What Matters Most?(19Feb2012)

Sharing the Presence M2 (Luke 15) 12 02 19
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu (with Sabine Lague giving testimony before the offering)
Title: What Matters Most?
Text: Luke 15
BIG IDEA: People who are lost to God’s love matter deeply to him and will matter to those of us who follow him.

Recently our three-year-old son Joey was invited to a couple of birthday parties of friends who are at his pre-school. We don’t know either of these families well, but I am acquainted with one of the moms of one of the birthday boys. Sakiko wanted me to find out what the son might want as a gift. I e-mailed her directly and asked, “What should we get your son for his birthday?” She e-mailed back and said, “I am sure he would enjoy anything that you would get him.” Sakiko said, “You shouldn’t have asked so directly.”
When I approached the second mother at a group dinner, I made the same mistake and asked, “What do you think we should get your son for his birthday?” I could see that she was demurring and Iremembered Sakiko's advice, so I said, “Oh, I should not have asked so directly. Tell me, what is your son interested in doing?” The mother said, “Well, he really likes Lego these days, so if you got him a small box of Lego he would be really happy.”
Sometimes when we are buying a gift for someone that we do not know well, it can be hard to know what they are really interested in and therefore what would be a good gift for them. Sometimes, even for people that we know quite well it can be hard to get that person a gift because they don’t have a clear passion for something, a real hobby, or something that they are really interested in.
Isn’t it great when someone tells you directly and honestly what they are passionate about?
In the pages of Scripture it is very clear what God is interested in. In the parables of Jesus that we are about to look at we are going to see what matters most to the living God.
Pray:
If you have your Bibles please turn to Luke 15:
So, here’s the context in vss. 1-2:
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law, who were these highly devout people who strictly observed the Scriptures, were muttering about Jesus because he welcomes tax collectors and sinners and eats with them. The tax collectors were seen by the Hebrew people as being traitors in bed with Rome because they would overcharge their fellow Hebrews—they could tax them at 70 or 80 percent in some cases, give Rome what was required, and pocket the rest.
In the Middle Eastern Hebrew culture of Jesus’ day for a person to eat with another was no casual thing. It signified friendship. It was a sign of acceptance.
Now, we tend to think of Pharisees today as people who are self-righteous hypocrites.
In Jesus’ day, however, the Pharisees were people who sincerely wanted to live a life that was pleasing to God. They were very bright. For the most part they were highly educated lay people. They were the respected, devout lawyers of their time. They were aware that the reason they and their people, the Hebrews, were living in a kind of exile in their own land, that is they were living in exile in the sense that they were under the foreign domination of Rome in their homeland, because, according to Deuteronomy, their people had disobeyed God and therefore they were being judged by God.
So the Pharisees were passionate about keeping the law of God as they understood it. In fact, they had atomized God’s law into 613 rules, 248 commandments, 365 prohibitions, and bolstered these rules by 1,521 emendations. For example, to avoid defiling the Sabbath, the day of rest, they outlawed 39 activities that might be considered work. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were very concerned about keeping every part of God’s Word.
The Pharisees had a practice of lowering their heads and not even looking at a woman to avoid any kind of sexual temptation. Some of the Pharisees were known as "bleeding Pharisees" because they bumped into walls and pillars while looking down.
Jesus was also passionate about keeping God’s Word, but his focus was different from the Pharisees. The Pharisees believed that keeping God’s Word meant that they would be completely separate from the sinful sinners of their world, so as not to be defiled by them. Their holiness led them to exclude the people of this world. Whereas, for Jesus, holiness, being truly set apart for God, meant he would offer God’s welcome, love, and presence to people.
He goes on to tell three stories which show us what God is most interested in—what matters most to the heart of the living God.
In each of three stories something valuable is lost.
In verse 4 Jesus says:
4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
The Parable of the Lost Coin
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
So, in the first parable, the shepherd loses something of real value to him—sheep--and searches for the sheep.
The second parable a woman loses a coin – something that's worth a day's wages and searches out the coin.
Have you ever lost something of value to you and so went on search for that thing?
The other day, I accidentally dropped $60 on the floor of IGA. After I got home I realized I had dropped it and could guess where I dropped it. I went back to the place where I dropped it and it was not there. I was feeling anxious, self-loathing – how could I be so careless? I’ve heard that if Bill Gates drops $100 bill it's not financially in his advantage to waste the energy to stoop down and pick it up. I thought I'm not Bill Gates. I was doubtful that I would find it, but still hopeful. I went to the place in the store where I thought I had dropped it. No sign of it. I went to the lost and found counter. I said I dropped three $20 bills – they were green with a picture of the Queen on any chance anyone turned it in? No sorry. I didn’t find it. (BTW, were any of you in IGA on Tuesday by chance? No—I’m done.) But the point is that for me the lost $60 was something worth searching for.
So the first two parables are about a lost sheep, and a lost coin—things that are worth searching for.
The third parable is about something that is much more valuable and therefore much more worthy of a search—Jesus tells a parable about a son who becomes lost to his father and family.
In this story, the father has two sons and the younger son approaches his father and asks if he would give him his share of the inheritance now. In the culture the younger son by asking for an inheritance was saying in effect, “I would be better off, Dad, if you were dead so I could get your money now.” The father, instead, out of love for his son sells off much of land holdings. He gives the money to his son and the younger son goes to the equivalent of Vegas and spends his money on partying, drugs, and prostitutes

As was true of the shepherd who had lost his sheep, and the woman who had lost her coin, the father who had lost his son desperately longs to find him.
Jesus’ was directing the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son at the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who are criticizing Jesus for his being friends with tax collectors and sinners.
In each of the parables, something is lost—a sheep, a coin, a son, something of great value to someone – something that is worth searching for.
A former teacher of mine, Tim Keller, in his book, The Prodigal God, points out: “There is a striking difference between the third parable and the first two. In the first two, someone goes and searches diligently for what is lost. The searchers let nothing distract them or get in their way, but in the third story, the story of the lost son, we are expecting someone to go out and search for him.” In a sense, the father looks for him, because the parable tells us that while he was still a long way off, he spots him and then sprints toward him to embrace him. It’s likely that he walks to the edge of his property each day and scans the horizon in search of his son. But beyond that, there is no active search for the lost son.
The listeners in Jesus’ day may have asked the question: “Who should have gone out and searched for the lost son?” Jesus and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law should have known the Scriptures well. They should have known that in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis, there is a story of an elder brother and a younger brother, Cain and Abel, and in that story God tells the older brother, “You are your brother’s keeper.” The older brother should have been searching for his lost brother.
Edmund Clowney tells the true story of a young person who was a North American soldier, missing in action during the Vietnam War. When the family could not get any word from the soldier through any official channel, the older son flew to Vietnam, and risking his life searched the jungles and the battlefields for his lost brother. In spite of the danger, he was never hurt because those on both sides heard of his dedication and respected his request. Some of them simply called him “the brother.”
This is what a true elder brother in the parable would have done. He would have said, “My younger brother has been a fool. Now his life is in ruins. I will go and look for him and bring him home.”
And Jesus by telling the Pharisees and the teachers of the law through these stories, and more through his own example, the Pharisees, calls those of us who claim to know the Father that we are to seek out women and men, boys and girls, who are lost to the Father’s love in some way and help them find their way home…help them find their way to the Father’s house. Lost, not in the sense that the Father does not love them, as the parable clearly shows, but lost in the sense of being disconnected from the direct experience of God's love.
As was true for Jesus, sometimes there is a cost, if we associate with people who are considered on the spiritual or moral margins of life, by other “older” brother or sister types (as in Luke 15) who are more traditional. As was true for Jesus, people who are more traditionally moral may look down on us.
Some time ago in a sermon I made a passing reference to attending a party where there was a lot of drinking for the purpose of an illustration on some something that was happening in our culture. Monday morning I received a scathing e-mail from someone that I do not know, asking how I, not just as a Christian, but as a pastor, could go to a party and enjoy spending time with such obviously disgusting depraved people. I am sure this person was very sincere to believe that true holiness means that we separate ourselves from people who are obviously sinners. But, according to Jesus, true holiness, which means being set apart for God’s purpose means that we love and embrace people that some of our brothers and sister types consider sinners. True holiness is about showing God’s mercy, love and passion to those who are lost in his love, for Jesus, as true of Sabine, it was about sharing the presence.
The names Jerry Falwell the fundamentalist Baptist pastor and Larry Flynt the publisher of the pornographic magazine, Hustler, provoke strong reactions from some people in our culture for different reasons. Both for different reasons are likely regarded as “lost.”
They were adversarial and often debated each other on shows like Larry King.


In the 1980s, Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine Hustler carried a parody advertisement of for the alcoholic beverage, featuring a fake interview with Falwell in which he admits that his "first time" was incest with his mother in an outhouse while drunk. Falwell sued for $45 million in compensation alleging invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress
But the following story, shared by Falwell's son Jonathan, describes a moving conversation between them years ago. Jonathan traveled with his dad to Florida where the senior Falwell was debating Larry Flynt, Jonathan recalls:
Mr. Flynt asked my dad if we could give him a ride back to Lynchburg in my dad's private jet. Dad said yes so we traveled to the airport and boarded a beautiful black and gold Gulfstream III. As we flew to Virginia, I sat across from dad and Mr. Flynt as they had a long conversation about sports, food, politics and other ordinary topics. I was amazed and bewildered because they kept talking like old friends. After we dropped off Mr. Flynt in Lynchburg, I asked dad, "How come you could sit on that airplane and carry on a conversation with Larry Flynt as if you guys were lifelong buddies? Dad, he's the exact opposite of everything you believe in; he does all of the things you preach against; and yet you were treating him like a member of your own church. Why?"
Falwell turned to his son, “Jonathan,” he said, “there may be a day when Larry is hurting and I want to keep the door open on our relationship and be available to serve him if I can.”
(Perhaps Larry Flynt wanted to keep the door of friendship open to Jerry Falwells with hopes that Jerry might chill out a bit).
After the death of Falwell in 2007, Larry Flynt released a comment regarding his friendship over the years with Falwell.
"I hated everything he [Jerry Falwell] stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity.”
I know parents whose children are making lifestyle choices in relationships, drug use, or walking way from God in ways that break their heart… but, if possible, they want to maintain a relationship keep the door open.
There are important people in my own life whose views or life lifestyles are very different from my own, but I want to maintain the relationship and the connection to share God’s love, share the presence (and I find that I receive God’s blessings through people who don’t believe in God’s existence—another sermon).
One of my favourite stories at Tenth that I tell at our newcomers diner is about a woman who was walking through Stanley Park on a rainy day. She ended up running into a pimp that she knew. She began to pour out the woes of her heart to this pimp, all of her personal problems. When she took a breath about 15 minutes later, the pimp said, “I don’t think I can help you, but why don’t you try going to Tenth Church?”
God has called us to be a place of welcome for all. I love it when I hear someone from a particular lifestyle background, such as a sex trade worker, someone of a particular sexual orientation, or an atheist, feels that they wouldn't be welcome here, but the friend who brought them says, “You need to meet Ken personally, or get to know some people in our community.”
I would love this to be a community of welcome for all, including people who are lost in a scandalous way, and those who were lost in a self-righteousness way like the Pharisees.
As was true of Sabine, Jerry, many parents, and I pray me and community like Jesus we are called to love and maintain a connection with people so we can share the presence, share God’s love with them.
As we love and maintain our connections to people who are lost to the Father’s love, they make their way a little closer to God, like the shepherd in the parable, like the woman who lost the coin, like the father. We can experience joy as a person makes their way toward home.
When I was working in Japan for Sony in Tokyo, I began to preach from time to time at my small church. The pastor was eighty years old and was looking for someone to pinch-hit for him from time to time. As I anticipated one day going to seminary and entering vocational ministry, I eagerly volunteered for this opportunity. My grandmother in Tokyo heard a rumor that I was preaching. She was both intrigued and amused. She remembered me as a little brat whose favorite book was the Sears Christmas catalog and she recalled I used to always ask her, “Grandma, how can I be rich when I grow up?” More out of curiosity than anything else she decided she would come and hear me preach…. She had not been to church in over two decades. On a cold, wet February morning she rode the Tokyo subway and buses for over an hour to come to our church.

She sat in the second to the back row on the right hand side of our small chapel… I got up and I gave a short message on the work of the cross from Galatians, Chapter 2, and sat down. The 80- year-old pastor came up to the podium and said, “Brother Shigematsu… after that kind of message, you should have given an invitation.” He continued, “Come up here and give an invitation…”

I was unprepared… embarrassed… The mood in the little chapel grew tense… and awkward… but I had recently watched Billy Graham… on video… so I just plagiarized him… I said, “If you are here and don’t know Christ, if you need to make your commitment or re-commitment to Christ, I want you to stand up and come… by coming you’re saying in your heart, ‘I commit myself to Jesus’.”

As we sang the closing hymn I looked up after the first stanza, no one was coming… my heart was sinking. We sang the second stanza… no one moving. After the third stanza, one woman began to move her way to the aisle and came… We sang the final stanza, I closed the hymnal. I looked up and there were 17-18… people. My grandmother was among them….

With tears streaming down her face, she said, “This is the happiest day of my life.
I thought I was a Christian, but today for the first time, I understood why Jesus Christ died on the cross for me.”

I often think of that day—one of the great days of my life, because it was the day my grandmother experienced peace with God.

Even one of my sisters who is an agnostic, said “This alone made your two years in Japan worth it.”

When we welcome someone in our lives, love them, share the presence, and point them to Christ, it may be not our grandmother, but it may be somebody’s grandmother, somebody’s son, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, somebody’s dad…somebody’s “person.”

When we see a son or a daughter who is lost to the living God experience home-coming, not only is it a gift to them, but it is a gift to God. Because what matters most to God are his sons and daughters, and when they come home, like a shepherd who finds his lost sheep, like a woman who finds a lost coin, like a mom who finds a lost daughter, he throws a party in heaven.
Prayer…
If you are here and are lost to the Father’s love, please know that he and Jesus, your true elder brother, welcome you home.
Receive his love and a new beginning.
And if you know the Father’s Love, is there someone with whom you can share this love…someone you can pray for?

Chosen(2012Feb 05)

Series: Sharing the Presence M1 02 05 12
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Chosen
Text: Genesis 12:1-3; Isaiah 49:6
BIG IDEA: You are chosen to serve as an instrument of restoration in the world.
Some years ago my wife and I were in Rome.
As we walked through the cathedrals of Rome, we noticed that some art, like the portrait of the Christ, had been compromised in its detail over time.

(keep this image of Christ until I speak about walking through Rome at night)
One evening we were out walking and we saw the old Roman coliseum in the distance.


The Forum:

(Note: Keep this image of the forum up over the highlighted section)
As a thought about the damaged frescoes, the old Roman Coliseum, the old forum a number of the arches, I thought, “What magnificent ruins!”
Like the old remains of ancient Rome, something can be both magnificent and a ruin at the same time.
In a way, our world is a kind of magnificent ruin.
We human beings have been made in the image of God. Our bodies and souls have been magnificently made by a master artist. We have the capacity for creativity, compassion, courage.
We are magnificent! But we are also marred. We can be self-absorbed, self-serving, spiteful.
We human beings and our world--like ancient Rome--are a magnificent ruin. When our forebears, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden turned away from God, the source of all that is good, true, and beautiful, a crack was opened for the sin virus to enter the world, a virus which causes us to experience alienation from our Maker, ourselves and each other.
From the beginning of time the living God has had a vision to restore the magnificent ruin of our world. One of the clearest ways that God began to restore the magnificent ruin of our world was by calling the Middle Eastern nomad named Abram (his name changed later to Abraham) and his wife Sarah 4000 years ago. He called them to leave their country, their household and people and go into an unknown land. As they followed God’s path, he would make them into a family that would bring blessing for the whole world.
And as we will see, whether we are of French or Japanese, Chinese, African or First Nations ancestry, God invites us to become part of Abraham’s family so that we will be a blessing to the world.
So please listen to this text because it is as much about you as it is about Abraham and Sarah.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Genesis, Chapter 12:1-3:
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
So, God says to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and I will make your name great. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Then, after he promises to make him a great nation, God says to Abraham, “Look up into the sky and count the stars you if you can. That is how many descendants you will have” (Genesis. 15:5).
God makes a staggering promise to Abraham and Sarah, telling them that through them and their offspring all the nations of the earth would be blessed. But they wondered, “How could that be?” Abraham and Sarah were well into their senior years. They had struggled with infertility for decades. But miraculously they were able to conceive, and gave birth to a son when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was likely about 90. When God told Abraham and Sarah that they would eventually have a son, they both laughed because they were so old. It seemed ridiculous. So when their son was born, they named him Isaac, which means “laughter.”
Isaac married a woman named Rebekah. God repeats the promise to the son Isaac that he made to his father Abraham and says that he will make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and that through their offspring all the nations of the world would be blessed. Isaac and Rebekah had a son named Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel. And God said, “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Sometimes the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…sometimes the people of Israel are called the “chosen people.” But we could also say, in light of God’s purpose to restore the world through Israel, that God so loved the world he chose Israel as his instrument of restoration for the world.
We see, not just in Genesis, but throughout the Hebrew Scriptures how God calls his people to be a restoring presence in the world. I have been reading the book of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, we read how God calls the people of Israel to receive his love and wisdom, not just for their personal advancement, but so that they would point people to the living God, the God who restores all things, the God who makes all things new.
In Psalm 96, verse 3, we read:
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
The people of Israel are to declare before the nations God’s marvelous deeds and God’s greatness.
In Isaiah 42 we read of God’s call on Israel to bring justice to all the earth.
Then in Isaiah 49:6:
6 he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
We read God’s plan for Israel was not just to restore themselves as a people and as a nation, but to be a light for us who are Gentiles, that God’s salvation would be brought to the ends of the earth.

How did Israel fare in its call to serve as an instrument of God to bring restoration to the whole world?
While there were moments when Israel shone as a magnificent light, for the most their light was dim… for the most part they failed. And when it seemed to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their descendants, the people of Israel, who were called serve as the instrument to restore the ruins of our world, would fail, in fact at a time when the Israelites would have felt like they had failed because they were in effect living in exile, that is under foreign domination, a sign according to Deuteronomy that they were being judged by God, God does something, which at the time no one could have anticipated. He decides he will, in a very personal way, become the fulfillment of the promise that he had made years ago to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He decides to become one of the children of Abraham. He approaches one of Abraham and Sarah’s great, great, great… grand-daughters named Mary and miraculously enables her to conceive. And the living God becomes a great grandson of Abraham. He becomes a human being. He becomes an Israelite. He takes the name Jesus—which means saviour. As a person who represents Israel, the people who are called to restore the world, at 33 years of age he voluntarily dies on a Roman cross and absorbs the judgment for the ways that Israel has failed to be a light to the world. And, before we become too smug and look down on the ancient Israelites, on the cross he also mysteriously absorbs the judgment that you and I deserve for all the ways that we have failed God.
God in Jesus Christ died on the cross. On the third day he arose from the dead. His rising from the dead was a sign that Jesus’ work of voluntarily absorbing in himself the judgment for sin that Israel and the people of the world deserved had been completed. This means that we can experience restoration with God and with each other and with our world.
As our lives are joined to Jesus’ we can become an instrument of God's restoration and healing in the world.
We become the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. When we look at that ruins around us and we wonder God won’t you do something? Shane Claiborne said last Sunday, “We hear God whispering I have. I made you.”
As Saint Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”
When our lives are joined to Jesus Christ we become his presence in the world, and according to the Scriptures we who are Gentiles, as was true of Jesus we become grafted in to the family tree of Abraham. In Romans 9 Paul says that we who are not biologically Jewish, we who are Gentiles, are like wild olive shoots that have been grafted into the original plant.
(SHOW POWERPOINT IMAGE).


In Romans 9:8, we read that it is not necessarily the natural children of Abraham who are Gods’ children. But it is the children of promise, those who have come to Jesus Christ who are regarded as Abraham’s true offspring.
We have, in fact, become sons and daughters of Abraham. We are, in fact, part of Israel.
In Galatians 4:28, Paul says that those of us who have come to know Christ are like Isaac—we are children of promise. We are the children of Abraham.
Do you know much about your family tree? Do you know the names of your great grandparents?
I did not know much about my family tree.
Several years ago as part of a team building exercise we were doing as a staff, I did some research into our family tree. On my father’s side, I saw that as I traced a line backwards, they were all Samurai. Samurai, of course, are typically known for their dexterity with the sword, but my ancestors were teachers of Confucius ethics for the whole clan. And in more recent times, there are professors, teachers, and artists on my dad’s side, and as you look at my mom's side, business people, like my great-grandfather who bought and sold mountains.
As a pastor I feel like some of my ancient grandparents who taught Confucius ethics for the Samurai community live in me. I feel like some of our ancestors who were professors and teachers, live in my younger sister who is a professor at the University of California and my youngest sister who was a high school teacher in Montréal, and that some of our ancestors who were businesspeople live in my older sister who is a business leader in the Silicon Valley, and our ancestors on my mom’s side who were artists live in my brother who is an artist.
I came across the story of the man who was adopted, and always felt a little out of place in his adoptive family because, while they were very loving, they were all interested in white-collar vocations; whereas he was more inclined toward cars and working with his hands. As an adult he discovered that his biological father had been a car mechanic.
While we may think that we have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, there is a sense in which our ancestors do live in us, and in some sense they are us and we are them.
If we belong to Christ, our great, great ancestor is Abraham, and he is in us and we are in him.
If you belong to Christ, you are a great, great, great granddaughter or grandson of Abraham, as well. You may be Italian, but you are also a Hebrew. You may be Kenyan, but you are also Jewish. You may be Columbian, but you are also an Israelite. (In fact, if you belong to Christ this tie to our spiritual forbears is actually stronger than your tie to your flesh and blood ancestors—that’s true for those of us who are Asian too!)
As a daughter or son of Abraham… … you are chosen to serve as an instrument of God to restore our world.
Through who you are, through what you do, through what you say, you are an instrument of God’s restoration in the world.
In fact, if you belong to Christ, you are in Christ and Christ is in you (John 14:20) and he will live his mission through you.
Earlier this year our family was in Osaka, Japan, spending time with Sakiko’s family. One morning I pulled the family photo album off the shelf, was flipping through it and saw a photograph of Sakiko’s dad with Pope John Paul II. Sakiko’s dad is not a Catholic. He is not Christian.
Here is how he had the opportunity to see the Pope.
Michelangelo’s great frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome had become mired in grime, soot, pollution across the centuries and 500 years of candle wax so that the colours of the paintings had faded. Some of the details were blurred. The company that Sakiko’s father works for, along with a number of other companies from Japan, sponsored a team of art conservators to work together to clean, restore, and preserve these priceless frescoes during the 1980s and 1990s.

Here’s an image of Daniel before the restoration and after.

Here’s a close up for Daniels knee:

(NOTE: Keep this image up over the highlighted section)
And God is calling us, as the sons and daughters of Abraham, to serve as an instrument in restoring his masterpiece, the magnificent ruin of this world through what we are, what we do, and what we say.
I had breakfast recently with a friend here in Vancouver. As we hike, bike together from time to he will sometimes preface a comment by saying, “I am not a Christian” and then give his view on something. But at this breakfast he mused and said, “As I look back on my life, it seems that there is some way there has been some kind of force, some kind of presence that has guided me. So if I believe that, I wonder if that makes me a Christian. I wonder if I could consider myself a Christian.” I said, “What brings you to even considering the possibility of you are now perhaps self-describing as a Christian?” He said, “The committed Christians I know live better.”
The sons and daughters of Abraham around him consciously or unconsciously through their integrity, generosity, care for people are helping my friend experience restoration through leading him to a path where he is experiencing something of the restoration of God in his life, and he recognizes that.
It is not so much a scientific or philosophical or theological argument that is tipping my friend toward belief in God, but it is in the lives of people he knows that our committed to God.

In the words of Dorothy Day: “Live a life that is so mysteriously beautiful that the only explanation for it can be a living and loving God.”

I have been thinking quite a bit about Steve Jobs since his death this past fall. Steve Jobs had met the masterful cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, when he was at a design conference in Aspen, Colorado and Yo-Yo Ma was at a music festival. That is where they met. Jobs really loved Yo-Yo Ma’s music, as many of us do, but also admired his character. Yo-Yo Ma in person apparently is as sweet and as profound as tones he creates on his cello. Steve Jobs had invited Yo-Yo Ma to play the cello at his wedding.
A few years later he came by the Jobs’ home south of San Francisco. He sat in the living room and pulled out his 1733 Stradivarius cello and played Bach. “This is what I would have played for your wedding,” he told them. Tears came to Jobs’ eyes. Although Jobs did not believe in a personal God, he said, “Your playing is the best argument I have known for the existence of God because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.”
I'm not suggesting that we make it our aim to become world-class cellists, but rather to say God is calling us as the sons and daughters of Abraham together, to live lives of such beauty, such mystery, that people are pointed to a living and loving God who restores all things… to a God who makes all things new.
And God is calling us as the sons and daughters of Abraham to live lives of such beauty, light, and mystery, and live such light that the only explanation for our lives is a living and loving God.

For those of us here who are pilgrims of Christ, some of us came into a friendship Christ because he foresaw Christ's beauty and the life. When I was a teengager, I went to the Firs this lakeside Christian summer in Bellingham. I don’t remember all that our counsellor Bam Bam, aka Ken Hamilton as he said, but I still recall seeing the joy and peace that shone from his face. More through his life as much as through his words, he invited me into a life with Christ.
Maybe that was true of you.
And if you know Jesus perhaps you want to do that for someone else.
Kim lived near our home. She preferred a New Age style of spirituality. She wrote me a birthday card some time ago and wrote something I’ll always remember. I didn’t know when or how she actually made a spiritual commitment, but she wrote these words. “I thank God that he brought someone in my life that I could trust enough to lead me to Christ.” I am a person with many flaws, but I want do want to become the kind of person… who someone can trust enough to point them in some way to Jesus.
Perhaps if you know Jesus, you have the same desire. Like the friend of my friend, I had breakfast with recently, like someone who plays beautiful music; perhaps you want your life to draw others to Christ and to become an instrument of reconciliation in our world.
Today building on the missions series and practicing the presence, we begin a new series called Sharing the Presence.
A couple of years ago we had an emphasis called Practicing the Presence, where we encouraged people in our community to commit to regularly prayerfully reading the Scriptures. Nearly 1200 people signed on to that movement and many have reported how as a result they feel closer to God and, in some way, have become a little more like Jesus. One of the natural overflows of practicing the presence and becoming more like God is to then share the presence of God in as we play basketball with people, or canoe, or hike with them, as we hang out over coffee….
Today we’ve looked at the big picture, and in the weeks to follow we’ll look at what it might look like for us to live lives of such beauty and love that the only explanation for it can be a living and loving God.
Here’s a little video that introduces Sharing the Presence:
Show video
Last Sunday Shane Claiborne said, the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away. When we really believe that best thing we’ve been given is the love of Jesus, we will want to share that love with others.
So, will you become part of this movement of sharing the presence—sharing the restorative presence of God in our world?
Pray:
Dear Lord,
Help us to turn over and over again to your son Jesus who is the beauty maker, and as we do may make us instruments of restoration in your world.
In the words of St. Francis:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

Amen.

Now Jade, Dan, and Lee… will lead us to Jesus through the table, the Jesus who is the beauty maker.

Christmas Concert Meditation(11Dec2011)

Christmas Concert Meditation December 10-11, 2011
Thank you for joining us.
My name is Ken Shigematsu. I'm one of the pastors here.
The theme of our concert is journeys. We have been singing about the wise men following the star.
Have you ever wondered why the wise men set out to bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to this new born baby in the first place?
Sure, they saw the star and Ancient Near East court astronomers believe that stars announce the births of great kings.
But why did they set out such a long journey from modern-day Iran to Bethlehem, a distance about the same as Vancouver to Winnipeg – but without the benefit of the TransCanada Highway, a journey which on foot and camel may have take between 6 months and a year?
These were educated, successful, wealthy men—they had it all—probably not kings, but senior advisors to the kings.
Why did they set out on such a long trek?
Longing…
They had all that they could have possibly wanted and still there was an inexpressible, inconsolable longing deep within them. As deep as the stars in the sky… a longing for meaning…a longing for fulfillment…a longing for a blessed life and so they follow the star.
The Wise men, the wise men, as we read in Scripture bring the baby Jesus: gold, frankincense and myrrh, but the truth is they were looking for a treasure in him. They were looking for the one in the words of the famous Christmas carol in whom: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met.”
We all have longing for a treasure and we seek to follow some kind of star.
When I was a young boy living in London, England, I remember standing in the backyard of our home. I was standing on the patio beside a rusting red wagon fantasizing about finding an old treasure map left by pirates with a big X in the middle (Use prop.) that would lead me to a treasure chest filled with diamonds, rubies, pearls, and lots of gold coins—or maybe I just wanted to live in a world where adventure on the high seas was possible.
We go through life looking for some kind of treasure, seeking some “star to follow.”
For me as a young boy it was a Pirate’s treasure.
For our three-year-old son Joey – he recently unwrapped a Toys "R" Us flyer and began to flip through it in search of some treasure – a fire engine and an adventure of his own.
We may call it by a different name. We may call it happiness, meaning, or significance. Aristotle said, “All people seek happiness. There are no exceptions.” (The word that he used in the Greek was which is often translated “happiness,” but can also be rendered “human flourishing” or translated literally “to be cared for by a benevolent deity.”) So, in Aristotle’s view we all seek happiness; we all seek to live a life of good fortune or blessedness.
Whether we believe in God or not, we seek happiness or significance--perhaps in sport, a special relationship,
As a young boy for me it the hope of finding a treasure left by pirates. As a somewhat older boy in high school treasure was accomplishing something in sport. As a teenager I was a big football fan and my hero was the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, Joe Montana. When our son was born, we named him Joe mostly after Joseph in the Bible, but also partly after Joe Montana.
When I had the unexpected opportunity to become starting quarterback on our high school football team – though it was just high school, at the time it was significant.
When I was in my twenties, I wanted to meet someone special and fall in love.
I felt really hard for someone. And here's a follow-up, I couldn't stop thinking about her. So you can iwise menne my happiness when we reconnected 10 years later. She asked, “Oh, Jeffrey right? From Berkeley.” “No, I’m Ken. From Canada.”
We didn't get off on the right foot, but ended up getting married.
We seek happiness or significance perhaps in sport or art, or in a special relationship, success at school and work, maybe a trip to an exotic, tropical place in the middle of the winter, maybe your dream car or even dream house. Perhaps that something brought you happiness initially, but then you got used to it, and you started looking for something else on the horizon to bring you happiness, or meaning, or real fulfillment.
The truth is that there is a part of the human soul that is so deep, so very deep, that nothing on this earth can fully satisfy us. We find ourselves searching.
Research conducted by Harvard psychologist professor Daniel Gilbert demonstrates time and time again we overestimate the amount of happiness we expect to receive from any given situation. We quickly get used to the new thing we thought would bring us happiness and it no longer gives us the same satisfaction.

But, the Christmas story is not a story primarily about the Wise men’s journey for meaning, or even about our search for happiness. The Christmas story is about God’s journey for what he considers to be a treasure of priceless worth.
Jesus of Nazareth told a parable about a person who discovered a priceless pearl and then sold everything that he had to buy the pearl. The living God considers us a priceless pearl. On that very first Christmas he, in effect, sold everything that he had…
The Scriptures tells us that God left the glorious splendor of heaven—shrank himself down, way down to the size of a single fertilized egg, an ovum, entered into the womb of a peasant teenager. God was born into poverty—under the gaze and the steamy breath of the sheep and cattle in that stable and was placed in a pile of hay that had been placed in the cattle feeding trough. When God, who had become a human being, was 33 years old, he voluntarily died on a Roman cross for our sins so that we could be forgiven…so that we could have a new beginning…so that we could enjoy a life with God and become an instrument of God’s peace and justice in the world.
We are on a journey in search of happiness, significance, meaning, treasure, but God’s story—the Christmas story—is a story about his journey to find a treasure…and that treasure is us.
If we find in our heart a restless yearning for something more, we can find rest in the Christmas story because the Christmas story tells us that the only one who can satisfy the deepest part of our soul, the God who became a human being to know us, has come for us in Bethlehem, and he comes to us tonight and if we would like, we can receive this gift.
You are searching for the treasure, but the treasure has come to you.
If would like, you can pray these lines from one of our famous Christmas carols:
O Holy Child of Bethlehem descend on us we pray,
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.

Simply Christmas(2011Dec04)

Series: Advent M2 11 12 04
Title: Simply Christmas
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu with Randy Hamm
Text: Luke 2:1-16, 24
BIG IDEA: In contrast to our consumer culture, the Christmas story leads us to a simple life.
When I was a boy, one of my favourite TV programs was The Six Million Dollar Man. (Show image.) Steve Austin was an astronaut who experienced a malfunction in his rocket as it was launching…. He says “I've got a blowout, paper three, I can’t hold it, she's breaking up, she's breaking up…” He nearly died as a result of this accident.
In the opening narration we hear:
“Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.”



And back in that day they spent $6 million dollars rebuilding Steve’s legs, his right arm and one of his eyes so that he functioned in part like a robot. He could run up to 60 miles an hour. He could throw a football 150 yards with the flick of a wrist. His right eye was like a telescope.
As a boy, not only did I love that show, but from time to time I fantasized about having a bionic arm so that I could throw the football further and with more accuracy, or bionic legs so that as a receiver I could outrun the coverage. If I had the opportunity to design my own arm strength and speed, I would choose to be The Six Million Dollar Man, the bionic man.
If you had the opportunity to design your life, your strength, your appearance, your socio-economic status before you were born, how would you use that power? If you chose to come to earth as a guy, would you want to look like Brad Pitt (Show photo.)

Or as woman perhaps like Halle Berry (Show photo.)


Would you want to have the net worth of someone like Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey?
The one person in history who had the opportunity to design exactly what he would look like before he was born, and exactly what his net worth would be before he came into the world, was God, when he decided to become a human being in Jesus Christ.
The Scripture tells us in Isaiah 53 that Jesus Christ would have no beauty and nothing in his outward appearance that would make us want to be with him. We are also told that he had no majesty, no trappings of royalty…. no procession or carriage, like Prince William and Kate:



… that we would be drawn to him. In fact, quite the contrary. When God becomes a human being in Jesus Christ and decides to enter the world, he leaves behind the unimaginable splendor of heaven, shrinks himself down to the size of a singular fertilized egg, an ovum, and lodges himself in the womb of a peasant teenage girl named Mary.
We know from this story when God becomes a human being in Jesus Christ, he voluntarily chooses to be born into poverty. He chooses not to be born in a clean, private hospital room at BC Children's in 2011, nor even into a proper home, but according to Luke 2 he is born into a kind of stable under the steamy breath of the cattle and sheep. After he was delivered and his umbilical cord was cut, he doesn't have a proper crib so he's placed on a pile of straw, in a cattle feeding trough.
We know from the sacrifice that Mary and Joseph made at the temple after Jesus was born, when they offered “the pair of doves,” that they were offering something that was permissible only for the poorest of families.
So when the King of kings, the president of presidents, the prime minister of prime ministers, the God of the universe decides to become a human being, he moves from unimaginable splendor and wealth to poverty. He becomes human in the most dramatic of ways, like no-one else ever before or after him--he voluntarily plunges downward.
This why the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
First Christmas is about God voluntarily becoming poor.
In sharp contrast to that, ironically so much of today’s Christmas is about consuming, about buying… accumulating. Not all of that is wrong. There can be a beauty in giving a thoughtful gift or expressing our gratitude to someone.
But the trajectory of the Christmas story, and the arc of the way of Christ, however, is one where we are called to move toward simplicity—toward a simple life: though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
I know that the most famous and successful churches in North America like Lakewood Church in Houston pastored by Joel Osteen does many great things, but if you listen to him and some other mega church preachers who promote what is billed as “the health and wealth gospel,” you will hear that if you follow the way of Jesus, you are going to become more successful, more healthy, more wealthy. The health and wealth gospel is a very popular message if you are in North America, in Africa, and certain parts of the developing world, but it is not a biblical message. The Bible clearly shows us that God in becoming a human being chose the way of simplicity.
I have been powerfully impacted by the teaching of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish follower of Christ who lived in the 16th century and founded the Jesuits. St. Ignatius talked about the three degrees of humility.

The first degree of humility: always obey the Word of God by living a life of integrity. As we saw last week when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would become the mother of Jesus Christ, the mother of God, even though she knew that that decision as an unwed teenager would cause her to become mired in great scandal, as it would appear that she had been unfaithful to her fiancé Joseph, she simply replied, “Yes, may it be to me as you have said.”
In the first degree of humility we are called to say “yes” to God whenever he asks us of something, or asks us to do something, or to not do something.The first degree of humility means we would never do something that would cut us off from God.
The second degree of humility: be completely open to will of God. According to Ignatius, it is that when you are presented an option in life, you strive to be free in our spirit, completely open, in a sense indifferent or detached. We don’t want to lean heavily toward a particular option, but rather open to whatever life presents. So, we have a choice that would bring wealth or riches, honor or dishonor, long life or short life; we are just open to the will of God.
In the third degree of humility: choose the path of Christ, the most perfect way, according to Ignatius, where you consciously seek to follow in the footsteps of Christ. This is going to sound crazy and I certainly have not been able to embrace this in any significant kind of way, but Ignatius would say, “If you have the option between riches and poverty, between honor and dishonor, between a long life and a short life, lean toward the latter. Lean toward poverty; lean toward dishonor; lead toward a short life—because that was the way of Jesus.
Now, I know that sounds absolutely crazy and perhaps even sick to some, but for those who have chosen and have been open to this path, they have found a surprising freedom and joy. Even for me, and this may surprise you because I am a pastor, but as my wife and people who know me well are aware, I have always been an extremely competitive person in sport and in other areas of life. Ignatius’ three degrees of humility have freed me from my need to climb some kind of ladder of worldly success. I feel greater peace. I feel a real gift in that.
When we talk about moving toward a simple life in a way that is consistent with the true Christmas story--who though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich, and not the commercialized Christmas story, and the true trajectory of Jesus Christ, not the arc that is articulated by “health and wealth” preachers, it may sound crazy, but I believe that Jesus wants to show us a different way of life that is ultimately richer, more fulfilling, and deeply more satisfying.
When a monk enters a monastery, they take a vow of poverty and give away their worldly possessions to the order, to their family and friends outside the monastery. Some people think they have gone crazy. Others feel sorry for them. The monks themselves don’t see it that way at all.
James Martin, now a Jesuit priest, graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Business and then worked in finance for General Electric. He describes his experience of entering into the Jesuit community as a novice and giving away his possessions:
My money and car went to my parents. My suits would sit in my parents’ house in case the novitiate didn’t work out. (I wasn’t taking any chances.) The rest of my clothes went to Goodwill Industries, which would distribute them to the poor. My books went to friends who dropped by one sultry afternoon to scour my bookshelves. "I wish more of my friends joined religious orders," said one friend….
[Writing more than 20 years later] I can still remember the initial burst of happiness I felt. How liberating it was! No more worrying about whether my suits were the proper shade of gray, my shoes the right brand, my ties the appropriate hue, no more worrying about whether I should rent an apartment or buy one. No more worrying about whether I needed a new this or a new that.
While most of us will not take formal vows of poverty like James Martin, we can also feel the joy that comes from simplifying our lives: by giving away what we don’t need (if I haven’t worn something in a year—as long as it’s still in good shape, I give it away to the Salvation Army. I love it.)
My older sister lives in the Silicon Valley near Stanford University. She and her husband are executives in a high tech firm. Since my sister was diagnosed with cancer a couple of years ago, she took chemo and radiation, and as far as we know she is in the clear, she has wanted to de-clutter her life. She recently sent me an e-mail and said that she had just got rid of bunch of stuff including a pile of CDs—and felt so good.
Part of the reason it can feel so right to de-clutter and simply our lives is because we will find that some of our material possessions not only do not bring us true lasting fulfillment, but in some cases can actually come between us and God. We may find ourselves joy uncluttering our lives so that we are spending less time and energy cleaning, maintaining, protecting, and worrying about our stuff so that more of us is available to God and others.
Randy Hamm, who for several years served as our pastor of small groups and for the last year or so has served as our pastor of family ministries, is a wonderful brother in Christ. We have so appreciated his loving spirit. His official pastoral ministry will come to an end at the end of this year. On December 18 we will take more time to honor him at all the public services.
Today I am going to invite him to come and talk a little bit about how he and his family have simplified their lives for Christmas.

RANDY:
When I think of Christmas one image that comes to mind is the Bright Lights at Stanley Park – great event to raise money for the Firefighters Burn Fund – go support them. One year in the midst of bright lights, hot chocolate and crowds of people, we found a nativity. Most of the characters were there, but in random order – but there was no Jesus – not even a manger.
Perhaps you’ve felt like that – I know I have – when you get to the end of Christmas – lots happened but we’ve missed what is most important. As a family we make some intentional choices to focus in the gift of Christ with us at Christmas.
We are intentional about where and how we shop. Instead of going to the mall, with its relentless consumerist message and usually very cheesy Christmas music, we opt for the all homemade craft fair with a social justice bent to it. Or we go to fundraisers like the Living Waters auction where we get great gifts and the money goes to a cause we believe in. We’ll shop on Main Street, places we can walk or bike to. We challenge ourselves to get creative and make something – a painting, craft or woodwork. And sometimes we give the gift of time, with a coupon book of experiences or tickets for an event we can share with the person.
We love to consider who we are shopping for and give them something that to is meaningful to them. One year I had my dad and instead of just getting him another tie, or sweater or dvd to sit on the shelf, I found something in the world vision catalogue that caught my attention. A gift to someone who really needs it on behalf of your gift recipient. Have you seen these? Used them? My dad was a teacher – so I gave kids in Africa school books and all he got was a certificate thanking him. At first he was confused, then his eyes lit up. He loved it. (and probably loved not getting another sweater). You can even create your own wishlist online – go on and buy me goat! When I talked to my parents this week they mentioned how they donated a bamboo house for someone in Thailand as their gift to each other!
We also teach our kids about Christmas – including St. Nick – the real one and how he gave gifts to the poor – those who really needed it. That’s the spirit behind Santa. BTW Dec 6th is the day the church traditionally celebrates St Nick– so this is a great time to consider who you could give to so that you love all.
Easing up on the craziness of the Christmas schedule is another way we simplify. We do it so we can focus on relationships. Its not about how good the party is or how well we’ve decorated, its about the depth of relationship that happens.
A couple years ago I found out about Advent Conspiracy – a group of people that are fighting for the real message of Christmas. They teach us to spend less, give more and love all – as I’ve talked about, but they also encourage us to Worship Fully at Christmas. In Matther 6 Jesus said For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Yes – we love the parties, the gift giving, the music – we’ll watch the Grinch and Charlie Brown, we’ll go shopping. But that’s not where we want our hearts. That’s why we simplify – to keep our focus. Last week we pulled out our advent tree and began reading through the story of Scripture to remind us of why Jesus came. Daily we turn our thoughts to the gift of Christ and how we can help others. As a friend, husband and father – that’s what I want to remember this Christmas. When we come to Boxing Day – I want know that Jesus was front and center. That we’ve grown in relationship with Him and others.
So this Christmas – may you Spend Less, Give More, Love all and above all – Worship Fully.

Show Advent Conspiracy video

Simplifying our lives isn’t just something that makes our lives lighter and more joyful, but it really gives us an opportunity to bless others.
As Randy and the Advent Conspiracy put it, we can spend less, we can give more and worship fully.
Sarah, as some of you might remember, and her husband Ziggy were actively involved in Tenth while Ziggy was pursuing a master’s degree at Regent College. During that time, Sarah served on our office staff here at Tenth. One day we got talking and Sarah told me part of her life story.
She said that when she was 20 years old and a university student, she loved drinking wine at parties and boldly extolling the virtues of Nietzsche’s philosophy. And how secretly on the inside she was afraid of leading a meaningless, mediocre existence. So when she was invited to go on a mission trip to a very poor part of Nepal with a Christian mission called Operation Mobilization, she went.
Sarah said, “I was absolutely blown away by the generosity of the Nepalese people. They were destitute. They had no money, and yet they gave sacrificially to each other. But, when they had me over for dinner, they would always give their very best.”
At the end of the summer, Sarah met with the leaders of the mission. She had been so deeply moved and so profoundly touched by “the unbridled kindness and hospitality of the poor” in Nepal, she asked her leaders, “How can I express my gratitude for all that I have experienced this summer? I want this summer to be more than a fleeting experience, more than just another page in the photo album of a tourist.” One of the mission leaders said, “Why don’t you make a commitment to living simply, and to giving generously? Why don’t you assess what you will need to live on and then plan to give the rest away?” (This is a practice sometimes described as proportionate giving.)
Up to that point in her life, Sarah had been a student and had been giving 10% of her income away, but no more—a tithe—which for the Christian is the biblical starting point. ‘That felt painful,” Sarah said. Ziggy, who at the time had been a friend at university and is now her husband, said, “If our financial giving ever stops being painful, then we are not giving enough.” Though Sarah was just an undergraduate student at the time, she made a commitment to giving generously. She said, “Some years are more financially uncomfortable than others, but we find that we can always afford what we truly require. Every year regardless of our combined income, we’ve made an effort to increase our giving. To be sure that is always a little painful. Our goal is to give 80% of our income away. We’re not there yet, but last year we upped our giving by 5%.”
Knowing that Ziggy was a student and Sarah was working as receptionist at our church, and I knew how little she made, I asked, “How is that possible?” She said, “We dipped into our savings to give more to missions.”
Ziggy and Sarah would say, “Our commitment to simple living and to giving as generously as we can, sometimes in the moment feels a bit painful, but don’t feel sorry for us. We love this way of life.”
There is a purposefulness and a sense of joy in their lives that is apparent to all who know them. Again and again, Ziggy and Sarah have stepped out in faith. And they have testified how God has miraculously provided for them.
That, of course, is not just true for Ziggy and Sarah, and when people make a commitment to follow in the way of Jesus, to simplify their lives, to de-clutter, to give as generously as they can, there is a sense of adventure, a sense of gratitude and joy, and a sense that their life has is being used for a higher purpose.
For so many human beings we have a tendency to grasp and to hold on to what we have. But there is a beauty and a joy and an attractiveness in living simply and to giving generously.
Do you remember June 15 of last year? That morning I went bike riding with a friend here in Vancouver. His family has season’s tickets for our hockey team. We were riding on the morning when our Canucks would be playing in a historic game seven of the Stanley Cup Final. I asked him, “Are you going to the game tonight?” “No – I decided to give my tickets away [which people would have paid thousands of dollars for].”
Knowing he’s a hockey fan, I asked him, “Are you okay with that?” I thought he must have experienced a tinge of wistfulness, but he simply said, “I wanted to show kindness to this person… (The person isn’t a Christian. I want in some small way to demonstrate the way of the Gospel.) And so I was glad to get away the tickets…” and he beamed with joy.
There is joy in the way of Jesus: though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
There is joy in simplifying our lives so that we can make others rich.
When we live this way, we will not experience a nativity scene without the Christ as Randy did at Stanley Park.
As simply Christmas, spend less, give more, and worship fully, and we will experience Christ at Christmas.

Prayer:
9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.


S

Connecting the Dots at Christmas(2011Nov27)

Series: Advent M1 11 11 27
Title: Connecting the Dots at Christmas
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Text: Galatians 4:4; Luke 1:26-38
BIG IDEA: We are called to entrust ourselves to the sovereign story of God.
Haddon Robinson, a professor of mine at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, who spoke here several years ago, tells the story about a married woman from the mid-west who decided to take a trip on her own around the world. She was planning to fly from North America east to London, then to Paris, on to Rome, Vienna, and so on. When she got to London, she phoned home to ask how their dog Lucky was doing. Her husband said, “Lucky died.” The man’s wife started weeping, then got angry. “You thoughtless, insensitive brute! Why did you have to tell me Lucky is dead!”
Her husband said, “What was I supposed to tell you?” She said, “Well, you could have told me that Lucky was walking around on the roof. When I got to Paris, you could have told me that Lucky fell down from the roof. When I got to Rome, you could have said that Lucky is not feeling very well. And when I got to Vienna, you could have said, ‘Lucky died’.” Then his wife asked, “How is mother doing?” “She is on the roof.” The woman thought that her husband’s timing in telling her the news about her dog being dead was bad.
Have you ever felt that something in your life had bad timing? Or some person or circumstance entered your life at the wrong time?
Today marks the first Sunday of Advent. And I wonder if Mary, who would go on to become the mother of Jesus, ever thought that the timing of her pregnancy was bad. Some of our best biblical scholars say that Mary was probably only 14-15 years old when the angel Gabriel approached her to tell her that the Most High would come upon her and that she would become pregnant with the Christ, the Saviour of the world.
Malcolm Muggeridge has pointed out that if Mary had become pregnant today the baby inside her womb would likely not have been allowed to live and experience birth. Mary was a teenager when she got pregnant. She was poor. The father was unknown. All of these factors would have made Mary an obvious candidate for an abortion today. People now would say, “Mary, you cannot raise a child. You are a teenager. You have no money. You have no education. Stop talking about being impregnated by the Holy Spirit or you are going to get a one-way trip to the psychiatric ward.”
As Kristen Rumary pointed out in her wonderful sharing a couple of a weeks ago, when we together addressed the theme of being single and spiritual, because Mary lived in a much more traditional time, and for her to become pregnant during her betrothal period when it would have been considered scandalous for her to be perceived to having had sex during that period would have mired her in an avalanche of shame, and if the letter of the law was followed exactly, even the death penalty. To make matters worse, Mary’s pregnancy occurred during a massive Roman census which required the Jewish people to travel to their places of birth to register. Even a pregnant woman would be required to travel. So Mary, who was expecting a child, and Joseph were forced to travel to Bethlehem to register as part of the census.
That trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem would have been over 100 kilometers. It would have been a trip further than Vancouver to Whistler. Remember that is on foot, perhaps with the aid of a donkey.
You know the story in Bethlehem. Because there so many people crowded in the small town for the census, there was no room for them in any hotel or motel. They didn’t even have any friends or family with available floor space, and they were forced to find shelter in a cold cave, with the stench of the cattle and the sheep in their nostrils.
If we focus the lens of our camera on Mary alone, we can easily conclude that given her age, the fact that the census would force her as a pregnant woman to travel, the fact that she would find no suitable place to give birth once she got to Bethlehem, we can easily conclude that Mary’s pregnancy was ill-timed. Maybe at times Mary whispered, “God, are you sure about the timing of all this?”
Have you ever had an experience where you felt like saying, “God this is bad timing!”? When my friend Sam Rima who was staying with us last weekend sensed God calling him to attend seminary, he was in his early 20s, fairly recently married, without much money and no medical insurance and then three weeks before he was going to enroll seminary in Southern California where he and his wife new no one--his wife Sue announced, “I'm pregnant.” About three weeks before we were to leave for seminary, Sue found out she was pregnant! San cried, "How could you do this to me!!" Sue’s dad said to Sam, "Surely you won't be going down there now – you could probably get your old jobs back." Have you ever experienced something felt like bad timing?
As we focus the camera lens on Mary’s life, we could conclude from our human perspective that the timing was off. But when we read Galatians 4:4 and with the benefit of hindsight, we can understand: 4But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Galatians 4:4 KJV).
In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son. What does the expression “fullness of time” mean? It means that there was a perfect time for Christ, the Saviour of the world, to be born. Learning from the beginning of time, if you scroll way back to the first book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, God says to Adam and Eve, after they sinned in the Garden of Eden, “I am going to send you a Saviour.” Later in Genesis, Chapter 12, God approaches a Middle Eastern nomad named Abraham and tells him to leave his country, his relatives, everything that was familiar to him, and to go to a land that God would show him. God promised that through Abraham’s seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. The seed that God was referring to would be Jesus. God promised to one of Abraham’s great-great-great-great grandsons David that he would send a Saviour trhough his family line, and through the prophet Isaiah God promised that a Saviour would be born miraculously of a virgin. The prophet Micah foretold that the Messiah would be in Bethlehem.
From the very beginning of human history God had whispered that he would send someone who would fulfill “the hopes and dreams of all the years.” And God always knew when the fullness of time would be to send his Son, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.
As we look back from the perspective of history, we know that the timing of Jesus’ birth was perfect. It was the right time politically for Christ to be born. The Roman Empire in many ways was at its Zenith. The empire, of course, had many flaws. But it had some virtues too. One of its virtues was that it was fairly tolerant of other religions. The Roman Empire had conquered many different nations with people of different races and religions, and the Roman Empire for the most part was fairly tolerant of different religions as long as they would proclaim that Caesar was God. This worked for most of the ethnic groups, but there was one exception--the Jews. The Jews said, “We worship only Yahweh.” The Jews were so adamant about this that they would not change, even after decades of being intimidated and, in some cases, martyred. So the Roman Empire finally said, “We will grant an exemption for the Jewish people.” The Romans did not require the Jews to declare Caesar as God.
During this privileged position where they did not have to proclaim that Caesar is God, a freedom that was present at the time of Jesus’ birth, and was present in the world until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Roman Empire did not force the Jewish people or the Christians (they assumed that Christianity and Judaism were the same thing), they did not force Christians to proclaim that Caesar was God.
In this environment of freedom, Christianity, for this and many other factors, spread like wildfire.
Jesus was born into a time of relative peace. When the emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated there was great civil war in the Roman Empire. As his reign closed and Caesar Augustus came to the throne, which was about 25 years before the birth of Christ, peace broke out throughout the Roman Empire and there was relative peace for the next 200 years. Because of this time of peace, the Roman men were not tied up in battles, so they were free to build roads throughout the Roman Empire. Travel was safe. People could travel with ease. Hence, the expression was coined: “All roads lead to Rome.” In this environment the gospel was free to spread to the known world.
It was also the right time culturally. Because of the time, conquests of Alexander the Great before Christ was born, 350 BCE, many people spoke Greek. Greek language and culture brought an element of cohesion to society. More people were being educated and more people than ever were able to read than ever before. So when the New Testament was written, it was written in Konie Greek, the language the majority of the people understand. Because it was culturally oriented, the message of Jesus spread more quickly.
And it was the right time spiritually--there was the spiritual openness. Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had done a wonderful job raising questions about the meaning of life. Some people say that Greek philosophies plowed the fields and Christianity came and sowed the seeds of meaning.
The average Roman citizen was tired of the same old religions. The mythological gods of Greece and Rome were losing their grip on many people. Everyone was hungry for something more. It was a time when people were longing for a relationship with God that was real, and more than just about keeping certain rules.
So we see in the Christmas story the perfect timing of God, that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son. Some of us may say, “Well, that may be true of Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, the Saviour of the world, but would that be true for me?” Would God's timing be perfect in my own life?
In Proverbs 16 vs. 1 we read: In human beings belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue (Proverbs 16:1).
Then in verse 9: In their hearts human beings plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps (Proverbs 16:9).
In Acts 17:26 we read: From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands (Acts 17:26).
This does not mean that our lives will be free of stress and suffering. As we just noted, Mary’s pregnancy as a poor, unwed teenager in a very traditional society would have brought great shame upon her, yet God was fulfilling his purpose in and through her.
For Jesus, the will of God meant going to the cross, serving as a sacrifice for our sins. And his destiny for us may be a cross as well, but as was true for Jesus God will create good out of it and find a way to bring glory to his name. We see this throughout Scripture.
In Genesis we read that Joseph’s brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. They told their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast. Joseph, who became a slave in Egypt, was unfairly accused for making a sexual advance toward the wife of his boss Potiphar and was thrown into prison. He was eventually released and worked with such wisdom and effectiveness that he became the prime minister of Egypt.
Then there was a great famine in the region. Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt to get food from Egypt. They ended up meeting with the prime minister, who was Joseph, but whom they did not recognize. When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, and said, “Look! I am your brother,” his brothers were deathly afraid. They were terrified. They thought Joseph would have them all executed. But Joseph said to them:
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you ( Genesis 45:4-5).
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis50:20).
In ways that we are not aware, God is guiding our lives.
If you read the book of Esther, even though the word “God” isn’t even mentioned once in this book of the Bible, we see God’s providential hand throughout. In a story similar to Joseph’s, Esther ended up being nominated and winning the Miss Persia contest. The king does not know that she is a Jew. Then one of the king’s evil pawns aspires to have all the Jewish people exterminated because one of them offends him. Esther as queen is urged by her uncle Mordecai to intervene and to plead on behalf of her people. And he says, “Who knows, perhaps you have been elevated to the position of queen for such a time as this.”
In ways that we may not be fully aware of, God is guiding our lives. As is true of Mary, as is true of Joseph and Esther, that doesn’t mean that we will be free of suffering, but it does mean that God is for us, even in the estranged and difficult times of our lives. As one pastor puts it, God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up, he is plotting the course of managing the troubles for far-reaching purposes, for our good and his glory.
It is a mystery how God uses our free choices to serve his eternal purposes. As esteemed theologian J. I. Packer puts it in his book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God: “The tension between our free choice and God’s sovereignty is a paradox and an apparent contradiction that our minds cannot fully comprehend.” Those of us who were raised in the West have a difficult time with paradoxes and seeming contradictions. But as people from Asia and developing world can fully appreciate, the Scriptures which affirm both-- as J. I. Packer puts it is an antinomy, a paradox, a seeming contradiction in terms. He points out that light has sometimes been observed as a "particle" and at other times as a "wave," yet we accept with this apparent paradox.
In God sovereignty gives us free choice and yet guides our lives to serve his purposes of history.
Last weekend as I mentioned my friend Sam Rima was staying at our house:
When Sam and Sue arrived in LA. Sue was hoping to work as a waitress (the only job she had ever had) to put them through seminary – not a promising prospect for someone who would soon be six months pregnant. They also were uninsured and realized that costs would likely be upwards of $7,000 in 1982. They were running out of money. It was during a recession and both of them had looked for over a month for work, but they received rejection after rejection. Sam says, “I remember Sue and I laying in one another's arms on our bed weeping uncontrollably...”

The next week Sue was out looking for work again and after numerous rejections she sought refuge from the August 100 degree heat by stepping into the lobby of a Home Savings of America to enjoy the air conditioning (their car didn't have any) and get a drink of water. While at the drinking fountain an older gentleman asked if she was a customer of the bank and she said no. He asked, "Well what are you doing here then?" She explained her husband Sam had come down to attend Talbot Seminary, and just needed to get out of the heat. He introduced himself as Mr. Oney, a Regional Sr. Vice President of the bank and a member of the Talbot Seminary Board of Directors. He told Sue if she needed a job, he would find her a job. He took her back to an office and began making calls to branch managers throughout southern California. After a few calls, he said the downtown LA branch would give her a job if she wanted it (heart of downtown at 7th and Figeuro). The branch manager told Sue if "Mr. Oney wants you to have a job, you have a job!" On the way home Sue began leafing through the personnel packet they gave her to check out the insurance coverage that the bank’s insurance company was the only insurance company in southern California that covered pre-existing pregnancy 100% after a three month waiting period.
Here’s a picture of Sam and Sue their daughter Jill in the middle who is now an adult and mother herself…



Even if you don’t believe in personal God I believe God can still guide us.

Steve Jobs didn't believe in a personal God, but believed that some good a powerful force was guiding his life:

In a graduation speech at Stanford he said:
“I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.”
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something.”
You have to trust something….
You have to trust something….

Why not trust in the living God?
God can even use world events to shape our individual story in powerful ways.
We see in this story of Mary, Joseph and Esther, and in the lives of countless people who have looked back thoughtfully over their lives, there is a force greater than ourselves, a personal being in the universe—God—who is shaping the course of history for our ultimate good and for the glory of God.
Paul says in Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Some of us want to be the general manager of the universe, or at least our universe. But, there is no way that our limited mind can do a better job than an all powerful God, who is running the universe. God calls us to do all that we can in our power, but then invites us to surrender or destiny to him.
Someone has said that when you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe that there will be earth to stand on, or that you will be given wings to fly.
When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, though she knew her life would be severely disrupted forever and never the same, she simply said, “Yes, may it be as you have said.”
That’s what God is calling us to. He is calling us to say “yes” to him and “May it be as you have said.”
The reason that we can do this is because of the One that Mary would give birth to—Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ was 33 years old, as a human being he died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
The Apostle Paul says in the Book of Romans: He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all the things?(Romans 8:32).
God’s will is being revealed to us very day, sometimes through a surprise, sometimes through an inner nudging, sometimes through an ordinary circumstance, And as we say “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to God, he will weave something beautiful in our lives.
I close with a prayer of Thomas Merton:
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

Singleness and Spirituality(11Nov2011)

Series: Relationships M1 11 11 06
Speakers: Ken Shigematsu and Kirsten Rumary
Title: Singleness and Spirituality
Text: 1 Corinthians 7:25-35
BIG IDEA: Singleness offers a vacancy in our heart for the Lord and a unique freedom to serve him.

Connections Dinner announcement:

Introduction
In an episode of the popular TV show Friends, a crotchety neighbour named Mr. Heckles dies and leaves everything “to the two noisy girls in the apartment above mine, Monica and Rachel.” (Show photo)

As his friends go through his apartment they find memorabilia that includes Heckles’ old high school yearbook. They find out that Heckles was the class clown, played the clarinet in the band and was extremely picky about the women he dated—just like Chandler.

show photo of Chandler (next photo) only if the video does not work



(USE PHOTO OF CHANDLER ONLY IF VIDEO DOESN’T WORK).

Chandler goes into a personal crisis because he sees that Heckles’ finicky dating habits kept him alone all his life. Heckles had kept pictures of women he dated with comments about why he rejected them: “too tall,” “big gums,” “too smart,” “too loud,” “makes noise when she eats.”
“This is me!” Chandler exclaims. “This is what I do! I am going to end up alone, just like he did.” “Come on, Heckles was a nut case,” Joey reassures Chandler. “Our trains are on the same track. Okay?” Chandler responds. “Yeah, I am coming up 30 years behind him. All the stops are the same! Aloneville, Bittertown, Hermit Junction!” (show video) Chandler says, “And now I have to get a snake! I am going to be a lonely old man. I am going to need a thing! I’ll be the crazy man with the snake…crazy snakeman. And I’ll get more snakes and call them my babies. Kids won’t walk past my place. They will run away from crazy snakeman.”
For Chandler the worst that could possibly happen to him is to grow old and die alone.
While Chandler’s feelings are amusing to us because they are so extreme, many people resonate with his concerns. Am I going to die alone? What if I never find somebody or a community to become part of?
The Scriptures do NOT share Chandler’s feeling that being single is a catastrophe. In fact, the Scriptures, in the New Testament in particular, honour the single life. It is really clear from the teaching of the New Testament that we have the freedom to remain single. We have the freedom to marry if we have desire and the opportunity to do so. But we also have the freedom to choose stay single.
Many people in ancient Israel, who lived who lived in what we would call Old Testament part of the Bible, did not feel free to remain single. Singleness for them in a real way felt synonymous with death and extinction. But now through the teaching of Jesus the unique son of God on the reality of a world to come, we are now truly free to be married, but we are also truly free to choose singleness.
Most of the people at Tenth Church, like most of the people in Vancouver and most of the people in North America, as of a few years ago, according to the New York Times, are single. And for those of us here who are married, the chances are that one day we will be single again, either through a possible divorce as much as we would not want that to happen about half of all marriages end in divorce, or through the death of our spouse. Occasionally a couple dies at exactly the same time—plane crash—but that is rare.
Jesus clearly taught that in the world to come people will not be married to each other – there is only a marriage between God and his people. This is hard to hear for people who are happily married to hear. But in the world to come I won't be Sakiko's husband; she won’t be my wife – we will be married to God. According to the Scriptures, the most enduring relationships that we have are not husband and wife but as brother and sister – as siblings in Christ.
And so I believe this message on singleness and spirituality as we begin the three-week series on relationships has relevance for all of us.
If you married and/or if you have children, we would like to invite you to our conference two weekends from now with Paul and Virginia Friesen.
The New Testament not only affirms our freedom to remain single in a way that wasn’t as true in the Old Testament times, but ennobles the single life. When God became a human being in Jesus Christ, he chose to remain single. One of the greatest people of history, the Apostle Paul, was a single man.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to 1 Corinthians 7: 25:
25 Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. 26 Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
29 What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who are married should live as if they were not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
In verse 25 when Paul talks about virgins, he is referring to single people who have not been married. In their culture, unlike ours, people, particularly women who were not married, were virgins (and this is why the term virgin and unmarried were used interchangeably Paul's world).
Paul prefaces his comments in verse 26 by talking about this present crisis. Paul, along with many Jewish people of his day, anticipated a time of great suffering. They expected the world, at least as they knew it, to end. And of course with the siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D., the Roman army led by the future emperor Titus besieged and conquered the city of Jerusalem. The siege led to the destruction of the famous temple in Jerusalem.
In the light of this, and in times of great periods of suffering in general, for example in wartime, when it was very possible to lose your spouse and children, the same kind of bias toward singleness and not having children applies. That’s why Paul says, “Because of this present crisis I think that it is good if a man or a woman is single to remain as they are.” He counsels people, “In this present crisis do not look for a spouse.” But he also says in verse 28: “But if you do not marry, you have not sinned.”
Then in verse 32, Paul says:
An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.
Clearing Paul is honoring the choice people might make to remain single – particularly given the present crisis that was facing his world.
Choosing to remain single is an honorable choice before God.
During spring break in my first year of undergrad, I went on a mission trip to South Carolina. We were there to help build a school for some underprivileged children in the African-American part of the community. One night around the fire pit, I noticed how the pastor who was leading the mission trip, a person whom I really admired, was unable to interact with the students on the mission trip because he had to look after two of his toddlers who were with him on the trip. He obviously had to attend to them. I remember watching this and praying “Lord, if you want me to remain single, I am open to that. If this would be best, lead me in that direction. Or if you want me to be married but to not have any children of our own, please lead me in that direction.” I wasn't consciously thinking of First Corinthians 7 at the time, but I intuited that as a single person or as a person without children of my own I might be freer to serve the Lord.
I was briefly engaged in my late 20s, but we broke up – she didn't feel led to move our relationship toward marriage and I didn't feel I wanted to keep dating her. When I became pastor here is a single person, as you might imagine, I knew that it would be difficult and complicated to date given my role. This is still back in the mid-1990s when eHarmony didn't exist. So I thought well maybe I will be single. And though there were struggles at times of loneliness, there was also great freedom (freedom that I can more fully appreciate looking back).
Then I got married. Just over year into our marriage Sakiko became pregnant and experienced a pregnancy complication which made us think that it would be difficult for us to have a child. It was hard at first, but then we embraced what we thought was our destiny and enjoyed the intimacy and the freedom of a married couple without children.
(And then to our great surprise along came Joey. And while parenting is rich in its own way, who also lost some of the freedoms we had before and while our marriages blessed. We’ve missed some of the unique closeness that a couple can have when they don't have children or are empty-nesters).
And speaking as one who is happily married and grateful to be a parent, I can also see why certain people choose to remain single, or married but not have kids. There are gifts and those stations of life.
A woman from our community here at Tenth named Beth Allinger served as a single missionary in India and Nepal for nearly 40 years. She has shared with me personally but also in public settings how as a younger woman here in Vancouver she had several suitors – young man who wanted to marry her, but who didn't share her vision to serve the Lord in South Asia. So she chose to remain single.
John Stott was a very respected pastor in England who recently died. His writings, teaching and a couple of personal conversations with him have had a great impact on my life. John Stott remained single throughout his life. According to a friend who asked him about his singleness, Stott never felt a particular call to singleness, but he never felt called to be married either.
John Stott also said, “The liberty of singleness is that single people experience the great joy of being able to devote themselves, with concentration and without distraction, to the work of the LORD.”
Single people have a special freedom to serve God and other people in a much more focused way. So if you're single, are you using your freedom in this way?
As will be true in the life to come, single people now have a special vacancy in their heart for God.
I recently read a beautiful book entitled The Long Retreat by Andrew Krivak. (Show jacket cover and photo)




Andrew Krivak was a poet, and an ocean lifeguard, who felt led to pursue the long retreat of entering into a process to become a Catholic priest and to join the order of the Jesuits. Near the end of his 8-year training, rather inconveniently, but rather naturally and beautifully, while he was studying at a seminary in Boston, he met a young woman named Amelia who had recently completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard and to whom he became attracted, and she like Andrew was deeply devoted to God.
In his memoir he writes: “Maybe it was her willingness to listen. Maybe it was the fact that she was so cute, with her silky ponytail, green eyes and wide grin. I began to test caution and let myself feel the desire that I had for so long pushed down inside, a feeling that I was being handed something I was certain I had lost forever, a loss of my own making. I committed it to prayer every day.”
As their friendship grew through their cautious gestures of friendship, a mutual affection was clearly deepening.
One day they were sitting on a stone bench and Andrew asked the question, “What is this we are feeling? Is it love?” She breathed out a prayer-like sigh. “It is,” she said, “at least for me.” And they watched swans float like white schooners across the lake.
And one day as they were standing along the banks of the inky Charles River which runs along Harvard College, Andrew looked into the river, took a breath and said nothing. And then he said this: “I think I never believed that anyone could love me without one day walking away,” Andrew said, looking into the water. “Not because of any great trauma. I guess because of those collective moments we have all had. After enough time, priesthood seemed like the best guarantee.” Then he turned to her, “I belong to somewhere or to someone, and that someone would be God. Love would be my love to Christ and you have to admit it’s a pull that’s pretty compelling.”
We have the freedom to choose singleness.
If you are unmarried, or if you are married without children, in some cases those are chosen states. In other cases they are not voluntarily chosen but are the result of circumstances. My friend Catherine from seminary shared with that from the time she was a young girl she wanted to remain single, to not become a biological mother, so that like Mother Teresa every child could become her child.
But, there can be real disappointment around these circumstances for some single or married people without children who didn’t choose these stations in life. But these states, whether voluntary or not, also provide a freedom with which to love and to serve God and others.
It’s different if you have chosen that particular path versus being on that path through circumstance you have not. But as Jesus and Paul affirm there are unique freedoms and gifts on that path.
KIRSTEN RUMARY:
At this time I am going to invite Kirsten Rumary to come forward. Kirsten is a long-time member of the Tenth community and she is going to share part of her journey with us today.

Singles Talk at Tenth – November 2011
My story:
_ Singleness
o Talk at Tenth on Freedom and Loneliness
_ Three years ago, I had the opportunity to speak on singleness here at Tenth. I had been thinking about the topic for a while, and decided to do a “survey” of other singles for fun, to find out what was the “best and worst” things about being single. After sorting through hundreds of replies, I distilled that the best thing single people enjoyed was freedom in all areas of life, and the worst thing was perceived loneliness. POWERPOINT.
_ So I decided to explore how Jesus dealt with the freedom and loneliness he would have known, being a single man in ancient peasant Hebrew society, and I spoke about how it helped me to embrace my singleness and the call to discipleship in a greater way - to choose to let Jesus' life inform HOW I live in my singleness. That is a pretty broad topic, there's so much more I could and did say three years ago, so if you'd enjoy reading that you can find it on Ken's Message Blog in the month of November 2008.
_ Today Ken has shared about the benefits of choosing singleness, I want to talk about my experience of NOT choosing it.

_ Engagement
o Craig

_ Since that time three years ago, I started dating a man I had known for a number of years through work connections. I really liked him. He really liked me! The way he communicated his affection for me was so extravagant I felt like being a plant being watered – it affirmed me in a way I had never experienced in relationship to a man before.
_ Christmas of 2009 we got engaged, and the whirlwind of wedding planning and pre-marital counseling sessions began. Three months after our engagement, my fiancé and friend that I loved, panicked and broke off our engagement very suddenly with little warning (two phone calls in a 24-hour period), and then refused to speak to me.
_ As you can imagine, this sudden and unexpected break was a terrible shock. In trying to explain that time in my life, it was as though I was in a boxing ring and someone hit me with a knockout punch. For a while I was just down for the count, I couldn’t even get up, and thank God for my family and friends who rallied around me and loved and supported me until I could feel and believe that I was on firm enough footing again.

_ Singleness
o This current undesired state of affairs
_ So here I find myself, a year-and-a-half later, in a position that not only did I not choose for myself but that I do not want to be in. This was NOT where I thought my life would be today. I’m supposed to be living in another country, doing work I love with someone I love, building a life together. The opportunity has been thrust upon me to think about my life and my singleness in an even deeper way (the same truths about freedom and loneliness and how Jesus' life informs how I choose to live still applies – but the questions I’m asking now are closer to my heart).

_ Am I significant? Do I matter?

_ Am I lovable? The man who said he couldn’t imagine being with anyone but me, walked away from me - is there something wrong with me?
_ Would it make a difference if I decided to be with just anyone now, so that I wouldn't have to be alone?
o Transition:
_ Now, I realize my story is singular in that it’s an extreme situation that not everyone would have experienced, but I think it is universal in that at the core of it, many of us who are single find ourselves so without necessarily wanting to be there, and we are faced with some of the questions I’ve posed, among others
_ Even though New Testament writers (like Paul) commend the state of singleness, it would seem that few are called to a life of celibacy in the modern-day church. (Celibacy as defined as the calling to choose never to marry in order to devote one’s life to God, as opposed to the calling to all believers to abstinence while unmarried, according to the scriptures). So I would make that distinction.
_ So for those of us who are undesirably single, how do we embrace God’s call on our lives while single – not assuming we are called to singleness for life?
_ (I want to be clear about one thing - I’m not saying God broke up my engagement because His call is for me to be single. Sometimes circumstances of life ambush us and it can be difficult to understand why things happen. Well-meaning people can default to saying “you know, Kirsten maybe it’s just God’s will that you be single.” (Or that this or that happened to you) I don’t equate what happened as God’s will for my life. I think a decision was made out of fear that impacted my life and placed me in the situation I now find myself in.)

_ Tragedy happens. Disappointment happens. It’s not necessarily God’s will, but can I still choose to respond to him in the midst of this place I find myself in?
_

The Comfort of Mary’s Story
_ As I was thinking about speaking today, a friend suggested that I read the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her experience of having her “life interrupted”. His words: go for coffee and “take time” with Mary. As I did that I found her story strangely comforting.
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
_ Mary finds herself in these circumstances that are “strange and troubling”, enough so that the angel takes the time to reassure her.
_ Then the angel gives her this news about what is going to happen to her, this miraculous work of God. We have the advantage of looking back 2000 years and seeing the whole story of Jesus’ life and the outcome that we all benefit from, but for Mary in that moment, her life has just been interrupted with an invitation she didn’t ask for, with circumstances she couldn’t have foreseen, an interruption that would have had significant consequences for her life:

o Some she would have known
_ The social backlash to getting pregnant in the “betrothal period” (technically married for one year, but not yet having sex) – the cultural shame and potential punishment
_ Fiancé had the right to leave her and there was the possibility of severe punishment

o Some she wouldn’t have known
_ Couldn’t have known they would have to flee for their lives when Herod ordered all babies under 2 to die
_ Couldn’t have known that she would watch her son die


_ Still, Mary chooses to open herself to the invitation to let God’s plan be carried out through her
o Opens up her emptiness (womb) to be filled by God
o Her choice to embrace the circumstances and possible consequences of this offer changes the whole world – mother of the Savior
o Her response to the angel seems so simple, but I can’t imagine that it was just a naïve response of a young girl who didn’t know better. This is what comforts me: that she chose a difficult thing for her own life that we get to know the wonderful outcome of. She didn’t run from the circumstances she found herself in, she didn’t curl up in fear and hide; she didn’t complain and worry and fret. She chose to be open.
_ In light of her response, I am wondering: can I be responsive to God’s call in my life as I find it now and be open to Him in the troubling circumstances I find myself in? This is not something I have perfected by any stretch of the imagination. I’m doing my best as I go.

_ 3 areas where I sense God calling to me right now are:
o Choosing a more intimate love-relationship with Him.
o Choosing what kind of work I will do in the second half of my life

o Choosing to build on the relationships I will have

_ Choosing to build intimacy with him: I’ve been seeing a spiritual director, someone who is helping me to look/listen for God’s “movements” in my life, and how to be responsive to that movement.
o For example, I am a very tactile person, so she is teaching me how to respond physically when I sense God’s presence close to me by creating something with my hands. I'm not this fabulous artist, by any stretch, but there is something about using my hands that helps me feel like I am talking to God, just not using words, and I experience it as being very intimate between Him and I.

_ I’ve also chosen to see a counselor to look at how the loss of my fiancé has affected me, so that my intimacy with God isn’t clouded or impeded by the trauma of that. Our experiences of hurt from the past can carry over into the way we relate to God, (if we perceive that God arbitrarily allowed the situation to happen or that it's His will that we only know loss), and I want to keep making sure that I don’t see God through that distorted lens of human hurt.
_ These two things are a means of building intimacy with him that are easier for me to devote my time to, because I am single

_ In terms of my vocational calling, in light of the fact that I won’t have my own children and the legacy of a family, the value of what I choose to do is taking on an even greater importance to me.
_ This isn’t to say that married people don’t do valuable work or have that desire – but sometimes they don’t have the freedom because they have to take into account what their spouse wants to do and they have to provide for their children (my parents).
_ I have tremendous freedom to choose what I want to do and respond to God calling me to a particular kind of work.


o For example, in the last year I got an offer to take a particular career path that would guarantee an increase in income, but I actually feel called to the work I'm doing now and it gives me the opportunity to contribute to others in a way that feels more significant.
o Again, if I had a family, I might not have as much freedom to choose in this way.

_ Lastly, in choosing to build relationships, I can find that difficult or disappointing as an aging single person. I choose to be in a small group where I can grow and be challenged in my walk with God, and I do have a few close friendships, but I struggle with feeling my “aloneness”. I can get caught up in feeling that only a marriage relationship is going to meet my need to not be alone. How I see my relationships as a single person must shift or I am in danger of becoming embittered by what I don’t have. Any time I choose to live as a “have not” the enemy has access to tempt me to choose less than God’s best for me, to try to meet my needs outside of God’s provision for my life. (I think of Adam and Eve, and the enemy tempts them with the one thing they can’t have, making them feel as if they were “have nots”, that God was holding out on them).
_ I have to choose to build on what I do have, the relationships I do have, and not let bitterness and envy take over in my heart, or I'm in danger of becoming a bitter, shriveled-up old lady. God in His tenderness invites me to choose to come close to Him if I start to travel down "Bitterness Road" and let HIM water and affirm me.
_ I believe that for every single person here today, God is wanting to draw close to you and water you

So In Closing – Come Back to the Angel’s First Words to Mary:
_ It’s significant that his first words are words of affirmation, reassurance, and then affirmation again

o We know that every human being needs to know the depth of their value – everyone here needs to know that they are prized possessions in the eyes of God.
o But I believe for the purposes of today's talk that the single people here need to know at a core gut-level, as people who stand alone, that they are "enough" and that they are "chosen".
o I have to know in my core that the answer to my question: “Am I lovable?” is YES. I have to own that YES from God alone. (My family and friends were a huge part of my recovery after the breakup - I felt their love in a very tangible way) but that deeper knowing of my worth must come in relationship to God alone or my tendency will be to find my core value, my identity, in other places in my life (like work and relationships to men)
o Before Mary hears anything about what is to come, she is affirmed, reassured, and affirmed again. Even Jesus at his baptism is affirmed by God, before scripture records him doing anything of great significance. If God felt it important to affirm Mary and Jesus, how much more would He know that I need to hear those words, know them in my gut, particularly if I am going to choose to follow him with integrity as a single person, and invite deeper intimacy with Him in these circumstances I didn't choose for my life.
PRAYER