Why I'm doing the happy dance

I've noticed a tendency to say just enough in a Facebook/Twitter status update to give people ideas. I didn't mean to be cryptic...it just takes a lot more than a line or two to explain what's on my mind. But I posted an update last week that deserves to be expanded on: Alan is doing the happy dance because my church is really a church. What the heck does that mean?

If you've seen the church building, or even pictures of it, you might think it's strange for me to have any doubts. Central Christian is as churchy-looking a church as you could ever hope for: stone walls, steeple, big stained glass windows, high roofs. How could it be anything but a church?

The thing is that a church isn't a building at all. In the New Testament, a church is a group of people--a group of people called together by God to be "the body of Christ." That's a tough phrase to explain, but I think it means that a when you run into a church--a group of people--you should get a glimpse of God working in the world. When you meet a church, you should be able to tell that something incredible is moving within and through them--and that presence of God should cut across all the different human categories: race, style, age, dress, money, class...if you walk into a church, you can be surrounded by people who are nothing like you and find out that you're right at home.

The sad truth is that a lot of the groups of people who meet in impressive religious buildings aren't churches by that definition. And I was pretty sure that my church really was a church, but it was hard to know because "everyone" in my small town has known that Central Christian is a church for the right kind of person ("right" in this case meaning "at the top of the social ladder in Connersville, Indiana). And those prejudices were strong enough that it's taken months before people who were really on the outside came in--people who, if you took a picture of the church, you would be able to pick out of our usual crowd.

Now those people didn't "come in." People don't just come in to a big, impressive, church building. They practically have to be dragged in--not by force, but by a deep and powerful caring. People don't accept that invitation to "come to church" doesn't mean anything unless they already believe that you--the person doing the inviting--really cares about them.

But after that...I watched the people in my church walk up to the strangers who came to see them, smiling, welcoming them, and being genuinely glad that they were there--not because they would add to the church, but just because they wanted to share the joy they felt with another person. They made God's presence known to those visitors, those strangers, who left saying, "I want what those people have." What do we have? Nothing of our own...just God. And so there's one more person today who got a little taste of what God can do, thanks to this church that I've been given the chance to serve.

Sermon Riff: Follow Him

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. (Mark 1:16-20)

What could be more straightforward than this story? Jesus tells people what to do, and they do it. Peter, Andrew, James, and John decide to put all their trust in this wandering holy man, just because he says "follow me." And they do it right away, without debating, delaying, hemming or hawing. They just go.

This is, at the most basic level, a story about what it means to be a Christian. Here at the beginning of the oldest story we have about Jesus, we learn that Jesus calls us to follow him. Being a Christian is, first and foremost, about following Jesus--not just living according to his teachings (which is hard enough), not even living according to his example (which is even harder), but following him on the journey that he took--a journey that led him from life to death and from death to new life.

So naturally, this is one of the passages preachers turn to when they want to tell people, "get off your butts and get moving!" Thousands of sermons have been given reminding us that Peter, Andrew, James and John were not special people, and if they could do it, we can too.

But...Peter, Andrew, James, and John didn't have any idea what they were getting into. Later in the story, when Jesus tells Peter that he's going to end up on the cross, Peter "rebukes" him--corrects his teacher! James and John try to get special seats in heaven. Based on the things that we learn about them in the Bible, it seems like they thought that following Jesus was going to give them a chance to be high muckety-mucks in the "kingdom of God" that Jesus was always going on about--dukes or lords or something like that. They didn't find out about the whole self-sacrifice part of it until later, and they weren't very happy about it when they did.

But Jesus' first disciples certainly had a different kind of faith in Jesus. By all accounts, they were pretty ordinary people without any special skills or remarkable traits. But they believed that Jesus had the power to make them special, to make them remarkable. They didn't just have faith that Jesus had power to do amazing things, but that Jesus had power to make them do amazing things. Even if these uneducated, self-centered fishermen didn't understand what they were getting into, it was pretty clear that they were going to end up doing far more than people like them were supposed to be capable of. They didn't just trust Jesus to lead them. They trusted Jesus to give them what they needed so that they could follow him.

And it worked! They just got up and followed, and in following Jesus, they gained the ability to do things that were totally impossible. Later on, we read that Peter and John healed people—not through their own power, like Jesus did, not by saying, “get up and walk” under their own authority, but in Jesus name, as Jesus’ followers. And when they were arrested and brought before the learned, the judges, the clergy, they spoke up in ways that uneducated fishermen like them weren't supposed to be able to do. Following Jesus turned out to be a lot harder than they ever imagined...but they gained the strength and the power to do those hard things, to work miracles and speak truths that they never could have reached under their own power.

And this is the great invitation that we receive. If we choose to follow Jesus, if we go on that journey with him, we will have to give up things that we hold dear--our reputations, maybe our relationships, perhaps even our lives. But the more we give away the paltry things that we value so much, the more room we give to allow God to fill us with strength, comfort, joy, peace, beyond what we can possibly give ourselves.

EPIC FAIL

This isn't my sermon; I'll post that tomorrow. But since I've been thinking about things I haven't been doing, I thought it made more sense to post this tonight, and celebrate success tomorrow. And that way I'm still committed to getting at least two days in a row on here...

My favorite computer game is Spider Solitaire set to high difficulty. I've been playing for years. It took me months to win a single game. Lately, I've been really excited because I'm winning about 10% of my games. I'm thrilled to be at the point where I only fail 9 out of 10 times.

I've never minded losing games like that--and, in general, I'm pretty comfortable with failures of all kinds. Self-help types will tell you that we have to take risks in order to grow, and that a risk--by definition--will sometimes lead us to fail in the things we're trying to accomplish. And I can see how the lessons from my failed jobs, failed projects, and failed relationships have contributed to my non-failures later on. And for pastors, accepting failure is even more important. I'm supposed to be changing lives, and if I ever get to the point where 10% of the people I meet go away finding that their lives have changed, I'll be totally thrilled.

Lately, I've needed to be comfortable with failure just to make it from day to day. My to-do list--the list of things that I've failed to get done--is huge and not getting shorter. If I went to bed with that failure weighing on me, I wouldn't sleep. Like I haven't touched this blog in 6 weeks, even though I've had all sorts of things I've wanted to say. And I haven't failed to find time for other things--like the Spider solitaire I mentioned earlier. If I hadn't posted a Facebook update demanding that random people hold me accountable (thanks Radegund!), I wouldn't be doing this now.

So there is such a thing as being too comfortable with failure. Sometimes we need to fail in order to learn and grow, but sometimes we just need to reject failure, try harder, and get it done. Lately I've gotten back in touch with some family members who I didn't talk to for about 8 years. They're all wonderful people, I missed them the whole time, but for one reason and another I just never managed to make even a single phone call. I got over it and started talking to some of my cousins...just in time to get a call last week from one, who told me that my aunt--an aunt I used to be close to--was being admitted into hospice. She's suffering from cognitive problems bad enough that she wouldn't benefit from a visit. So, my cousin said, I should just plan to come for the funeral.

I'm never going to talk to my aunt again. I can gain wisdom from this experience, I can talk to my other aunts and close friends, use this experience to teach others, find forgiveness, and decide not to beat myself up about it, but I can't talk to my aunt ever again. I wanted to, but I failed.

Maybe it's because I've led three funerals in three weeks, but I've been acutely aware that failure is failure. Every broken relationship, every wasted hour, every unworthy word and deed--each one uses some time and some energy that we can never get back. And so while we need to be comfortable with failure, we can't be too comfortable--to forgive ourselves, but also to challenge ourselves.