August 26, 2007 - Simba the Apprentice

Pentecost 13
August 26, 2007
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
W. Gregory Pope

SIMBA THE APPRENTICE: (
Intentional Spiritual Formation:
Being and Making Disciples)

Matthew 28:16-20; Galatians 5:22-23

In the movie “Meet the Parents” there is a scene when a girl brings home her fiancé, played by Ben Stiller, to meet her parents. He also meets her brother, played by Owen Wilson, who says he is a carpenter because that’s what Jesus was, and our goal is to be like Jesus.

Is that what being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, is all about? Does it mean we should all become carpenters? Or does following Jesus mean something more?

We are thinking together these days about five congregational practices vital to our life together.

We began three weeks ago with the practice of Radical Hospitality, offering the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ. This Wednesday evening we will engage in a congregational conversation about how we can best practice Radical Hospitality in this place. We strive to be a place of hospitality not in order to survive as an institution or to develop a stronger financial base. It’s not about launching a membership drive for a civic organization or inviting people to join a club in order to enhance revenue through dues. We practice hospitality because the fundamental purpose for which the church exists is to draw people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ and to see how this changes lives.

And so we seek to provide life-transforming encounters with the presence of God through Meaningful Worship, which was the subject of our conversation two weeks ago. Worship is the essential gathering of the people of God as a place where God shapes souls and changes hearts and transforms lives.

But growing in Christ requires and depends on more than what happens during a weekly period of worship. This leads us to a third practice, the topic of our conversation today: Intentional Spiritual Formation.


Brian McLaren says that the mission of the church is “to be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world.”1

The congregational practice of Intentional Spiritual Formation has to do with being purposeful about disciple-making. Learning the way of Jesus and growing in Christ-likeness does not come easily or automatically. We have to be intentional about our own spiritual formation and make sure there are opportunities here for others to grow spiritually. Bill Johnson, whose 25th anniversary we celebrated last week - wasn’t that a great day? - he has led us well toward this goal. And we will continue to search for new ways to become more deeply nurtured in the way of Jesus.

Spiritual Formation is the work of God’s Spirit within us. As we mature in Christ, God cultivates in us the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the qualities to which the Christian aspires; these are the qualities God’s Spirit forms in us as we deepen our relationship with God. The end toward which we strive is having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.

The history of the church has taught us that Spiritual Formation happens best in community. McLaren calls us to be and make disciples in authentic community, where life is shared on a deep level. It is true that spiritual growth requires solitude. Jesus often went up into the mountains alone to pray and be with God. But we learn the practice of faith best with others. It was in community that Jesus taught his disciples. Learning in community gives disciples a network of support, encouragement, direction, and accountability as we seek to grow in Christ.

Our calling is to join together in authentic community and to be intentional about being and making disciples of Jesus Christ. No matter what else we do in this place, if we do not make disciples we have failed. If our worship does not make us better disciples of Jesus, then our worship is in vain. If every building is renovated and beautiful, but those buildings are not used to make us better disciples, then we build the house in vain. If we have a thousand people in worship and offerings of three million dollars a year, but fail to make disciples, all we would have are impressive numbers. Being disciples and making disciples - that is the church’s reason for being.

What is a disciple? Dallas Willard speaks of being a disciple in terms of being an apprentice to Jesus. Our view of what an apprentice is may have been distorted by Donald Trump’s television “reality” show, where people ferociously compete against one another for a position of wealth and power. Sometimes you join together with others in competition against another group, but you are always in competition with those in your group. And all the time you live in fear of Trump the slave-driving master. This is a perfect example of the kind of story our culture wants us to live in. However, being an apprentice to Jesus is not about wealth, power, or competition.

Dallas Willard defines an apprentice as:

someone who has decided to be with another person, under appropriate conditions, in order to be capable of doing what that person does or to become what that person is.2 (REPEAT)


We do not learn Jesus as an object of study but rather as a personal presence in our lives. To become an apprentice of Jesus is to decide to be with him in order to better do what Jesus does and be who Jesus is. A disciple is a learner, an apprentice of Jesus. To be a disciple is to commit your life to following in the way of Jesus. Instead of wealth, power, and competition, we learn the way generosity, humility, servanthood, and community.

It is the task of the church to be a community of Christian formation. We are to help each other follow in the way of Jesus. Through Christian Spiritual Formation we seek to be formed into people who embody the life and teachings of Christ: loving enemies, helping the needy, being an advocate for the poor, offering grace to the wounded, living generously, growing spiritually.

We invite people into the life Jesus lived - the lessons he taught, the people he touched, the healing he offered, the forgiveness he gave, the love he showed, and the sacrifice he made - as the only life worth living.3 We’re not just talking about making nice people, but about God remaking people into a new creation.

As a community of Christian formation, we teach the foundational truths and basic stories of our faith handed down over 3000 years - the Ten Commandments and the Exodus, the Sermon on the Mount and the life of Jesus. We teach each other how to read the Bible seriously. We teach our children what is right and take delight in them. And we use not only words and books, but sacrament and song and the example of our very lives. We make sure we are all grounded in the basics of our faith.

Next month I am beginning a 25-week class for that very purpose for those fairly new to faith and those who never felt like they received a good foundation for the Christian life. We need to be grounded in the basics.

We also need to learn to think critically about the faith, asking questions, making faith our own. We do all of this for the purpose of developing a relationship with God that forms us into the likeness of Christ so that we might make a difference in our world. That’s what it means to be a community of Christian formation. It is not easy. It is not cheap.

David Buttrick, professor of preaching at Vanderbilt Divinity School, told the story of a small town in Michigan the week following 9/11. People across the town began to notice sheets of purple paper appearing in the stores. These purple leaflets were in the gas stations, the restaurants, the taverns, the cleaners, everywhere. On the purple sheets, beginning at the top and going all the way to the bottom, was a list of phrases:

Blessed are the peacemakers
Love your enemies
Do not retaliate
If you forgive, your heavenly Father will forgive you


They are, of course, the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Buttrick said as he sat there in Suzi’s Restaurant with the purple piece of paper in his hand reading the words, a man seated next to him looked over and said, “I don’t know what them words are, but they don’t sound right to me.”

And he is right. In our world the words of Jesus are strange. They don’t sound right to our ears. Even in the church where we have traded in costly discipleship for comfortable membership his words sound odd. We live by another story and other values.

The rock band, Nickelback, recently released a song called “Rockstar” which through hyperbole describes the foolishness of our culture’s goals. Listen to a sample of the lyrics:

I want a brand new house on an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in.
And a king size tub big enough for ten plus me.

I need a credit card that’s got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it.

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and James Dead is fine for me.

I think I’m gonna dress my[self] in the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to blow my money for me.

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name

Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We’ll all stay skinny ‘cause we just won’t eat
And we’ll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars

Hey hey I wanna be a rockstar4

Brian McLaren addresses this cultural story in his forthcoming book Everything Must Change. He talks about a “covert curriculum” our culture teaches that is at great odds with the curriculum of Christian spiritual formation, and how if we want to be change agents in the world we must uncover the curriculum and teach a new one.


He says the common lesson plan that underlies forty thousand commercials tells us we can eat desirable foods and not get fat, or if we do get fat, we can surgically remove the unwanted tissue. And it doesn’t matter where our food comes from. We can drive a new car every year or two and not go into debt. We can titillate our sexual appetite and not hurt ourselves or our families. And the common script that underlies our most popular movies and video games shows us that the way to defeat bad guys is through violence that will always bring a happy ending with no negative consequences. Because the next time we play the video game, the children and grandchildren of our last game’s casualties aren’t waiting to inflict revenge.

And then McLaren offers a series of questions about this covert curriculum:

What is the covert curriculum in our culture regarding aging and death? What are we taught about gray hair, wrinkled skin, changing body shape, and failing health - except that these facts of life are embarrassing and to be feared or covered up in some way? What use does this denial of death and aging serve? Could it be that if we were to think more deeply about our mortality, we would see how silly and ridiculous so many of our culture’s obsessions really are?

Who profits from making us fear aging, death, celibacy, fidelity, marriage, parenthood, or wearing last year’s hot brand name?

What are we being taught each day, covertly, about prosperity? About security? About what human beings are worth and what human life is for?

The church, McLaren says, must be a community of people who begin to wake up to this covert curriculum in which we swim every day, a curriculum that is killing us, and we must band together to talk about it, and help one another not be sucked in by it.

We must develop intentional practices of spiritual formation so that we and our children for generations to come will be able to learn, live, and grow as part of the solution, as agents of healing, as revolutionaries seeking to dismantle and subvert this suicidal system, instead of serving it and preserving it.

McLaren writes: “It would be an exciting thing to be a part of: a community that forms disciples who work for the liberation and healing of the world, based on Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God. Groups like this wouldn’t need buildings, pipe organs, rock bands, layers of institutional structure, video projectors, parking lots, and so on . . . although having these things wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, and could possibly be useful. What they would need would be simple: a passion to understand Jesus and his message and a commitment to live out that understanding in a world in which everything must change.”5


We create that kind of community through the regular practice of worship that gives us an interpretive lens through which to view the world, helping us see events, relationships, and issues through God’s eyes. In a world where people are immersed in a context of fierce individualism, acquisitive consumerism, intense nationalism, political partisanship, hopeless negativism, and naive optimism, worship helps people perceive themselves, their world, their relationships, and their responsibilities in ways shaped by the kingdom of God.6 And we engage in the other spiritual practices of prayer and solitude and contemplation and service that continue to nurture a new way of living in the world.

My family and I were given a generous gift a few weeks ago to attend the marvelous production of Lion King at the Kentucky Center. There is a scene in which the adolescent Simba who has been running from himself, his guilt, and his responsbility is chased down by the truth about himself. His Father appears to him and says, “Simba, you are more than you have become.” Aren’t we all?

Church is a place where we learn to receive the love of God and discover God’s acceptance of us just as we are. It is also the place where when we’ve sold ourselves short and given up on ourselves, hiding, escaping, living a lesser life, we gather to hear the truth that we are more than we have become. And we see and hear a vision of who God created us to be, a vision of who we have the power to become. The purpose of Intentional Spiritual Formation is to become all God created us to be and to live by a story that God is writing rather than the story coerced upon us by the destructive values of this world.

Are you ready to live in a different story than the nightmare of competition, consumerism, and destruction this world is writing? Are you ready to live in God’s story of a new creation? Are you ready to end your apprenticeship to the power brokers of this culture and enter fully and completely into an apprenticeship with Jesus? The choice belongs to each of us. The task belongs to all of us.
____________

1. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, 107
2. Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy
3. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 20
4. Nickelback, “Rockstar”
5. Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2007, 299-303. This book is due to be published in October of 2007. I am grateful to Emily (Mulloy) Prather, an editor at Thomas Nelson, for allowing me to read an advanced copy. This book is a must read!
6. Schnase, 39

August 12, 2007 - Meaningful Worship

The following is a text copy of Greg's sermon with opportunity to post your blog response at the end -- jwa


Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 11
August 12, 2007
W. Gregory Pope

MEANINGFUL WORSHIP:

LIFE-TRANSFORMING ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD

Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 12:1-8

We are thinking these days at Crescent Hill about five practices of vibrant, growing, faithful congregations. Last week we talked about the practice of radical hospitality, where congregations offer the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ so that people experience a sense of belonging, connection, and acceptance. We do that because we believe a part of God dwells in each person. Namaste.

But for what purpose are we practicing hospitality, inviting and welcoming people to this place, providing sacred space for belonging, connection, and acceptance?

We will answering that question over the next few weeks. The part of the answer we will talk about today is the practice of Meaningful Worship. We extend hospitality in the hope that the people who accept our invitation will encounter the living God in ways that will transform their lives.

DISSECTING THE SERMON TITLE

Worship

Worship is one of the most significant spiritual practices God uses to shape souls and open hearts and change minds and behaviors and lives. Worship can also create a desire to grow closer to Christ. “I am the vine,” Jesus said, “and you are branches.” Worship connects the branches to the vine; it keeps us connected to the source of life, and helps us grow in Christ.[1]

We gather in community for worship because worship supports and nourishes all other ministries of the congregation, giving life, vision, direction, and encouragement to the whole Body of Christ.

Meaningful

Meaningful Worship connects us with God and with one another. It opens our lives to God’s grace and to the hearing and doing of God’s Word, and forms us as the Body of Christ.

Meaningful Worship is authentic, engaging, alive, creative, passionate, and understandable.

It takes tradition seriously but it doesn’t follow tradition blindly. We should not do something in worship simply because the historical liturgy of the church says it should be done. However, we should pay attention and give thought to what the church has done in worship for over 2000 years, as well as what Israel did 2000 years before that. It is arrogant to assume we have nothing to learn from the history of the church’s worship. At the same time, it is meaningless to do something just because it has always been done or because the official liturgical police (whoever they are and wherever they are hiding) say it must be done.

We are here to worship God, and every action and ritual, every song and sermon, reading and prayer, silence and gesture should have purpose and be done with intentionality.

Life-Transforming

Meaningful Worship offers the possibility of an encounter with the life-changing presence of God in the presence of others.

Our scripture lesson this morning from Romans calls upon us to “be transformed.” Hospitality extends the welcome of God to all just as we are. Worship helps transform us into who we were created to be.

Meaningful Worship changes people and changes the way we experience our whole lives. It changes how we view ourselves and our neighbors. It deepens our understanding of life and our relationship to God. “An hour of [Meaningful] Worship changes all the other hours of the week.”[2]

“God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change, inspire compassion, and bind people to one another.”[3]

Meaningful Worship includes those “aha” moments that change and mold us, “the touch of transcendence that pulls us out of ourselves.”[4]

But the transformation that happens to us in worship depends in large part upon what we bring to worship. The attitude and expectation we bring to worship will shape our experience as much as what we find in worship. Meaningful Worship requires a preparing of the heart, mind and soul before attending worship.

What kind of attitude and eagerness do you bring with you to worship? Is there a love for God? Is there an eagerness for relationship with God? Is there a desire to open yourself to God’s grace? Are you here to be changed?

Many times we unconsciously enter worship in the evaluative posture of someone preparing a movie critique. But we are not here to observe and evaluate. We are here to receive what God offers and to offer our best in response.

In order for worship to be meaningful and carry with it the possibility of transformation, we must always have an ear to what God is saying to us . .
.....through the words of scripture, even if they are read imperfectly
....through the sermon, even if the illustrations are weak
....through the prayers and Holy Communion, even if there are stammerings and stutters.through the unifying power of music, even if it’s not your favorite style, or is not the best you’ve ever heard.

The question to consider before worship is this: Am I intending to allow God’s Spirit to form me, change me, transform me through these actions of worship, or am I intending to evaluate the quality of entertainment?

And the question to consider upon leaving a service of worship is not: “What did I get out of it? but rather “What did I leave at the altar? What offering did I make? What part of myself did I give to God? And what difference will it make in my life?”

Not every worship service will transform your life. But the hope of worship is that little by little, week by week, small changes will take place that will help you follow Christ more closely, examine your life more deeply, and listen to God more clearly.

A lyric in a hymn may become more true for you. A line in a prayer or a sermon may become the words of your heart. God may speak in the silence. The swelling music may lift you out of your despair - if only for a moment, or the week, or a season. Wounds old and fresh may begin to heal.

James Finley writes: “The call of God is like a gradual, subtle, stirring that grows within us, perhaps unnoticed, like a small flower unfolding in an enclosed garden.”[5] Worship is like that sometimes.

And sometimes, as with Paul something might happen that knocks us to the ground. God’s voice may become so clear, an encounter with the living God so overwhelming - that your life dramatically changes. We might have to call it an F.R.E. - Frankfort Road Encounter.


Encounter

That leads to another word in the sermon title - Encounter. That word was intentionally chosen over the word “experience.” There is a danger in worship that we seek an experience of God rather than God.

To quote Finley again: “It is not an experience of God we seek but the living God inherent in, yet transcending, all experience.”[6]

If we focus on the experience, we will continue to find ourselves in need of experiences to sustain our spiritual life. When God is who need most.

God

God is the focus and theme of every service of worship.



Encountering the Holy Otherness of God - Praising / Exalting God

God is clearly the focus of Isaiah’s encounter in the temple.

The text that called us into worship today illustrates the essence of true worship. As Isaiah tells of worship, God is encountered as Holy Other. Eyes are covered. Smoke fills the holy place. God’s presence is too illuminating to be fully seen with the human eye. And the angels sing: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

Note that Isaiah is not at the center of this encounter. God is. Worship is about who God is and what God is calling us to be and do. And so, we praise and exalt God for who God is and what God has done in the world and in our lives.

Confession

In such an encounter with the holiness and grandeur of God, we are reminded of the ways in which we have failed to be and do all that God has created us to be and do. And so, like Isaiah, we are moved to confess our sins.

We do so as a community and as an individual.

Community

Isaiah confessed the sinfulness of the people of which he was a part. He said, “I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” In worship, we confess the sins of the world, even those sins we did not commit. We acknowledge before God, on behalf of the world, actions that are wrong.

I know some of you do not like corporate confession because you are perhaps being asked to confess sins you did not commit. But worship is not just personal. It’s about the community and the world of which you are a part. As the body of Christ we are members of one another, and we often share in the sins of others by association.

It is important that we acknowledge our sin as a people, whether or not we have knowingly participated in the particulars. I say knowingly because there is sin we often participate in without our knowing. And confessing our sins as a community may help us confess things we would not normally confess or realize we need to confess.

Personal

And then there must be time for the personal confessing of our own sins in times of silence and response. Isaiah said, “I am lost. I am a person of unclean lips.” Personal confession.

The purpose of confession is not to evoke shame or self-hatred. The purpose of confession is honesty. Confession bridges the chasm between what God already knows and what we are willing to acknowledge about ourselves.

Forgiveness

And our honesty is met by God’s forgiving grace. God’s pardon frees us from guilt and empowers us to live lives of truth and righteousness.

We need worship because worship is, I believe, the most likely setting for people to encounter the opportunity for a renewed relationship with God. It is not the only setting, but perhaps the best. Where better is a person likely to speak honestly with God and at the same time realize that she or he is pardoned, forgiven, loved, and accepted by God.

Worship is an invitation to truth and grace.

The Invitation to Act

Worship also includes an invitation to act. In Isaiah’s encounter with God he heard God ask: Who will go into the world for me? Who will speak and serve in my name?

Worship is not a sweet hour of prayer that calls us from a world of care. Worship is a dangerous and surprising hour of prayer that calls us into the world to care for the world and act in the world. Scripture, song and sermon call us to faithfulness and invite us to live for God in the world, doing what God needs done, saying what God needs said.

And so, every service of worship calls for a moment of decision.

I ask you now to open your bulletin and look down to everyone’s favorite part, the moment the sermon ends. Well, that may be everyone’s second favorite part, second to the postlude, which many worshipers understand as the dinner bell.

Up until the moment the sermon ends, we have been called into worship, to praise God and exalt God as Creator of the universe and the only rightful Lord of our lives. We have invoked God’s presence, welcoming God into our midst for the purpose of receiving our praise and changing our lives. We have listened for God’s Word through song and scripture and sermon, including the voices of children.

Silence and Prayer

Following the sermon, we pause in silence to reflect upon what all of this might mean for our lives. Opportunities for decision are going to follow the prayer. So we need to listen to God.

The silence is for listening to the Spirit of God. In the silence God may say what has not yet been said in worship. Or God may return our thoughts to what has already been said. In the silence, you may even want to look back over the order of worship to recall what has happened, or in your heart and mind think back over the service - the songs that were sung, the many profound things you heard in the sermon (too numerous to count) - and prayerfully consider what God might be saying to you through these actions and rituals of worship.

And the Prayers of the People, often voiced by one person, give voice before God to the concerns and needs of our world, our congregation, and our own individual hearts.

Following the prayer, the order of worship is going to change from how we’ve been doing it. We’re trying this change in order to be more intentional about how respond to God in worship.

Three invitations will be given. Who says we’re not evangelical?

Invitation to Discipleship and Community

There will be the invitation to discipleship and community.

You may decide to commit yourself to being a disciple, to walking in the way of Jesus. It may be a first time commitment to be followed by baptism at a later date. Or you may renew your commitment to discipleship. Every week, in some way, should include a renewal to walk more faithfully in the way of Jesus.

You may decide to enter into community with this congregation. Discipleship is lived in community. We do not walk with Jesus alone. We walk with one another.

During the hymn of response is the time we make public our decision to be a disciple or to enter into community with the congregation.

Invitation to Serve

Following the hymn of response comes the invitation to serve, to minister.

This is where I would ask you to listen carefully.

No matter how you have seen this time in the past, I want to share with you my intention for this time.

You may have noticed I shared a few announcements at the very beginning of worship today. We called that point in the service “The Greeting and Life of the Church.” From now on we will use that time to announce any meetings or change in schedule.

During the time following the hymn of response we will extend invitations to serve. Anything you come forward with needs to be presented as an invitation to serve. If you are uncertain as to whether what you have to say is an announcement or an invitation to serve, please call me and we can decide together. In fact, it would be helpful, if you would let me know during the week if you want to extend an invitation to serve, so that I will know in advance, or Bill or Josh will know if they are leading this time.

Grace will flow freely today if you have an announcement to make since you did not know of this change ahead of time. But let us seek to be more intentional about this crucial moment in worship as an invitation to serve. As a time when we are listening for ways to be the Body of Christ in the world. As a time of considering how our worship of God and the gifts God has given us are lived out in the world, the community, and the larger life of the church. If what we do in here doesn’t extend beyond the sanctuary, then all we have done is play church.

At this time you will also hear who within our congregation needs your prayers and your acts of compassion this week.

Invitation to Make an Offering/Commitment

Having heard the invitations to serve, and having listened for the Voice of God’s Spirit throughout worship, you are given a third invitation - to make on offering of yourself and your possessions.

This is a time to respond as faithfully as you can to the question: What is God calling you to do?

What is God calling you to give? And you are provided the opportunity to give of your possessions as the offering plate is passed.

Where is God inviting you to serve? What commitment is God calling you to make? We are providing space for you in the bulletin to write down what you feel God is calling you to do. Keep the bulletin with you and pray about it in the upcoming week. Use the time of offering to make a personal commitment to God.

Doxology

Then we will rise to our feet in doxology, praising God from whom all blessings flow, the God who deserves our very lives.

Benediction

And then we will be seated to receive the benediction, literally “good words,” words of blessing. In benediction, we are sent out of the sacred space of sanctuary as the blessed people of God to live the commitments we have made.

Silence

And in the final silence, we bask in the blessing of God, renewed to follow Jesus and serve in his name.

CONCLUSION

Worship is not a presentation by others. It is not a self-help seminar. Worship is not about what we receive from God; worship is about giving ourselves to God, making God the center of our lives. Meaningful Worship is a lifting of our hearts to God in praise, confession, and commitment. It is an encounter with the God who transcends us, yet graciously meets us in this hour with divine presence, with words of guidance, with the purifying flame of forgiveness, and the call to be transformed, to be our true selves, to be who we have been created to be.

What offering will you make today? What part of yourself will you offer to God?

___________

1. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 53

2. Ibid., 40

3. Ibid., 34

4. Ibid., 43

5. James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, Ave Maria Press, 1978, 88-89).

6. Ibid., 79

August 5, 2007 - Namaste

The following is a text copy of a sermon preached Aug 5 and is published here with blog response opportunities provided. -jwa

Pentecost 10
August 5, 2007
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
W. Gregory Pope

NAMASTE
(Radical Hospitality: Becoming an Inviting And Connecting Community)
Luke 10:25-37

Today I begin with you a series of holy conversations beginning with five sermons centered in five practices I believe are essential for every vibrant, growing, and faithful congregation. They are: Radical Hospitality. Meaningful Worship. Intentional Spiritual Formation. Risk-Taking Mission and Service. Extravagant Generosity.

The conversations begin with my sermon and continue through your writing on the back of your bulletin insert. You may also enter the blog on our website. We will also be talking together on Wednesday evenings this fall around these practices. I invite you to prayer and deep reflection on how God is calling us to practice these things as we begin a new century of ministry.

Today our theme is the practice of Radical Hospitality, extending the gracious invitation and welcome of Christ so that all who walk through these doors and all whom we encounter throughout the week may experience a sense of connection and belonging to God’s people and to the God who welcomes us all.

Jesus and a lawyer were walking down the road. The lawyer says to Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to enter God’s way of life?” Jesus asked him what he found in the law. And the man gives the right answer: “To love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Being a lawyer, he’s a man of the fine print. So he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” We ask that question too. Are our neighbors only those in Crescent Hill, or does it include Clifton and St. Matthews, or all of Louisville? Do we have to extend our love across the river into Indiana, or across the ocean into other lands? And are my neighbors limited to moderate, progressive Baptists? Those who like my kind of worship? Those who see the world as I do? Those of my culture and nationality? Those who speak my language?

The man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus responds by telling a story about a stranger lying in the ditch beat up and left for dead. The Baptist preacher and the liturgical musician pass by the man in need.

Then someone comes along who embodies the neighbor. One version says he was a Samaritan. Another version says he was a member of Al-queda. And yet another said he was a member of the Burmese government. Whatever the version, the one who stopped to help, the one who acted like a neighbor, was the enemy of the hearers of the story. And the neighborly act to which Jesus calls us is to love the unknown stranger lying in the ditch in need of our help.

This story defines for us the radical nature of Christian hospitality. Scripture tells us that if we say we love God but do not love others who are in need, we are liars. And those others we are called to love include strangers and enemies.

Extending hospitality to the stranger and the enemy on the roads we travel is not an easy task. There are obstacles.

There is the obstacle of fear, fear that chokes out love. We have become a fearful people, haven’t we, suspicious of strangers and outsiders. And hospitality is scary. But it’s worth the risk. Because unless we find a way to open ourselves to others and practice courageous hospitality, our world will grow even more isolated and frightening and hostile.

There is the obstacle of prejudice, which is often rooted in fear. In fact, when we are confronted with the need to respond with radical hospitality we are often confronted with prejudices we did not know we had. And so hospitality becomes an act of spiritual formation for us, where we learn to love the stranger as Christ loves the stranger - without prejudice.

There is the obstacle of narcissism. We don’t want to inconvenience ourselves. And hospitality in the way of Jesus will inconvenience you. It will inconvenience the church that thinks only of itself and its preservation of the way it has always been. It has been said that “the biggest obstacle to Hospitality is not the state of the world. It is the state of our hearts. It is the comfort we crave so badly that we will do almost anything for it.”1 Hospitality rearranges our way of living.

Hospitality costs. It may be the simple cost of giving up the last brownie during the coffee time or giving up your seat or waking up early to drive a van or listening to the story of another or opening your wallet to meet needs.

The Good Samaritan took the needy stranger to a place where he could get help and then he paid the tab. Hospitality costs. It requires us to risk entering the pain of others. If we do we will be changed. You cannot engage human pain and remain unchanged. But that is the beauty of it. It will cost you everything and you will gain everything.2 In taking on the pain of others we act in the transformation of human lives.

Hospitality costs because hospitality serves. Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve others. So we are here not to be served but to put the needs of the guest and stranger before your own. To invite the guest and stranger to a place of connection and acceptance and home.

Christian hospitality is an invitation to home. We live in a world of profound homelessness. There are those literally without a place to live. And those whose homelessness runs even deeper. Frank Woggon sometimes wears a t-shirt that says, “Not all who wander are lost.” And while that is true, it is also true that many are deeply lost, wandering around in the world as if it were a wasteland, void of meaning and connection. They are homeless.

In the face of such homelessness, the church must recover a more radical sense of home. The home of every human being is the heart of God. But the church is the physical manifestation of God’s home, the place from which we extend hospitality.

Hospitality’s invitation has an outward focus, a reaching out to those not yet known, a genuine love that motivates us to be open and adaptable, with a willingness to change in order to accommodate the needs of the stranger-guest.

A congregation of radical hospitality focuses its creativity and energy on those outside the congregation with as much passion as they attend to those within the congregation. Hospitality extends beyond the walls of the church to live with what one has called an “invitational posture,”3 a willingness and desire to go out of our way, even at the risk of awkwardness and inconvenience, to invite and welcome people into the life and ministry of the church.

To adopt an invitational posture changes everything the church does. It is about seeking a culture of hospitality that extends into all ministries of the church. With every ministry, we consider how to reach the stranger and guest as well as those who are not yet present. We do it with passion and with joy because we know our invitation is the invitation of Christ. Hospitality invites.

Hospitality seeks to make connections and build relationships. “There is a big loneliness at the center of every person”4 that is meant to lead us to God and to others. We all need to know that we are not alone. We yearn for a hand that will reach out for ours. We both want and fear connecting with others. But deep down, we all want to know that when we face life’s difficulties we are surrounded by a community of grace, people who care for us. A congregation of radical hospitality seeks to make sure those connections happen and that opportunities for meaningful relationships are available.

Hospitality makes connections and builds relationships by listening and giving attention. Hospitality doesn’t require you to pour out your soul and share your deepest secrets with every stranger you meet. It’s not about making everyone your best friend. It’s about responding to the everyday, simple needs of others. Being a person of hospitality involves getting out of myself for long enough periods that I can really listen to other people, and give attention to what they might need at this moment. Listening will break your heart, but it will also give you a heart. Every encounter of hospitality toward others affects you and affects the other. It fills the very deep need of the human heart to be heard.5

In addition to listening and paying attention to people’s lives, the greatest need hospitality seeks to meet is the human need of acceptance, the need to know and be known by others.

The Rule of Benedict that guides Benedictine monasteries does not require a visitor to understand and conform to belief systems or cultural norms. Instead all persons are received as they are and invited into a place where acceptance and compassion seek to generate the desire for God. Benedict’s way is the way of Christ, who welcomed without distinction. Hospitality says to every guest and stranger: “I welcome you to this place to share our life.”6

To provide a place of hospitality is to offer an acceptance of another who doesn’t have to prove anything, but just lets themselves be loved.

What we want most is acceptance. You probably can’t fully understand me, and I might not understand you, but we can accept each other. We tend to confuse acceptance with tolerance or even approval. But acceptance is about receiving, rather than judging. Acceptance is not about condoning; it is about embracing.

But why we do we extend such radical hospitality - inviting, connecting, serving, accepting?

We extend hospitality as the natural overflow of God’s love for us. Scripture says, “Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Connecting us to Israel, God’s people since ancient days, we are told, “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt and God led you home.” Hospitality springs from the place within us where God’s love for us dwells and our hearts overflow to share what we have received.

But most importantly, we extend hospitality because we believe that Christ resides within each person and that every person is sacred.

I’ve given hospitality the “radical” adjective. Radical means “getting to the root.” The root reason for hospitality is the belief that the living God resides in each person.

The writer of Hebrews says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)

The Rule of Benedict states that all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me. . . and just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:35, 40).

If we really believed this it would radically change our behavior toward strangers. If you want to know what a church thinks of Jesus watch how they treat strangers and guests.

The gospel calls us to treat every person we meet, as if they are Christ. “The message to the stranger is clear: Come right in and disturb our lives. You are the Christ for us today.”7

There is only one word on our marque out front this week. It is the word “Namaste.” It comes from the Eastern religious traditions. To say to another, “Namaste” is to say, “The part of the living God that lives and breathes in me bows down in reverence before the part of the living God that lives and breathes in you.”

Paul said the secret of the ages is this, it is Christ in you. And in me, and in everyone we meet. Everyone who comes to us is bearing the Christ. If Christ is in us, and if Christ is present in the others that we meet, then there are no moments in which Christ is not present. There may just be moments when we do not recognize him.

Christ is the elderly person next door, the one who fell on her steps in the dark and needs a meal every evening for the next month and has no family to prepare it for her. Christ is the student who cannot find a friend. Christ is there in the joy of the young couple down the street who are out every afternoon with their newborn in a stroller, just hoping that you will stop them and share in their joy. We do not have to go far to find Jesus. What we have to do is adopt a posture that allows us to see him.

Robert Benson remembers his father saying that when we get to heaven and see Jesus, our first thought is not going to be that we have never seen him before. Instead, we will grin and say, “It’s you, it’s you. I have seen you everywhere.” All of which changes the nature of every human contact, great or small, whether we are being the Christ or receiving the Christ, or somewhere in between.8

Hospitality is not about warm, fuzzy, social graces but about mutual reverence. Every man, woman, and child bears to us the presence of God. Benedict tells us to offer an open heart, a stance of availability, and to look for God lurking in every single person who comes through the door.

Have you ever noticed in the gospels how, at every turn, the disciples and Pharisees seem ready to draw boundaries and distinctions that would keep people at a distance. In every instance, Jesus radically challenges those prejudices by overstepping the boundaries to invite people in. Hospitality allows us to see people as Jesus sees them and to see Jesus in the people God brings before us.

Hospitality refuses to toss anyone aside. You can’t ignore people when you realize that God is looking out their eyes at you.9 Jesus said, “If you ignore them, you ignore me.” So Benedict says we must receive every person as if we are receiving Christ himself.

Several years ago there was a popular song by Joan Osborne titled “One of Us.” It asked, “What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home?” That is what Jesus said, that God is one of us, that God comes to us in the stranger, that we are all of us strangers on the bus of this world trying to make our way home.

Hospitality treats people respectfully, as if they are sacred, because they are. Hospitality is a call to revere the sacred in every person ever born. We reverence people not because they are pleasant or convenient, but because God is present in them.10

My hearts overflows with thanksgiving and praise for you as a congregation, and the ways in which you have opened your hearts and lives to the Karen refugees, especially the van drivers, nursery workers, Sunday School teachers, and all who have worked so closely with the Karen.

Can you imagine spending years of your life in refugee camps running for your life and for the safety of your children? They are strangers in America searching for a group of God’s people who will make a home for them. And I am grateful to you for the ways in which you have welcomed them as crazy and as confusing as it has been some times. We have been Christ to them, and they have been Christ to us. They have reminded us why we are in the first place.

There are still things yet for us to do to make all people welcome here. And I believe, with God’s help, we are up to the task. We are discovering that hospitality is an adventure that takes you where you never dreamed of going. It is more than something you do, it is something you enter, it is something you become. It is a way of being in the world. In genuine Hospitality we work to make our entire existence a welcoming table (as Christ does at the Table set before us). It’s about shaping a life that says “Welcome!” Hospitality, says one writer, is “the stance of the heart that is abandoned to Love.”11

As we draw near to the Table, I want to ask you to do something. I know we all have our pet-peaves about worship that in an act of hospitality we allow because it may be meaningful to others. I know that for some of you, the passing of the peace is something you would rather pass on. But when done with meaning and intentionality, it can be a beautiful act of hospitality.

Saint Benedict writes: “Never give a hollow greeting of peace, or turn away when someone needs your love.” At the monastery everyone is a guest, not just the visitor at the door, but the monks themselves. God is the host, but God also becomes the guest we receive in others. In the monastic image of the world, we are all guests, we are all travelers, we are all a little lost, and we are all looking for home.

As we move toward the table where Christ in great hospitality invites and welcomes us all, I invite you this morning to pass the peace in a different way. I only want you to get up if there is no one beside you or in front of you or behind you. If possible, remain in your seat and greet one another with the word “namaste,” meaning, “The part of the living God that lives and breathes in me bows down in reverence before the part of the living God that lives and breathes in you.” When you say the word “namaste,” allow your heart to bow in reverence at the God within each of you. And may that prepare us for the welcome of Christ at the table. Namaste.
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1. Daniel Homan and Lonni Pratt, Radical Hospitality, Paraclete Press, 2002, 16
2. Ibid., 197
3. Robert Schnase, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, Abingdon, 2007, 14
4. Homan and Pratt, 10
5. Ibid., 185-186, 213-216
6. Elizabeth Canham, Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom For Today, Upper Room, 1999, 49
7. Joan Chittister, The Rule of Benedict: Insights For the Ages, Crossroad, 1992, 141
8. Robert Benson, A Good Life: Benedict’s Guide to Everyday Joy, Paraclete, 2004, 53-55
9. Homan and Pratt, 10
10. Ibid., 73, 139-140
11. Ibid., 203

jwa- Inserted in the Sunday bulletin were three questions Greg asked regarding hospitality at CHBC:

1. In what ways have you experienced hospitality at CHBC?
2. What do you believe are obstacles to hospitality at CHBC?
3. What suggestions would you make in order to increase hospitality at CHBC?