Sermon: “The Lord Will Come”

I preached this sermon at the Highland Park Congregation in
West Seattle on Sunday, December 7th, 2008

2 Peter 3:8-15

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed it’s coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.”

I have to admit; I am always uncomfortable when I hear people talk about the second coming of Christ. Usually it is from people that possess a holier than thou kind of attitude! A “you-better-live-your-life-like-I-pretend-to-live-mine” kind of attitude! I believe that we should not be living our lives in preparation for the returning of Jesus Christ but as if He has already returned and is here with us now in our midst.

There is a song from the 90’s by Collin Raye, one of my favorite singers, called “What if Jesus Comes Back Like That?”. Throughout the song he paints different scenarios of who Jesus could come back as. Such as a hobo or a woman born addicted. The question is how would we treat those people? How do we treat those people? How do we treat each other? How do we treat ourselves? Those are the questions we should be asking ourselves. Let’s not get caught up in Jesus coming in the future but get focused on how we are living our lives for today because of our devotion to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Doctrine and Covenants 163:3a – “You are called to create pathways in the world for peace in Christ to be relationally and culturally incarnate. The hope of Zion is realized when the vision of Christ is embodied in communities of generosity, justice, and peacefulness.”

We have been called and we have a lot of work to do! There are constant wars going on and it is hard to find peace. And I am not just talking about global wars between countries. We have wars going on in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in our homes, and with ourselves.

We have entered the holiday season and today we celebrate the Second Advent Sunday. Advent is the period around Christmas in which we prayerfully anticipate the birth and coming of Jesus Christ. Today is the Advent Sunday of Peace. A theme that I am very passionate about as I am sure many of you are as well.

Unfortunately, there are many who battle personal struggles that are manifested during this time of year. Depression rates rise. This “happy” time of year is not joyful for many. Many don’t experience peace in their personal lives. If you are one of those people then I urge you to be a peacemaker unto yourself before you become a peacemaker unto others.

Doctrine and Covenants 163:3b: “Above all else, strive to be faithful to Christ’s vision of the peaceable Kingdom of God on earth. Courageously challenge cultural, political, and religious trends that are contrary to the reconciling and restoring purposes of God. Pursue peace.”

Sometimes we are too afraid to say certain things from the pulpit because we don’t want to get too political. We label certain issues as “political” when in fact they are social justice issues and therefore they are issues that, as Christians, we need to be concerned about. We need to stand up for our brothers and sisters who have been treated unfairly by others, sometimes even by us.

Doctrine and Covenants 163:3c: “There are subtle, yet powerful, influences in the world, some even claiming to represent Christ, that seek to divide people and nations to accomplish their destructive aims. That which seeks to harden one human heart against another by constructing walls of fear and prejudice is not of God. Be especially alert to these influences, lest they divide you or divert you from the mission to which you are called.”

One of my favorite quotes is “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do” – Anne Lamott. Unfortunately, too many “Christians” spew out rhetoric of hate in the name of Jesus Christ. We need to heed caution to this. I am sure many of us here are guilty of it from time to time. Maybe not in big ways but possibly in small ways. Be mindful of how you treat others no matter how different they are from you. Treat each others as you would want to be treated.

Let’s go back to this idea of “The Lord Will Come” for a moment. There is a Duran Duran song by the name of “What Happens Tomorrow”. Part of the song goes as follows:

Fighting because we’re so close
There are times we punish those who we need the most
Though we can’t wait for a saviour
Only got ourselves to blame for this behaviour

And nobody knows
What’s gonna happen tomorrow
We try not to show
How frightened we are

You’ve got to believe
It’ll be alright in the end

Wow! How true is that! We can’t wait for the saviour to come. Live life like He is here. I am not saying we are called to bring peace to the world without Him but that because of being followers of the teachings of Jesus Christ we go out to spread the good news!

The time to be peacemakers in the world is now. We need to stop living lives devoted to self-serving interests and start living our lives dedicated to the betterment of the world. Not to the USA but the World. We ARE a global family. We ARE the Community of Christ.

Today is Communion Sunday. That day when we have the opportunity to take the bread, resembling the Body of Christ, and the wine, resembling the Blood of Christ, and take it as a reminder of the commitment we made when we made the decision to follow Christ. Hopefully though, we are not living our lives with the hope that by taking Communion we are continuously saved. Hopefully we are not living our lives by doing actions that we expect to be forgiven for on Communion Sunday. Hopefully we are living our lives as if every day is communion. We should not view communion as a chance to rededicate ourselves to being a disciple of Jesus Christ but see it as a continuation of the dedication we already made when we choose to follow the Path of the Disciple and commit ourselves to living out the teachings of Jesus Christ and bringing Jesus’ message of Peace unto others.

Doctrine and Covenants 163:11a – “God is calling for a prophetic community to emerge, drawn from the nations of the world, that is characterized by uncommon devotion to the compassion and peace of God revealed in Jesus Christ.”

This is one of my favorite verses from 163. I love the phrase “Uncommon Devotion”. The Seattle based Young Adult Group that I co-lead for the church, Young Adults of the Puget Sound, uses that phrase as the focus for one of the services that we do once a quarter in NW Congregations. At one point in the service we do three silent vignettes. No speaking parts, just signs and our interaction with each other.

1. The first vignette is of a lady holding a sign that says, “Let us stand up for Justice and stand against child labor!”. The Young Adults are shown walking by the lady. They ignore the lady, mock her, make light of the situation, and look disgusted as they proceed past her. The last young adult is shown approaching her and standing in support of the cause.

2. The second vignette is of a man holding a sign that says, “I love Jesus and I’m gay. I’m afraid of how others will treat me.”. In this vignette a group of young adults approach the guy and start to get aggressive. They pretend to yell. One even aggressively pointing to the bible at the guy. After a few moments another group of young adults come up and firmly but gently form a protective barrier around him. The aggressive individuals leave.

3. The last vignette is of a female in her teens holding a sign that says, “I’m 16 and I’m pregnant. I’m scared and I don’t know what to do. I’ve considered abortion, but I just don’t know…”. A male and female young adult nearby are playing the role of her parents and are shown to be arguing. The parents confront the daughter, yell at her, and then send her to her room where she begins to cry. A friend of the girl arrives and comforts her friend. Then the friend proceeds to take the pregnant teen to her parents and acts as a mediator and they all reconcile and embrace.

We are all called to reach out to those in need. No matter what there situation is. I have been told after our services that these silent vignettes are the most powerful part of the service. After all, as we know, we should “Preach the gospel wherever we go and when necessary, use words.”. May we live our lives as an example of Jesus’ message of Peace in this world.

When you take your communion today do so because the time for being Christians that just keep the pews warm on Sunday morning is over and that you are ready to get out into the community that lives out your uncommon devotion. Don’t just wait for Jesus to come back and do it for us! Be Peace-Makers! Be Peace Doers! Be the living example of Jesus Christ on Earth today! Fulfill your callings as Disciples!

Missionary Coordinator

I was going to put this at the end of my previous post but decided it was long enough as it was. Like I said I have been thinking a lot about mission lately and have sensed this burning desire to dedicate my life to it. Last fall a position became open in my Mission Center. For my readers who are not Community of Christ affiliated, a Mission Center is a jurisdiction that oversees 20 to 50 congregations in my church. My Mission Center is the Greater Pacific Northwest Mission Center and includes 40 plus congregations throughout the states of Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. This position is to be the Missionary Coordinator for the Mission Center as well as a Congregational Support minister. At the time a couple of people suggested that I apply for it but I wasn’t really sure whether I should or not. Over the past several months I have prayed about it and continued to contemplate whether I should apply or not. Well, within the past week or so I have decided to apply for the position. The job posting was actually just made last week and I do meet the requirements.

I have had several people confirm to me that I am making the right decision and some telling me that they had hoped I would apply. Some of what the job would entail is basically overseeing the Missionary work in my mission center, coordinating our Bold Moves! program, and empowering congregations to be dedicated to mission. With this role, I would also be a Congregational Support Minister in the Greater Seattle Area and be assigned to 6 or so congregations. The possibilities are endless and I am increasingly excited about this position. I will e-mail my application in by the end of this week and I believe the interviewing process will begin late this month and into early next month with everything being completed by the end of April and ready to start work on May 1. I guess I would ask for prayers that everything work out according to God’s plan, whatever that may be!

Mission, Witnessing, and Church

So, I have been thinking a lot about mission as of late. Well, really for the past 8 months or so. I have been struggling with the complacent attitudes of my fellow church members towards mission and witnessing and truly embodying the meaning of being a Disciple. Most are way too comfortable with coming to church, sitting in their seats for an hour, and then leaving. Though, we are not called to be seat fillers! We are called to be Disciple’s of Jesus Christ! We can’t fully represent the meaning of Disciple without putting forth action. Action is a key word here. It represents that act of doing something! We need to be doing something!!!

You see I have always had a zest for wanting to reach out and bring ministry to people. For me, I think I especially realized the importance of mission when at the age of 17 I attended the 2002 Community of Christ World Conference. There the keynote speaker during the opening session posed a question to us that still resonates deep within me. It was something to the effect of, “If you’re congregation was no longer around. If it was here one day and gone the next, then who in the community, besides current church members, would be affected because of you not being there”. That spoke to me on such a profound level. Basically the point was that if no one would be affected then we aren’t doing something right.

Last summer I was asked to be a Counselor to the Pastor in my congregation and I accepted. My focus as a Counselor was to be on Witnessing and Peace & Justice Ministries. This excited me so much! My discipleship theme song has always been Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Live out Loud”. I love that song because it represents “action” so well. I mean look at the words in the chorus, “Wake the neighbors. Get the word out. Come on, crank up the music, climb a mountain and shout. This is life we’ve been given, made to be lived out. So, la, la, la, la, live out loud.”. So anyways, I started out with a vision that first and foremost the Cedarcrest Congregation would begin to touch the lives of the Marysville community and that secondary, as a result our congregation would begin to grow physically and spiritually. That we would wake up from this slumber that we were in and be revitalized as a congregation! I was pumped. I was ready. Man, was I fooled!

I decided to organize a Witnessing Taskforce after the model of a missionary in my church down in Texas. Her congregation was growing and reaching out to people in wonderful and new ways. The Witnessing Taskforce would organize a witnessing event once a quarter in our community, whether it be on the church grounds or at another location. The only rule I had was that if it was a fundraiser that the money may not be for any programs at Cedarcrest but something that would specifically help others. I even scheduled myself to preside and preach on a Sunday in September to kick off the program and make the announcement. The theme that day was “Find the Lost and Rejoice”. I felt it was a perfect theme to introduce this taskforce to the congregation. When I presented the idea to my congregation I announced that anyone who would like to be on the taskforce to please talk to me. That our first meeting would be in November with our first activity planned for the first quarter of 2008.

I announced it several times over the next few weeks. My excitement level started to decrease as no one came forward to be on it. I finally was able to get one person to agree to participate but he almost had to begged to be on it before he agreed. I realized at that time that if the congregation would not get motivated enough to start doing some witnessing in our community that we might as well close our doors and go our separate ways or merge with another congregation because there was no reason for us to continue to be open anymore. You see my congregation says they want to support witnessing opportunities but when it comes down to it what they are really saying is that they want someone else to do it for them. So, I decided that it was not in the best interest of my congregation for one person (me) to do the work for the whole congregation and thus the Witnessing Taskforce never got off the ground.

The idea of mission has still been continuously on my mind though. You see eventhough efforts with my own congregation have not been fruitful there are still other things going on. The biggest of which for me is the fact that I co-lead a young adult group for the Greater Seattle area in my church, Community of Christ. We call ourselves YAPS or Young Adults of the Puget Sound. Our group has had great successes since it was formed two years ago and was actually an extension of a group out of my congregation that started a little over 4 years ago. We are being given the opportunity to reach young adults who don’t normally come to church on Sunday morning. Young adults who are tired of the traditional worship lifestyle but still want to stay connected to the church. Once a quarter we put on a worship for a Northwest Community of Christ Congregation and that has been a wonderful ministry to be a part of. Then once a month we have an activity or retreat. We have discussed having young adult specific worships once a month or meeting for bible study at a coffee shop. Opportunities seem to be endless and it is so good to experience. So, I have continued to ponder mission and think about the successes of the young adult group and roadblocks at my congregation. Please note that I say roadblocks and not failures. People do have to wake up eventually and realize they are getting nowhere on the path they are currently on.

Then recently, especially over the past week or so I came to a realization. I realized that my congregation is spending too much time focusing on our building, on the structure. We worried too much about the maintenance and upkeep on the building and the land that we don’t have time for anything else is because we are getting burned out. And since we get burned out by our building we don’t spend our energy on mission and thus we don’t grow as a congregation. And because we don’t grow as a congregation then we have a few people doing a lot of the other work as well such as presiding, preaching, etc. I realized that Cedarcrest really needs to sell the structure, because that is all it is, and replant ourselves. We don’t need to close our doors for good we just need a change of address. We need to meet in a gym, grange hall, or another facility that we can rent out and not have to worry about mowing, cleaning the toilets, etc. Let’s face it, as it is we are not being very good stewards by owning a building for 20 to 30 people to meet in it one morning a week for worship. If we didn’t have a building anymore then we could spend our energy on reaching out to the people of Marysville. Then sometime in the future after we have grown we could by our own building again fill it with programs that the people of Marysville need.

When it comes down to it, I don’t know what Cedarcrest will end up doing. We will soon be experiencing a change of Pastor yet again as our current one only agreed to two years. I will most likely not even be attending the same congregation in a few months as I hope to move about an hour or so South from where I currently live. Though, I do still care about the congregation that I grew up in and want to see it experience new life and revitalization.

Two blog posts that have fueled my thinking as of late and are related to mission and buildings are “Churches and Buildings” by Glenn at re-dreaming the dream and “The Island Church” by Christian at Flannel Christian.