Tag: encounter

Undignified Hospitality

Zacchaeus

In our sermon this last week – Encounter Hospitality, we looked at the very familiar story of Zacchaeus from Luke 19:1-10.   This passage has many deep wells from which we can draw, but the lesson this week is to look at the Radical Hospitality of Jesus who welcomes arguably the most hated man in Jericho.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector.  And while no one likes paying taxes or getting a dreaded letter from the IRS, our dislike for paying taxes is nothing like the hatred of the first-century Jews for tax collectors.  They were looked upon as sellouts to an oppressive and occupying government.  And to make matters worse, the Romans gave the tax collectors only one rule – you will collect THIS much money for the emperor.  There was no limit placed upon the actual amount that could be collected!  So Jewish Tax collectors were known for lining their own pockets at the expense of their fellow Jews, all-the-while- pledging faithfulness to the pagan emperor!  WOW!

So Zacchaes hears that Jesus is coming through town, and for some reason wants to see Jesus, even though he is convinced Jesus would NEVER care to see him. Zacchaeus runs ahead of the crowd and climbs a tree (both terribly undignified actions for a grown Jewish man!) in order to see Jesus. What he doesn’t realize is that Jesus is willing to be undignified himself in the sight of the entire town. He stops and sees Zacchaeus and says, “Zacchaeus, come down from there, I must stay at your house TODAY!”

Jesus causes quite the stir as people complain that he is actually spending time with such a known sinner! But Jesus love changes Zacchaeus in ways that hatred never could. We have received the same love from God, as undeserving sinners! We know the joy of having our Lord come to us, and getting up on the tree himself, with nails and spears.

So how do we respond in generosity to the people around us? It can be very simple. It starts with actually noticing people around us (Stay tuned for next week’s sermon on this very topic!). It involves actually GOING OUT to meet them. This is KEY. The days of building a church and opening the doors and saying “ya’ll come” have been over for a long time. If we notice and go out, we will have a chance to love and serve.

In the sermon, I challenged the people listening to go out and practice generosity in some way. It could be as easy as getting to know someone’s name, using technology to make real face-to-face plans, actually praying with someone rather than saying you’ll pray for someone. It could be that you use you relaxation time grilling, or having a beverage, or setting up a fire-pit in the front yard one night instead of the back yard (hat-tip on this idea to Greg Finke, Author of Joining Jesus on his Mission).

So if you have accepted the challenge, post a comment in the comment section of this post and let me know what your goals are, what you did, how you felt about it, or whatever else you’d like!  Can’t wait to read YOUR thoughts!

Recapping week 2 and Orlando Prayers

Just like you I was so sickened by what I read Sunday morning about the attack in Orlando.  The death toll was 20 in the early morning hours, then by the time church was over, I read it was revised to 50.

The FBI reported that while they were processing the horrible scene, the cell phones of the 50 deceased kept ringing with incoming calls and messages.  I can’t imagine.

Lord God, we beg you to be our anchor in seas too rough to navigate, to be our rock as we feel we are standing in sinking sand, to be the heart that pours out compassion when our broken ones just can’t feel anymore.  We pray for all those families who received the phone call we all fear –  Who got the news we can’t even let ourselves think about.  We pray for all the parents, the kids, the friends, the loved ones, the teachers, the co-workers, the churches with holes in the pews this week, all those who got that news they never wanted to hear.

Lord have mercy,

Christ have mercy,

Lord have mercy,

AMEN

Encounter Culture Recap week #2
This week in our sermon we looked at what it takes to reach out with Christ’s love to people in a culture when they don’t share a similar religious background.

If we can learn from what Paul did in Thessalonica, we would see that our LIVES become a witness to the love of God.  This is a TALL order for sure, but when we think of being an example of love, we have to remember, it is NEVER about us, its always about the one who loves us perfectly.  Our example starts and ends with Christ alone.

For a scholarly look at what it means to be a witness to the faith like Paul was in Thessalonica, read this article by Dr. Charles Gieschen

To reference the article I mentioned in the sermon by Matthew Parris, an atheist who sees the value of the Gospel in Africa.  It’s an interesting read (it will be a Word download file, just a heads-up)

What IS Culture Anyways?

THIS WEEK

This is the week we start our Culture Encounter series, and the first sermon is aptly named “Culture Encounter.”  We will look at Paul on Mars Hill in Athens and learn from the story of Naaman, the Syrian Military Commander who has a powerful interaction with Elijah the Prophet of God.  I’ll put the sermon in a upcoming post.  If you want to take a listen to some of the material that helped me process through these verses, listen to this great sermon called,  “A World Full of Idols” by Rev. Tim Keller.

I was thinking about the word “CULTURE” and I find that it is hard to define off-hand.  We have a lot of words like this in our language.  We all know what WISDOM is, but defining it is hard.  In fact, it’s interesting to see how the Book of Proverbs in Scripture deals with this topic in the Hebrew language.  Biblical Hebrew has very few words (under 4,000) and it struggles with abstract ideas.  So instead of defining “wisdom,” in Chapter 8 the author personifies wisdom (as a woman by the way) and rather than explain what wisdom is, he shows us what Wisdom DOES.  Good idea!

So good in fact, I will attempt the same (much more feebly and not at all inspired, of course) with the word “Culture.”

When I think of what culture does, my mind races to airports.  In 1987, SRG Partnership, Inc. designed a carpet for the Portland International Airport that looked like this:

Over time, the carpet took on a life of itself, and has even inspired a line of clothing with the same pattern.  When it was replaced a number of years ago, it led to period of mourning by some in the Portland community.  The carpet was ugly, but somehow it had become a comfortable and recognizable part of the Portland Culture.  How did it happen?  It’s hard to figure out exactly how, but if we look at how airports use carpets, signs, architecture, and psychology, we can learn a little about what culture does.

If you ever go to an airport, your eyes are being assaulted with signs and clues about which way you are to walk, where you are to turn, where you are to wait in line.  If you are thinking, “well duh, of course, I can read the signs everywhere,” understand that I am not talking about signs with words.  There is a whole field of design that deals with way-finding.  There are elements in the design of airports that help shuttle you along in the right direction, even if you can’t read.  The 99% Invisible podcast has a fun episode about this topic called,  “Walk this Way.”

The way the ceiling curves, the change of color or design in the carpet, the way the corridors are designed to give you a long range of sight, these all make you want to move along the path without thinking about it.

THIS IS CULTURE!  Culture can be any number of things, but what it does is serve as the “design elements” in society that keep us moving in a certain direction often without us even realize we are following a path.  This can be helpful… IF that direction is the RIGHT direction for us!

My mind goes to 2010 when I was travelling with my 1+ year old son.  We had a LONG layover at Chicago O’Hare (little did we know we’d soon be living by O’Hare!) and I was looking for a place to play with my son and get out of the frenetic movement and commotion of the busy terminal.  I couldn’t find ANYWHERE to do this until I made a conscious decision to buck the “signs” all around me that were subconsciously telling me where to go.

I looked up and saw a corridor that looked abandoned, and while everything in me felt a little wrong about going that way, I did.  And I am so glad I did.  NO ONE was in this hallway, and it had a ton of windows so my boy and I could look out and see buses going by.  It had room for us to run and chase, and take turns pushing the stroller while pretending it was a race car.  It was amazing!  It was the RIGHT place for us.

Sometimes I think of Culture as pushing us down a certain road.  It is full of both blatant and subconscious sign posts.  Most of us follow along without thinking to some degree or another.  But the question is, is the culture always leading me to the RIGHT place?  The answer is often – NO!

This week in our sermon, we will explore what it means for Christians to engage our culture in a meaningful way, and a what opportunities can we find in our culture to share the love of Christ, and present a different set of “sign posts.”  There are so many ways we can Encounter Culture, but at the root of everything is the love of Christ – Crucified and Risen from the dead – which leads us to WANT to walk a different way at times.

I’m looking forward to this week’s sermon preparation time.

And for the record.  I think the old Portland Airport Carpet really is miserably ugly.

 

RECAPPING LAST WEEKEND

Here is the Sermon from Memorial Day Weekend that followed my last post “The Fire Within,”  I take the same story of the USS Forrestal in another direction.

POST SERVICE NOTES:  After the church service on Sunday, I spoke with a Navy veteran who was on the Sister-Ship to the USS Forrestal when the 1967 disaster occurred.  He said their own ship had a fire in which 19 sailors lost their lives.

When I was getting ready for a wedding on Sunday afternoon, a young man in his Navy uniform and his dad pulled me aside to talk more about the Forrestal.  They weren’t members of the church, or even in our church that morning, but they had heard about the sermon already, and were wanting to share their own ideas about the Forrestal and Iowa.  It’s amazing how these travesties stick with us, and even if we weren’t there, we need to TALK about them.

The Fire Within

In 2000, I was blessed to spend the entire summer at The Naval Education and Training Center (NETC) in Newport, Rhode Island.  Our barracks were right on the water (funny how often this happens in Navy life) and most days I would take a slow jog around parts of the base.  My favorite path took me past a couple of decommissioned ships, an aircraft carrier and a battleship.  Since most of my runs were in the dark of the early morning or after nightfall, I wasn’t able to read the names of the vessels.

It wasn’t until I was able to run by these two ships in the daylight that I read the names.  The Battleship was the USS Iowa, and the Carrier was the USS Forrestal.  This totally changed my relationship with these two vessels I had run by a dozen times without noticing.

Both ships carry with them horrible stories of loss.  In 1989  the Iowa was the site of the largest ever peacetime Naval disaster in US history.  When turret #2 exploded, 47 sailors were killed.  47.  Think about that.  47 sets of parents notified that their child was no longer going to call home or visit.  And this during peace-time.

The Forrestal was in operation in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1967 when a chain of horrible events led to fires that raged for hours.  An electrical surge caused a rocket to launch from a plane on the deck.  That rocket tore a hole in the fuel tank of another aircraft.  The resulting fire spread to explode a pile of freshly delivered 1,000 lbs bombs on the deck  In the end 161 sailors were injured, and 134 perished.

I could never run by those floating monuments to pain and suffering again without thinking about the fires that once raged within.  My relationship was changed because I learned the names of the vessels.  I was filled with a mixture of sadness for the losses and gratitude for the service of those brave sailors every single time I would see them  – once I learned the names.

This got me thinking about my own relationships.  How much would our relationships change with the people around us if we simply stopped to learn names?  That guy you see at the supermarket every week, get his name.  The mom that picks up her kid from school at the same time you do, you know, the one you smile at when you comment on the weather? Get her name.

Names matter.  And more than that, knowing names leads us to know a person.  I guarantee you, if you ask someone to share their name, a conversation will almost always follow.  You will get to know the fires that have raged within, and maybe share some of your own.  But whatever the stories are, you will never be able to encounter that person again without thinking more deeply about them as a whole person.  Knowing a name leads us to know a person.  Knowing a person leads us to a deeper sense of knowing their story.  Knowing a person’s story fundamentally changes the way we see them and can lead us to a deeper sense of respect for them.

In our culture where communication is so terse, so chained to devices, so utilitarian, simply stopping to learn a name can be a counter-cultural revolution.

There are fires within that we’ll never see unless we say something like, “Hi, I’m Matt, what’s your name?”