Mosaic

Welcome to the MOSAIC

2007-02-01T16:22:00.000-08:00

Next Course starts Jan 26 2011 (for 6 weeks)
Wednesdays
6:30pm Meal | 7:15-9pm Talk and Groups

Mosaic is a 6 week introduction to an awesome story - one that includes all of us. Our evenings start with a hot meal and then delve into the mysteries of faith, the centrality and importance of Jesus, and the exciting possibilities for a new way-of-life. Each night the talk leads into a small group discussion where honest questioning is encouraged in a respectful, loving environment.

1. OUR STORIES SO FAR People put their belief in many things, but what makes for a ‘good’ faith? How could we even recognize bad faith? With these navigational tools we begin the journey.

2. PARADISE (LOST) ‘God created, and it was good...’ So, what went wrong? And what has this got to do with us, our spirituality and our world?

3. THE LIFE OF JESUS In his day, people didn’t get Jesus, and little has changed today... Was he a revolutionary perhaps, a religious CEO, or just a nice guy? Did he even exist and say the things ascribed to him? Who was he really?

4. THE DEATH OF JESUS The disciples were devastated; after a few short years their beloved teacher was arrested and killed. How could this fit in with God’s plan of redemption?

5. EPILOGUE OF HOPE Incredible reports claimed Jesus had risen from the dead. How can we believe in that? More importantly... so what?

6. FROM STORY TO JOURNEY After Jesus, what happened to the early church? Millenia later, how can we connect with the Loving Father and the Risen Son?

Information: Errol Nadeau
(250) 721 - 3156
Registration: ebnadeau@shaw.ca

About Mosaic

2006-06-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

MoSaiC is a casual conversation about the Christian faith. It is for those of us wanting to explore faith and spirituality - or those who feel a dry, compartmentalised faith, seemingly disconnected from real life.

We believe that healthy conversations about God are an essential part of an honest search, and that unhindered questions are important stepping stones toward developing an authentic faith.

Our goal is to provide a safe, non-threatening environment that incorporates talks, discussions, panels, Q&A times, and small group conversations into a meaningful discussion of Christian faith.

The 1st Conversation | Faith

2006-06-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

Formal or informal, if we come away from here having had good conversations I think we will all come away richer people.

You could be at home alone reading various books on the various subjects that we are going to cover, but the value of being together is that we get to talk about things.

You get to ask questions. Hopefully you will share with us your stories, observations and insights. I have never come away from a Mosaic course not having learned and gained something from the people taking the course.

We have set this room up intentionally around tables. And we have people at each table to facilitate conversation.

Take some time right now to get to know each other… 1st & 2nd Questions.
You are all unique people. You are here with particular expectations. And desired outcomes. It might look something like this… 3rd Slide.
It would be great to share this with the group.

I’m going to make a couple of observations.

Although the pursuit of happiness is often said to be one of the most fundamental human rights, since the dawn of time it has been astonishingly elusive.

Granted this is a generalization, the rich are frequently miserable. The powerful often appear insecure and driven by fear. Those of us who don’t have wealth and power … those who simply seek comfort, become complacent and wake up feeling restless.

…the “meaning in life” will not be satisfied by a pretty spouse, a better job, a bigger house and a new SUV.

Scientific progress, for all it’s achievements, hasn’t really satisfied the longing…
Einstein said, “I desire to know God’s thoughts, the rest are just details.”

Jim Morrison – lead singer and primary songwriter of the Doors – said, “You think people want two cars and a house don’t you? You’re wrong. You know what they want? Something sacred.”

Sometimes we think this itch is a reaction to our accelerated modern culture … but it’s always been around.

3000 years ago a grumpy old philosopher named Quoheleth – interesting guy – pursued more or less everything life had to offer and concluded that life was more or less meaningless. But at the end of his life he makes this puzzling observation…

“God has set eternity in the hearts of all people.”

It’s a pretty bold statement … in spite of all his futile search for meaning, there still is this itch for something more.

1000 years later, a Christian thinker and leader named Paul was discussing the Christian faith with Greek scholars in Athens, and came across this passage in their ancient texts that said…

“God is not far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being.” St. Paul

Essentially he was saying, “Your poets were right. The source of that itch … that longing … is God himself.”

Today we live in a culture that is becoming increasingly sensitive to spiritual matters all the time. And this is not an anti-scientific statement. Science explains a lot of the “How’s” in life. But the “Why’s” don’t seem to go away. And people are entertaining all kinds of ideas these days.

For the most part, I think it’s really exciting. But I think it has created – at times – a degree of confusion.

And one attitude that has surfaced recently is this one…

“It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.”

It’s a very common statement. And I can understand why people say it. As we are entertaining ideas, let’s not fight … let’s not grow intolerant of one another. If we are all equal, one idea should not be better than another.

I understand the sentiment but I don’t think any of us mean literally…

We don’t mean…for example…
• It’s okay for white supremacists to believe and practice hate so long as they’re sincere…
• It’s okay for sincere fundamentalists to control people through intimidation, censorship… MiddleEast or N.A.
• It’s fine for parents who sincerely believe that life is meaningless to offer their kids drugs…

You see where I’m going with this. I don’t think anybody here would agree that this is okay.
Next week we are going to begin our journey into the depths of the Christian faith. But before we do, I think it’s important to develop a healthy understanding of faith.

I’m going to throw some ideas out to challenge you with. And maybe we’ll take some time to talk about them afterwards.

Firstly, I want to talk about what we’ll call, for lack of a better word, “bad faith”.

1) Bad faith is based solely on unquestioned authority.
Now, to begin with, there are a lot of things that all of us believe that are not based on some kind of authority. I believe that New York exists even though I’ve never been there. Why? Because when I watch Seinfield I see it in the background. So based on what I’m seeing through this little square box in basement, I believe New York exists.

To my horror, I believe the Yanks won last night. Why? Little box told me.
But to believe something simply based on what some authority figure or structure tells you is pretty dangerous. BELTBUCKEL

We want you to think for yourself. We want you to question what’s being said here on Wednesday nights.

Even tonight we want you to break into groups and talk about this stuff. To discuss and probe ideas. That’s why we have discussion facilitators for the group. No question is stupid.

2) Bad faith is based on pressure or coercion
One Sunday night after church, a woman approached me and asked if she could talk to me. She wanted to talk about what I had been teaching. She had been crying through the service and was now feeling sick to her stomach. “Oh no, what have I done?”

She said, “What you were saying tonight rings true to me, but I’m involved in another kind of religious community …and if they knew I was here, I would be shunned and disowned.
And I don’t know what to do.” She was so disoriented that night that, really nothing I could say was able to else her anxiety. Everything she had believed up to that point had been…

Now, the church has been very guilty of this tactic…so if you are ever feeling pressured by what we are doing or saying, yell at us.

3) Bad faith is arrogant and unteachable
Again, so much of religion has an edge of arrogance to it.

My neighbor once said, “I had this friend, she used to be such a nice person, then she became a Christian and now she’s become so judgmental and pushy. Either you have to convert or she doesn’t want to be your friend.”

When a person takes pride in feeling “right” and rewards himself with a sense of superiority …when his faith puts him in a high and mighty posture to look down in judgement on others…well that can’t be good faith.

I think it’s no surprise that Jesus’ highest command for his followers was not to be “right”, but to be “loving”.

4) Lastly, bad faith is apathetic
Real faith should inspire some kind of life change. If faith is just talk, then it’s like spreading strawberry jam over moldy bread.

If you walk out of here in November having found faith based on these principles, I think you’ve taken a step backwards, not forwards.

Okay let’s turn it around.

1) Good faith is humble, teachable, and inquisitive
Aristotle once said that humble and curious people tend to understand more than proud and arrogant people do. Philosophy profs…

Sometimes I think that’s the difference between adults and children. So let’s be childlike in our journey: not childish and infantile…but childlike in our posture.
A humble sense of wonder … that acknowledges that none of us has the absolute corner on the truth, but continually seeks guidance can’t be a bad thing.

2) Good faith is honest
Whether we are talking about our emotions or our intellect, we should be free to be as open as we possible can. You have permission here to open up.

In fact, if you have deep issues with God or the church, we would consider it a gift if you were to share it with us. I also I believe God can handle your honesty.

3) Good faith is communal
My individual understanding of things is so utterly limited.

I need to connect with a group of trusted companions, so we can help and encourage one another in our common search of faith.

I’m a lousy golfer…I don’t see my swing. In life I don’t always see my ‘swing’ either. Wife.

Again, not coercion and pressure...but mutual encouragement and support.

4) Good faith is active
MEXICO…Christianity is a system of beliefs / Christians are holders / Church is enforcer

We want to see Christianity understood – not so much as a system of beliefs – but a way of life. It should effect the way I see things. It should effect the way I live.

5) Good faith is relational
If Epi-men-des is right and there is a personal God at work in the universe, then my search for truth should acknowledge my relationship – or lack of relationship – with God.
Faith isn’t like biology class where you dissect dead animals. I would like to think that faith is creative transforming and alive…because it will lead us to a creative, transforming and living God.

Now, this list is not the last word on the subject…in fact, this is not an exhaustive list at all. In your mind you may be coming up with other criterion as to what is good faith and bad faith. And…you may be in disagreement with what I’ve already presented.

Which one of these statements generates the strongest response positively or negatively from you? And why?

If you could, what would you add or subtract from this list?

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable sit still in a room.
--Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

The 2nd Conversation | Genesis

2006-06-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Let’s say you owned an independent bookstore...

“That’s easy, in the Religion section, beside books written by the Dali Lama, which is right beside the Self-help/New Age section which has books written by Dr. Phil and Madonna.” Now, you’re an independent bookstore owner, playing by your own rules. So let’s say you have chosen not to have a Religion section. Where would you put it?

I think you could put it into a lot of different places. You could put it into the History section. Well over half is written as history. It could go in the Poetry or the Literature section – almost a third of the Bible is written as poetry. We have Philosophy. There are entire books in here that are just philosophical ponderings. Fiction – Jesus was never without a story…even Biography: the story of Abraham, the story of Moses, David…we have four biographies of Jesus. A lot of published Letters…

It’s a uniquely popular book. Since the building of the Gutenberg Press, it has been the biggest-selling book every year.

It’s a remarkable book. It was written in three different languages over the span of 1500 years by at least 40 authors including kings, philosophers, warriors, fishermen, poets, lawyers and doctors.

I don’t think you need to have a degree in order to read the Bible. In fact, this is one of the more remarkable things about it. The over-arching story is remarkably consistent. And there’s a whole lot you can get by just picking it up and reading it. There are some sections that are super easy the read.

But that being said, there are also parts of the Bible are perplexing, strange and even brutal. Someone was once asked if he had ever read anything that would undermine his faith? “Yeah,” he said, “The Bible.”

So you have to be patient with yourself. And through our time together, you will be given some tools to help you understand and hopefully you will be able to ask questions when you get stumped.

Is it a hard book to read? Yes, sometimes. But pieces of it are so simple and beautiful they take your breath away.

Tonight we begin our journey. And we are going to begin at the beginning. Many stories begin with “once upon a time”; this story simply begins with “in the beginning”. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.

When most people open the book of Genesis and read the first few chapters, the temptation is to get all tied up on whether or not it is scientifically viable or not. For the time being, let’s not concern ourselves with whether or not this is science. Let’s read some the story and see how it plays into our understanding of things as they are today.

GE 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

GE 1:3 And God said… let there be light …

So, in the beginning we have God speaking creation into existence. Over fixed time periods he creates the whole cosmos: star-fields, oceans, vegetation, sea life, and animals. And after these things are created, he says, “this is good.”

If we are going to begin to understand Christian spirituality, we have to begin by understanding that the universe and everything in it isn’t a mistake. Also … otherworldly? The universe was intentional, beautiful, good and rich.

Then on the sixth day – these regulated time periods – he creates humanity.

Like the rest of the universe they are made up of the stuff of life. But they are unique in all of creation. Men and women are created in His image … He breaths life into their lungs.

AND they are to be the stewards of creation.

GE 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

It doesn’t say destroy…but subdue … tame… soften… cultivate … more of a sense of stewardship than ownership.

Then it says that God says in verse 18, “it is not good for a man to be alone…”

Great narrative… Beyond the erotica, we have community between Adam and Eve…

So we have harmony between Creator and humanity, creation and humanity, humanity and humanity. And finally humanity with him or herself. 2:25 says that “they were naked in the garden and felt no shame.”

The 3rd Conversation | The Old Testament

2006-06-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Last week we opened the first two chapters of the Bible and discovered this opening narrative. And – in it – we discovered that God is creative. He is a creator God who creates good things. That the cosmos and everything in it was not a mistake.

We also discovered a relational God. That we were created to enjoy God. Enjoy His creation. And have a harmonious relationship with the earth. Enjoy community – locally and globally. And we are to enjoy wholeness within ourselves.

We discussed last week, all these relationships are – on one way or another –torn. And that we live in this tension today. Where we have tasted something of the goodness of life, but I think we know that it is not what it should be. Questions. You may not agree with this biblical portrait, but one thing you can’t say is that it is naïve, pie-in- the-sky and escapist.

The rest of the Scriptures are an account of what God has been doing to restore those relationships.
They have also been described as God working through flawed and sometimes insignificant people to accomplish his restorative plan.

To do this, God has broken into history. The Bible isn’t a nice book full of nice inspirational stories about good and heroic people. Some of these people are just nasty. Which is encouraging. You will find God – sometimes almost desperately – breaking into this world to redeem it. Something I believe he is still doing. Always, if we had the eyes to see. And when he breaks through, we discover things about his character.

His redemptive plan begins to unfold though a nomad named Abraham. Through Abraham, God demonstrates that he is a covenant-making God. Does anybody here what to take a stab at a definition of “Covenant”? What separate a covenant from a contract? A forever, loving, unconditional promise.

17:7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.
In those days, they didn’t sign contracts … they did things symbolically to bind agreements.

It is not a covenant that Abraham keeps…at times he demonstrates incredible faith, other times he fails miserably. But God blesses him anyway, because he is a covenant making God.

GE 12:2 …and you will be a blessing to all nations…

Why does Abraham need to be a blessing? Because things aren’t quite right in the world.

Abraham fathers’ a tribe and the tribe becomes a nation. Fast forward a few hundred years, and you think they would be in a good place, but they are not. The nation becomes enslaved in Egypt…loses every once of dignity it once had. Called “Hebrews”. But through Moses – again another flawed reluctant leader – God liberates his people. He demonstrates that he is a saving God.

He also demonstrates what we already saw in Genesis, that he is the Lord of all creation. The first half of the book of Exodus is kind of like a cosmic showdown. The Egyptians weren’t really just polytheists … they were henotheists. Not just multiple gods, but geographical and national gods. It isn’t the Egyptian gods vs. the Hebrew tribal deity. This isn’t Moses vs. Pharaoh. Through the plagues, God demonstrates his sovereignty over paganism and creation.

Towards the end of Exodus, He demonstrates that he is a holy God.

Exodus 19: 4 “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

So he gives them the 10 commandments so they can live apart from the chaotic world the surrounds them. But why? So they can be a blessing to the world around them.
They will be a radical alternative community. Do justly. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly with God. LAWS **

The whole attempt is to bring people back into healthy relationship. But the whole thing falls apart. They want a king, but God wants to be their king. Samuel.

1SA 8:6 But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do…"

He goes into an awful description of how terrible it will be…

1SA 8:19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

1SA 8:21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."
“You are to be this subversive alternative.” Reluctantly he gives in, and their kings are corrupt. There will only be a few shimmering rays of light through this period of Israel’s history.

The kings are not characterized by justice, mercy and humility. So when they go astray, he sends prophets. What’s a prophet? Some people think that a prophet speaks mostly into the future. That’s not a biblical understanding of the word. Speak God’s reality into the present. A prophet is kind of like a mouth-piece for the voice of God. Bono.

Through the prophets, we see that God is a God of justice.

The prophets are perhaps the most difficult reading, but some of the most poetic…

Jer 21:12
12 O house of David, this is what the LORD says:
" `Administer justice every morning;
rescue from the hand of his oppressor
the one who has been robbed,
or my wrath will break out and burn like fire
because of the evil you have done--
burn with no one to quench it.

AM 5:22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.

AM 5:23 Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.

AM 5:24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

He extends a covenant. They are given the written word of the law. And the spoken word of the prophets. Nothing seems to stick. So God goes even further. It was foretold by the prophet Isaiah…

ISA 9:2 The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned…

Fast-forward a couple of hundred years to first century Palestine. And out of Nazareth comes a carpenter who claims to be the fulfillment of these words. God gave spoken words…he gave written words…finally, the words become flesh and bone.

Is your understanding of Scriptures much different than Randy’s?
Which descriptors of God do you find most attractive? Why?

The 4th Conversation | Jesus

2006-06-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

What would we have noticed about Jesus?

One night, about 2000 years ago, Jesus was sitting alone with his friends. I always picture them in the warm Palestinian country side around a fire at night. At this point in the story, Jesus is becoming very popular. Thousands upon thousands are flocking to hear him teach, watching in awe as he performs miracle upon miracle, and they are following him as he sets forth to proclaim truth. But on this particular night, Jesus is alone with his friends and he looks at them and says,

"Who do the crowds say I am?" (Luke 9:18)

“Well, there isn’t consensus, Jesus. In fact, there’s a lot of confusion. Most people aren’t sure who – or what – you are. They are saying a lot of different things.”

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" (Luke 9:20)

Who is Jesus?
The question was asked 2000 years ago. The question is still being asked today. And, just as it was 2000 years ago, today there is a lot of confusion. A lot of different people saying a lot of different things. But the question remains the same. Who was Jesus?

Three years ago, Angus Reid released a poll…*
It’s a very telling statistic that only 6% of people in Victoria consider themselves part of a church community. A sad commentary on the church.

But the majority of Canadians are drawn to, and – in one form or another – are looking for this man. If you are going to be genuinely thorough in your quest for an authentic spirituality you can’t ignore him.
:
The trouble is: we have all kinds of different interpretations of who he was … even what he looked like. PICTURES

Historically there has been confusion.
Right now there is a lot confusion…

Is he, as the Soviet dictionary described,
• “A mythical figure who never existed.”?
• Was he a political rebel?
• A mystical poet?
• Simply a wise moral teacher?

Or…was he something else altogether?

It seems like everybody wants to justify their ways in the name of Jesus…CEO vs. Marxist…
Buddy Jesus … “Marry Mary Magdalen and father the blood line of the French Aristocracy.”

In your groups…

I think some of us have an image of Jesus that is quite contrary to what is actually written about him.

When I was growing up, my image of Jesus was always calm to the point of being stoic. My Jesus growing up was kind of like my Jesus action figure…

As Simon said two weeks ago week, way back in the 1700’s Voltaire wrote, “If God made man in his own image, then man certainly returned the compliment.” This is very true of Jesus. Everybody wants their own personal Jesus.

Writer Philip Yancey, after spending a lifetime in the church, went back to actually read the gospels for himself. He wrote about it in a book called The Jesus I Never Knew. A book you should all read. And this is what he says…

The Jesus I found there [in the Bible] bore…*

What I want to do tonight, is strip away all the stuff and fluff, and all historical misrepresentations and all the present media hype – as best we can – and explore what the Bible has to say.

Because, when I read the Bible, I find someone really there, someone substantial, someone who can’t be silenced by generations of skepticism and misrepresentation. Someone who is real and too alive to be ignored.

But before we turn to the Bible … many people today are asking the question, can the Bible itself be trusted as a historically reliable document? Is the history written there legit? It’s a valid question. We are not going to really go into depth on the question tonight, but I want to point you to a couple of books if you are interested…

But let’s at least say this for tonight…

There is so much evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus, that no serious historian today can maintain any other position.

This evidence not only comes from Christian sources, but from non-Christian sources as well. Two pagan historians at the time Tacitus and Sue - tonius both wrote about him.
And even before the gospels were written, a Jewish historian named Josephus – probably the most credible historian at the time – described Jesus and his followers…

Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise

So for the sake of getting somewhere tonight, let’s move right into the substance of the scriptures.

So let’s begin with His Birth: Jesus was born around 0 A.C.E. give or take 30 years…

LK 1:5 In the time of Herod king…

Herod was not from the line – the lineage – of the Jewish Kings. He was a descendant of Edomites. Most Jews at the time to not truly accepted him as their true Monarch.

It didn’t help that he had taken control of Jerusalem by laying siege to the city. He was, in many ways, a conqueror.

He was a man who had an instinct for survival. He was a little wild. These qualities, combined with an intense loyalty to the Roman Emperor, made him the perfect puppet king for Rome.

LK 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus…

Rome was ruled by a different kind of man. He was cool and calculating. His name – actually – was Octavianus: Gaius Octavius.

Instead he chose Augustus. It had a religious significance. It was an attempt to deify himself. The word means “reverential awe” or “an object of worship”. Thus, he had himself declared the son of a god and the empire established rites of worship.

Augustus brought decades of civil war to an end and established Rome as a unified world power. He made two basic demands of all people: that they accept the rule of Rome and that they pay taxes. A tax the Jews would come to hate.

This is the world that Jesus was born into.
There was Roman law and governance, a Greek alphabet but the spoken language was Aramaic and the spiritual language was Hebrew. There was Jewish religion, but it was fragmented into different conflicting groups…
…there was smatterings of Egyptian paganism and Hellenistic culture everywhere. And we think things are confused today. Things were more multicultural, pluralist and perhaps even more relative then, than they are today.
Interesting context to be talking about Kingdom

So in the corner of this manic confused world that Jesus is born…

At Christmas, when we deck the nativity scene up with glitter and magic, we may be missing the point. The scene was anything but a sweet fantasy. It would have taken the eyes of faith to see anything but a tragedy.

Two rural teenagers, after nine months of awkward explanations, and the lingering scent of scandal, arrive in overcrowded Bethlehem town: a picture of pure anarchy.

So when God is born into the world he didn’t play favorites. He was born into the most humiliating circumstances possible…He plays by the rules…and they were hard rules.
What did he teach? Read MARK

More than we can get through tonight. But I’m going to focus on three themes. But before I even do that...

I want to say something about his method of teaching. Jesus primarily told stories and asked questions.

Love.
He taught that loving God and humanity was our highest calling. It is the most important thing we can do.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart

And as you can see, even in this statement, love is not some just a sloppy feeling. It is a call to a complete re-orientation of life against any kind of self-interest. It is something that is going to start from the inside out. Soul…mind…strength. One of the first things Jesus ever teaches is a great reversal from worldly ambitions.

Blessed are those people who grieve.

Again, this goes against the grain of the times he lived in. And it certainly goes against the grain the times we live in.

Happy are the pushers:

Jesus was and still is very counter-cultural. Understand: this is something that Jesus not only taught, but it was something he lived. And we will talk more about that next week.

Religion.
I think it’s a bit amusing that the founder of the biggest religion in the world was probably the most irreligious person there ever was.

The most religious people of his time were these religious leaders called the Pharisees. They had 613 rules, 248 commands, 365 prohibitions and 1,521 amendments. Their job was to keep religion pure…by distancing themselves.

They didn’t like Jesus very much. Again and again they criticized Jesus because – from their perspective – he was hanging around the wrong kind of people. He had a lousy reputation in the faith community.

And the whores and tax collectors seemed to love him.

Jesus went to them. He dined in their houses and he brought them the truth in their language.

Luke 15:1-2

Matthew 9:10-13

Teaching woman the law. QUOTES
Jesus always threatened these people – not because he too exclusive – but because he was too inclusive. He was scandalously inclusive.

It went both ways. Religious people infuriated Jesus too. In fact, if there was one thing His teaching confronted, again and again, it was religion. “Woe to you”. “You are not better.”
He hated hypocrisy and he saw it everywhere.

In fact, he goes on to say this …

Matthew 21:31-32

The Prodigal Son example…Tell it.

The Father.
His teaching is littered with references to character of God. For Jesus, God isn’t some Cosmic Vengeful Tyrant, so much as he is a Merciful Father who loves and cares for His creation. FATHER? MALE?

This infuriated the religious people of the time. God was distant. This was a Jewish introduction to prayer at the time of Jesus…

Blessed art thou, O Lord, God of Abraham,

LK 11:2 He said to them, "When you pray,

Or read the simplicity and tenderness in these words…

MT 6:28 "And why do you worry about clothes?

The last thing that Jesus taught about was announcing the Kingdom.

Let me set the scene for you. Jesus is in Jerusalem and teaching in the temple courts.
And he is surrounded by all these religious leaders. Now the whole history of the Old Testament – the first part of the Bible – points to a time when a New Kingdom was going to be established. LAST WEEK.

Jesus is saying that he is the fulfillment of that longing. He is bringing the New Kingdom. But this isn’t making them very happy. He isn’t what they expected. They were expecting a military king who would wipe out the Roman Empire and establish an earthly kingdom. They were conquered subjects of the Romans and they weren’t too happy about it. But Jesus is saying, “This New Kingdom isn’t about politics. It isn’t about race or geography. It’s about God’s reign in the lives of all people.”

He was saying God’s rule is present…his saving activity is at hand…it is a reality to be experienced now.

What does it look like?
A lost sheep…
A lost coin…(woman)
A lost son coming home…

What is the common thread through all these stories? Celebration! The shepherd rejoices! The woman throws a party! The dad comes running!

When we look at these parables – and by the way, most of Christ’s parables – we don’t see a crisis of condemnation, Jesus isn’t saying, “People, you are not feeling bad enough about yourselves, you should be feeling more guilty than you are!” We don’t see a crisis of condemnation but a crisis of approval.

The 5th Conversation | The Cross

2006-06-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

What do you think of when you see a cross? It really symbolizes different things for different people.

Often they symbolize places of healing and mercy – like the Red Cross. Places of peace and consolation – like cemeteries. That being said, for over 100 years, a burning cross in the South was the symbol of fear and hate. I’m sure for many people who are First Nations the cross symbolizes oppression. It certainly was abused – literally twisted by the Nazi’s during the Second World War.

I think for most people, the cross is seen as a symbol of beauty. It is probably the most common symbol that is found in jewelry in the Western world. … a thing of beauty … really – when you think of it – this is the strangest thing of all.

Spice Route or Missionary? Marco Polo gave a jewel cross to The Emperor of China, and told him it was the symbol of faith, the Emperor was shocked. For him, it was a form of execution.

The Jewish religion is symbolized by a six pointed star, Islam by a crescent moon, Buddhism … a statue in lotus position – obvious symbols of beauty and light. But the symbol for Christianity is an instrument of death.

The writers of the New Testament saw the cross as central to the mystery of Jesus. It’s the focal point.

One major purpose of Mark’s gospel was to make sure that readers and hearers understood that the most important thing about Jesus was neither the parables nor the miracles but obedient acceptance of the way of the cross.

Later the apostle Paul writes “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Christ and him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2 In his letters, he doesn’t mention much about Christ’s teaching or his miracles at all.

Most biographies devote less than ten percent of their focus to the subject’s death – including men like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, who died violent and politically significant deaths. The gospels – which are the four biographies of Jesus – devote nearly a third of their length to chronicling the climatic last week of Jesus’ life.

So the gospel accounts, in an almost disturbing manner, slow down and give us detailed accounts of the events that led up to his death.

Why the effort? Why such focus and concentration? What makes the death of Jesus so different than the death of other religious leaders like Buddha or Mohammed, or other intellectuals like Socrates or Plato?

Did his death accomplish anything beyond religious martyrdom?

Quick review. Light speed. In Genesis, the book of origins, the Bible presents a world-view in which there are four primary relationships.

• Our relationship with our Creator –
“walk with me”
• Our relationship with creation –
“take care of my art”
• Our relationship one another –
“it’s not good for man to be alone”
• Our relationship with ourselves –
“be naked and feel no shame”

The Bible explains that – in the beginning – they were in harmony. But that something went painfully wrong. As has been the story ever since … that, today, these relationships are less than ideal. I don’t think anyone would agrue that. We live in a broken world.

But at the heart of his character, God is a relational God. And he loves his creation. And the rest of the scriptures are written as his attempt to restore those relationships.

He enters into a relationship with Abraham. He shows He is a saving God to Moses: he gives him the law. He voices His justice and his mercy through the prophets.

They are given the written word of the law. And the spoken word of the prophets. Nothing seems to stick. So God goes even further.

The events come to a climax. God doesn’t just give words, He becomes a living word. God not only attempts to show the way. In a sense, His life becomes the way.

The cross says something to this on a scale so cosmic and full of mystery that it is hard to grasp.

The cross represents the fact that something beautiful can come out of something scandalous. That something seemingly tragic can be the source of all healing. That a symbol of death, can be the ultimate symbol of mercy. +++

We have to picture Jesus at the height of his popularity. Thousands of people are following him to Jerusalem. They are ready to make him king and take up arms. Remember last week? They had a very different concept of the kingdom compared to what he was saying.
So they are saying, “Let’s go”. Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world…and if you follow me into the reign of God, you can expect to suffer.”

JN 6:66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

So, from this point on, Jesus’ popularity amongst the militants begins to decrease. Seizing the opportunity, the religious authorities arrest him on grounds of blasphemy because he’s claimed to be God. And, to the Romans, they accuse him of treason because he has claimed to be a king.

In a span of less than 24 hours, Jesus faces as many as six trials and interrogations… some Roman some Jewish. In the end, he is hauled off to a hill called Golgatha to be crucified.

The two noblest pillars of the ancient world – Roman law and Jewish religion – together support the necessity of putting Jesus to death.

The most advanced religion of the day judges him guilty, and the most advanced government carries out the sentence. It is religion – not irreligion – that accuses Jesus. And the law – not lawlessness – that carries out the execution. Both of these powers are simply “trying to keep the peace”.

Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for the lowest criminals, clearly implying that he belonged to this category of people. In the view of most Roman law makers, notorious criminals had to be crucified on the exact location of their crimes, so that “the sight may deter others from such crimes”: for Jesus it was outside the gates of Jerusalem beside a garbage dump.

At first sight, it seems like a highly unpromising starting point for anything. It hardly seemed “miraculous” at all. Pathetic and tragic seem to be the words.

How do we account for the significance of the cross?
The scriptures themselves convey that the cross will grate against our sensibilities. It will grate against both our religious notions of what is right and our sense of logic.

1CO 1:22-25 Jews demand miraculous signs …

“This is how I will save them. I will come Myself, in disguise. I’ll be born in a barn to an unmarried couple. I will live in obscurity for thirty years, then I’ll wander like a vagabond, slum around with a ragtag group of men who are rash one minute, timid the next. I will live in poverty. I will make enemies of the powerful and influential. I will go to Jerusalem, straight into their snare, and be beaten. I will be killed like a criminal.”

Yet, from the perspective of the cosmos, this death is the most surprising miracle of all. See, the miracle of the cross lay not in what happened, but what did not.

If the Bible is correct in communicating who Jesus was, then the very fact that the ritual of violence played itself out with no interference may be the most supernatural thing about it.

It is not a demonstration of power or logic but a demonstration of love.

The event of the cross brings about the possibility of atonement. Does anybody want to take a shot at what this word actually means? It seems so complicated but really it is just the fusion of three words smashed together. AT-ONE-MENT. Through atonement, there is a possibility that things that were once separated can be brought back together again.

Today, when we say we are going to “atone” for something, we are saying we are going to act in such a way as to try to make something right. The cross was God’s act of atonement.

19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness

Very important to understand here. And you don’t have to agree: this passage is saying that God’s fullness was dwelling in Jesus. If this is the case, then this event becomes a universal event: all things for all time *. But it was sooo small. Not from the perspective of the cosmos.

It is saying is that the cross Jesus declared peace universally…on you, everybody and everything.

• Our relationship with our Creator –
“walk with me”
• Our relationship with creation –
“take care of my art”
• Our relationship one another –
“it’s not good for man to be alone”
• Our relationship with ourselves –
“be naked and feel no shame”

All things. Not just God and me. But all things. We are going to be talking about this more in the weeks to come.

On the cross, Jesus re-enacted God’s forgiveness towards us. From the beginning, God has been loving and forgiving.
But the eternal love of God was shown most fully and graphically through His acceptance and forgiveness of the worst that human beings could hurl at him.

Mercy is more important than Justice.
Love is more important than Power.

It was a universal demonstration of love…

RO 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we..

Anyone want to take a shot at a definition of the word ‘sin’?

Telemachus was a monk and a pig farmer in 5th Century Asia Minor. Small, wiry, and shy, he was a simple man, and simple minded. But God spoke to him and told him he was to go to Rome and bring an end to the popular bloodsport, the games of the gladiators. Telemachus did what he was told … he set out on foot. He had no plan, just a word from God.

He arrived in Rome and went to the Coliseum. Men were fighting. The crowd roared. Telemachus moved among the crowd, yelling at them to stop. The people, the few that heard him, laughed. They threw things at him.

So he jumped down onto the floor of the Coliseum, flailing, shouting, pleading. More jeered him, and threw things at him.

Then someone threw a stone. And another, and another. They threw stones until the monk’s small, shattered body slumped to the ground, and died.

I have read three historical accounts of this story. They differ in details, except at this point. When Telemachus died the crowd woke up to what they had done. Holy dread and silence fell on them. One man stood and walked out. Then two, three, ten, a hundred. A thousand. All. They walked out. No one ever came back.

Demonstrations of love – especially sacrificial demonstrations of love – can be very powerful.

The cross was a demonstration of identification. The Creator becomes like his creation. And endures the very worst. Dennis Ngien

When I was eight years old, I lost my father to..

We can’t shake our fist at heaven and say, “you don’t understand”. It’s like a voice from heaven quietly whispers, “yes, I do.”

Finally, it was a universal ransom…

On the last day of July 1941, the Auschwitz sirens announced the escape of one prisoner. As a reprisal, the consequence was that ten prisoners would die of a long, slow starvation, buried alive in a specially constructed, concrete bunker.

The German commandant walked between the ranks of prisoners and selected ten men arbitrarily.

As he pointed to one man, Francis Ga-jow-nic-zek, he cried out, “please, I have a wife and a family”. Hearing this, an unimpressive figure with sunken eyes and round wire glasses stepped forward and took off his cap.

“What do you want, Polish pig?” said the commandant. “I am a Catholic Priest; I want to die for that man. I am old…he has a wife and family ... I have no one,” said Father Maximillian Kol-be. “Okay” said the commandant.

That night, those ten men, including the priest, went to starve in that bunker. Normally -- when placed in such circumstances -- men tear each other apart. This group was different. While they had strength, lying naked on the floor, they prayed and sung hymns. The Father lived for two weeks and eventually was given a lethal injection to end his life.

Mark 10:45 …the Son of Man did not come to be

In a ransom situation, someone who is considered “valuable” is being held captive until a price is paid. The more valuable the person being held the greater the price demanded.

One of the ways that the scripture describes our attachment to sin is in the language of captivity. Some people don’t like that, but I think it’s actually pretty descriptive. We are stuck. One of the most astonishing things about the love of God for us is that God was prepared to pay so dearly to set us free.

2 Corinthians 5:21 reads, “God made him who

John Stott calls this the ‘self-substitution’ of God. It means that God took on whatever was broken in us, and made it his. So the consequences of our sins were laid on him that day. And, in this, he paid the ransom.

COL 2:13 He forgave us all our sins…he took it

The very thing that looked like a defeat turned into triumph.

The 6th Conversation | The Resurrection

2006-06-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

Resurrection: The Unbelievable Story

Quick starter for 10. Here are four personal stories, only one of which is completely true. After I tell them, and put myself on the line, around your tables you will have 2 minutes to figure out the correct answer:

1. I played field hockey for the South of England…
2. I had ethical reasons for leaving chemistry to do with weapons systems…
3. As a teenager my kleptomaniac tendencies landed me in jail…
4. With long hair, a studded belt and leather jacket I played bass very badly in a school metal band…

The answer is 3 I am afraid although hockey was my main sport, I left the field of chemistry (for youth work), and I was immersed in the metal scene…

Anyway, moving on.

Last week, Randy led you through the events and effects of the oddly-named Good Friday (especially if you have seen Mel Gibson’s rendition.) From Jesus’ preaching on the coming of God’s kingdom comes the brutality of His death on the cross. Scandalous and horrific, yet at the same time a beautiful representation of mercy. This incredibly important yet ultimately mysterious act became the main symbol of the new faith, Christianity. Randy talked about AT-ONE-MENT and the restoration of the four relationships. Somehow on the cross we see absolute Love, victory over evil, identification with humanity’s suffering, and a price paid for us – a ransom to rescue us who are hostages to sin and brokenness. We see God’s justice and mercy play out, in a way that continues to mystify us…

But this didn’t really seem the case on the day following his death – the Sabbath. It seemed that evil and the worst aspects of humanity had had the last laugh. Another dead preacher. Another rebel with a cause. But he was dead. The authorities breathed a sigh of relief. The Pharisees had got their way – no one to call them on their hypocrisy any more. The disciples were hiding, dejected and scared…

But the story doesn’t end there. Here’s the unbelievable part…

< READ LUKE 24:1-12>

OK. In your groups again… And this isn’t a time to put up defenses or reasons to believe in the subject matter. Just have a look at the questions.

I think that some major factors in disbelief are ‘it goes against the laws of nature’ and ‘I have never heard of that happening’. Hey they’re pretty valid – and they both spring to mind when you think of resurrection (and not just the lite version: resuscitation). Was dead. Is alive. Even today. Hmm. Kinda contra-rational.

Well, if you are interested then there are many theories as to what happened that Easter Sunday…

and many books have been written to systematically unpack them all. If you are interested then chat to me after. But tonight I want to focus on the stories of those closest to Jesus, rather than hammer you with infallible proofs (if such things exist!)– giving you ‘evidence that demands a verdict’ as one writer would say…

So what happened to the disciples and those closest to Jesus on that Sunday and for the rest of their lives…

Most theories explaining the events of that day, have these disciples either as hopelessly GULLIBLE or as deceitful CONSPIRATORS.

The scriptures do not paint the disciples as particularly gullible however… occasionally stupid yes.. but even that is with 2000 years of hindsight. Firstly when the women return they consider their report ‘nonsense.’ They steadfastly refused to accept the possibility even after another account (this time from men – so it wasn’t purely sexist). One of them, Thomas was a sceptic through and through and held out even when the other 10 said they’d seen Jesus. He would not believe until he saw and felt the wounds of His Master.

What about Conspirators? Men who made the whole thing up…

As I hinted at earlier they were in a sorry state: we find them behind locked doors, despairing and scared for their own lives, and ashamed of their disowning of Him. Their numbers diminished and disorganized, their world had collapsed. 3 years on the road with the one they thought would bring about a new kingdom, and he was gone. This was not the ideal starting point to launch the world’s greatest deception. Even if they did, why chose women as the main witnesses? They had no legal standing in Jewish courts. Why not Peter, or better still Nicodemus, a Pharisee? Why not create a tighter story? There is some confusion, even contradictions between the gospel accounts. They had a few decades to write it down… so why not clear that up? With the conspiracy theory, you then have to answer questions like ‘how did they steal the body?’ How did they keep up their unified front?

Moreover, why not just build a religion on His teachings, rather than insist that he has risen and was actually God – a statement that was so unthinkable to Jewish culture and tradition as well as all the other philosophies and religions of the day.

If not sitting around dumbly or concocting wild accounts, what do we know happened to his followers?

• With MARY, we see her sorrow at Golgotha turned to gladness
• With THOMAS, utter doubt transformed to life-altering belief
• With PETER, the shame over his rejection of Christ as the cock crowed three times became a divine commission to build the church
• Later, with PAUL, who wrote most of the New Testament, the persecutor of the early church changed into its greatest evangelist

Change didn’t stop there. Within 2 months of amusingly-ordinary appearances to over 500 people, the ragtag team of followers explodes into a Jerusalem church of over 10,000. Over the coming years many of the original disciples and eye-witnesses were to die for their beliefs rather than reject them.

Paul said to a church in Corinth “if Jesus hadn’t risen, our preaching and your faith would be useless’ – so the resurrection quickly assumed key significance. This belief was shown in the transformation of individuals, of a church and of the world.

But if this unbelievable story were true, what could this mean today?

1. When God seems most absent, he could be incredibly close, waiting to act in new unbelievable ways.
2. Everything is reversible, and even death ‘has lost its sting’. It shows that the four relationships, broken by us can be reversed and restored.

Pictorially, at first God was at the centre of each one, then humans chose to oust God by their free will and try to run things themselves. The results as we have said are apparent. But now Jesus is back in the centre of all things ‘restoring them to himself’ – If Jesus is God, then God is back in the centre.

In some ways, cosmically we live in the Saturday after Good Friday. The cross has ensured the reconciliation of all things, but we are only just seeing it and participating in it. We will not see the full resurrection of all things when God will ‘wipe away every tear from our eyes’ until the future cosmic Easter Sunday. Only then scripture tell us ‘There will be not more death of mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.’

3. The resurrection cannot be left in the Past or relegated to merely a future Hope. If true, the Present Risenness of Jesus tracks and pursues us in love, as He seeks to be a companion for life’s journey. If we let him accompany us:
a. It will have life-changing implications in the everyday. It will affect our fears and loneliness, offer hope and freedom from the slavery to brokenness and sin. It will offer new possibilities.
b. Sometimes life seems random and all activities and relationships seem in vain. Meaninglessness absorbs us. But His Presence should offer illumination on the riddle of life, and give us a rudder to help steer through it.
c. Finally our heart would start beating with His. We would learn to love what he loves, and act in compassion and mercy.
“People do well to be sceptical of beliefs not anchored in present experience” H.A.Williams.

Did Jesus have any idea what was going to happen to him?

The Resurrection

Christ actually predicted He would rise on the third day. His claims are substantiated throughout the four Gospels. When Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside and said to them,

"We are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered to death. They will deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him. And on the third day He will be raised up" (Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22).

John confirms this when he writes: "Jesus answered and said to them,

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews therefore said, 'It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and will You raise it up in three days?' But He was speaking of the temple of His body" (John 2:19-21)

In fact Jesus not only foretold his own death and resurrection but he also knew that the whole of the scriptures were pointing towards Him.

"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:58)

And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27).

Jesus said to them, "These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44).

These scriptures that Jesus and the disciples were referring to was our Old Testament written by many people over a long period, hundreds of years before Jesus' birth. They contain more than 300 prophecies describing the appearance of a Messiah or Saviour. In Jesus, Christians suggest that all of these details came true, including the precise lineage; the place, time, and manner of birth; people's reactions to Him, His sinless life, His many miracles, his betrayal (even the 30 pieces of silver thrown to the floor – see Passion) and the manner of His death and resurrection.

There are perhaps explanations of this:
• Coincidence
• Altered gospel – made to match – though Matthew was put to death without taking anything back and the Jewish writings of the time (Talmud) never tried to fight the truth of the stories.
• Intentionally fulfilled – tough to do all, especially birthplace, and payment for betrayal…

So Jesus seemed to know what was to befall him and he knew he was mentioned in scriptures. So what? What does that mean about Him? Could it lead us or Him to believe that he was more than a mere human?

What Jesus thought…

He said that John the Baptist was the greatest of men, then proceeded to live out a ministry that put his life and works in the shade. When he spoke to the leaders about God, he spoke with an authority that superceded that of the prophets and OT writers. When he performed miracles he said it was ushering in the kingdom of God, when he prayed he used a previously unavailable term, deeply intimate, Daddy (Abba). He forgave sins, which was impossible to the Jews – only God could do that. He said he was without sin, and noone differed.

Jesus claimed, "I and the Father are One" (John 10:30) and "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Jesus was convinced that he was the unique Son of God.

What the disciples said…

Originally resistant to the idea of his divinity, His disciples called him ‘Christ’ (Peter) and the skeptic confessed that he was Lord (Thomas). The earliest Christian writings make it clear that within 20 years of his death, not much time for legends to be developed with the eye witnesses still around, Jesus is God. For them, the resurrection was a deal on Jesus’ divinity. He might have said some good things, some stuff they didn’t understand, but now he had a come back from the dead, putting an authentic hallmark on ‘faith for today’ and ‘hope for tomorrow’ – the promise of peace and restoration.

The Scriptures do not try to PROVE divinity, they just convey it.

But what do we think?

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the life of Jesus. Recently it was suggested that he was a master hypnotist but the main issue with this is that everyone is not equally susceptible to this kind of trickery. Plus, in the healings we seem to get real results, quickly and not just because of the placebo affect or wish fulfillment – results that lasted.

By far the most widespread opinion is that Jesus was a moral man, who gave us some great thoughts, and unfortunately died young. However, when considering the life and words of Jesus – what he did and thought about himself, C. S. Lewis sums up the problem,

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

These might seem like exaggerations, but I challenge you to read the gospel accounts and not see his divine suggestions…

So was he mad as a ‘poached egg’? Did we see him exhibiting the typical signs of depression, inappropriate anger and anxiety, being irrational and full of misperception?

Do we see him as a ‘devil of hell’? Someone who knowingly deceives a bunch of men to their own deaths and gives them false hope? Someone who would exhibit this maliciousness and deception?

Questions…

1. Jesus as God… what do you think?
2. Why do we think this? Is it by fact, feeling or faith?
3. Jesus as a risen present reality… what does that mean for you?

Finale

All of this ‘Jesus is God’ stuff certainly stirs up questions… How can Jesus be human and God? Did he limit himself in someway? Where is he now? Are He and God therefore the same? These questions will be explored next week as we delve into the mysteries of the incarnation and something called the Trinity.

The 7th Conversation | The Trinity

2006-06-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight we are walking into a mystery. We are exploring something that can’t really dissected or even comprehended with human minds. But it’s something that has been affirmed by the church for 2000 years.

Tonight we are talking about the Trinity: that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God: three persons.

I have to confess that sometimes the idea of the Trinity makes my brain hurt. And I don’t think I’m the only one. As much as I try to make it fit, the Trinity defies what I learned in grade one math. One apple just can’t equal three apples. Simple as that.

This problem didn’t escape the early church. But before we go to the early church, I feel I need to set a certain record straight. In The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown writes that the Trinity was a later development of the church brought on by Constantine to unify the Empire.

He writes that up to that point the followers of Jesus just thought he was a moral prophet. That there was a vote of his divinity, and that the vote was very close.

Not the case. The earliest council – which Constantine really had no part of – the council of Nicea voted 316-2 in favor of the doctrine of the Trinity. And the two that opposed the doctrine were denying Christ’s humanity, not his divinity. They were denying his human side.

The idea of the Trinity is not a later development of the church. It comes from the basic data of scripture and the fundamental experiences of the early church. But this doesn’t solve the problem of one being three and three being one.

For centuries Christians have been trying to find ways to describe the Trinity. Early Theologians came up with illustrations…

One illustration was to use an egg. Shell, White and Yoke: one egg three parts. But this illustration is flawed, because these are parts of the egg but not the egg itself. Whereas the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not parts of God. Each one of them is God.

So we move to the water illustration, which is better. Water can take on 3 forms: Liquid, Vapor and Ice all the time remaining H2O. Three forms, one substance. But this is also flawed because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not forms of God. They are God.

I think the best illustration is found in music. Three notes, independent in tone and pitch come together at one place and time to make a single chord. Three notes become one: in harmony. Musical community.

Truth is, I don’t think there is an adequate or watertight way to explain the Trinity.

Illustrations may help, but they are suggestive rather than conclusive. They are kind of like the Star of Bethlehem. Three astrologers from the East look up and see a star that is curious enough to follow … in a sense to guide.
The star is nothing like the event, but it’s the thing that brings them to the event.

An illustration can act as a guide, but it’s not the thing you are looking for.

But take heart…

Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Trinity I can experience the Trinity.

Three experiences…

It’s like an experience I had in 1987. There were 30,000 of us waiting in anticipation. The lights were out in the area. Then the organ started playing the notes that we knew so well and we waited for the guitar to kick in…

I was trying to explain the opening to my then-girlfriend now wife Marcy, and there was a certain disconnect. I couldn’t find words to capture the experience in a satisfactory way.

However, I was on the bus the next day going up Burnaby mountain, wearing my U2 T-shirt, and another guy wearing the same shirt. He had been at the concert. We made eye contact. He looked at me and said, “Ya bro”.

Now you are saying, all you two shared was a massive emotional group experience. Doesn’t really mean a thing. It wasn’t a real experience. Doesn’t really say anything about God.

All true. Although, for some of us, seeing Bono is pretty close… The point is: it was a shared experience that we couldn’t easily describe.

I’ll move to a more personal, I’ll even say ‘private’ experience.

When I was growing up, my parents tortured me. Every time my Auntie Jean came over we would run and hide, but my mom would find us. And make us watch the dreaded slide-show. Auntie Jean had traveled the globe on bus tour. And she’d taken pictures of everything … everything. And she would describe in great detail every picture … forever.

Then I remember taking a course in grade 12 called Western Civilization. I thought it would be an easy 3 credits. It turned out to be a video series with this guy named Kenneth Clark who just talked about art for two hours.

Fast forward 10 years and Randy is in Florence stumbling out onto the street and into the Academy Gallery and there I saw it: Michelangelo’s David. Auntie Jean had shown me a million photos of it. Kenneth Clark had talked about it for what felt like a million hours. But there it was. Magic. How could a massive piece of marble evoke such a response?

Now you are saying, well that was a deeply personal experience. But hardly an experience of God. True. But like God, it was experience that to this day I can’t easily comprehend only apprehend. And it was something that I shared with my Auntie Jean.

Or take the romantic kiss. Deconstruct it and describe it in sheer physical terms.

Two people press their moist, creased facial orifices together, clinch tight the sphincter muscles to draw flesh around the orifices into a fleshy mound and exchange saliva, breath, occasionally allowing tongue muscle to touch and wrestle.

Is that erotic enough for you? Sounds downright repulsive.

The point is this: sometimes when we analyze and deconstruct the Trinity we come up with something that sounds clumsy. Kind of like my first kiss. But to experience the kiss is so much more. It’s erotic, relational, intimate.

At some point we have to say that God is not just some abstract idea that we can kick around, but someone we experience and encounter. He is a person: a living reality who enters into our experience and transforms it.

Now the personal way Christians have believed that God has related to us is by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not three individual gods, but one God whom we experience and encounter in this mysterious three-fold manner.

Father

Again, sometime this notion that God is Father gets a reaction … and for all the wrong reasons. When Jesus revealed that God was like a Father he was wanting to convey a gentle intimacy.

But these days, the analogy has frequently been turned on its head. A lot of it has to do with the experience of many of us had with our fathers. The unfortunate reality is that fathers are frequently absent. And another reality is that some are abusive.

So, if you think of God as Father, and this is your point of reference. Then you project that God is either distant, or vengeful. This is not what Jesus had in mind.

Seeing God as Father implies that he is a creator with a natural love for his creation. When my kids were born they were completely unable to love me, but in that moment when they first came out … I couldn’t speak. I remember when I was growing up … PAINTING.

I love my kids, not because of my achievements, but because they are mine. I have their best interests in mind.

I am, by no means, the perfect father. But it’s important that we don’t mistake the model with what it is modeling. Analogies are helpful, providing we remember that every analogy breaks down at some point.

The strongly patriarchical structure of society at the time meant that emphasis was placed upon God as father. There are several passages that encourage us to think of God as our mother (Deuteronomy 32:18)

Son
We have spent a great deal of time talking about Jesus already. In Jesus we have the self-portrait of God. As the only member of the Trinity who became incarnate, he is the only member of the Trinity that can be properly pictured.

It is impossible to make any sense of him if we treat him as a solitary individual whose significance was in himself. From first to last, from the 12-year-old boy in the temple, all the way to the night of his crucifixion he is going about his father’s business and committing himself into his father’s hands.

And what does he reveal about God? Love. Forgiveness. Friendship. Identification. And by being an example, he showed us how to live. In unity with the Father. Living for the sake of others.

Spirit
The word for ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew (ruach) literally means “wind” or “breath”. The word in the Greek (paraklet) means “the one who comes along side of”.

He is life and source and power. That being said, The Holy Spirit is also a counselor and comforter. He has been described as a still small voice.

The Holy Spirit is the presence of God here and now. And He is active. He prompts us towards Jesus. In fact, He may be the one that has been hounding you for years.

He never condemns “You dumb shit”, but always convicts “You know, you were pretty calloused towards your wife today.” … “Why don’t you help your neighbour with his bad back rake his leaves … he looks like he is struggling.”

It’s the Spirit that invites us into the dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, I would argue that some of you who think you are on the outside have heard the song and are beginning to dance already.

Enough … I’m beginning to sound like an evangelist.

Questions.
Have you had an experience that you couldn’t completely describe or explain? If so, be bold and share.

To quote myself …

“Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend the Trinity.”

Do you think Randy is just looking for a loophole, or do you think there are truths out there that just can’t be completely explained?

If you don’t like the idea of God being described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then how then do you perceive God (Him, Her, It, Them)?

Cross yourself.

Verbal pictures, while never adequately conveying glory, majesty and beauty of God, can give us an inkling of what he is like.

We can see the trinity work in our prayers. To the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
CROSS YOURSELF…

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in you and around you right now. You are not alone. You are never alone. You never will be alone.

So talk to God with reckless abandon. Enter the circle of their friendship. They are inviting you into their most intimate interactions. They want you there. You've got an invitation to intimacy with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus prayed this about us in John 17,

"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."

When we begin to enjoy our relationship with the Trinity the world can't help but sit up and take notice. They will see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit's power, love and grace unleashed through these jars of clay!

So take some Advil. Take three if you need it. The Trinity may make our brains hurt, but it should make our hearts sing!

========

All three persons of the trinity are incomprehensible, and our knowledge of the trinity in not exhaustive and there are no completely adequate illustrations in the world.

It is not the doctrine of the trinity that underlies the Christian faith, but the living God whom we encounter through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit – the God who is the trinity.

Thus when we think of God, we don’t think of three individual gods, but of one God whom we experience and encounter in the three-fold manner.

Not three individuals, but three personal self-distinctions within one divine essence.
Unity and diversity.

We know that God can, in fact be love. If God were a single person he could love but he wouldn’t be love. God, in essence, is love and community.

To quote …

“Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend the Trinity.”

If you don’t like the idea of God being described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then how then do you perceive God (Him, Her, It, Them)?

The 8th Conversation | The Church

2006-06-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I went to church. Going to church meant a lot of things. It meant getting up earlier than I wanted to on Sunday mornings. Almost always reluctantly.

It meant wearing itchy sweaters and dress shoes that gave me blisters on my heels. Sitting on a hard wooden chair called a pew. Singing songs that were barely comprehensible and listening to sermons that were even less comprehensible.

It was a place where I began hearing stories that enraptured my young imagination – stories that still hold me spellbound. It’s where I first heard about Jesus. Going to church meant a lot of things.

It was the place where I fell in love. It was the place where my heart was broken for the first time.

You may have had negative experiences with the church. I have too. I have wounds that go deep.
But while the church had done a lot to hurt me, it is also the place where I encountered God – in that – my life has forever been changed.

Tonight, I want to talk about the true nature of the church. I want to talk about stuff that, in all those years of going to church, nobody really taught me.

You see, what I was taught was this: I was given all the steps I needed to become a Christian, and then – after taking these steps – I was taught that good Christians go to church. “Now that you are a Christian, dress up and go to church!”

However, after doing this for a while, I soon discovered that I was quite happy on my own. Everybody has their reasons.

I began to see the church as something political – full of hypocritical, legalistic, power hungry people. I couldn’t reconcile how good people would stay connected with such a flawed institution.

And I felt justified in thinking,
“If my relationship with God is going great, what does it matter if I go to church or not?”

Many of you have walked in here tonight with a similar story.

You look around at the church and you see crap. You look around and – like I did – you see a people that are laughably irrelevant and hopelessly out of touch, and you say – as I did…
“If my relationship with God is going great, what does it matter if I go to church or not?”

What I want to tell you tonight is that the Christ of Scriptures has called you into something so much more than what you may think. More than you can imagine. When you say “yes” to Christ – in that instant – you enter into a community.

And that is what the church really is. It isn’t an authoritarian institution with structure and hierarchy. It isn’t a building. It isn’t made of cement, two by fours and asbestos … the church is made of flesh and blood.
Last month, when I first spoke to you, I painted this scene on a Palestinian countryside. Jesus is talking to his friends and he asks,
“Who do people say I am?”

They explain to him that there is a lot of confusion. And then he says,
“But what about you, who do you say I am?”

MT 16:16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

Jesus responds by saying, “You are right Peter, and on this confession I will build my church (not his philosophy…but his community) and the gates of hell will not overcome it.”

You see, Jesus never wrote a book. He never founded a school or a mediation center. He formed a community. And it was based on the foundation that he was the Son of God.

2000 YEARS later, the church is that community. And when you say “yes” to Jesus, you become part of this amazing story.
And it doesn’t begin with Jesus in Palestine 2000 years ago. Again, we need to step back and see the big picture from the beginning.

When we go back to creation…God calls everything into being. And he calls everything into relationship. With himself, with creation, with one another. And – even though things go drastically wrong, we’ve talked about that – he is endlessly pursuing relationship and community.

He begins with Abraham and his family…
“You are going to be my representatives.”

And it grows from family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to kingdom…finally – at the appointed time – Jesus comes and says
“This Kingdom is going global. It won’t be defined by an ethnic group. It won’t be confined by geography. These are earthy definitions. It will be defined by God rule in people’s lives. In fact, it isn’t just going global, it’s going cosmic, I’m bringing all things together, and you are the ambassadors of this message.”
Insignificant people?…No heroes…
Abraham liar…Moses reluctant/speech inpaired …David murderer and a womanizer…
Peter is a buffoon…Randy…what is Randy?

But we are representatives of this message. By what we say, how we live.

We don’t go to church. We are the church. Membership is not an option. If you say “yes” to this mystery, you are part of this universal body known as the church.

You have an invisible link with people through history. You have an invisible link with people all over the world tonight. In this body there is ethnic diversity. There is cultural diversity.

People may look and worship differently than you. They may be Baptist, United, Catholic, Anglican, but together we make up this universal community.

We don’t go to church. We are the church.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to “go to” church anymore. I’m tired of this mentality. If church was just something to “go to”, then I would stop going.

If all church is, is an hour and a half on a Sunday morning I would encourage you to stop going. All it is – really – is second rate entertainment, and there are better ways to entertain yourself on a Sunday morning.

As you see, there is so much more…

I want to spend the rest of tonight focusing on the local church. We are part of this universal thing but we are also called into a local community. I want to talk about what that looks like day in and day out.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 12 the great Christian leader Paul describes the church as a physical body.

1CO 12:12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

1CO 12:14 Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15 If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

1CO 12:21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

1CO 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
There’s a lot here…what we are to find in the local community is unity and diversity. We are one body. Paul says we are to be united with Christ …to be like minded … being one in spirit and purpose.

But there is also diversity. We are all equal but different.

God doesn’t want us to be clones. In fact, I think this is a real problem in the church. We often feel pressure to conform.

God loves diversity. He loves the fact that we are different. In fact, He created us different.
I have my own story which is different than yours. I have my own battles which are different than yours. I have my own unique quirks that – hopefully – are different than yours.

I bring something to this community. So can you. The glue of community isn’t that we are all the same. Look around you…even in the past 2 months we’ve found diversity…

We live in a world that loves to divide and fragment things…

I’ve found economics a dividing factor.
We can become generational snobs.

These tensions work against unity in the church.

But the biggest assault on unity has always been more personal than these things. When we get close enough, we begin to see one another for who we really are.***

And here is a challenge for you. Paul in a different letter to a different church writes this…
PHP 2:1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
When Christ is at the center of the church, then the church is the center of healthy relationships. Masks of hypocrisy come off, conversations deepen, and lives are shared.

A lot of people think the church is a place where we dress up and put on our best behavior. They think it is not a place where you can be open or vulnerable. “If they really knew me, would they accept me?”

Truth is, most of us have never felt fully safe anywhere. At home, at work, at school, with the church … most of us have felt only partially safe. So we hide. And we remain alone. We remain alone in our pain, in our weakness and our sin.

As we’ve learned – hopefully – Jesus will meet us in that place. To all of us Jesus offers forgiveness and freedom. The unfortunate thing is, at times, that church hasn’t been a place where that freedom is offered.

We have been a community of rules and judgement instead of love and grace. When people tell me the church is full of hypocrites,
I tell them they are right. And I am the chief of hypocrites. But where else is a hypocrite supposed to go?

The church is there for hypocrites.
For junkies and for those who have never inhaled. For adulterers and for the virgins. For evolutionists and creationists. All of us…

And if it has been your experience: that the church has been a place of judgement and condemnation, as a leader of the church and on behalf of the church I want to ask for your forgiveness.

Because, biblically, there is nothing more detestable than a self-righteous group of people.

When you are free to discard your defenses, masks, disguises, only then are you free to become who God made you to be.
Now, understand, he also calls us into accountability. On this journey, we are called – not to judge one another – but certainly to keep one another on the path. To encourage, but also – at times – to challenge and even confront one another. This is how we grow.

Now, you are not going to find all of this in an hour and a half on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning. Don’t even try. It can’t all happen here. That’s why DON is here…

So this is the challenge to us tonight. Brian McLaren has a great chapter on the church. He makes several suggestions on “Getting the Most out of Church”. In fact he gives a list…

(1) Keep your expectations low
(2) Keep your sense of humor
(3) Expect to see weirdos
(4) Expect to see hypocrites
(5) Don’t expect to like everything
(6) Listen to the words
(7) Meet some people
(8) Ask them direct questions
(9) Observe their relationships
(10)Get involved
(11)As you are able, participate in worship and prayer

Questions…

(1) What has been your experience with the church so far?
(a) Share your story or feeling…
(b) Everybody else comment on your story.

(2) What do you think of the church as a community as opposed to a building and/or institution?

(3) Do you think this vision of the church is something you can trust?

The 9th Conversation | Discipleship

2006-06-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

It’s okay to wrestle with questions. I do it almost everyday. I believe that sometimes simplified answers to questions trivialize them. You don’t have to have everything completely sorted out before you enter into this journey with God.

Which is what I want to talk about tonight…the journey with God. What is this journey with God? How do we enter the story? What does it look like? …

In my 11 years of being a pastor, I’ve done a lot of pre-marital counseling. When I sit down with a couple, one of the first questions I ask is, “how did you two come to know each other? How did you fall in love?” Not because I need to know, but because I’m nosy.

I get the most amazing answers. Sometimes she pursued him. But most of the time, he pursues her. Sometimes it was real gradual. Others times, it is like Cupid “pop” just did a number. Some of them are long distance relationships, others are glued to the hip from day one onward. Some our very stoic and matter-of-fact about their love for one another. Others are so mushy it’s disgusting (get a room). But, without exception, each couple has a different story. They came to fall in love in very different ways.

The process of becoming a Christian can be very similar…experiences vary.

For me it was dramatic and emotional. I had grown up in a Christian home and had always gone to church. In others words, I had grown up with the language and culture of Christianity: I had known what it meant to be a Christian, but never felt any urgency or even desire to make it my own.

Then, one night while I was talking to a friend, it was like it just all came together. He wasn’t coercing me or pushing me, it just seems like the lights had come on and I knew what I needed to do. And after I prayed, it was like ‘something’ had happened. People could see the change in me immediately.

For others it is not so dramatic. Some people sit down, look at the facts, and say, “this is true, this is what I need to do.” For others it is like a struggle, and in the end they say “okay God, I give up, you win”.

Some pray to become Christians when they were small children. They didn’t understand all the deep implications -- they just wanted to be with God in heaven.

Still others cannot precisely pin-point the moment or have no recollection of a sudden awakening. Like my wife: she just can’t remember not believing, and as years went by her experience was an ever deepening relationship with Christ.

Becoming a Christian has been described a train crossing from one country to another in the middle of the night. Some people are awake and very aware when they hit the boarder. Others are sound asleep only to wake up and find themselves in a new place.

So when it comes to the ‘faith journey’, don’t worry about where you’ve been, or how you got here…because everybody’s story is different. If it’s too threatening at this point to ask it, then don’t, but at some point ask yourself,
“Where am I with this?”

If the Christian journey is a journey into a restored relationship with God and others…if God has taken steps towards me – if he is pursuing me – have I responded?

Some truths have to be experienced to be truly known. I talked about the Kiss. A kiss can be examined and deconstructed. But to truly be understood, it needs to be experienced.

What I would like to add to that tonight is this: we like to examine things – even experience them – without ever really committing to them.

We live in a culture in which everything is interesting but nothing is important.
Some things require even more than experience, they require commitment. And I really believe that relationships are one of those things.

I met my wife Marcy when I was 19. You may not believe this, but -- back then -- I was a kind of a geeky guy. Yet -- for some reason -- pity I think, Marcy began to return my affection. It wasn’t long before we decided to commit to get married.

Today, 16 years later, we are still in a marriage relationship. It is not dependent on my feelings any particular day, or even on the circumstances. She can be in the next room, we can be continents apart. We are in relationship.

When I ask people if they are Christians – I get all kinds of responses… “Sort of”

Now, I sympathetic to all these answers, but what would happen if you were to apply the same statements to other relationships. What if people asked me if I was married and my response was: “Sort of”
At some point, we have to say, “As flawed as I am, I want to follow you Jesus. I want to enter and commit to that mysterious dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I can’t do it on my own, I can’t even meet you half-way, but I guess that is what the cross is all about…you going all the way for me.”

I believe at that very moment the cosmos erupts into applause. The lost son comes home. The lost sheep is found. You enter into The Grand Story and A New Life.

What is this life that Jesus offers? How does it saturate our days, hours and minutes?

Christ has called us to be disciples. Not converts. Not churchgoers. Not decent people, but disciples. What is a disciple ????

In our world of assembly lines, and impersonal learning, it’s really a lost word…
A disciple, simply put, is a follower in a growing - learning relationship with a mentor.

VIOLIN EXAMPLE* – They had confidence in the master craftsman. They followed him around through and watched his daily ongoing example. Watched very closely. Then repeated what they did.

When we are talking about following Jesus, we are not talking about ascribing to some dead guys ideas. Even though we can’t see or touch him, we believe that Jesus is in some way with us. He has a living presence and – as Simon will share later – a mission.

So tonight, we are going to look at three “disciplines of the disciple”.

Kinda like a three-legged stool. Solitude to community to engagement. You need all three to keep balance. Another way DIAGRAM.

The first is solitude. Being alone with God. Jesus said…

I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful.
I have to confess, when I buy fruit at the store, I pass right by the organic section and go straight for the mass produced stuff.* It’s cheaper. It looks polished. Organic fruit doesn’t look perfect but it’s made with conviction.

We need to think of God as an organic gardener, carefully surveying each branch of our life. Sometimes letting us grow, sometimes pruning us back.

Every year a garden goes through the seasons of change. Which are very predicable. Then there’s the weather. Which is very unpredictable.

Life brings both predictable and unpredictable things. The predicable things being growing older and hopefully wiser. The unpredictable things are a little harder to define, but life does throw us curve balls every once in a while.

There is only one way to get through it. Christ repeats it again and again in the passage. Remain in me.
Simply put, the life of discipleship demands a daily relationship with Jesus.

But we have to pray, listen, meditate, and read. We need to let simple truths descend from mind to heart. This is a lifelong process, but it is from here that Jesus meets and speaks w/ us.

But we have also been called into community.
Jesus never wrote a book. He never founded a school or a meditation center. He formed a community. And that’s really what the church is. We talked a lot about this last week. So we are not going to spend a lot of time on it tonight.

Community is a way of living. It is a way of learning. And a way of growing. A long time ago – after watching “It’s a wonderful life”…*

Christians have a communal identity. When they get together, they are saying, “We’ve embraced is gospel. This forgiveness. The healing. We belong to God” It really should be a party of sorts … which is frequently not the case in churches.

When we started our talk on the church on week two, both Simon and I shared our early negative memories. But I’ve tasted this beautiful side too.

So Christians have a communal identity. They also have a communal mission. To bring this message of reconciliation to the world. To be ambassadors of mercy, justice and humility...