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.
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.
posted by Shigematsu at 6:12 PM
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