I want to give you one thought. This comes from a man named Jim Wallis who is one of the great Christian leaders of our day.
He’s written a book recently called "Faith Works." And he gives a kind of starting point for people who want to build compassionate hearts. So I want to tell you the phrase that he offers and then kind of unpack it. "The place to start is here: You’ve got to get out of the house more often." Here’s the idea: We all tend to live in a little slice of the world where we feel comfortable.
I go to school. I shop. I work. I go to church. I play with people who are like me. Our society just divides people up that way. It puts all kinds of really subtle barriers in between different kinds of people. And as long as I don’t get out of the house, people who live in other conditions, people who are different from me–different language, different accent, different skin color, different economic conditions–they’re just not on the radar screen. They’re just not in my mind and heart.
[personal example]
Most people who are deeply committed to the ministry of compassion, who are building bigger hearts and trying to extend themselves as Jesus did, most people in that condition will trace their own transformation to some time when they went to a third world country or had a cross-cultural experience, or went to a neighborhood in the city and had some real experience with some real people who had real names and real faces.
Usually what transforms people when it comes to this business of developing compassionate hearts, is not a great talk, not a good book, not a powerful documentary or a really moving film. It’s a real life experience that grips your heart and seizes your vision and immerses you into the life of a real person. You’ve got to get out of the house.
If you'll do that, if you’ll get outside your normal world, if you know to serve and pray for a real person with a real name, your heart will be touched. God will work in you in that way, and you will want to extend your hand. You will begin to think about how you might do that, not because somebody is trying to make you or because you feel like you ought to. It will come from inside you.
Something happens when you get out of the house. Something happens in the world and something happens in you. In the book by Jim Wallis that I mentioned, he tells about a lawyer named Dale who was into big deals. He had an income in the high six-figures. He helped negotiate the contract for Dolphin Stadium in Miami.
But he began to get out of the house one day, and it changed his life. He started working at the Good News Soup Kitchen in Tallahassee, and this is what he writes.
[reading from book]
"I showed up every day in my three-piece suit to help from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. They assigned me door duty. My job was to make sure street people lining up to eat waited in an orderly fashion. Every day I stood at the door for an hour chatting with the street people waiting to eat.
"Before I came to Good News, street people was a meaningless term. It defined a group without defining anybody in particular from the comfort of my car, my suburban home, my downtown law office. Street people were just those people out there somewhere. Then one day an elderly woman named Helen came running to the Good News door. A man was chasing her and threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him back his dollar.
"’Tell him he can’t hit me because it’s church property,’ she pleaded. In true lawyerly fashion, I explained that Good News is not actually a church, but he still couldn’t hit her. After 20 minutes of failed mediation, I bought peace by giving them each a dollar. That evening I happened to be standing on the corner of Park and Monroe, and in the red twilight I spied a lonely silhouette struggling in my direction from Tennessee Street.
"’A poor street person,’ I thought, as the figure inched closer. I was about to turn back to my own concerns when I detected something familiar in that shadowy figure–the red scarf, the clear plastic bag with white border, the mismatched shoes. ‘My God,’ I said in my thoughts, ‘that’s Helen.’ My eyes froze on her as she limped by and turned up Park. No doubt she’d crawl under a bush to spend the night.
My mind had always dismissed the sight of a street person in seconds. I could not expel the picture of Helen. That night as I lay in my $1,500 deluxe temperature controlled waterbed, I couldn’t sleep. A voice kept asking, ‘Where is Helen sleeping tonight?’ No street person had ever interfered with my sleep. But the shadowy figure with the red scarf and the plastic bag and the mismatched shoes had followed me home. I made a fatal mistake. I learned her name."
---------
That’s what happens when you get involved. You learn somebody’s name. And when you learn somebody’s name, you’re never quite the same. Why is it that one name, one face can be so powerful? I’ll tell you why. Because that’s the face of somebody made in the image of God.
Mother Theresa used to send members of her community to a home for the dying. She wrote of a young woman from a well-to-do family who spent three hours caring for a dying man brought in from the streets who was covered with maggots. And Mother Theresa said to this young woman, "You be very careful. You be very loving as you touch him for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise."
That’s why when you get out of the house and learn a name and see a face something changes in you–for there is Jesus in the distressing disguise. Now that’s why we are utterly committed to building a community of women and men who extend themselves in works of compassion. This is just core to the message of Jesus.
So I’m here to give you just one challenge–just one. Get out of the house. I don’t know what your next step is—there are any number of ways. Two weeks ago we listened to stories from our various compassion ministries. Maybe it will be getting plugged into those.
Or maybe it will begin by participating in our Day of Kindness next Saturday, August 4. [describe Day of Kindness] That’s a low-risk, high-grace way to get out of the house and demonstrate compassion and kindness on an individual basis. It’s a simple way that we as a church can go beyond these walls and sprinkle some grace in the life of someone who might never be interested in visiting a church.
For everyone here who’s a parent, I want to make a very strong plea. Get your kids involved with you. They need it. We need to form our kid’s hearts by taking them to places where hearts will say things like, "I care. I weep. I’ve got to give. I’ve got to serve. I’ve got to make my life about something bigger than just my own comfort and success."
I promise you at the end of your life, you will not regret one act of kindness or compassion. You will not regret one moment that you spent, one dollar that you gave, one tear that you shed. You won’t regret any of it because this is Jesus’ way of life. And every one of us who knows and follows him has been on the receiving end of his compassion.
Jesus looked around at this world and saw all the needs and the hunger and the aloneness and the sin and the guilt and the poverty. And Jesus lived at the right hand of God in unspeakable glory and splendor. But Jesus said to himself, "I’ve got to get out of the house." And he crossed every barrier and boundary to extend himself in love to every human being who would receive him.
He came to the city, and he came to the suburb. He came to the hood, and he came to the barrio, and he came to the mall. He came to needy people like me and you. Jesus comes to us, and then he says, "Now why don’t you do what I do? Why don’t you devote your life to developing and building a kind and compassionate heart?
[ministry invitation]
[worship & communion]
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Sermon: The Art of Being Yourself #5: Loving Yourself and Living for Others
The Art of Being Yourself #5: Loving Yourself and Living for Others
by Don Bromley
July 7-8, 2007
This weekend, I’m doing the fifth and final sermon in our series entitled “The Art of Being Yourself.” The subject of my sermon is “Loving Yourself and Living for Others”
The text I’m looking at is in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10:
Jesus is talking with his friends, his students, and two of them have been saying they want to sit on his right and on his left when he becomes King, because they want to be in great glory with him.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45)
“We want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
“Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
James and John didn’t have problems being assertive, or asking for what they want!
One of the interesting things you’ll notice when reading the Bible is that there aren’t many texts that deal with the topic of low self-esteem. You don’t see a lot of the characters in the Bible struggling with it, and there isn’t much that addresses the issue. It’s hard to know exactly why. Maybe people did, but just didn’t write about it. Nevertheless, it seems that the average person in the ancient world wasn’t quite as introspective as we are.
Anyone who’s taken Psychology 101 is probably familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the bottom you have physiological needs, such as hunger and thirst. If these needs aren’t met, every bit of your energy and resources are spent obtaining them. These needs must be met before you move up the pyramid to the next level of needs, which are safety needs, like security and protection. Next on the pyramid are social needs, such as a sense of belonging and love. Then esteem needs: self-esteem, recognition, status. Finally self-actualization.
So it’s not until you’re in a place where most of your basic needs are met that your mind can wander to issues of self-esteem and self actualization. One theory is that people in the ancient world were much more preoccupied with the lower, more basic needs than we are—just trying to stay alive—and so ideas of self-esteem and self actualization weren’t at the forefront of their thought.
Anyway… in the Bible, the idea that people have a fairly positive view of themselves is pretty much a given. It’s assumed that everyone loves themselves, in the most basic sense—everyone is taking care of themselves, because if you don’t, you won’t last long.
This idea of self-love is fundamental to the Old Testament’s law code:
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” (Lev. 19:18)
Jesus assumes self-love when reaffirms the greatest of the Old Testament laws:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:37-40)
Paul, in speaking to husbands, assumes that they love themselves first:
“…Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” (Eph 5:28)
Jesus doesn’t correct this attitude and tell us that we really shouldn’t love ourselves. Instead, he says that we should love others as we love ourselves. If we don’t love and take care of ourselves, how can we even begin to love others?
Sometimes Christians get the false impression that following Jesus means some sort of loss of self, or de-selfing as Ken talked about a few weeks ago. As if we stop existing and somehow are absorbed into some kind of cosmic consciousness. This is the negative sense of “living for others.”
People sometimes say a prayer like this one, "Lord, make me nothing." Did you ever hear that prayer? It's not a good prayer, because what if God answers it. Think about it… What if he should say, "Okay"?
It is a very good thing that you exist. You can’t reject yourself and love God.
Self love is a horse that you can fall off either side of. On the one hand a person can love themselves in such a way that they are selfish and narcissistic. Their interest is only in themselves, see only themselves, and they overlook the needs of others. They’re often aggressive with others.
But falling off the other side of the horse are those that are self-less in the negative sense of loss of self or “de-selfing.” This can take the form of codependence—in which the person’s needs are met in an unhealthy way through their relationships. Their interest is only in others (or so it seems), they “live for others,” overlooking their own needs and desires. They’re often passive and lack assertiveness—thinking that those are Christ-like qualities. I’m unhappy and my needs aren’t being met—so I must be following Jesus.
It’s true that there is a degree of self-denial and selflessness in living for Jesus, properly understood. But first a few things self-denial does not mean. Self-denial does not mean that being miserable is a good thing to God. It does not mean that you are supposed to deny your feelings or that you should try to avoid pleasure. It doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that you exist.
Following Jesus doesn’t mean I should move to a country I don't like, wear ugly clothes, eat bad food, date unattractive people and inflict pain on myself. Sometimes we act as if it is, and we wonder why people aren’t flocking to church.
Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Living life to the full isn’t a selfish life, and it’s not a life in which we de-self. Jesus’ desire is that in loving ourselves, in discovering our true selves, we will live our lives to their fullest.
When Jesus speaks to his disciples, he’s assuming self-love, and a desire for good things. “Whoever wants to become great among you…” And Jesus doesn’t reprimand James and John for what they ask; he only instructs them in how their thinking about leadership is wrong. Of course, all the other disciples are upset with them—but probably only because they wanted to ask the same thing of Jesus!
Let’s talk about this idea of what it means to “live for others” in a healthy sense—the idea of servanthood.
There is, Jesus says, a standard approach in this world of power and greatness among the Gentiles. That's his way of saying, "The world apart from the kingdom of God." The rulers lord it over their followers.
He says their “high officials” -- the Greek word is the megaloi we get our word "mega" from this word -- the mega leaders, the big kahunas, are tyrants in this world. They use power to dominate, control, gain status and inspire fear. Life among them is a competition. Who's the greatest? Who can climb the ladder the highest? Who can impose his will?
Jesus says, "Not so with you." Now, because power and leadership can be abused and can be dark in the hands of fallen people -- because Jesus has warnings about it -- some people get distrustful about any form of leadership or the exercise of power. They don't initiate, they don't challenge, they don't stretch those who are around them.
They hold back from leading when they ought to lead, and they hold others back from leading. That’s not a good thing. Their families, their churches, their organizations suffer. When people aren’t envisioned and challenged and stretched to grow, they suffer.
To lead is a good thing. At the very beginning, the Bible says that God created human beings to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue it and have dominion over it. Jesus doesn't reject leadership or even the use of power or greatness for that matter, but he redefines it, he redeems it.
As he says here, Jesus himself is the ultimate example of redeemed leadership. He says, "I didn't come to be served," which is generally the measure of leadership in our world. How many people are below me, serving me?
He says, "I came to serve." That's what servants do. Here's a real key point. In Jesus, to lead is to serve. In Jesus, leadership is simply one form of servanthood. In God, to lead is to serve those he leads.
When Jesus places a towel over his arm and washes the feet of those that he loves, he's not disguising who God is; he's revealing who God is. He says God is up to the same old tricks he's been up to before time began.
This takes a little bit of thought, because it’s hard to imagine what this means before Jesus was born, or even what it means today.
Scripture tells us that God is basically community; that within the being of God there are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit united in a relationship of oneness, a relationship that is unbreakable, unassailable because together they make one being.
These are three expressions of the same divinity but with different roles/functions—they practice these in deference to each other so that the Father gives everything he has to the Son, the Son gives to the Father everything that he is, and the Holy Spirit puts himself at the service of both.
The Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, the Holy Spirit glorifies both. It's a mutuality arrangement where each one’s function supplements the other’s function so that there is dynamic within the being of God.
Indeed, the Scripture tells us that God is love, and where there is love, that love seeks expression. It has to give—give of itself, and we know that God assumes servanthood in the fact that he created. Just the work of creation is an expression of God's servanthood, when he lavishes his bounty over his creatures. Actually, in creation he wants to give them all that he has that is give-able, that is transmissible, and the highest good that he can provide in servanthood to his creatures is himself, his image.
There is not only a relationship of servanthood within the persons of the Godhead, but whenever God expresses himself it is for the good, it is to serve, it is to give, it is to support, to provide, to sustain, to nourish, to grow, to develop.
God is community and oneness, and there is servanthood bounding that community together, and God establishes the human community as his reflection, his image, and he wants that community to be bounded by a mutuality of servanthood. Servanthood is not just a passing idea; it has to do with the very essence of who God is and therefore with the purpose of creation.
When Jesus goes to the cross, when he's whipped and beaten and battered and bleeding and dying, he's not disguising who God is. We think that because we misunderstand God. Jesus, on the cross, is revealing. It is the ultimate revelation of the heart and the nature of God -- Jesus hanging on a cross.
"For," Jesus says to his friends, "the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many."
At the same time, Jesus had the strongest character of anyone who ever lived. He was never intimidated. He was always assertive. He defied those who held immense power without batting an eye. He threw full grown men out of the temple area with a whip. He is a servant, but he didn’t suffer loss of self; he wasn’t passive; he was truly in touch with his real self.
He calls us, calls his followers to be that form of servanthood – being “servant leaders.”
People who love themselves in the best way: are in touch with their God-given aspirations and dreams, understand that they’ve been made in the image of God, and are seeking to understand the true self that God has created them to be. They’re people who understand that living for others means leading through servanthood. That in being servants we are not debasing or lowering or losing ourselves, but we are expressing the very essence of who God is—a community of love.
by Don Bromley
July 7-8, 2007
This weekend, I’m doing the fifth and final sermon in our series entitled “The Art of Being Yourself.” The subject of my sermon is “Loving Yourself and Living for Others”
The text I’m looking at is in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10:
Jesus is talking with his friends, his students, and two of them have been saying they want to sit on his right and on his left when he becomes King, because they want to be in great glory with him.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”
When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45)
“We want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
“Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
James and John didn’t have problems being assertive, or asking for what they want!
One of the interesting things you’ll notice when reading the Bible is that there aren’t many texts that deal with the topic of low self-esteem. You don’t see a lot of the characters in the Bible struggling with it, and there isn’t much that addresses the issue. It’s hard to know exactly why. Maybe people did, but just didn’t write about it. Nevertheless, it seems that the average person in the ancient world wasn’t quite as introspective as we are.
Anyone who’s taken Psychology 101 is probably familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the bottom you have physiological needs, such as hunger and thirst. If these needs aren’t met, every bit of your energy and resources are spent obtaining them. These needs must be met before you move up the pyramid to the next level of needs, which are safety needs, like security and protection. Next on the pyramid are social needs, such as a sense of belonging and love. Then esteem needs: self-esteem, recognition, status. Finally self-actualization.
So it’s not until you’re in a place where most of your basic needs are met that your mind can wander to issues of self-esteem and self actualization. One theory is that people in the ancient world were much more preoccupied with the lower, more basic needs than we are—just trying to stay alive—and so ideas of self-esteem and self actualization weren’t at the forefront of their thought.
Anyway… in the Bible, the idea that people have a fairly positive view of themselves is pretty much a given. It’s assumed that everyone loves themselves, in the most basic sense—everyone is taking care of themselves, because if you don’t, you won’t last long.
This idea of self-love is fundamental to the Old Testament’s law code:
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” (Lev. 19:18)
Jesus assumes self-love when reaffirms the greatest of the Old Testament laws:
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt 22:37-40)
Paul, in speaking to husbands, assumes that they love themselves first:
“…Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” (Eph 5:28)
Jesus doesn’t correct this attitude and tell us that we really shouldn’t love ourselves. Instead, he says that we should love others as we love ourselves. If we don’t love and take care of ourselves, how can we even begin to love others?
Sometimes Christians get the false impression that following Jesus means some sort of loss of self, or de-selfing as Ken talked about a few weeks ago. As if we stop existing and somehow are absorbed into some kind of cosmic consciousness. This is the negative sense of “living for others.”
People sometimes say a prayer like this one, "Lord, make me nothing." Did you ever hear that prayer? It's not a good prayer, because what if God answers it. Think about it… What if he should say, "Okay"?
It is a very good thing that you exist. You can’t reject yourself and love God.
Self love is a horse that you can fall off either side of. On the one hand a person can love themselves in such a way that they are selfish and narcissistic. Their interest is only in themselves, see only themselves, and they overlook the needs of others. They’re often aggressive with others.
But falling off the other side of the horse are those that are self-less in the negative sense of loss of self or “de-selfing.” This can take the form of codependence—in which the person’s needs are met in an unhealthy way through their relationships. Their interest is only in others (or so it seems), they “live for others,” overlooking their own needs and desires. They’re often passive and lack assertiveness—thinking that those are Christ-like qualities. I’m unhappy and my needs aren’t being met—so I must be following Jesus.
It’s true that there is a degree of self-denial and selflessness in living for Jesus, properly understood. But first a few things self-denial does not mean. Self-denial does not mean that being miserable is a good thing to God. It does not mean that you are supposed to deny your feelings or that you should try to avoid pleasure. It doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that you exist.
Following Jesus doesn’t mean I should move to a country I don't like, wear ugly clothes, eat bad food, date unattractive people and inflict pain on myself. Sometimes we act as if it is, and we wonder why people aren’t flocking to church.
Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
Living life to the full isn’t a selfish life, and it’s not a life in which we de-self. Jesus’ desire is that in loving ourselves, in discovering our true selves, we will live our lives to their fullest.
When Jesus speaks to his disciples, he’s assuming self-love, and a desire for good things. “Whoever wants to become great among you…” And Jesus doesn’t reprimand James and John for what they ask; he only instructs them in how their thinking about leadership is wrong. Of course, all the other disciples are upset with them—but probably only because they wanted to ask the same thing of Jesus!
Let’s talk about this idea of what it means to “live for others” in a healthy sense—the idea of servanthood.
There is, Jesus says, a standard approach in this world of power and greatness among the Gentiles. That's his way of saying, "The world apart from the kingdom of God." The rulers lord it over their followers.
He says their “high officials” -- the Greek word is the megaloi we get our word "mega" from this word -- the mega leaders, the big kahunas, are tyrants in this world. They use power to dominate, control, gain status and inspire fear. Life among them is a competition. Who's the greatest? Who can climb the ladder the highest? Who can impose his will?
Jesus says, "Not so with you." Now, because power and leadership can be abused and can be dark in the hands of fallen people -- because Jesus has warnings about it -- some people get distrustful about any form of leadership or the exercise of power. They don't initiate, they don't challenge, they don't stretch those who are around them.
They hold back from leading when they ought to lead, and they hold others back from leading. That’s not a good thing. Their families, their churches, their organizations suffer. When people aren’t envisioned and challenged and stretched to grow, they suffer.
To lead is a good thing. At the very beginning, the Bible says that God created human beings to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to subdue it and have dominion over it. Jesus doesn't reject leadership or even the use of power or greatness for that matter, but he redefines it, he redeems it.
As he says here, Jesus himself is the ultimate example of redeemed leadership. He says, "I didn't come to be served," which is generally the measure of leadership in our world. How many people are below me, serving me?
He says, "I came to serve." That's what servants do. Here's a real key point. In Jesus, to lead is to serve. In Jesus, leadership is simply one form of servanthood. In God, to lead is to serve those he leads.
When Jesus places a towel over his arm and washes the feet of those that he loves, he's not disguising who God is; he's revealing who God is. He says God is up to the same old tricks he's been up to before time began.
This takes a little bit of thought, because it’s hard to imagine what this means before Jesus was born, or even what it means today.
Scripture tells us that God is basically community; that within the being of God there are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit united in a relationship of oneness, a relationship that is unbreakable, unassailable because together they make one being.
These are three expressions of the same divinity but with different roles/functions—they practice these in deference to each other so that the Father gives everything he has to the Son, the Son gives to the Father everything that he is, and the Holy Spirit puts himself at the service of both.
The Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, the Holy Spirit glorifies both. It's a mutuality arrangement where each one’s function supplements the other’s function so that there is dynamic within the being of God.
Indeed, the Scripture tells us that God is love, and where there is love, that love seeks expression. It has to give—give of itself, and we know that God assumes servanthood in the fact that he created. Just the work of creation is an expression of God's servanthood, when he lavishes his bounty over his creatures. Actually, in creation he wants to give them all that he has that is give-able, that is transmissible, and the highest good that he can provide in servanthood to his creatures is himself, his image.
There is not only a relationship of servanthood within the persons of the Godhead, but whenever God expresses himself it is for the good, it is to serve, it is to give, it is to support, to provide, to sustain, to nourish, to grow, to develop.
God is community and oneness, and there is servanthood bounding that community together, and God establishes the human community as his reflection, his image, and he wants that community to be bounded by a mutuality of servanthood. Servanthood is not just a passing idea; it has to do with the very essence of who God is and therefore with the purpose of creation.
When Jesus goes to the cross, when he's whipped and beaten and battered and bleeding and dying, he's not disguising who God is. We think that because we misunderstand God. Jesus, on the cross, is revealing. It is the ultimate revelation of the heart and the nature of God -- Jesus hanging on a cross.
"For," Jesus says to his friends, "the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many."
At the same time, Jesus had the strongest character of anyone who ever lived. He was never intimidated. He was always assertive. He defied those who held immense power without batting an eye. He threw full grown men out of the temple area with a whip. He is a servant, but he didn’t suffer loss of self; he wasn’t passive; he was truly in touch with his real self.
He calls us, calls his followers to be that form of servanthood – being “servant leaders.”
People who love themselves in the best way: are in touch with their God-given aspirations and dreams, understand that they’ve been made in the image of God, and are seeking to understand the true self that God has created them to be. They’re people who understand that living for others means leading through servanthood. That in being servants we are not debasing or lowering or losing ourselves, but we are expressing the very essence of who God is—a community of love.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Eve on her "computer"
This is Eve on her little laptop, which does the alphabet, phonetics, and music. She loves to sit at her desk and draw with crayons, or play with her laptop.
Movie: Eve & Her Computer
Movie: Eve & Her Computer
Monday, June 18, 2007
Eve loves to swing
she could swing for hours. i ask, "are you ready to get down?"... she anwers, "nooo". 30 minutes later, same answer.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Eve and cousin Madeline driving!!!
This is a little movie (wmv format) of Eve and her cousin Madeline driving in a toy car in April...
Movie
Movie
Friday, June 08, 2007
Eve is tired...
Eve must have been tired this morning...
So far she has thrown her sippy cup at my computer, drew on the wall next to her desk with crayons, and put a coaster into my cup full of coffee...
I put her down for an early nap at about 10:45.
So far she has thrown her sippy cup at my computer, drew on the wall next to her desk with crayons, and put a coaster into my cup full of coffee...
I put her down for an early nap at about 10:45.
Friday, January 12, 2007
time for an update, eh?
well, it's been almost 6 months, so it's time for my biannual blog entry.
Eve has grown since my last post--she's put on an additional 25 pounds and lost an inch in height--oh wait, that's me. It's amazing how fast they grow. It seems like only yesterday she was learning her ABC's and could barely throw a football.
Life has been great. No problems or issues that I can think of... pretty much smooth sailing all around. Never been healthier, happier, smarter, richer, better looking... marriage is perfect. I've pretty much got it all.
Okay, seriously... I still love being a dad. Eve likes to come up to me when I'm sitting on the couch and say "uppees"... which means "up, please." It's pretty hard to resist, so I sit her next to me, put an arm around her, and let her flip through a magazine while I work or watch TV. My other favorite Eve moment is when i come home from work. As soon as she hears me drive up, she starts yelling "dada"... then when I open the door she practically hyperventilates, trembles with excitement, and her eyes get really big. I kid you not. It's nice to be loved! I can't wait to get home every day. Julie does the same thing (but she says "honey" instead of "dada").
gotta run...
Eve has grown since my last post--she's put on an additional 25 pounds and lost an inch in height--oh wait, that's me. It's amazing how fast they grow. It seems like only yesterday she was learning her ABC's and could barely throw a football.
Life has been great. No problems or issues that I can think of... pretty much smooth sailing all around. Never been healthier, happier, smarter, richer, better looking... marriage is perfect. I've pretty much got it all.
Okay, seriously... I still love being a dad. Eve likes to come up to me when I'm sitting on the couch and say "uppees"... which means "up, please." It's pretty hard to resist, so I sit her next to me, put an arm around her, and let her flip through a magazine while I work or watch TV. My other favorite Eve moment is when i come home from work. As soon as she hears me drive up, she starts yelling "dada"... then when I open the door she practically hyperventilates, trembles with excitement, and her eyes get really big. I kid you not. It's nice to be loved! I can't wait to get home every day. Julie does the same thing (but she says "honey" instead of "dada").
gotta run...
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