The Community

I preached this sermon originally in 2009. In its initial form it began with a shorter version of the poetic retelling of the story of creation, fall and redemption. This rewrite was an assignment for the class I took this past January. The intent of this message is to remind the hearers/readers that Scripture is telling a story we’re all struggling to hear naturally and to call us to share that meaningful story of belonging with others.

Before the beginning there was Community. God, the Community of Love, whom we refer to as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit had a perfect relationship of mutual love and respect. This isn’t to say that there were three gods - there is One God and this God is the essence of Love. Love neither exists nor is it expressed in isolation, it is expressed in community. This God, this Community of Love was not incomplete, the Trinity was and is the fullness of completion. Community needed nothing, Love lacked nothing. Love was eternally expressed within the Community of the One God in Three Persons.

While the Community of Love was not incomplete, neither is God static. The nature of True Community is expansive. It is dynamic. It is always growing and bringing into itself everything around it. The relationship of the Community, being rooted and established in a deep indescribable love, felt compelled to create. For that is what love is and what love does, it continually creates expansive opportunity for love to be expressed.

So God, the Community of Love, created. God brushed away the darkness, stepped into the midst of chaos and brought forth solid foundations. God molded and formed an unbelievably expansive and expanding universe, and then, in an inconspicuous section of all that began to paint with beautiful strokes a landscape that was begging to be enjoyed.

God walked in the garden she had created. She knelt down and from the same material that formed mountains, deserts and jungles; the same material that made up the fish and birds and lions and bugs, she began to mold something new; something that would see and know and laugh and love. She began to form something that would walk with her, that she could teach and love. She formed out of herself - using her own image as a mold and model.

This new thing God was making would be the pinnacle of everything God had created. She would be able to point out the sunrise and this new thing's breath would catch; when a thunderstorm would pass through this new thing would come running to God for protection; he would hold this small creature and explain that everything would be okay.

God formed this living being. He breathed his own life into this thing. The Community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the relationship that was full, complete and needed nothing - invited these new small frail children to share this powerful community. And it was so very good.

God could have formed these creatures without the ability to choose their course. That was a decision that God made with the stars and planets and mountains and streams. None of these had been given the freedom to choose - planets and moons are in their orbit and have no ability to decide to do otherwise. Mountains are tall and strong but they will never think, "I want to be a valley now." Gravity does not consider whether it will influence objects or not.

This decision allowed the universe to be orderly, but it also ensured that no planet would ever decide to write a song about the Father. True, God created great beauty in the planet, a beauty which is itself a kind of song, but it isn’t a song that the planet created in response to its Creator. In humanity, God has created something which is able to create as God creates - not on the same level; neither as equal nor rival, but as something which understands, as God does and because God does, that when love is present beautiful things result.

The children could not be like the stars or the trees, they had to be able to choose.

Some say that God was disobeyed and so his wrath was stirred. I think its much more sad and tragic than that. The Lord had created these children to live in the trusting, loving relationship that she enjoyed as herself; God had created room for the Community of Love to be experienced. In the moment of choice, the creation rejected both Community and Love. The course of the Story was altered from its intended trajectory.

This crisis was devastating and cataclysmic, but it would not have the last word. It WILL not have the last word. Even in the midst of great crisis, when Creation rejected the relationship of love and community and instead launched into selfishness and isolation...The Creator continued going to his creation. He called a man named Abraham and made a covenant with him. The Lord God blessed Abraham and promised that through him all peoples on earth would be blessed...in fact, all of creation would be blessed.

As the children of Israel continued year after year to cycle through seasons of confusion and clarity, The Lord kept going back to them seeking to restore and reconcile community with her creation. He patiently taught and corrected and reminded and invited and urged and groaned and pleaded. The Community could not stand to see creation languishing in isolation.

The sending relationship with great leaders and the inspiration of great prophets continued until the Community of Love decided that ambassadors would no longer suffice. Once again, God would walk in the garden with his creation. Once again the missionary God sent himself - which is the nature of true love and true community. And Jesus the Christ walked among us.

Jesus gathered a community around himself and continually invited the broken, overlooked, forgotten and oppressed to rejoice because the Community of God was at hand; it was here and they were invited in.

When the time came for Jesus to return to the Father, the Spirit was sent. The Spirit wasn’t sent to wander aimlessly. She came to form and cultivate community in the Church in anticipation of experiencing Community on earth as it is in heaven. The Spirit called for the community of believers to be sent to the ends of the earth; continuing the ministry to which Jesus had dedicated himself, continuing the ministry to which God had called Abraham, continuing the ministry which God initiated in the first garden, continuing the Act that began in the beginning, continuing the character of the One who was Community before the beginning. The missionary God who sends herself as Love has sent us in like fashion...

We see it everyday in a thousand ways. Walking down the fluorescent lit halls of our high school, they’re there...whispering, judging, huddled together like the impenetrable phalanx of Spartan warriors. Enter any public space: a bar, the mall, a dark alley...even most church buildings and there they are again. Notice your friends, yourself even, and perhaps you will recognize with astonishment that they are still present...even in the mirror.

Sometimes they give themselves a name and go to battle against other theys - sometimes with tanks, sometimes with machetes and assault rifles, sometimes with stolen firearms and knives, sometimes with words.

They are us. Humanity. Struggling to find meaning and belonging in the midst of a deeply scarred and broken world. Whether we’re talking about nations, religions, factions, gangs, fraternities or cliques the dynamic is the same. We long for connection and as I once heard someone say, “when we’re dying of thirst we’ll gladly drink water we know is poisonous.”

The story of Scripture - our story - reveals that this longing is natural, it was placed within us in the very act of creation by a God who exists in community.

We miss the power of the Story when we make it about rules and retribution, about medieval honor codes and penal substitution. We miss the story altogether when we make it about justifying our desperate groupings’ existence at the expense of another’s.

The Story is about the God who created out of love and is compelled by that same love to heal, reconcile and restore...The Story not only explains the origins of our longing, but also describes the landscape of those longings fulfilled. The story gives us a hope-full picture not only of an alternative vision of existence than that in which we currently dwell, but also of the lengths to which God is going to make that existence a tangible reality...on earth as it is in heaven.

This is a story worth telling. It is the story we long for...it is the story that yearns to be told. It is the story that sheds light on and deserves to replace every tale of mangled attempt at connection. It is the story that explains why we will kill to belong to a group...and calls us instead to die in order to find true belonging.

And because the story so deeply important, it is not a story that can be controlled and retold merely by a select few. It is your story, it is my story. We each have a unique translation and we are each called to share this story, through our presence and through our proclamation, with those we meet as we go along.

The Missionary God who sends Godself as Love has sent us in like fashion.

So, This Story is Kinda Long...

I just finished 5 weeks of preaching at Christ Journey on the topic of Sabbath. My suspicion going into this series was that very few of us, particularly here in our faith community, really understand, appreciate or practice any type of Sabbath rhythm.

I think this suspicion was confirmed and (hopefully) overcome. Over the past month I’ve had people come to me and say, “I’m glad we did this, I never knew that Sabbath had anything at all to do with Christianity - I thought it was just an Old Testament thing like Passover or Kosher laws.” Another told me, “I was always taught that Sabbath was going to church and NOT GOING to movies or the mall on Sunday.”

What we spent this entire month considering were the ways in which a Sabbath rhythm could be cultivated (which basically means that we have an intentional time set aside each week to cease from work and the compulsion to produce and prove ourselves and instead embrace other things like rest, worship, feasting, remembering, celebrating and storytelling).

I admit fully that while I have a great affinity for the concept of Sabbath I am not always very good at practice. I can see the areas in my life that would be healthier and more satisfying were I to center myself in the practice of remembering God is God and I am not...but I do not do the thing I want to do and what I do not what to do, I do.

One concept which has come up quite a bit lately, through our Sabbath discussions as well as in other (seemingly) unrelated settings is the importance of story. Being good storytellers and story-hearers is important to our spiritual formation and it is also a reenactment of the Gospel of Jesus.

We discussed in a couple of the sermons that Sabbath itself is rooted in story - we are first introduced to Sabbath in the narrative of creation. It does not simply show up out of the blue in the middle of the Ten Commandments. In fact the command issued in Exodus 20 is to REMEMBER the Sabbath day. This story is formative.

Later when the Ten Commandments are retold to Israel in Deuteronomy 5 Sabbath is set within another story. Here the people are told to remember the Sabbath day as a way to remember that they were captives in Egypt and God rescued them and brought them to freedom. The Exodus story is central to understanding God’s relationship to humanity. We, the captives, cried out to God and he came near in order to set us free. He is not a God demanding constant production, like the Egyptian masters. He invites his people to rest in Him.

Jesus would later say that He came so that we might have life and have it to the fullest. He said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”

The hearing and telling of these stories - our stories in scripture - is central to participation in the life of faith. But that isn’t where the importance of story ends.

In the midst of one of our worship gatherings we had an opportunity for several couples to share stories. They were asked to talk about how God had worked in their lives in the past or where they were hoping to see God at work in the future.

I thought it was a great moment for our family when one couple shared what they thought were two unrelated stories. However after they shared their two stories we helped them to reinterpret their story. In fact the two were so closely connected that it was quite powerful - one talking about the struggle to find balance between providing for his family and spending time with them and the other talking about her struggle to forgive a father that failed to maintain that very balance.

We are a community that tells, retells and sometimes, reinterprets stories. It is what we do because it is precisely what God has done for us. The story of human existence was one of brokenness and despair. Sin, unchecked, destroys life after life with no compassion or mercy. God in his greatness did not allow this story to define us forever. Instead he stepped into the story and began redeeming and reconciling the characters. Humanity and all creation are in the process of being healed and restored by the Great Storyteller who was not happy with this tale ending in tragedy.

Where there are chapters of brokenness, God is editing and rewriting to include restoration. Where there is pain, God writes in healing; where there is chaos, God speaks a narrative of peace.

We too have that ability. We are able to tell the story in a new light. This isn’t to say that we stick our head in the sand and pretend that everything is okay. No, we step into the midst of a story that says everything is doomed and proclaim that in fact, there is hope. (Which was part of what happened at Marvelous Light)



Paul stepped into the midst of total relativism in Athens (Acts 17) and said, “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 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.”

Paul was able to reinterpret this story for the Athenians because he was willing to enter into their story in the first place. Had he simply stood outside the Areopagus and denounced their idolatry he would have had no impact whatsoever.

I recently heard a Christian say that they were unable to participate in Christmas activities because December 25 was an ancient pagan holiday associated with the Winter Solstice and the practices of Christmas originate in the worship of Saturnalia and other pagan gods.

It may be jarring to learn for the first time that there were religious celebrations associated with winter and even December 25 prior to Christ. While this may be difficult if you didn’t know about it, it isn’t a great deception.

In (I believe) 350, Pope Julius declared that the celebration of the birth of Christ would take place on December 25. This happened when many pagans were being forced to convert to Christianity. The move, while certainly containing the risk of syncretism, retold this story - which was always one of hope.

And theirs was a good story. The worship may have been false, but the concept was one of hope in a higher power that could rescue humanity from the powers of nature which were so threatening.

In fact, the practice of bringing an evergreen tree into one’s home was meant as a reminder that life would return even though the harsh cold winter seemed an unstoppable ally of death.

And Christianity retold this story. “Yes” we were able to say, “there is hope in the darkest of times; yes we can look forward to resurrection of life from the dead - but not because we’ve properly coerced the pagan gods but rather because the One True God has become one of us in order to be life and light in this darkness.” In other words, “So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship - and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

Granted, the early church’s use of power and coercion was not something I believe to be Christlike. There were probably many pagans who simply used Christian language while maintaining their pagan beliefs - just as there are many Africans today who struggle with syncretism...and many Americans who baptize their consumerism and greed.

For Christians not to celebrate Christmas - at a time when the whole world is just a little more receptive to hearing the story of God coming near - seems to me to be a tragic missed opportunity to engage in this story. This story has been reinterpreted, retold and redeemed. For those who used (or use) the winter solstice to worship gods which are unable to actually save, we say, “Do not be afraid. We bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” And because this story has been redeemed we can claim it as our story...because that it what it has become, it is a new creation!

I love the season of Advent - which is focused on anticipation of God coming near; the season of Christmas - which is focused on the arrival of our hope in the form of a Savior; the season of Easter - which is the fulfillment of our hope through the victory of Christ over sin and death. These seasons are filled with storytelling cues which can be incredibly powerful...and they can also prime the pump for the story to be told to those who’ve never heard.

I love the music, the decorations, the preparation for Christmas...there is no denying that something is happening. This story is just begging to not only be told, but to be experienced and entered into.

Now if we want to have a conversation about letting Christmas be an excuse to become self-centered materialists...well that’s an altogether different story.