October 2018

Lay Reader = 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

1Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.3When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

6So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

11Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

Introduction

We are still in our series looking at how Nehemiah dreamed of a better future and inspired others to help make it happen. Just to recap where we are in the story, Nehemiah had his heart broken by the suffering in Jerusalem. He had a vision to repair the walls and restore the city. He got the Persian king to invest in the project. Nehemiah faced the reality of the situation rather than a fantasy. And then he inspired the other leaders in the city to buy into the vision.

Now that Nehemiah has a vision based in reality, the resources he needs for the job, and the support of other capable teammates, let’s see what those teammates actually did in response.

Nehemiah 3:28-32

28Above the Horse Gate the priests made repairs, each one opposite his own house. 29After them Zadok son of Immer made repairs opposite his own house. After him Shemaiah son of Shecaniah, the keeper of the East Gate, made repairs. 30After him Hananiah son of Shelemiah and Hanun sixth son of Zalaph repaired another section. After him Meshullam son of Berechiah made repairs opposite his living quarters. 31After him Malchijah, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs as far as the house of the temple servants and of the merchants, opposite the Muster Gate, and to the upper room of the corner. 32And between the upper room of the corner and the Sheep Gate the goldsmiths and the merchants made repairs.

Above and Beyond

When was the last time you flew on a commercial jet? If you haven’t been on one in a few years, your memories might be better than today’s reality. But most airlines still pass out a snack – peanuts, pretzels, stuff like that. So I want you to try to remember – what’s the most memorable airline snack you’ve ever received? Anyone have a memorable airline snack story? Anyone?

I actually do. Southwest Airlines actually considers humor to be one of their core values. Not a nice add-on. One of their core values. And on one flight we were just starting to climb after taking off. And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something sliding past me on the aisle. Probably a kid dropped something, right? But then another slid past me. And another. And that’s when the flight attendant announced on the loud speaker, “To expedite the distribution of snacks, reach down and grab one as they come down the aisle.” He had released all the pretzel bags at the front of the plane, and they were sliding past for anyone to grab. That’s memorable! If you can make snack distribution memorable, you have officially gone above and beyond.

Nordstrom is another company that is legendary for going above and beyond. One of the cleaning staff found some bags of purchased clothes that had been left at the store – along with a flight itinerary inside the bag. He looked up the name in the store’s database and found a phone number. After multiple attempts without an answer, he realized that the customer was probably going through the security line at the airport based on the flight time. He called the airport and had them page the customer to let them know where the bags of clothes were. That’s serious commitment! That’s above and beyond.

Have you ever experienced something like that? A company or a person going above and beyond?

In our text today, we see a list of who repaired which sections of the wall. It starts off by listing the people who repaired the wall right across from their house. They helped the city and made their own back yards better in the process. Nothing wrong with that.

But then the scope of the repairs gets larger and larger. Finally, we get to Malchija, one of the goldsmiths. And he repairs this huge section of wall that extends way, way beyond his own back yard. He didn’t just pitch in a little bit to help his city, he went above and beyond. He was to the repair effort what Southwest and Nordstrom are to customer service. He was inspired to go above and beyond, not just for himself, but for his neighbors and for his city.

Has anyone ever gone above and beyond for you? Or have you ever gone above and beyond for someone else or for a cause you believe in?

Past Behavior

As you know, I was a computer programmer before becoming a pastor. And it’s interesting to see how people react differently depending on which company comes up with an idea. For instance, Microsoft just recently purchased the most popular system for sharing your computer code with other people. On one hand, it’s a nice investment in the global computer programmer community – this service needed money to keep going, and now it has it courtesy of Microsoft. But computer programmers have seen Microsoft’s past behavior, and they have the 3 E’s to describe it – embrace, extend, extinguish. In other words, Microsoft has frequently played nice at first, then added features that make the tool incompatible with others, then killed it off after their competitors go out of business. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Based on that past, Microsoft is viewed with two bucket-fulls of skepticism. Past behavior matters.

Or have you heard that Walmart is buying up-scale clothing brands? They actually bought one of my favorites – Bonobos. But instead of the up-scale brand improving my thoughts about Walmart, being owned by Walmart lowers my thoughts of the previously up-scale brand. It’s hard for me to feel like I’m getting truly up-scale quality at a place that predicates its whole business model on being the lowest price possible – even if you have to lower quality to get there. Past behavior matters.

When I was living in Pennsylvania, there was a somewhat infamous local developer. He had a rather abrasive manner of interacting, and he was always pushing the boundaries of what he could get away with in his zoning. That earned him opposition to every plan he proposed, because people assumed he was out to hose them somehow. Past behavior matters.

You can’t buy different values. You can’t purchase a new heart.

If you’re thinking about going above and beyond for someone else, how will they perceive you based on your past actions? Past behavior matters.

So if you feel like God is calling you to invest in a better relationship in your family, you can’t expect your family member to switch their impression of you immediately. If you’ve spent ten years being the my-way-or-the-highway person, you’re going to have to really commit to encouraging the other person to tell you their real opinion. You’ve spent ten years shutting them down, you’re going to have to earn their trust before they’ll start opening up.

If you feel like God is calling you to invest in a relationship in your neighborhood or at work, what message has your past behavior sent? Are you going to be welcomed? Are you going to be feared? Are you going to be respected? Are you going to be written off as a waste of time? Past behavior matters. And if you want things to be different, you’ve gotta be committed for a long time. You can’t try something new once or twice and then give up and say, “Well, I tried!”

Is God calling you to go above and beyond for someone? Is God calling you to go above and beyond for a cause you believe in? Not just the bare minimum, but surprisingly above and beyond like Malchijah? If so, how long will you need to be committed? Your past behavior will affect that answer.

Committed

When we first started the monthly Community Dinners, we decided to stay committed even if no one came. I remember those early dinners. Cooking for 40 and only having 12 show up – that can be defeating! But the leadership team was committed. Now we can see over a hundred! But it took commitment.

Where do you need to stay committed to see a different result?

I’m planning to stay committed to our neighborhood. I’ve shared before that when I was interviewing here I sent a friend who lives in the area to be an anonymous spy. I wanted to get the perspective of a first time visitor. And the number one impression I got back was, “Boy, those people sure like each other!”

And I think that is the fundamental essence of this church’s character. When we chose to help people with food, it wasn’t as a food bank. It started with Thanksgiving Dinner and then expanded to the Community Dinner. We sit down with people around a table and enjoy the relationships.

When we started a program for our…more seasoned members, it evolved into Saturday Lunch – a chance to sit down together to eat, to enjoy an interesting program, and to enjoy the relationships.

Why do people love to sing in the choir or play in the handbell choirs? Sure, they like to sing or play the handbells, but really they enjoy the relationships.

I’ve tried sending out materials that people can study – like going deeper with the sermon. Almost no one does it. But if we have a class or some other way to gather, it goes well. Because you get to enjoy the relationships.

Are you picking up on a theme?

I believe that our character, our past behavior, is enjoying relationships with each other. We really like each other. Most of the time. That’s who we are as a church. So when we think about going above and beyond for our neighbors, that’s our calling card. How can we help people enjoy relationships just like we enjoy each other?

I believe that is our specific niche. I believe that is what we are called to do and be. I believe we are called to help people have better relationships with each other – relationships that are enjoyable. That’s how I believe we can go above and beyond in a way that resonates with our character, not swimming upstream like Walmart buying up-scale brands.

So we’re going to commit to opportunities to develop and deepen enjoyable relationships. My two best ideas are having a monthly family-friendly movie night here at the church and also having opportunities for parents to have a night together without the kids. We’re going to have our first movie night on Friday November 9. Open to anyone in the church and anyone in our community. Come have a good time. Enjoy the relationships. A free movie with free popcorn and snacks is a way we can go above and beyond for our neighborhood, and I think it fits with our character. But we’ll still have to be committed to it for a long time before it gets traction.

Transformation

But the vision isn’t just to have people come watch movies at our church. We’ve been tracking the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, but I don’t want you to think that it’s about walls. It’s not really about the walls.

Nehemiah rebuilds the walls because he knows that fear is preventing the Israelites from investing in their relationship with God. They’re too busy trying to survive to care about what Moses wrote down. By rebuilding the walls, Nehemiah helps them broaden their horizons and care about God again. That’s what Nehemiah is really about. Rebuilding the walls results in a spiritual transformation, not just a better-defended city.

In the same way, I believe that a transformation will happen if we can help people enjoy each other. If we can enjoy each other, we can serve together. If we can serve together, we can worship together. If we can worship together, God can do miraculous things.

A movie night isn’t about a movie. It’s about giving people reasons to care about each other. If we do that, I believe it will result in a spiritual transformation as well. That’s the vision.

One last story of a company going above and beyond to illustrate. Sainsbury’s had a popular item called Tiger Bread. But one day the company got a letter. “Dear Sainsbury’s, Why is tiger bread called tiger bread? It should be called giraffe bread. Love from Lily Robinson, age 3 ½.”

And what was the response to this suggestion from a three-year-old that they should change the name of their popular product? She got a letter back. “Thank you so much for your letter. I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea – it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn’t it? It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a loooong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly. Chris King, age 27 1/3.”

Instead of ignoring this little child who couldn’t possibly know anything about marketing and branding, they cared! And they shared her letter with others, and those people cared. And now Sainsbury’s doesn’t sell Tiger Bread anymore. They sell Giraffe Bread courtesy of Lily Robinson, age 3 ½.

Transformation happens when you decide to care about someone. That’s the power of relationships. In our first text today, we heard this: “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” That’s our task in our relationships.

Is God calling you to care? Is God calling you to go above and beyond for someone? Is God calling you to be committed? If the answer is yes, transformation can happen. Amen.

Lay Reader = John 4:7-26

7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Introduction

We are still in our series looking at how Nehemiah dreamed of a better future for his people and then rallied others to make it happen. And we’re asking what better future we can make happen as well.

In the story of Nehemiah, we’ve seen how he was deeply moved thinking about how much the people of Jerusalem were struggling. And then he convinced the king of Persia to let him return to Jerusalem and the king decided to invest a bounty of his own resources in the project.

So Nehemiah dreamed of a better future for his people. He rallied the king of Persia to make sure he had the resources. And now we’re with him as he arrives in Jersualem. He has heard about the problems. God has called him to invest in a better future. Now, he wants to see it for himself.

Nehemiah 2:11-20

11So I came to Jerusalem and was there for three days. 12Then I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode. 13I went out by night by the Valley Gate past the Dragon’s Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. 14Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool; but there was no place for the animal I was riding to continue. 15So I went up by way of the valley by night and inspected the wall. Then I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned. 16The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest that were to do the work. 17Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.” 18I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, “Let us start building!” So they committed themselves to the common good. 19But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, “What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” 20Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.”

Evangelical Counting

In church pastor circles, there’s a well-worn adage. If the Head Pastor wants to talk about last Sunday’s worship attendance count, it’s never going to be revised down – only up. I remember a conversation I had with the head pastor at my previous church. I was in charge of our small groups, and that was the primary discipleship ministry. We had 1300 people in worship on a weekend, and our goal was to get 1000 of them into a small group. When I arrived, our initial count was between 350 and 400.

Each year we had immense success. Thanks to the efforts of the staff, the small group team, and my own contributions, we were up to 1000 after three years.

But the next year we kind of stalled out. We went from like 1005 the third year to 1020 the fourth year. And I told that to the head pastor as we were putting together our annual report. And he asked if there was any way to round up to 1100 to make it look better. I replied that I would rather tell the reality that we had stalled in our growth than tell a fiction that we were still expanding rapidly. If we fudge the numbers this year, how much would we have to fudge the numbers next year to maintain the fiction?

In church circles this is jokingly called evangelical counting. If we count the number of arms in worship today, the number will look way better than if we count the number of bodies in worship.

When I was an executive pastor I was talking with some of my colleagues. And they were debating if someone who watches a video of the worship service counts as “attending worship.” I mean, if we counted people who visited our sermons page as “attending worship,” we could add 17 people per Sunday. Our worship count would look very good this year!

But…about half of those are actually just robots updating info for Google and other search engines. And….many of the actual humans viewing the page only stay a minute or two – so they’re poking around, not listening to the sermon. So I could add 17 people per week to our worship attendance, and I could even point to a number to back it up, but it would still be nothing more than a very pleasant fiction. For reference, we don’t add anything extra to our worship count.

In our text today, Nehemiah doesn’t want to hear the very pleasant fiction. He wants to see the very real, very tangible, very dangerous situation with his own two eyes. In fact, he writes that he did his inspection before he even told anyone why he was back. He didn’t want anyone to try to influence him before he had a baseline. He wanted to face reality, not a fiction.

When I was growing up, I knew some girls whose parents were divorced, and their dad was rather scarce. And over and over and over again, he made promises to show up at their event. Or to come pick them up. Or to take them to something special. And he never showed up. But the next time he made a promise to them, they would excitedly tell us what they were going to do with their dad. Everyone else knew it was just a fiction.

But fiction doesn’t have to be pleasant. Sometimes our fictions are worse than reality. Maybe you’ve heard about the recent rise in the rate of violent crimes in America. Maybe you’ve heard the stories in the news about children being victimized by adults in power. The world sometimes feels like it’s going down the tubes, right? But…the violent crime rate is still considerably less than it was in the 1990’s. And for children, the rates of violence, physical abuse and sexual abuse are all less than the 1990’s. We have actually made progress – still a long way to go, but things are better today than they were. The idea that everything is getting worse is a very unpleasant fiction.

Are those numbers perfect? No, of course not. But they weren’t perfect in the 1990’s or 1960’s or 1930’s. The numbers we have are messy – whether we’re talking about worship attendance at our church or national statistics. If two messy numbers are close to each other, count them as equal. But if there’s a big enough gap, there’s probably something real there, not just a fiction.

Is there anything in your family, or in your work, or here at church, or anywhere else in your life – anywhere you need to face reality instead of a fiction? Anywhere you need to inspect the walls yourself, like Nehemiah?

Jesus’ Radical Reality

In our first text today, Jesus was in the wrong part of town, talking with the wrong people. If you read the Old Testament without having your eyes glaze over, you’ll see some fairly specific instructions for the Jewish people. God wants them to be a cohesive unit, not intermingling too much with the other nations around them. God wants them to be different.

Between the time of Nehemiah and the time of Jesus, there came to be two different races of Israelites. Samaritans were the descendants of the people who started intermingling and intermarrying with the other nations after Babylon and then Persia ruled over Israel. And the Jewish people were the ones who kept God’s commands to only marry other Jewish people. So the “pure” Jews saw the “impure” Samaritans as traitors and collaborators. Instead of maintaining their Jewish heritage, they intermarried and broke God’s commands.

And “collaborator” is perhaps the best way to think about their relationship. You can think of it kind of like France after World War II. Those who were in exile and then came back, or those who stayed and fought the Germans were the “pure” ones. Those who stayed and collaborated with the Germans were the “impure” ones. There’s some understandable bad blood between those groups, right?

So here we see Jesus in Samaritan land, talking with a Samaritan, and she’s a woman! That’s three strikes, Jesus! And that’s before we even learn that she’s a collector of husbands. And how does this exchange end?  The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Let me try to help you understand how mind blowing, reality-altering this was. Jews thought the Samaritans were beyond hope. They were permanently defiled. They were a lost cause. And Samaritans thought the Jews worshiped the wrong way in the wrong place. And Jews were judgmental to boot.

And Jesus says he is the Messiah – the one coming to make all things right – and he is the Messiah to the Jew and Messiah to the Samaritan. This one person, Jesus, came to make things right for Jew and Samaritan alike. This one person, Jesus, took the insurmountable divisions between them and stood in the gap to bridge the divide. The Son of God was sent to the Jews, and the Samaritans, and to all the peoples of the earth.

Thanks to Jesus, those insurmountable divisions became nothing more than unpleasant fictions.

Are there any seemingly insurmountable divisions that are nothing more than fictions because of who Jesus was and what he came to do?

Jesus’ Radical Reality Today

Let me tell you a few perceptions that are nothing more than fictions because of Jesus.

If you have  lost a loved one, you may feel that you’re all alone. That’s a fiction. Jesus says “remember, I will be with you always even to the end of the age.” And there are people in your neighborhood or in this church that want to be with you as well. If you have lost a loved one – if you are a widow or a widower or stuck at home with no one to talk to – you aren’t alone and you don’t have to be alone. That’s a fiction. The reality is that Jesus has not abandoned you, and there are other people here today that don’t want you to feel alone, too. That’s reality.

If you feel like the thunderclouds are just following you around – if you feel cursed – if you feel that there isn’t hope. That’s a fiction. I was just talking to a friend who lost his job, lost his health insurance and he has a kid with a rare and expensive illness, he had a bunch of job interviews and they all dried up. He was feeling cursed. And then the closet with his wife’s clothes separated from the wall and collapsed in their bedroom. That didn’t help the feeling of being cursed. But after telling me that update, he told me that God had opened a new door for his family. It wasn’t where they wanted. It wasn’t what they pictured. But it’s exciting. It took a while, but God had a way out from the thundercloud.

There’s this famous verse in Jeremiah 29, but I want to give you the broader reading.

“This is what the Lord says: “You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”

That famous verse about God having plans for your good – that was written to a defeated people at the start of their 70 year exile in another country. That verse is NOT a promise that God is going to zap away everything bad in your life. That’s a pleasant fiction. But that verse DOES promise that God has something better in mind. For some of those exiles, they didn’t get to see the payoff. But their children did. God has a plan in mind – and it’s good. That’s reality. It might not look like you want it, it might not be where you want it, it might not be when you want it, I can’t even promise that you’ll be alive to enjoy it, but God’s plan is a reality.

If you feel that you have messed up beyond compare – if you feel that you have sinned your way out of heaven – if you feel like God would be offended to be seen near you – that’s a fiction. In our first text, Jesus sat and talked with a woman who had burned through five husbands and was living with yet another man. Jesus got in trouble because he at meals with the collaborators and the traitors and the prostitutes and the homeless and the lepers. And even worse? He had fun with them! Scandalous!

Romans 8 reminds us that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Nothing! And troubles in this life don’t mean God has forgotten us or stopped loving us. “Nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Jesus.”

If you think you aren’t worth God’s time or aren’t deserving of God’s time – that’s a fiction. Jesus’ love is for you, too. That’s reality.

Child of God

In fact, let’s camp out there for a little bit. At our staff meeting this past week, Carol was leading a devotional and she shared that she has long shared the same bit of good news with people in the hospital, with people she met as a chaplain, and with the student she tutored with our Whiz Kids tutoring.

“John, you are a beloved child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark in you, and nothing can change that.”

“Nancy, you are a beloved child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark in you, and nothing can change that.”

“Dave, you are a beloved child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark in you, and nothing can change that.”

“Maria, you are a beloved child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark in you, and nothing can change that.”

You get the idea. That is both beautiful and Biblical. I love it.

And now, as the pastor at my previous church used to say, “I’m about to go from preaching to meddling.” I don’t get nervous about preaching except for the times I have to speak an uncomfortable truth. This is one of those times.

There is a rather unpleasant fiction in our society right now, and I think we need to name it as a fiction. Our society wants to tell us that anyone who votes differently than me isn’t human – or at least they’re idiots. Our society wants to tell us that anyone who focuses on a different part of Jesus’ life and teaching and ministry isn’t going to be in heaven. Our society wants to tell us that we should be angry at each other, afraid of each other, divided against each other. This is an unpleasant fiction.

Here’s what Jesus said about our divisions. This was part of his prayer from the Gospel of John right before being crucified on our behalf.

“My prayer is… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

If we believe in Jesus, that’s our reality. If we believe in Jesus, our reality should mean we can look at someone with different theology or different politics or different values or different emphasis and say, “There goes a beloved child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark within them, and nothing can change that.” If we believe in Jesus, that’s reality. If we believe in Jesus, then whether someone gets their news from Fox or MSNBC or NPR or the New York Times or the Economist or wherever – Jesus still came for them. Just like he came for you. That’s reality.

Colorado Public Radio has been doing something interesting they call “Breaking Bread.” They get people with wildly diverging views – even different world views – together to talk about those divisions. People don’t generally change their minds after these talks – they don’t suddenly agree. That would be a fiction. But they do get to humanize someone they vehemently disagree with. Maybe we can do something similar.

If you find yourself wondering, “How can we worship the same God when…?” Fill in that blank. If you look at someone else who reports to believe in Jesus and you wonder how we can worship the same God? I encourage you to go find out. Go break bread with them. In fact, I dare you to go find out how you can worship the same God.

We have another round of Hot Button Theology classes coming up at the end of October, and we’re going to try to do that together around some pretty dicey topics. Maybe we’ll discover that we disagree but are still connected through our faith in Jesus. Maybe it will all blow up in my face. We were able to do it together last time, but even two years ago our society wasn’t telling us we were quite as divided as it’s telling us today. I mean, we just heard how Kathie’s prayer walk was mistaken for being a suspicious criminal! That’s how divided our society is telling us we are.

I think that’s a very believable, unpleasant, FICTION. Not because the gaps between our opinions are small – they’re big. I believe the ultimate reality is that we who believe in Jesus have a chance to remember that we are part of a story that is much older than any country. Much more compelling than any movie. Much more transformative than any political platform. Much more real than any philosophy. Much more personal than any self help book.

That’s what I think is reality.

Children of God

To close today, I can’t force you to do this but I’m going to give you the space to do it. I’m going to give you about thirty seconds of silence here, and I challenge you to think of someone you vehemently disagree with. It might be someone in this room. It might be someone who’s in the news. It might be someone within reach. It might be someone a world away. It might be someone in your house. It might be someone you’ve never met. It might be me!

If you’ve got that person in mind, in the next silence, I encourage you to imagine yourself telling them, “NAME, you are a child of God, made in the image of God, with the divine spark within you, and nothing can change that.” I know we’re bold enough to lob verbal hand grenades at people we disagree with from behind the fortified walls of our little tribes. But are you bold enough to imagine Jesus’ very different reality? Here’s 30 seconds to think about that.