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Sermon Feb 3 2008 - Transfiguring Willow Creek
Preaching from Mat 17:1-9 and 2 Pet 1:16-21
In the church calendar, this morning is Ascension Sunday – a Sunday set aside to remember the day when Jesus, along with 3 of his disciples, climbed Mt Hermon.
Mt Hermon is about 150km north of the Sea of Galilee, so it would’ve taken a bit of effort to walk there. And on top of that it’s 2,814m high, a bit taller than Mt Ruapehu, so it would’ve been a bit of an effort getting to the top as well! Definitely worth the trip though! When they finally get to the top Jesus is transfigured by the glory of God. God infuses his being, the Spirit wells up within him in a profound and dramatic way – his face begins to shine like the sun, and even his clothes become dazzling white as the radiance of the Creator of the universe shines out of him.
Pretty trippy stuff! If I had been one of those disciples I would’ve thought that I was suffering from high-altitude oxygen deficiency, causing my eye-sight to go blurry. Or maybe snow blindness or something. But then, Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus, showing the disciples that this is real – this is a moment of grace, this is a profound spiritual event…
Then God’s presence is made known, with a bright cloud overshadowing them, and a voice from the cloud saying…
“This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
The disciples then fall to the ground in fear.
Our second reading was from the 2nd letter of Peter, who was one of the 3 disciples on the mountain that day, and is referring back to that experience…
We were there (he writes) when God gave Jesus honour and glory; we heard the voice that came from heaven; we were with him on the holy mountain! And, because of that we are even more confident of the gospel, and you would do well to pay attention to it as well… “because it is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the Day dawns and the light of the morning star shines in your hearts.”
Now, although Christ was unique in that he was both human and divine, this transfiguring experience isn’t actually unique in the Bible. In Exodus 24 Moses also climbs a mountain after waiting 6 days, there he is overshadowed by the glory of God in a cloud, with God again speaking from the cloud. Another similarity with Jesus is that after several of these encounters, Moses’ face too begins to shine with the radiance of God.
So, this experience of being transfigured by God’s grace and glory isn’t limited to Jesus alone.
I thought it was interesting that both of these dynamic, transfiguring God encounters happen on top of a mountain. This brought me back to the last art service we did 2 weeks ago on this icon of the Trinity. If you were here, you may remember that behind each person of the Trinity there is a symbol. Behind the Father there is a house, behind Christ there is a tree, and behind the Spirit there is a mountain top.
The latter is because in the Bible there are several stories of people having profound and life-changing encounters with God, through the Holy Spirit, on the top of a mountain. This is where our English phrase “mountain top experiences” comes from. In Christian terms, these experiences can take many forms – like being caught up in worship; like periods of feeling especially close or intimate with our God; moments when our eyes are opened to a new truth or we are given some profound revelation about life and faith; or simply when God grants us a deep sense of peace or affirmation – like the words spoken to Jesus… “You are my child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
The problem with mountaintops though is that God can be a little unpredictable. God is sovereign, we can’t put God in a box, we cannot manipulate God into action and into granting us one of these experiences.
Often Christians can have an attitude that if we tithe our 10% without fail, then God has to reward us financially, it’s the rules!
Or, if we set aside time to pray, and if we pray in the right way, then it is assured that we will be blessed by a sense of God’s presence with us – if we don’t, then we’re doing it wrong!
Or, if we choose the right songs, in the right music style, in the right order, then that will break through and allow the Spirit to fall and transfigure us all in an ecstasy of worship here on a Sunday morning.
But, God doesn’t work like that! God is sovereign. Maybe God will act, maybe God won’t. Any blessings or mountaintop experiences are a gift of God’s grace.
This is one of the tensions of the Christian faith, and I’ve been wrestling with it over the week – trying to make sure I’m not preaching heresy!
God’s gifts are freely offered to us, but we still have to reach out and accept them. God does graciously call us regardless of who we are, what we’ve done, or how holy our lives are – but we still have to respond to that call, we still have to do something, we still have to put in a bit of effort.
Like with Moses and Jesus, to be transfigured, to attain their mountain-top experience, they still had to put in the hard yards and actually climb the mountain! If they’d just sat around at the bottom saying “No worries, God will graciously transport me to the top, to this place of divine encounter, without me having to break a sweat” then the Bible stories would’ve been quite different.
So, if God is calling us up a mountain, if God is desiring to graciously transfigure us or move us on in our faith with some new spiritual encounter or new spiritual truth… how do we maintain our spiritual health & fitness? How do we keep our spirits open and attentive to God?
So that…
a) We can actually hear God when God calls, and b) so that we have the tools and spiritual muscle to respond to that call, to get us to the top of the mountain…
But first!
Has anyone heard of Bill Hybels and his church Willow Creek?
Bill Hybels founded this church in 1975, and it grew so much that it now has a congregation of over 20,000 making it the second largest church in the US, and it is consistently voted the most influential church in America, as well as one of the most influential churches in the world.
This is because it’s done a lot to pioneer the “seeker-sensitive” model of church life that has developed in the US. Rather than just suck Christians out of other churches, these churches want to attract non-Christians (which is good!), so they try to make their services as accessible as possible to people without a Christian background. Accordingly they don’t meet in buildings that look like churches, rather they meet in theatres or converted warehouses. Next they get rid of the crosses and Christian symbols that might look weird to new people. Then they get rid of any religious jargon, and make the sermons as straightforward and understandable as possible. And on top of that they try to make their services really modern with lots of drama, dance and multi-media, and with high quality music playing simple, modern songs.
That ethos has proved very successful in attracting 45-65 yr olds to church, and in engaging their children, so it’s really taken off in the US and with the bigger charismatic churches here in NZ – and some Presbyterian churches as well.
But, Willow Creek don’t just want to attract spiritual seekers, they want to transform them into disciples – their understanding of a disciple being ‘someone who is growing in their love of God and their neighbour’ which again I think is really good.
So, how to do that? How do they take a new person and encourage them to grow into a disciple of Christ?
Being in America, a very consumer-oriented society, Willow Creek developed a consumer-oriented view of the people who come to their church. So, they began to provide them with spiritual products and services and programmes – so far they’ve developed nearly 100 different programmes and ministries (as well as 4 different services a week) for different kinds of people – and churches around the world buy these programmes and duplicate them. The idea being that as a spiritual seeker consumed each programme, they would move a step further on in their journey of discipleship.
But, after doing this for a few decades, last year they decided to do a survey to see if this actually worked. Do different programmes and ministries foster a deeper spiritual life in Christians? Do they take us to the mountaintop and open us to being transfigured by the grace and love of God? Do they help us grow in our love of neighbour and of God?
A brave step! And they’ve been open about their findings which was even braver and which has sparked a huge discussion all around the world about the nature and purpose of church – as well as lots of headlines like this one…
Their findings…
For those who hadn’t yet committed to Christianity, they thought the programmes Willow Creek offered were fantastic – it’s a great place to explore the Christian faith.
For those who had accepted Christ into their lives and were at the beginning of the journey of finding out what that meant, they thought it was pretty good. They were happy with their church.
Those who were a few years down the road of faith and had settled into their Christian life, generally thought this model of church was ok.
But for those who would be classed as mature, established Christians, some thought these programmes were great, but quite a lot were bored and frustrated, and a good number were dropping out of the church.
This way of doing church was helping people to grow and have lots of transforming, mountaintop experiences early in their life of faith, but also seemed to be encouraging Christians to stagnate spiritually as the years went by.
Why?
What they discovered was that as a church they weren’t encouraging their members to actually practice their faith at home. Their emphasis was on programmes, not practices. If someone wanted to grow in their faith there wasn’t a sense that they needed to put in the effort themselves, that they needed to sweat a bit and climb the mountain. Rather, all they needed to do was go to church and consume another product – and this did take some effort, and some people did continue to grow through these, but many didn’t, and very few of them seemed to know how to feed themselves or exercise their spirits at home.
So, as a result of all this Willow Creek seems to be returning to the importance of the age-old Christian practices, to encourage & equip their people to be Christians who grow by practicing their faith in their daily lives rather than Christians who try to grow by consuming products at church (and I can’t wait til they come up with a whole bunch of new programmes teaching people how to do that!).
Some of these Christian practices they’re turning to are quite common and even seem a little boring, but then if you go to the gym the basic exercises like the bench press are just as effective in building physical muscles as the new-fangled fancy stuff – and I think it’s similar with spiritual muscles.
For example, some tried and true Christian practices…
1. Meeting together with other Christians
2. Reading your Bible, but in a discerning way, giving yourself time to reflect on what you’ve read.
3. Taking time to talk with God and allowing God to talk back.
4. Being intentional in the love of your neighbour, showing generosity and hospitality.
5. Showing active compassion & justice to the weak and the least in society by maybe supporting a foodbank or volunteering with DCM or the Sisters of Compassion.
6. Or if your problem is that you do too much, you could factor some periods of silence into your life.
7. Or give yourself a Sabbath rest where you just relax or hang out with your family every now and then.
But there are more new-fangled practices as well…
8. Find yourself a spiritual director. I have a list of them in this area if anyone’s interested.
9. Some people find journaling useful where you pause now and then to write and reflect back on your life, try to discern where God has been active, and then record your prayers for the future.
10. Then there’s prayer like the charismatic praying in tongues, or the Benedictine repeating a name of God, or the Jesus prayer we looked at last year. Prayer that stills your mind and allows your spirit to bubble to the surface.
11. There are a few retreats offered around the place. The SGM booklet in the foyer has their year plan in it.
12. Confession is another ancient discipline often overlooked by Protestants.
13. Fasting from various things can be healthy now and then,
14. but so are parties and celebrations of your spiritual life.
Lent starts this week on Wednesday. Traditionally that’s a season to deny ourselves and give stuff up; trying to exercise our spiritual muscles in the hope that Easter might be some kind of meaningful mountaintop experience for us. It’s probably easier to do that in the northern hemisphere though - where it’s cold and miserable! But this is the best time of year in NZ and we should be making the most of it!
So, fast from something if you like, but also consider adding something, adding a Christian practice into your life this Lent – if you feel God leading you to.
Lent lasts for 6 ½ weeks, so maybe commit to reading a gospel in that time? Maybe be more intentional in practicing hospitality and try to invite a neighbour to dinner each week? Maybe you could give journaling a go to see if it’s your thing? Maybe you do grow through small groups and discussing your faith with others – if that’s you and you want a Lent study let me know and we’ll organise one. Or maybe you need to do less and can try giving yourself a Sabbath for a while?
There are heaps of different practices and I’m happy to talk to people about them.
So, let us also learn the lessons of Willow Creek, and let us cherish the idea of being a practicing Christian, of exercising our spiritual muscles and becoming spiritual versions of Arnold Schwarzenegger. So that… a) Our spirits are open to hearing God’s call when it comes, and b), we have the resources and spiritual muscle to respond to that call, to get ourselves up that mountain, to be transfigured & transformed by God’s grace.
Sermon Feb 10 2008 - Christ in Community
Preaching from Eph 4:1-7
Our text for today from Eph opened with the words… “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” (repeat).
Last week I did a longer than normal sermon – about 23 mins! I was amazed no-one passed out (or if you did you did it subtly, so congratulations!). In that sermon I looked at some research that’s been done by Willow Creek Church in America, that was looking at a popular model of doing church called “seeker sensitive churches.”
That research found that these churches can be a fantastic place for people who are ‘spiritual seekers’, interested in finding out about the Christian faith, as well as for new Christians. They loved these churches, and were helped to grow, encounter God, and have many transformative, ‘mountaintop’ spiritual experiences.
But, the research also found that this way of doing church also encouraged those who had been around for a few years to spiritually stagnate. They got bored, they got frustrated, they stopped having life-changing spiritual encounters, and many of them dropped out.
Their research claimed that this was a result of their consumer-oriented view of their members. They produced lots of spiritual products for their people to come along and consume – programmes, studies, ministries, services. In order to grow in their faith, they encouraged their members to consume these products, each spiritual product consumed theoretically moved a Christian one step further along the road of discipleship.
But, it didn’t work like that. In actual fact this model of church seemed to encourage stagnation and dependence on these programmes rather than putting their faith into practice at home. They neglected the ancient Christian practices in preference for Christian programmes.
- Their people hadn’t been taught how to read their Bible at home
- how to talk to God at home.
- They were encouraged to engage in an intentional love of their neighbour, and to practice practical acts of justice and compassion to the weak and vulnerable in society; but, they were encouraged to do it through church ministries, rather than putting it into practice in their own lives – their workplace and their families.
- They weren’t encouraged to set aside times of silence, or to journal and reflect back on their lives.
- and they weren’t told about disciplines like fasting or confession.
So, now their focus is going to be on creating practicing Christians rather than ‘consuming’ Christians; Christians who, rather than stagnate, actively grow through engaging in the ancient Christian practices (and I have a list of more of these practices if anyone wants to see it).
Back to Eph 4! This passage had lots of ‘ones’ in it…
There is one body and one Spirit; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all.
Towards the end of last year we had a retreat with the leaders of this parish - the Parish Council as well as those who volunteer with looking after our buildings and finances, and the people who lead our various youth ministries. We were looking at this idea of ‘one body and one Spirit’, remembering that we at Island Bay Presy Church, although many and diverse, by God’s Spirit are bound into one body. Along with the other churches in Island Bay, together as a church community we form the Body of Christ in this suburb.
On the one hand we felt quite good about our body here. There is a trend at the moment for Christians to prefer to commute on a Sunday to the larger churches in the central city. This has caused many suburban churches to decline and even die. And so, compared with some other churches in the southern suburbs we’re doing pretty well.
- We have a lively and gracious family spirit here
- Although we’re not always overly extroverted about it, we have a deep and living faith, that God loves us and hears our prayers.
- We’re blessed with a good supply of musicians and have enough volunteers to keep the place up and running.
- And we have the money to pay the insurance, cover my salary, and have a few extravagances like employing a cleaner.
But, on the other hand we had to face the reality, that although it is happening slowly, we are declining as well. In the 1980’s this church had over 100 members, now we have 85. We’re only declining by about 1 person a year, but we are declining.
Back to Eph 4:1…
“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
So, faced with this reality, the reality of our on-going life, spirit and vitality as a congregation; but also with this background of slow decline… we asked ourselves, are we doing church well? How do we succeed in being the Body of Christ in Island Bay?
Will we have succeeded if we become rich, with all the latest gear and a staff of 10 ministers? No, of course not. Will we have succeeded if we grow so large that we need 5 services a week to fit everyone in? Again, no of course not.
God determines our success not us, therefore we succeed through ‘being’ what God wants us to be, through living a life together which is worthy of the calling we have received from God. So, I think that “do” questions (“what do we need to do?”) are the wrong questions. Rather, as a church we should be asking “be” questions (“who are we called to be?”) – the ‘doing’ should come out of the ‘being.’
So then, what are we called to be? What does being the body of Christ mean?
As a spin-off from the leaders retreat we’ve invited Justin Duckworth to speak at camp this year on this topic of Christ in Community, what is the nature of authentic Christian community? I’m really excited to hear what he has to say since he has a proven track record in this area – with founding Urban Vision. Today is my take on it though, to get us all thinking about it before camp, and I hope he doesn’t contradict me!
A long, long time ago, about 400yrs after Christ, there was a very inspired Christian called St Augustine whom many of you will have heard of. He was thinking about this question, about what a church should be, and he came up with this term – the Church should be “a hospital for sinners!”
Fundamental to this definition is the idea that the world around us is sick. Bad stuff goes on in the world all the time; it needs healing, it needs transforming; and the church as Christ’s body, Christ’s hands and feet, is called to get involved, to reconcile this world back to its Creator and to try to bring some healing to the sickness around us.
Included in that, the people in this world are sick as well. Each and every one of us has something inside us that is hurt, that is broken, that is sinful and which affects what we do from time to time. So we too, as humans, need to be reconciled back to our Creator, given a glimpse of God’s desire for wholeness and harmony, and to have these broken and sick parts of our lives healed and forgiven. Again, Augustine saw the church as the place to foster that, and to support people on their journey as they grow in wholeness and holiness, walking with their God.
Back then there was only one church per town. Regardless of race, age or class, everyone who lived in the same place was baptised into and went to the same church. Augustine saw this as a good thing, the church was to embrace everyone regardless of who they were or how far down the road of healing and holiness they were, “sinners” and “saints”, and to encourage them all to keep at their Christian life and continue to grow.
But, over history it has proved really hard to keep the spiritual vitality of this kind of church going. If you encourage everyone to come to church regardless of their spiritual development or even their enthusiasm for a spiritual life, a church can quickly lose focus on spiritual things altogether and just become another social club.
I’m sure you all know the stereotype of church where people go to be seen to go, rather than to have any kind of life-transforming divine encounter. Where people just go to keep up appearances or make business contacts. Churches have degenerated into this countless times over history.
Another tendency for this understanding of church, is to latch on to the idea that yes, we are all broken, yes we are all sinners, but God loves us anyway and we don’t need to do anything! And so they stagnate, they lose their sense of mission, they stop trying to encourage their people to grow.
A good example is a church I know of where a man was cheating on his wife. The first she knew of it was when he left her to go live with his girlfriend. Naturally the wife was devastated, and went to church the next Sunday hoping to find some love and support in her brokenness. But instead, she found her husband sitting in their regular pew with this other lady. No-one in the church said anything or did anything, and she didn’t have the emotional strength to endure the pain of seeing them together every Sunday so she left the church.
In the words of Eph, I think this church failed to live a life worthy of their calling in 2 ways…
1. What this man did, bringing his new lady to his wife’s church, was either selfish, insensitive or cruel (or maybe all 3). This was sick behaviour that needed to be challenged and brought to God for healing. But, the church hid behind the excuse that we’re all sinners, we’re all broken, we have no right to criticise this man.
2. Secondly, the Bible constantly calls us to look out for the poor, the weak, the orphan, widow and refugee – those who are most vulnerable and most needy in society. In this case the wife was the most vulnerable and most in need, so in my understanding of our faith, her protection was their highest priority. Instead, by doing nothing they victimised her again. She had already lost her marriage, now she also lost her church.
So, time and again over history, churches that set out to be ‘a hospital for sinners’ end up sliding into becoming social clubs, or stagnating. What they then offer isn’t a relevant, living faith, and so often people reject them. Some of these people reject church altogether, but over the 2,000yrs of Christian history, others have formed another type of church, churches that see themselves as a gathering of saints, not a hospital for sinners. (These are just stereotypes though, and today many churches are a mixture of these)
In the town that had one church, the church to which everyone in town belonged and which was probably in danger of degenerating into a social club, a group gets frustrated and rejects that main church to form a new group. This group will be those who are keen to grow spiritually, those who see themselves as progressing down the journey of becoming holy and whole. They stand apart from society rather than embracing society, and in order to maintain their vitality rather than be dragged into becoming a social club they establish stronger boundaries than the ‘hospital’ churches, and have higher standards for behaviour. People are welcome to join them as long as they live up to those standards first.
It’s easier to maintain a dynamic group feeling when everyone believes similar things, so, standards for behaviour are often joined by some strong beliefs that members are expected to hold to, and sometimes attitudes to society are encouraged to be the same as well.
Groups have always been splitting off to form these holy communities as long as Christianity has existed. The Pilgrim Fathers who founded America were of this tradition. They were Puritans who had rejected the Church of England and its struggles, and they had gone to the New World to build a pure and godly society, with high standards of morality and very strong theological convictions.
This has continued to be the dominant model of church in the US, and interestingly they continue to have high church attendance.
NZ however followed the European ideal of the church as a hospital for sinners. The idea of the village church that embraced society and tried to be open to everyone - which put it in danger of sliding into becoming an un-spiritual social club, with no life or relevance to those it was trying to include. Interestingly, church attendance in NZ and Europe has dropped quite a lot.
So where does this leave us?
Although half of you here weren’t brought up Presbyterian, this is a Presbyterian church, and our tradition is this ‘hospital for sinners’ idea. A church that tries to serve and welcome society, sinners and saints alike, and which tries to reconcile them to God and move us all down the road of healing and holiness.
This church seems to’ve been doing this, and doing this well long before I ever got here, and although I believe that other ways of doing church are needed as well, I’m committed to continuing down this road.
But, given how hard it has been to maintain this kind of church throughout history, how do we do it well? How do we resist stagnating and losing our spiritual vitality and relevance? Again, as with last week, I think the answer lies in intentionally engaging in the Christian practices.
Last week we looked at the importance of being practicing Christians if we are not to stagnate individually in our spiritual lives as the years go by, and it seems to be the same for congregations as well. Practising congregations, churches that intentionally engage in Christian practices as a group, all over the world are thriving and proving to be a healing force in the world.
1. These are churches who read their Bible, who are grounded in this book as that which contains the Word of God. But, they also remember the words of Eph 4:2…
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
They remember the evil that has been done in the name of the Bible, so they try to read and apply it with humility, gentleness, patience and love.
2. They talk to God. They pray for each other and themselves as a congregation, they wait on the Lord.
3. They are committed to being a place of healing, both physically, spiritually, emotionally and morally. And so they strive to be agents of healing through prayer and action.
4. They are committed to intentionally loving their neighbour as well as practical acts of justice and compassion in society. But their members don’t do this through church ministries instead of doing it in their own lives, but rather what the church does serves as a model for small things individuals can do in their neighbourhoods and workplaces.
5. They are also churches who take time for stillness and reflection. Pausing every now and then to reflect back on what they’ve done, and try to discern God’s will for the way forward.
6. They are also congregations who celebrate, who share each other’s joys and sorrows, and who take delight in what God is doing among them.
So, how do we heed the word of Eph 4 and live a life together worthy of the calling we have received as the Body of Christ in Island Bay? What kind of congregation are we called to be? What is the nature of an authentic Christian community? We’ll be asking ourselves this question quite a bit this year, and as I said this is what our camp speaker will be looking at.
You’ve heard my take on it now though! I feel we are called to be a practicing congregation. A place where all are welcome, but within this welcome there is also the encouragement to actively engage in the Christian practices together, to bring our brokenness and hurt and sinfulness to God, and to receive God’s healing and forgiveness – moving us all on in our journey of wholeness and holiness.