Faith and Doubt Apr 26, 09

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Faith and Doubt M2 (Draft) 2009 04 26

Title: Only One Way to God?

Text: Acts 17: 16-31; John 14: 6

Big Idea: Christ is the only way to God.

Samuel Huntington, the late renowned professor of political science at Harvard, in his best-selling book, The Clash of Civilizations, argued back in the mid-1990s that the primary sources of conflict in the new world of the 21st century would not be over economic policy or political ideology, but over cultural and religious issues. This is where the battle lines would be drawn in the future.

Interestingly, in the mid 1990s, Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, in effect, predicted what would happen on 9/11 2001. He, of course, didn’t predict that planes would crash into the World Trade Centers, but he predicted there would be a massive violent attack against the West by a radical Islamic group.

There are many people who intuitively understand with Professor Huntington that culture and religion can pose a real threat to world peace. One of the most common responses to this concern is to affirm that all religions are one and the same. Oprah Winfrey put it like this: “One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to believe there is only one way. There are many diverse paths leading to God.”

Jesus and the apostle Paul lived in the midst of a world where there were many cultures and religions. In fact, in their world, not only did you have Judaism and Greek philosophies, but you also had “mystery religions” and local cults in every major city. Dan Clendenon has pointed out that scholars have documented enough names of the “gods” in human religions in the Roman Empire to fill the size of the phone book in a large urban area.

There were many names for the many “gods” in Jesus’ and Paul’s day.

This morning we are going to look at how Paul responds to this smorgasbord of religions that he encounters in Athens.

Please turn to Acts 17 (and I will set up the context):

While Paul in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. He began to debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Paul began telling them the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. They took Paul and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, also known as Mars Hill, and said "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?”

In vs. 22 Paul says:

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 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. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' [a] As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' [b]

29 "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."

How does Paul respond to the smorgasbord of religions that he sees in Athens?

We see here that Paul, who was trained as a Jewish rabbi, honours the spirituality of these people of Athens, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”

He has taken time to read about them and learn about their traditions.

In verse 28 we see that Paul quotes from their own writers. He quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides: “For in him we live and move and have our being.” He also quotes the Cilician poet Aratus: “We are his offspring.”

Paul is not afraid to read and learn from people who come from faith traditions very different from his own. Paul, in citing these Greek poets, is affirming that what they have said is true and that we can learn from them. Part of the posture of a follower of Christ is to have, like Paul, a spirit of humility and willingness to read and learn from other faith traditions.

As a Japanese person I have benefited from the teachings on mindfulness, particularly as articulated by the Vietnamese Zen master Tich Nat Han, who encourages people to be wholly present by doing just one thing at a time. I have long-admired the discipline, passion for purity, and concern for the poor that many devout Muslims have. And like Paul, we can learn from and affirm the truths that are present in other religious movements.

Paul honours the spirituality of these Greek people. He learns from their teachers.

But he does not say that what he and the people of Athens believe are just different ways of saying the same thing. He demonstrates real humility, but he also clearly distinguishes what he believes is true, and not true, about God.

He says in verses 29-31, Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.

It is fairly common for people to say that all religions are basically the same. But, that is a little bit like saying all cultures are basically the same. I’m Japanese--and if someone says to me oh the Japanese and Chinese and Koreans—all are same… It reveals a very limited understanding. Asian people on the surface may look similar, but there are also significant cultural differences between them and people who from these cultures typically understand the differences.

And people who are part of a religion (and have an understanding of their religion) tend not to say that all religions are basically the same.

There are significant differences between the religions. For example, Judaism, Christianity and Islam say there is one God. But there are forms of Hinduism which say there are over 300,000 different gods. So they are not saying the same thing.

Some religions say God is personal. Others says that the divine is impersonal.

Some religions say there is a God, but Zen Buddhism does not affirm the reality of a God. Some religions believe in the supernatural, but Hinduism does not believe in a supernatural reality beyond the material world, but only a spirituality within the empirical. People who follow a particular religion don’t typically say that all religions are same.

The reason that many people like to say that all religions are saying the same thing is that they are motivated, at least in part, both by a desire to promote tolerance among the religions, but also because people believe that although religions may claim to make truth claims, no one can really know the truth about God.

Sometimes this idea is illustrated with the story of the three blind men and the elephant.

These three blind men are walking along, and they come upon an elephant. The first blind man, holding the elephant’s trunk, says, “This creature is long and flexible like a snake.” The second blind man, feeling the elephant’s leg, says, “This being is thick and is round like a tree’s trunk.” The third blind man, touching the elephant’s side, says, “No, it is large and flat, like a wall.” Each blind man can only see a part of the elephant. None can envision the whole elephant.

And people argue that the religions of the world each have a grasp of part of the truth about spiritual reality, but no one religion can see the “whole elephant,” or claim to have a comprehensive vision of the truth.

But as Leslie Newbigin argues in his book, The Gospel on a Pluralist Society, this illustration backfires. The story is told about 3 blind people, but the story teller is not blind. The story teller can apparently see the whole elephant. There seems to be a certain humility in this because the story claims that no one can really see the whole elephant—the bigger reality, but this story is presumptuous because it assumes that person telling the story has this privileged vantage point from which they can see the whole elephant—the whole of reality.

Paul here on Mars Hill doesn’t say that Jesus only sees part of reality or part of the truth.

Paul, in verses 30-31, says that the God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, commands people everywhere to repent, that is, to turn to God, for he has set a day when he will judge the world through Jesus Christ, and he has given proof of this. How? By raising him from the dead.

Jesus, in John 14: 6, in response to Thomas’s question about Jesus’ identity says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus here makes the astounding claim that he is the way to God. I know this sounds outrageous to some…

He also claimed to reveal God, in way that no other major religious leader had done.

Jesus said, “If you really knew me, you would know my Father (God) as well. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father—God.

In John 10 Jesus said, “I and the Father are one." The Jews picked up stones to stone him, because Jesus as human claimed to be God.

St. Augustine, who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries in a time when there were many religions and many gods, pointed out that in his world he could see that there were parallels to every Christian teaching in the other religions; such as, the idea that God was a God of love; that human beings were sinful; that we are to love others as we would want to be loved; that we are to exercise the so-called golden rule. But Augustine said the Christian faith was unique among all the other faiths, and all the other religions, in that it was the only faith to claim that the Word became flesh, that God became a human being and moved into the neighbourhood.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “There is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, 'Are you the son of Brahma?' he would have said, 'My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.' If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus?' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, 'Are you Heaven?' I think he would have probably replied, 'Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man... We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects--Hatred--Terror--Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval."

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Buddha never said that. Confucius never said that. Mohammed never said that. Jesus said that. “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

I was talking this week to woman in this community who told me, “I was raised as an atheist. While traveling in Southeast Asia, I spent ten months in a Buddhist monastery. While meditating one day, Jesus Christ came to me in a vision.

I was angry. I wanted to be a good Buddhist and Jesus showed up!”

When she moved back to Vancouver a friend in her apartment building invited her here. She was still an atheist. She said, “I will suspend my belief in atheism for one month. God if you exist, you have a month to show yourself to me.” Then over that month through a series of what you a skeptic might call coincidences, God showed up to her that month in series of unmistakable ways and she went on to not only believe there was a God, but committed her life to Jesus Christ.

What makes Jesus truly unique among all the religious leaders? He alone claimed to be God in the human flesh. Paul says that God validated this claim of Jesus because he raised him from the dead that first Easter.

He is risen from the dead and therefore He is Lord.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then he was simply, as Lewis put it, “a delusionary lunatic or a liar, but if he did rise from the dead, then he is able to make the claim that he is the way, the truth and the life.”

Paul therefore says that God commands people everywhere to repent. That means that we are to change our course and bring it in line with the way of Jesus Christ.

A Navy captain was at the helm of a ship. He sees the light on the horizon, and it’s on a collision course with his ship. He sends it a message.

Change your course 10 degrees to the west.

He gets a reply back:

Change your course 10 degrees to the west!

He sends another message:

I’m a Captain of the U.S. Navy. I suggest you change your course now!

Another message comes back:

I’m a Seaman--Second Class. I suggest you change your course now.

He sends a final message:

I command a battleship. I’m not changing course.

Then, he receives a final message:

I oversee a lighthouse. Your call, Sir.

“Reality…truth is like a lighthouse.”

We steer our lives in alignment with it, and Jesus Christ said, “I am the light of the world. Change your course and aligned it to me.”

But, doesn’t alignment with one person make us narrower?

The paradox is that when we align our lives to Jesus Christ’s, we become the kind of people who don’t exclude others, but embrace people very different from ourselves.

The Emperor Julian in the first century wrote to a pagan priest friend asking why was it that this Christian group was adding to its numbers so quickly when it had no money and no political power. The pagan priest said, with some contempt, “They are growing because Christians help people who are different from themselves.” In the first century Hebrews helped Hebrews, Greeks helped Greeks, Africans helped Africans, but Christians helped everyone.

Vinay Samuel, a respected Indian leader and author and former leader of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, says that Hindus can produce as many miracles as any Christian miracle worker, Islamic saints in India can produce and replicate every miracle that has been produced by Christians, but they cannot duplicate the miracle of black and white together, the miracle of racial injustice being swept away by the power of the Gospel.

I know in my own life given my own natural tendencies to be an elitist snob, Jesus has made me far more inclusive than I would be otherwise.

When we follow the one who says “I am the way, the truth and the life,” and receive the forgiveness of sins that is offered by his sacrificial death on the cross, we become people, who instead of excluding others, we embrace them.

So what about you? What will you do with Christ?

Will you align your life to His?

Will you follow his way?

If you would like to, I would invite you to pray with me:

Lord Jesus, I don’t understand it all, but I commit my way to yours.

I believe you died for my sins and rose again from the dead and you are the way, the truth, and the life.

Forgive me of my sins and make me a new person.

I align my life to you yours.

With your help, I will follow you.

Faith and Doubts (Apr.19, 09)

Faith and Doubt: M 1 (DRAFT) 2009 04 19

Title: Faith and Doubt

Text: John 20:1-18

Big Idea: A path to faith is to doubt our doubts.

The last couple of months I have talked about a mother named Rachel Barkey.

She is married to Neil. She is in her thirties. They have two young children, Quinn and Kate.

I have shared about how her cancer has returned, spreading to her liver and bones. There is no medical cure.

Rachel says the hardest part of all this for her is leaving her husband Neil and her children, Quinn and Kate. She has said that loving Neil and helping him has been the most wonderful privilege; and being a mother, is a gift that she did not deserve. She feels that Quinn and Kate are treasures that were entrusted to her for a time, and she is grateful to have been their mother for these years.

In a more recent e-mail Rachel shared that she is now essentially bed-ridden. The pain in her back and the constant nausea make it difficult for her to be upright for more than a few moments each day. But in the midst of these horrendous circumstances, Rachel feels God’s comfort and is assured that she is not alone—God is with her.

But there are other people around her who are asking, “Here’s a mother of young children; how could God let this happen?”

Stories like Rachel’s can make us ask: “Where is God? Does God really exist? And if God exists, does God really hear our prayers? Is there really life after death?”

Do you ever ask questions like that? Many of us who consider ourselves to be believers in God, if we are honest, at times, have doubts. Is there really a God? Does God hear my prayers? What will happen to me when I die?

Even people we would consider spiritual giants have doubts, too. Mother Teresa in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, wrote: "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see — Listen and do not hear ... I want you to pray for me..."

People who believe in God have doubts.

Atheists and agnostics have their doubts, too.

I remember, when I was working for Sony, a brilliant scientist approached me and asked if I would have lunch with him. At lunch Shintaro told me about some ground-breaking work that he was doing in physics, measuring certain aspects of spheres that apparently had never been measured before. He was getting ready to go to Vienna, Austria to present his new findings at a science conference.

At lunch, he asked, “You are a Christian. Right?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I have never believed in God. I am an atheist, but as I study these spheres I see evidence of this beautiful design. I see this amazing symmetry in the world, and I am starting to doubt my atheism. I wonder if there might be some kind of designer. I would like to know why you believe in God.”

Richard Dawkins, the brilliant physicist and author of The God Delusion, in an interview with the New York Times said: “I cannot know for certain, but I think that God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.” Even Dawkins, the famous atheist, says, “I cannot know for certain, but I think it is probable that God does not exist. I live my life on that assumption.” So, Dawkins too is putting his faith in an assumption, that there is no God. He is a person of a faith in that regard.

Thoughtful, intelligent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennet have their moments of doubts about their atheism as well.

Elie Wiesel, the writer and holocaust survivor, when asked to describe his faith, used the word “wounded”: “Our tradition teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith as solid as a wounded faith.”

Like Wiesel, many of us believe and we doubt.

Doubt, as Wiesel says; can be a friend; it can make our faith more solid.

Doubts can make our faith more resilient as we wrestle through them.

Wrestling with doubt honestly can make us more humble and motivate us to learn, and can help us shed false views of reality.

Frederick Buechner says, “Doubt are like ants in the pants of faith; they keep it alive and moving.”

If there really is a God, then we do need to be intimated by our doubts.

A pastor, who serves in the San Francisco Bay Area, said, “I was talking with a friend recently

who said, ‘I never read books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, because I’m afraid if I read it, it would undermine my faith’.” The pastor says, I’m not saying that you should, or that you need to read every book like that one. You may not have that need, but if you don’t read it and avoid it because you are afraid it will destroy your faith, then what you’re really saying is, “Deep down inside, I don’t believe that Jesus was really right.” It’s impossible to trust Jesus if way down deep inside, you don’t think He was right.

Today we are going to begin a new series on faith and doubt. We will explore such questions as:

Is there only one way to God?

How can a good and powerful God allow suffering?

Do faith and science contradict each other?

If you would like to read a companion resource I would recommend a book by one of teachers and mentors, Tim Keller, who pastors in Manhattan--The Reason for God.

Last Sunday was Easter, and I’d like us to look again at John 20.

The Empty Tomb

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

The text goes on to say:

(Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," Mary said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.")

In this passage we read that Mary went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. She said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

When Mary saw the empty tomb, she assumed that Jesus’ body had been stolen by some grave robbers. She was so convinced of this that when she actually saw Jesus risen from the dead just moments later, at first she didn’t recognize him. She assumed that Jesus was the gardener, and said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

John, on the other hand, according to verse 8, reached the tomb, and when he saw that it was empty, though he did not know from the scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead, he believed that God had performed some kind of miracle.

We may tend to think that Mary didn’t have faith (that she “doubted” that Jesus’ could have risen from the dead), and John had faith, but they both had faith, faith in a framework, that neither, at least at that point, could conclusively prove. Mary had faith that Jesus was dead, and assumed (reasonably) that people don’t rise from the dead. Jesus’ body was missing, and so Mary concluded that his body must have been stolen.

We may tend to think that some people have faith and other people have doubt, but everyone has faith, everyone has a way of seeing the world. Even a person’s doubt, reveals that they have a “faith” or way they tend to see reality, they have “eye glasses” (through which they see the world).

Tim Keller, points out in his book, The Reason for God: “When we unmask a so called ‘doubt’ we see an alternative underlying belief, or an underlying way people see the world.

For example, if you say ‘It is absolutely impossible for a human being to rise from the dead’ you are making a faith statement that our universe is all there is and nothing from outside of our world can break in and suspend the normal laws of nature, and therefore a miracle is impossible.”

You are assuming that the world is like this plant terrarium and nothing can break in.

Now believing that the world does not have a plastic covering like this plant terrarium, and that there is a God or some kind of transcendent reality that might break in, is a faith position, but it is also a faith assumption to believe that the world in effect has some kind of plastic covering like the terrarium and there is nothing outside of the world that could break in and suspend the laws of nature.

Both are faith assumptions.

Both a ways of seeing reality.

One person says there is God.

Another, their material stuff is the only thing that is real—there is no God.

Both are faith statements that no can absolutely prove.

In the Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond is framed and sent to jail unjustly. He’s about to beaten by the jailor and Edmond says, “God will give justice.” The jailor says, “God is never in France this time of the year.”

Both are faith assumptions.

One assumes God sees. The other that God does not see.

And if you say, “I don’t care one way or another; it doesn’t matter” you still then have faith that there is no God who would hold you accountable in some way (It’s a way of seeing the world).

Mary sees a person outside the tomb that she thinks is the gardener, and asks, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.” Jesus says to her, “Mary.” In that moment Mary recognizes him and says, “Rabboni!” In that moment Mary in effect now doubts her assumption that someone stole Jesus’ body, and comes to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Mary was not the only follower of Christ who at first assumed that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Jesus’ disciple Thomas (as we see later in John 20) does not at first believe. He wants proof that Jesus has risen from the dead. Jesus shows him the wounds in his hands and side, and Thomas believes—he cries out, “My Lord and my God.”

Engaging doubt as I said can be very healthy for someone who considers themselves a believer, but engaging in doubt as a skeptic (about your way of seeing the world) can also be healthy.

If you consider yourself a skeptic, but are open to possibility of having faith in God, if so convinced, then learning to doubt your doubts may be the starting point of faith in God for you. 2x

Like Shintaro, people who have trouble believing in God will sometimes ask me, “Why do you believe?” and I typically say there are several different reasons why I believe.

One is because of the historical evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Last Sunday, if you were here, we briefly looked at some of the evidence for the resurrection.

Of course there are no airtight arguments for God’s existence, but there are good reasons for believing.

Mark Twain, said “Faith is trying to believe what you know ain’t so.”

But, real faith is believing what you really believe is true.

One of the reasons, I believe in God is the historic evidence for the resurrection.

Respected New Testament scholars like N. T. Wright have argued that the empty tomb and the accounts of personal meetings with Jesus after he rose from the dead--the resurrection--become more historically certain when you realize that they must be taken together. If there had only been an empty tomb, and no sightings, no one would have concluded that a resurrection had taken place.

They would have assumed that the body had been stolen. Yet, if there had only been eye witnesses of the sighting of Jesus, and no empty tomb, no one would have concluded that it was a resurrection either, because accounts of people seeing departed loved ones happen from time to time.

Only if the two factors were both truly together would anyone have concluded that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Historic evidence is clear that the tomb of Jesus was empty.

Paul’s letters show that those followers of Christ proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection from the very beginning, and so the tomb must have been empty. No one would have believed the preaching of Gospel if the tomb wasn’t empty.

Paul also wrote in a public document in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were hundreds of eye witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, many of whom were still alive at the time’s Paul’s writing. (And Paul encouraged people who were skeptics to talk to the people who had seen Jesus risen from the dead.) If this was not the case, Paul’s letters and the Christian movement would have never have gotten off the ground.

As we also saw last week, one of the most compelling evidences that Jesus rose from the dead was the fact that Jesus’ disciples went from being fearful cowards, who fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested on Thursday night (the eve of good Friday), to being fearless proclaimers of the message that Jesus had risen from the dead the following Sunday. From Thursday to Sunday, they went from zeroes to heroes.

All of those early disciples of Jesus, with the exception of John, died for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

The only plausible explanation for this radical transformation in their lives was that they believed that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

People don’t die for something they know is a lie—they don’t die for a hoax.

The second proof, a more subjective proof, that enables me to believe, helps me doubt my doubts, is that my life has been powerfully transformed through Jesus Christ. Many you have heard my story, and so I am going to give you the opportunity to hear some else’s story. I invite Patrick Elaschuk, who is involved in leading our international mission here at Tenth, to come and share part of his story.

I was not raised in an environment of faith. Even going though high school I had no idea of who Jesus was and was not too interested. After moving to Vancouver from Vernon after graduation, I began asking questions like, “how can God exist if the world is so messed up?”

Through a serious of God inspired events. I was invited to church one Easter by a friend and started a journey of faith in Jesus Christ, and I began to change.

* As I was growing as a new follower of Jesus Christ, I had a new sense that stealing, lying and cheating were becoming more wrong than before.
* I had a new sense that sex outside of marriage was no longer right.
* I had a new sense that somehow, someway, there was a God out there who cared for me and wanted me to know Him.



I began to change my lifestyle because of these new convictions.

I also felt a compelling strange new desire to go into the world and make a difference. Before that, I was far more concerned with me, myself and I and promoting my own agenda. After my first exposure to extreme poverty in Fiji, my perspective on the world radically changed; my own mother noticing significant differences in me.

Fast forward 10 years, I was married with 2 children living in an urban poor slum in Davao City Philippines. Why the Philippines, you may ask? Jesus compelled us to leave a degree of comfort and follow Him to a place where He was inviting us to serve in an outreach clinic. A combination of opportunity, peace, and unity as a couple helped us discern that. Inneke served as a midwife delivering babies to the urban poor and I built the relational foundation for a church. Moved by the killing of 15 year old youth I introduced to Jesus named McCoy, who was gunned down by a vigilante group called the Davao Death Squad, Inneke and I began ministries for the urban poor related to education, health care, and micro enterprise.

Even while serving as a missionary I had serious questions about faith in God when I met children under the age of 6 that begged for food on the streets or know youth that have been unjustly killed.

I still don’t have all the answers for that, but seeing God’s love reflected through people who sacrificially give their lives for the poor in places like the Philippines—helps me continue to believe in God and that God is good. When God’s people continue to give up self driven pursuits for the pursuits of God, God becomes far more visible to us all.

Patrick has had a powerful life change—leading him to experience a change in his personal life, making him a far more giving person that he can only explain by God.

I’ve never heard someone say, “I just converted to atheism; I used to be self-centered so I will move to a slum to help the poor.” I’ve never heard anyone say, “I just became an atheist, “I used to be player, but know I will be faithful to my wife.”

But, I’ve heard many people talk about how God has transformed them so that they are now more giving and generous and faithful.

I believe in God because of the historic evidence for the resurrection and because Jesus has changed my life and the lives of countless others.

But, I have doubts, too.

As an undergraduate I studied both business and philosophy. As a philosophy major, I was encouraged to doubt. From a philosophical perspective, there is nothing that we can know with absolute psychological certainty. I think that I am here and that you are here, but it is based on the assumption that I right now am not having a dream, that my senses are conveying to me a picture that at least somewhat corresponds to reality.

I have doubts. I wonder.

I welcome them, so does Jesus.

The Gospels portray Jesus as one who welcomes us with our doubts.

As we saw, when Jesus later in John 20 met Thomas, one of his disciples sometimes referred to as “Doubting Thomas,” he encouraged him not to surrender to his doubt, but to believe.

He responded to his request for more evidence. Jesus said, “Put your finger here in my hand, and put it in my side.”

In Mark 9:24, a man, filled with doubts, approaches Jesus and says, “I believe, help my unbelief” ; and Jesus welcomes him and blesses him and brings healing to his son.

Today and in the weeks to come pray that God would not only help us to find faith, and the things that are worthy of faith, but to doubt the doubts that are worthy of doubt.

Let’s pray.

Easter Message

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Easter Message April 12, 2009

Title: The Promise of Easter

Text: John 20; 1 Cor. 15:42-44, 53-55, 58

When I was in my last year of high school, I remember walking out to the end of our drive way one afternoon and opening up our mail box and pulling out a letter, from a school that I had applied to—I remember the silver logo on the envelope. I paused. Took a deep breath. Opened the letter, read the first two sentences and sensed that my life would take a new direction—through this new, open door. It was just a letter, but a letter that held a promise.

Another moment that I will always remember… I was riding the bullet train from Osaka to Tokyo, after having spent part of a week together with Sakiko, I said, “One day I hope to marry you,” and she responded by saying, “I feel the same way.” I knew my life would change. No ring at the time. It was spontaneous, but there was an implicit promise made.

We celebrate Easter today, with billions of others, because it represents a promise greater than admission to a school or even into marriage.

In our text that Mark and Sharon recited for us, we saw how Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance and that she assumed that Jesus’ body had been stolen.

Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," Mary said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."

Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher").

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!"

All four of the gospels point out that the first eye witnesses who saw Jesus risen from the dead were women. Women’s social status was so low in the first century that their testimony was not considered admissible in court. New Testament scholar, Tom Wright, argues there must have been enormous pressure on the early proclaimers of the Christian Gospel to remove the women from the resurrection accounts. If this story of the resurrection were being simply made up, there would be no advantage in stating that the first witnesses were women.

The women are described as the first people who actually saw Jesus risen from the dead in the Gospels because they were the first people who saw Jesus. This is the way it actually happened.

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and a woman named Joanna are the first people to see Jesus risen from the dead, but there are others as well--literally hundreds of others according to Paul (in 1 Corinthians 15) who see him as well. The people who see the risen Christ are powerfully changed as a result.

One of the most compelling evidences that Jesus rose from the dead was the fact that Jesus’ disciples went from being fearful cowards, who fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested on Thursday night (the eve of good Friday), to being fearless proclaimers of the message that Jesus had risen from the dead the following Monday (the day after Easter Sunday). From Thursday to Monday, they went from zeroes to heroes.

All of those early disciples of Jesus, with the exception of John, died for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

The only plausible explanation for this radical transformation in the lives of Jesus’ disciples was that they believed that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

People don’t die for something they know is an April’s fool’s joke—they don’t die for a hoax.

But what does Jesus’ rising from the dead mean for us? Why does a third of the human race celebrate Easter?

We celebrate this day because Jesus’ rising from the dead means that God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for our sins--and the sins of the world.

Jesus’ death on the cross and his rising again is a promise that our sins can be forgiven, that we can have a new relationship with God, and out of that relationship with God we can be made new people.

Sometimes we suspect that if we give our lives over to God we will lose the unique part of our personhood. But when God’s light shines into our lives, we become our true self, the person that we were created to be. As C.S. Lewis says in his classic Mere Christianity, “Give yourself up to God, and you will find your real self.”

I was reminded recently of a time when my wife and I were driving through Burgundy, France. As we passed by fields of sunflowers, we noticed that when it was dark and cloudy, the sunflowers would be closed, but when the sun came out, the sunflowers would open and all point their faces in the direction of the sun. (Prop)

So it is for us when the light of God’s presence begins to shine in our lives. Like those sunflowers we open up and become the selves that God intended us to be.

As a young person in my teen years, as you may know if you attend here regularly, I loved adventure, whether it was the adventure of sports or motorcycles or shoplifting (I thought I was Robin Hood, stealing from the rich stores and giving to my “poor” me) or joy riding in cars borrowed from the local gas station that were being worked on.

But when God’s light began to shine on me, he didn’t take away that love of adventure—it was just redirected. I remember my heart pounding as I was attempting to smuggle contraband Bibles, theological books, and medicine into Romania when it was still behind the iron curtain. I remember when the border guard dressed in military fatigues and armed with a machine gun announced he was going to inspect our car trunk, which was I knew was full of Bibles, theological books. I knew because I put them there myself! I heard the car trunk open, and I held my breath, and he got distracted… He told us to move along.

I remember the first time I watched Star Wars, the scene where Luke and Obiwan cruise into town on Luke's landspeeder, with C3Po and R2D2 in the back. They get stopped by Imperial Stormtroopers, and Ben says with a wave of his hand, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." And the stormtroooper says, "These aren't the droids we're looking for." Back then, I thought that Jedi Mind trick was cool, but God allowed me to experience something even cooler.

The resurrection of Jesus means that we can be made new. We can become our real selves—the self that God intended us to be. The resurrection also means that one day, like Jesus, we will rise from the dead, as well. The Scriptures teach those who have joined their lives to Christ--at the end of time our bodies will be resurrected from the dead, as well. We will then inhabit, what the Bible calls, “the new earth.”

There is a lot of interest in a city like ours in health. Vancouver is an easy place to be healthy, with the beautiful outdoors, the opportunities to exercise, and the emphasis on eating healthy. My mom and dad recently went to Japan to see my grandmother (my mom’s mom). My grandmother is 95. She is very healthy. As far I know, she has never had any serious illness, and she eats chocolate and drinks Asahi beer every day, but has never had a single cavity. As I said, she is 95 and she still plays tennis several times a week. Some years ago she was bragging to me that she was ranked number 2 in the nation. But I said, “Yes, but in your age category there are probably only two of you.” That's when she showed me her backhand.

She is very healthy and she has already lived a very long life. But one day she will die. And so will we.

I was reading about some multimillionaires here in North America who have arranged for their bodies to be cryogenically frozen at death, confident with the progress of medicine that they will one day be able to bring them back.

It is not necessary to freeze our bodies--because the promise of Easter is that if our lives are joined to Jesus Christ then we, too, like Christ will one day rise from the dead in resurrected bodies.

We don’t know exactly what our resurrected bodies will be like. There has been lots of speculation. I’ve heard it has been taught that our resurrected bodies will be similar to whatever we looked like at our peak. Some of you will be happy to hear that. Perhaps others... were hoping for more (We still have space available for boot camp by the way).

The Scriptures, however, are not specific as to what we will look like in our resurrected bodies. It is clear on the basis of Jesus’ resurrected body that people will recognize who we are and that there will be some continuity between our bodies on earth and our resurrected body. (Jesus still had the nailing markings on his wrists in his resurrected body). We also know that our resurrected bodies will be glorious.

The promise of Easter is that we can be made new now and that we will one day have glorious resurrected bodies. Just as a person who’s gotten a letter of admission from a school where they really want to study or has gotten engaged to a person they really want to marry, can live with a sense of hope and joy even before they actually enter the school or get married, so we too can live with hope and joy and peace now, knowing that one day, like Jesus, we will experience the resurrection.

But Easter is not only a promise that we can be made new in this life time and that we will be resurrected at the end if time; but it is also the promise that the earth itself can be made new.

Just as Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection can be a turning point in our lives—breaking the power of sin and evil—so his death and resurrection—can break the power of sin and evil in the world.

Just as Jesus’ death and resurrection, is a promise that we will one day be resurrected, it also a promise that the earth will be made new, as well.

In Revelation 21, God promises that he will create a new heaven and a new earth. In Revelation 21:5 God says, “I will make everything new.”

As my friend and colleague Darrell Johnson points out, “God does not say ‘I will make all new things, but I will make everything new’.” Hear the difference? God doesn’t say “I will make all new things” but “I will make all things new.” He will renew the earth.

And just as there is continuity between our present bodies and our resurrected bodies, so there will be continuity between this present earth and a new earth to come. The good we do on this earth will one day be magnified in the new world.

If we understand this truth, we will be really motivated to work for justice for the poor--to alleviate hunger and disease, create beauty in art or music, and to care for the environment.

Many people who do not believe in God also care about justice, creating beauty, and care for the environment. But if you don’t believe in God and believe this world of ours was simply caused by accident, and that one day the earth will burn up when the sun goes expands going supernova, you don’t have nearly the motivation to work for justice, create beauty, and to care for the earth, as you have if you believe that the world is going to be renewed by God.

The promise of Easter is that God will make one day renew the earth and the good we do here will manifest itself in that new earth.

Therefore, Paul in 1 Cor. 15:58, says, “Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord because you know your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”

Our labour in the Lord is not in vain because the things that we do on this earth, whether it is working to break the cycle of poverty in people’s lives, create beauty through art or music, or caring for the environment will somehow make its way into the world to come.

The reason that we are motivated here at Tenth to help provide temporary shelter and food for the homeless and to help them take steps toward finding homes and reintegrating into society by finding meaningful work, or helping people who have been trafficked into the sex trade whether here in Vancouver or in Cambodia find a way out, is because we believe that all human beings are made in the image of God and will live forever… So our work with them is not in vain. The healing they and we experience in this life will in some way carry over into the world to come.

My colleague here at Tenth, Patrick Elaschuk and his wife Inneke and their family moved from their comfortable home in North Vancouver to spend 7 years living in a slum in Davao City, the Philippines to help people in that community experience a fuller life: by bringing health care (Inneke as a mid-wife helped deliver babies in slum), better education, and start small businesses. They did so with the knowledge that that work is not in vain, that somehow their investment would carry over into the world to come.

Steve Hayner is a person who serves as part of World Vision (an organization I serve as a trustee).

Steve recently talked about going to Rwanda on a World Vision trip with his daughter Emily.

While there, they met an African woman who warmly welcomed him and Emily in her tiny little house. She began to tell them her story.

She said just before the genocide in Rwanda, she was living in this same village with 54 of her relatives (her husband, her 4 children, her parents, her cousins, and her extended family were living in this one area). They thought that they were safe—because their family was full of both Tutsis and Hutus.

But, one night the militia came and began to murder her entire family with machetes. She was raped by the soldiers and left to die.

When she woke up in the morning, she made her way slowly toward Burundi where she got medical care. A couple of months later she was feeling better, so she began to make her way back to her village.

She said, “Two things I brought back from Burundi that I didn’t have before I left. One is that I was pregnant by one of the men who raped me; and the second was that I was now HIV positive.”

At that point in her story an 11-year-old beautiful boy, the child of this rape walked into the room.

Steve asked, “How do you live?” She thought he was saying, “How do you make a living?” She said, “Well, I am a digger. Every day I take my hoe, and I go and I rent myself out to one of the farmers in the neighborhood, and I dig all day for 12 hours not for money, but for food, so I can feed my family.” (She had a daughter too.)

Steve asked, “How do you survive when your soul has been so beat up?” She looks at him quizzically, and she hops up, runs into the other room and brings back into the room a vinyl diaper bag. She begins to unpack it and says, “This is my medical kit.” She begins takes out a towel, some soap, and a little tube of some kind of medicine, and some aspirin.

She says, “You know what? World Vision has given me a bicycle and a medical bag, and I get to go and visit the ten people twice a week in my village who are dying of AIDS.” She said, “I get to care for them.” And then she began to describe how Jesus had changed her, gave her the ability to forgive, and what it meant for her to experience healing because she served and gave her life for her children and to these ten people in her village who were dying.

At the end of their visit, Steve and his daughter Emily walked out of her little hut and down the little stone path and were weeping.

The work that woman is doing in her village in Africa to make her world a better place will make its way into the new world that will be redeemed.

The promise of Easter, as Tom Wright points out, is that every act of love and kindness, every work of art or music inspired by the love of God, every minute spent teaching a special needs child to read or to walk, or listening to a lonely, elderly person, every act of care for the earth, every act that spreads the good news of the Gospel, will all find its way into the new creation that God will one day make.

It must have been a slow news day because the final story that ran in the broadcast news was a fluffy piece about kids taking ice skating lessons at the local ice rink.

The last shot was of 2 kids maybe 5 years old on the ice doing what 5 year olds can do--holding hands shuffling across the ice—trying not to fall, but then something unexpected happened—they did a slow cross dissolve and the kids were transformed into a pair of Olympic figure skaters and just at that moment, the man threw his partner high into the air and she spun more times than you can count and when she came back to earth she nails the landing perfectly—with breathtaking artistry and grace…

Someone made the connection between where those skaters begin and where they can go.

So it is with God. Whatever hard work and intention we put in today will one day manifest into something glorious than we can imagine in the new world.

And this is the promise of Easter. Admission to school you want to study at or an engagement to someone you love is only a faint echo of the great promise of Easter that God will make all things—including us and this world---new in Christ. So we live with the joy and hope that God’s work in us and through us is not in vain.

PRAYER: Inviting people to experience the resurrection power of Jesus Christ by joining their lives to his.

(before benediction: announce: Faith and Doubt following Easter)

That first Easter Mary and Thomas and some of the other students of Jesus, did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. Like many of us, they simply assumed people don’t rise from the dead. They had their doubts and so do we. So beginning next Sunday and for the next several weeks, we’ll begin a new series here on faith and doubt.

True Greatness(Mar 29, 09)

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Mark M7: Message Notes March 29, 2009

True Greatness (final draft)

Text: Mark 10:35-45; 9:33-37

Big Idea: Greatness in God’s Kingdom is measured by servanthood.

Bernie Madoff is the man (show photo) who has been accused of perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in history by allegedly losing 50 billion dollars of investors’ money in a massive scam.

According to journalist Alan Chernoff, on the surface Madoff was polite and understated, but on the inside he was intensely ambitious. Psychologist Alden Cass said that Madoff had a need to prove to the world that he was someone powerful and intelligent. He went to a relatively unknown college on Long Island, New York, and he confessed to a friend that he regretted not having been able to go to Wharton, the prestigious business school connected to U Penn, or Stanford.

Madoff ended up becoming the chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the early 1990s, and he was earning tens of millions of dollars. So he didn’t need more money. He joined exclusive clubs like the Palm Beach Country Club and joined other elite social circles so that would create an aura of exclusivity. Everyone was in awe of him and that’s how he deceived people.

Even when the stock market began to tumble last fall, Madoff reported better than 10% returns. But under the weight of the collapsing stock market, investor requests for redemptions finally overwhelmed Madoff. He had to admit that his investment management was a fraud—“It was just one big lie, basically a giant ponzi scheme.” Madoff faces a potential penalty of 150 years in prison.

Madoff’s example may be extreme, but as a culture isn’t it true that we tend to evaluate people’s worth based on their wealth, their education, their career, their status?

Even Jesus’ students carried these assumptions. Today we’re going to see how Jesus responded.

If you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark 10:35.

The Request of James and John

35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. "Teacher," they said, "we want you to do for us whatever we ask."

36 "What do you want me to do for you?" he asked.

37 They replied, "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."

38 "You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?"

39 "We can," they answered.

Jesus said to them, "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared."

41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In verse 35, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come to Jesus and ask him, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.” “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus replied. They said, “Let one of us sit at your right, and the other at your left, in your glory.”

In Jewish custom the place of highest honour was at the centre of the company, followed by the right hand, then the left hand. The right hand was considered special for two reasons. First, the left hand was used for sanitation purposes, and therefore was less respected than the right hand. Second, since most people were right-handed, the right hand was considered to have innately superior strength and capacity. The Talmud (the commentary on Jewish law) says, “Of three walking along, the teacher should walk in the middle, the greater of his disciples stays on the right and the lesser one to his left.” The brothers James and John want the honour of being at Jesus’ right and his left.

As commentator William Lane suggests, part of the irony of this request is that James and John already occupy that privileged place with Jesus as two of the disciples (along with Peter) who are closest to him.

James and John believe that Jesus’ government, will be one of prestige and power, and they want the highest level cabinet positions in his new administration. Peter, James and John, are the inner core of Jesus’ disciples; perhaps they want to try to jump over Peter and gain a higher status in Jesus’ government.

Jesus responds by saying, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? (meaning, “Are you able to drink from the cup of suffering I will drink of?)” “Yes we can,” they answered. The fact is, according to Matthew’s Gospel 26:56, when Jesus was arrested, James and John, and all the disciples deserted Jesus and bailed on him.

When the ten other disciples heard about this conversation that James and John had had with Jesus, we read that they became indignant with them. Jesus called them all together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles, lord it over people, and their high officials exercise authority over them (rulers in the first century had despotic power), not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant (which means table waiter); and whoever who wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Dale Bruner paraphrases this verse by saying, “The Son of Man did not come to be waited on, but to wait on, to give his life as a ransom for all the rest.”

Jesus’ whole life was about waiting on others, and his greatest service was his giving himself over in death as the great sin offering, paying for the sin of the world with his life. Mark says he was our ransom for sin; he paid the price for sin with his life to set us free.

The world honours people who seek greatness, who ascend…who go up, up, up but Jesus is calling us to follow him in precisely the opposite direction. He calls us to go against the tide of the culture, to go down and to serve.

When we join our lives to the life of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves moved to serve our world, as well.

In Philippians 2:5-7 Paul says to people who have joined their lives to Christ and who have experienced the life of God’s Spirit.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:

6 Who, being in very nature [a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature [b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness

As Gordon Fee has pointed out precisely because Jesus Christ was in very nature God, he didn’t consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but he poured himself out, taking on the very nature of a servant. (USE PROP OF JUG OF WATER)

New Testament scholar N. T. Wright says that the only God there is, is a servant. The gods of the ancient world were capricious, vindictive and self-serving, but the true God serves.

It’s God’s nature as God to serve.

We are most like God when we empty ourselves in loving service for others.

When we embrace the one who served us in the ultimate way by laying down his life for us, we too will be more likely to serve others. When Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2006, during spring break The United Way and MTV recruited 100 volunteer students to go and help. The number of college students sent by a single Christian organization mobilized 7000 students to go. The well known journalist and politician, Roy Hattersley was covering the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina for the UK Guardian. Hattersley is an atheist, and said, “Notable by their absence were teams from rationalist societies and atheist associations.” After watching the Salvation Army lead several other faith-based organizations in their relief effort after Hurricane Katrina, Hattersley said, “It is an unavoidable conclusion that Christians are the most likely to make sacrifices involved in helping others.”

When hear the term “sacrifice” we may tend to think that means we will miss out.

As CS Lewis says, we can view God as a kind of taxman who takes what he requires and we hope lets us enjoy what we have left over with our life.

Jesus said we find our lives by losing them for God and others.

In serving others we will find that we are most ourselves and most fulfilled.

Not that we serve for this reason, but it’s interesting that there is yet again a scientific correlation to what Jesus taught here.

Stephen G. Post, professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, points out when people serve others the areas of the brain which are activated (and which you can see if you do a brain scan) are those that show profound state of joy and delight.

The University of Chicago did a study on vocational satisfaction. They found that pastors were the most vocationally-fulfilled of the all the professions. Part of the reason pastors came out on top (at least in this University of Chicago study) is because pastors are oriented to think of and serve others—they is real joy and fulfillment in that.

The world defines greatness as money, power, influence; Bernie Madoff embraced these values to an extreme; but Jesus defines greatness as service. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, “Greatness with God and greatness on Earth are two very different things.”

Our culture relentlessly pushes us in the direction of up…up…up. As Dale Bruner points out, “Believers must pray almost daily for the wisdom and courage to counter-culturally go down.” It takes a great deal of wisdom and courage to resist.

What might this look like in our everyday lives?

First, we invite Jesus to shape our attitude toward school and work:

My parents were born and raised in Japan, a country that values education very highly. It is a country where what school you go to determines the kind of company you will work for; and the kind of company you work for will determine the kind of life you have. That is why parents in Japan can become very anxious about whether their children will make it into the right kindergarten or not, the right kindergarten will position them to pass the exam for the right elementary school, and the right elementary school will position them to get into the right junior high, and so forth.

My parents came from families that highly valued education. They went to the top tier schools in Japan and were educated at an Ivy League school here in North America. Before my mom really committed her life to Christ, I remember that it was very important to her that I did well in school. I was a very irresponsible student in elementary school and she bribed me by saying, if and I got straight A’s--and only if I got straight A’s, I could play ice hockey (my ice hockey career was very short).

After committing her life to Christ, there was a significant change in her value system. As I was applying to undergraduate schools, and then later graduate schools, she kept emphasizing that the brand or the fame of the school doesn’t matter; what matters is that you study at a place that will help you best fulfill God’s purpose for your life. This is a countercultural way of thinking for an Asian woman of my mom’s generation. That’s what Christ does for us—he turns our value system upside down.

In my own life, I pray for the wisdom and the courage to go down. As a child, as a teenager, two of the things that were most important to me were being part of the “cool and in” crowd and excelling in sports. I love sports, but especially as I became a teenager, sports was also a bridge to acceptance and becoming more popular than I would have otherwise been.

I’ve also learned it is possible, even for ministers, to be caught up in trying to go up…up…up.

I was with someone who was telling me how they had spent time with a pastor who is considered a kind of “rock star” pastor. He is famous and influential. He said, “The whole time I was with him I got the sense he was looking over my shoulder for someone more important in the party to talk to.” He said, “This person was spending a lot of time hobnobbing with the rich and the famous.” This person said, “You know, I was a little disappointed.”

I don’t want to presume any judgment on this person, but it made me think I don’t want to be the kind of person who in my work is always trying to go up…up…up…in a worldly sense. Once in a while, someone from this church will come up to me and say to me, “I hope you are not thinking about moving to a bigger venue, a bigger city.” And I respond that I don’t see my work as a kind of career ladder. I don’t want to be like some players in professional sports who seem to be always looking for a bigger venue, a bigger market.

I am not called to be a star. I am called to be a servant. I hope that I will have that desire in all that I do and in all the decisions I make. It is not my natural way, but it is the way of Jesus. In any career, whatever it is, you probably have desire to get ahead, and that is not necessarily wrong, by any means, but wanting to get ahead just for the sake of getting ahead, wanting to be better for the sake of being better than a particular person is not Jesus’ way.

(I remember being in Queens, New York, a few years ago with my friend, Pete Scazzero, who is Italian, and he was introducing me to some of his uncle’s bakery. It seemed like they were right off the set of some godfather movie. Later Pete said “My uncle is always saying, ‘This year, this year I am going to bake a better cannoli than the guy in St. Louis at the bakers’ convention this year.’ His life seems to be defined by making a better canoli…making a better pastry than someone else.” Pete said, “I know that this sounds really pathetic, but when we think of ourselves and our station in life, whether we are bakers, or accountants, teachers, or construction workers, a lot of our self-identity is tied up in doing better than the other person in our peer group.”)

Jesus says that is not the way to true greatness. The way to true greatness is in serving. “If you want to be truly great,” Jesus says, “don’t try to go up, but go down and serve.”

Which way are you going?

2nd We also learn the greatness of servanthood by serving in humble ways.

Richard Foster writes, “More than any other single way, the grace of humility is worked into our lives through the discipline of service….nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service, but screams against hidden service. It strains and pulls for honour and recognition.”

Servanthood may begin with serving your roommate in a humble way. I had a roommate in grad school who loved to begin writing his papers at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. He served me by typing them out in another room.

Servanthood will involve serving your spouse humbly. When my friend Craig married Debbie, he surprised by pulling out a guitar singing her this folk song:

Sister, let me be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant, too

When Debbie got breast cancer and lost her hair and (in her view) her beauty, she was afraid that he would leave her, but he served more tangibly and loved her more deeply than ever before.

Serving may mean we serve a child or a younger friend.

In Mark 9 Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me, but the one who sent me.”

The last nine months have been different for me. In August when Joe was just six weeks old, I travelled to Mexico City to mentor with some young emerging leaders that were gathering there. It ended up feeling like a very long and hard week for Sakiko, as Joe didn’t sleep well and he cried a lot through the night. When I came back, I cancelled my traveling and speaking schedule for the year. Many weeks I still work too much, and Sakiko bears more than her share of the responsibility of raising Joe. But, being home more this year has meant that I have been able to change more diapers and occasionally get up in the middle of the night to soothe Joe (but if I am fast asleep, it is Sakiko that gets up and nurses him and soothe him). I have been able to help bathe Joe on most nights. It is a very different kind of service. (BTW, According to Dr. John Gottman 70% of couples experience their marriage tanking because of the addition of a baby, but Sakiko says that our having had Joe has brought us closer together. We are more interdependent. It is possible.)

Serving others means that we are willing to choose the non-glamorous over the glamorous.

Wayne Muller was a student of Henri Nouwen’s, and Wayne Muller describes in his book Sabbath how one evening when he was reading a political story in the magazine, The New Yorker, he came across Henri’s name. Apparently, Hillary Clinton had been reading Henri Nouwen’s writings on gratefulness and forgiveness. Wayne Muller said, “So I called Henri and asked him about it.” Henri told him that he had been invited to go to the White House to provide counsel during some difficult times. While he sympathized with the Clintons’ sorrow and while a White House invitation seemed to be recognition of the importance of spiritual matters, he nevertheless sent his apologies and did not go. “I don’t want to be the court chaplain,” he told Muller. “I am here with Adam, my disabled friend (in Toronto). There are others who can go to the White House. Adam needs me.”

Henri Nouwen said, “Be faithful in small things” and he was faithful in small things—small things which are great things in the view of Jesus because greatness with God and greatness on Earth are two very different things.

Being a servant means that we are willing to be interrupted (that doesn’t mean all the time, but it means we are open to adjusting our schedules to serve others).

The irony is that the week I was preparing this sermon I was “interrupted” a number of times. Someone came to my office unexpectedly who was experiencing what he said was a family crisis. Afterwards, it seemed like what he felt like he needed was some money. Someone in our neighbourhood had an emergency come up and asked us if we would take care of their dog, just as I was getting ready to leave for our elders’ retreat on the weekend. Part of being a servant’s heart means willingness to be interrupted.

Richard Foster tells of being in graduate school, desperate to work on his doctoral dissertation, a friend from church called him. The man had no car that day and needed to do some errands. Could Foster take him where he needed to go? With unspoken resentment Foster agreed to help the person. Just before climbing into his car, he picked up a copy of Life Together, a book written about Christian community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, just to have something to read. With each succeeding errand he did with his friend, Foster’s resentment at being forced to do these little tasks grew. When they came to a grocery store, Foster told the man he would wait for him in the car. He pulled out Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together and read: “Active helpfulness means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. There is a multitude of these things wherever people live together. Nobody is too good for the humblest service…”

Do we serve in humble ways? School, home, work, church, in community?

Speaking of Life Together, we learn to serve by serving in community.

Being a servant means we serve in community and invite the people in community to influence us.

When I was an undergraduate student, I heard Helen Roseveare, an Irish medical missionary to Zaire, talk about how she learned this. She was the only doctor in charge of a large hospital where there were constant interruptions, shortages and red tape, and interference by the government. There was a time when she had been working so hard and so impatiently that her irritation was apparent to everyone around her. One Friday afternoon the African pastor of her church went to the hospital and gently, but firmly, insisted that Helen come with him. In his humble car he drove her to his small house and ushered her into a little room. He told her that she was to take a weekend retreat. She was to pray until her spirit was restored for the work ahead. She prayed but didn’t feel like she was making any progress in her prayer. Late on Sunday Helen humbly and desperately told the pastor that she was getting nowhere, and asked him to help her. “Helen, may I tell you what is the matter?” he asked. She nodded. The pastor stood up, and with his bare toe drew a long straight line in the dust. “That’s the problem. There is too much ‘I’. Too much Helen in what you are doing.” Then he went on. “I have noticed you in the hospital. A number of times during the day you take a brief break and ask for a cup of hot coffee. You hold that coffee in both of your hands while it cools off, and then you drink it.” Again, he took his big toe and this time he drew another line across the first one. “I want to ask you this,” he said kindly. “Every time you stand cooling that cup of coffee, why don’t you say in your heart, ‘Lord, cross out the ‘I’.” In the dust of that African village, Helen learned that her service had become more important than those she was serving, and even God himself.

Bernie Maddoff’s story shows us one kind of definition of power—money, prestige, power. He went up…up…up, but then he came crashing down.

Jesus shows us a different way to greatness—the greatness that comes when we serve the purposes of God, and the good of other people--the greatness that comes when we find our life by pouring others.