Oh That You Would Tear Open the Heavens 2

    Right before Christmas, I preached a sermon with the exact same title as this morning’s sermon.  The sermon was based on Isaiah 64:1-9, and I will read a snippet of that to you once again, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—2 as when fire kindles brushwood    and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!  3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.  4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.”

    There is a longing in this verse for God to reveal Himself to us.  There is a longing for God to come and make things right–to convince those who do not believe–to convert those who scoff and commit injustice–to affirm those who have faith in Him.  It’s a deeply moving cry on behalf of the believer.

    Christians believe that God indeed tore open the heavens and came down in Jesus, and today’s Gospel lesson from the book of Mark shows this rather starkly at Jesus’ baptism.  Please look at it once again beginning in verse 9, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

    “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down...”

    “He saw the heavens torn apart, and the Spirit descending like a dove on Him.”

    Do you see the connection being made here?

    It’s an important one.  A very important one.  One that grows in importance as we wrestle with the reality of life and the reality of our relationships with each other.  You may wonder how, but let me press onward.

    Today, there will be many who will focus their attention on that last sentence uttered by God to Jesus.  It will be changed in many congregations as pastors and priests tell congregation members, “You are God’s children, beloved by Him, with you He is well pleased.”  And to an extent, these pastors and priests will be right.  I mean, I have proclaimed this to you in my years here as your pastor.  I have said this very thing to you, but I didn’t flesh it out completely.  I didn’t proclaim this in its fullness.

    What do I mean by that?

    Well, let me ask you these questions: what would you be like if no one ever criticized you?  What would you be like if all you heard throughout your life is that you were okay just the way you were?  What would you be like if no one ever pointed out your wrongs and tried to steer you in a different direction?  What would you be like if all you ever heard were positive comments?  What sort of person would you be?

    How many of you remember Hakeem Olajuwan?  If you were a Houston Rockets basketball fan back in the 90's you remember him.  He was a fantastic player–a dominant center who led the Rockets to back to back championships.  He was originally from Nigeria, and his parents hadn’t seen him play in a game.  I remember hearing a sports cast one night talk about how Hakeem had sent his parents many highlight videos.  Of course, you know what is in a highlight video–all the good stuff.  None of the bad.  When Olajuwon’s parents finally saw him play a game, they were shocked that he didn’t make every basket.  On the videos, he never missed!  Perfection was an illusion brought about by selective editing.

    The same thing tends to happen with people who never deal with criticism; who are constantly told they are special; who never have to deal with adversity or failure.  They get big headed and think they are über-special.  And what usually happens to this person’s character?  How do they usually act toward other people? 

    Well, you know as well as I do, they tend to become very self-centered and arrogant.  They tend to think they are always in the right, and they have very little regard for anyone else’s thought or stance.  They tend to be uncompromising and have little or no compassion for anyone else.  If someone is always told they are special, great, awesome, or what have you, without any corrective, they end up in a very dangerous place.

    And yet, on the other hand, what happens to someone who never is affirmed?  What happens to someone who is always criticized; who can never seem to get a positive thing said about what they say or do?  What happens to someone who constantly runs into negative comments and actions over and over and over again?

    Well, these folks generally become depressed and down trodden.  They feel worthless and believe they have no ability to contribute to the world around them.  They feel no sense of self-worth or achievement.  They are totally ashamed of who they are and what they have done.

    Now, most of us at this point would say that there needs to be a balance here.  There needs to be just the right amount of criticism and just the right amount of praise to turn out well adjusted people.  I would tend to agree, but is that what actually happens?  If you look at the cultures of the world, does this actually get played out?

    No.  It does not.  Cultures and societies tend to practice an either/or kind of discipline.  Either they work diligently to build up a person’s ego and raise their self esteem, or they tend to shame them and make them feel worthless.  We particularly see this in our educational system.  Many, many years ago, there was more the shame approach.  If someone wasn’t doing well, they were shamed and made to feel bad about themselves.  Now, the opposite is the truth.  If someone isn’t doing well, we try to affirm them and make them feel better about themselves thinking if they felt better about themselves, they would do better.  The pendulum has swung.  And it will keep swinging.

    The question is: can anything stop the pendulum?  Can we arrive at a happy medium where there is the balance of discipline and affirmation?

    “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down...”

    “And He saw the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.”

    These things might not seem to address the issue too much until you keep following the rabbit hole.  For, there is one more scene we need to see.  There is one more tearing we need to hear about.  You see, Mark, in his Gospel, uses a very particular Greek word to talk about the heavens being torn open.  It’s the word schizein.  I know.  I know.  You didn’t come here this morning to get a lesson in ancient Greek, but bear with me a moment.  Mark uses this word only twice in his Gospel, and I believe he is very, very intentional.  Here is the rest of the story, from Mark chapter 15:

    33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ 35When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ 36And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ 37Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38And the curtain of the temple was torn (schizein) in two, from top to bottom. 39Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’

    The heavens are torn in two at Jesus’ baptism.  The temple curtain is torn in two at Jesus’ crucifixion.  Mark links these two events purposefully to show that they go together.  Why do they go together?

    Because of why Jesus had to die.  Jesus died because we were not perfect.  Jesus died because we were self centered.  Jesus died because the world was broken.  Jesus died because we were broken–and still are broken.  We don’t like thinking about such matters today because we like to think we are okay.  We like to think the one’s with the problem are those out there.  That crime and stuff is out there in the cities.  Yet, in our own community, Austin Berger was shot and killed.  Those people out there get up in arms and angry about people getting hurt and killed.  Well, people here have it happen too.  Well, it’s just those people who are getting angry and upset, I’m not.  But have you ever?   Of course you have.  If each and every one of us delves deeply enough, we will all have to face our own imperfections.  We will have to face our own brokenness.  We will have to face our own mortality.  We cannot hold our heads too high despite those who want to tell us that we are fine just the way we are.  Jesus had to die because of us–because of our broken, self-centered nature.  We killed Jesus. It’s enough to depress you. 

    But we do not hold our heads down in a permanent state of depression.  We do not focus completely on our brokenness because Jesus died for us so that we might become God’s beloved children.  Jesus died so that we may know how much God really and truly loves us.  Jesus died so that we are not overtaken by our brokenness and separated from our creator for eternity.  You can’t hold your head down in shame forever when you know that God went to these sorts of lengths for you.  You cannot wallow in misery when you know you were important enough for Jesus to die for you.  You are God’s beloved child!

    And so, you are broken but loved.  You are sinful, but redeemed.  You are cursed but forgiven.  You are shamed, but accepted.  You cannot be too haughty because you know you are broken.  But you cannot be too depressed because you are bought with great price.  The pendulum comes dead center–all because of the Gospel.

    For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that all those who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world but so that the world may be saved through Him.

    At your baptism, God redeemed your brokenness.  God made you an accepted failure.  The heavens have been torn open for you not because of what you have done but because of what Jesus did.  And now, you have been made God’s beloved child.  May you be as humbled by this as I am.  Amen.

The Conversion of a Pastor

A reader asked something very pertinent and poignant:

I've read with great curiosity about your "conversion" and was wondering if there is/are post(s) from that time that I may read.  I struggle with the same issues that your congregant Mark dealt with and I read your sermon from his funeral and it was great.  I was just hoping to read what you were writing at the time he gave you that book that lead to your "conversion"...really a fuller understanding of the Gospel, I'd say.

I think one would have to read through the entirety of this blog in order to grasp what I was writing at the time this conversion process started, but one would also have to know the underlying processes which was at work as well.  In this post, I hope to lay some of that out so that you can see just what was going on inside my heart at the time.  Be forewarned, I personally don't think it was pretty.  In fact, it was rather petty.  At the time, I never saw what I was doing and what my motivations were.  I know now, and I have a sense of shame regarding them.  But none-the-less, I will put the chips out there and let them fall where they may.

As I stated in my Easter Sermon to my congregation, I was filled with dreams as a pastor--big dreams.  I wanted to be the pastor of a congregation that grew and grew and grew.  I wanted the place to worship thousands on a Sunday and have thousands of members.  I wanted that congregation to buck the trend of decline experienced by denominations in the U.S., and then I wanted folks to beat down my door asking, "How did you do it?"  I wanted to be able to share my expertise and be important in the eyes of the church.  I wanted fame and notoriety.  To an extent, these things still reside within me as a shadow.  I am not sure I will ever get rid of them.

Of course, in order to have these dreams come to fruition, I needed a congregation to cooperate.  I needed others to cooperate with me and make this stuff happen.  I would work like the dickens to see it accomplished, but I needed others to work like the dickens as well.  I never realized how self-centered this approach was because, as I see it now, I was using Jesus as a means to an end and I was using a congregation and its people as a means to an end.  The only humility I had within me was a false humility to make people think I wasn't using them.  (Again, I never saw it this way at the time.  I never thought I was using anyone.  I thought I was doing God's work and simply preaching the Gospel.)

I considered my first congregation a learning experience as I served as an associate pastor, but coming to my current congregation was a chance to really do things my way.  I jumped in with both feet and hit the ground running.

And things went wonderfully!  The congregation grew by leaps and bounds!  People were excited about doing things!  People were filling the pews!  And I was thrilled!  My dreams seemed like they were well on their way to coming true.  We were drawing all sorts of people to the church--some who were disgruntled with other congregations; others who had stopped worshiping long ago but were returning; young families with children.   I was happy, happy, happy.

But then things began to stop.  Perhaps there were many factors, including making the transition from a "pastoral" sized congregation to a "program" sized congregation, but there was one in particular that I can point to that filled me with fear.

The national church in 2009 made the decision to ordain practicing homosexuals.  There were a few members who were absolutely against this decision.  There were others who favored it.  There were many who were not happy but wouldn't cause a fuss--they would just stop giving.  There were others who really didn't care at all.  It was a no win situation as far as I was concerned.  The national church assembly had just thrown a monkey wrench into my plans.

And so I tried to fix it.

I did.  I tried to come up with a solution that wouldn't necessarily satisfy everyone, but it would be enough to keep the congregation on the right track to growth.  My dreams wouldn't be derailed!  Or so I thought.

The "fix" didn't work.  We still lost members.  A different sort of "spirit" seemed to surround the congregation.

And so I went to work.  I tried to get the church focused on other things.  You know what all the pundits say, right?  Keep an organization focused on a project.  Keep them focused on doing good things!  That will bring folks around and keep them coming to your organization.  Yep, I bought it.  Onto trying such events.  The first of which was the Kan You Kover 100K?--one of the reasons I actually kicked off this blog.  These things will work, right?  No luck.

Little did I know that burnout was fast creeping upon me.  I had thrown myself into trying to save my dream, and it was taking its toll.

It was around this time that I was given the book A Place for Truth: Leading Thinkers Tackle Life's Biggest Questions.  Looking back now, it was a blessing and a curse at the time.  Ultimately, it was a blessing, but to begin with it fed another part of my ego.

You see, I suffered from, and still to an extent suffer from, a tremendous desire to be right.  I want to have the right thoughts, subscribe to the right doctrine, do the right things, and so on and so forth.  I wanted to think that I was intellectually superior to others, and I wanted to think I was morally superior to others as well.  I would have never, ever admitted this before.  False humility.

The authors presented in this book offered me a train of Christian apologetics that I had not been exposed to in my days of college and seminary.  After having been exposed to "Christian fundamentalism" in my youth, college and seminary presented me with the exact opposite end of the spectrum.  Neither of these two paths seemed intellectually satisfying in my estimation.  Both seemed to have severe inconsistencies.  The train of thought presented by the book seemed to have fewer inconsistencies and have a better progression of logic.  Therefore, I became hooked.

I read and read and read.  I ordered other books by those who had chapters in the book.  I absorbed their thoughts thinking I had found the "right" path.  I now had the answers!  I knew what would save my dream!

Discipleship!  I had to be a better disciple.  I had to make my congregation be better disciples!

I embraced another form of legalism, and burnout loomed large.

Yeah.  Long story short, I failed at that discipleship thing.  I just couldn't be a great disciple, and I couldn't make others be disciples either.  Looking back at many of my sermons from those days, I was so concerned about what we were supposed to be doing!  Do this.  Do that.  Give here.  Be loving.  Be kind.  Produce the fruits of the Spirit.  I was also consumed with believing the right things.  This is the proper belief.  This is the proper doctrine to grasp.  If we all just believed this, things would turn, and we would stop this plateau and grow once again. 

What I failed to realize is that these sort of things don't happen unless a heart has been transformed by the Gospel--the realization that our salvation is from the Lord; that our self-worth is from the Lord; that we do not strive for worldly status and praise--"I haven't accomplished much in the eyes of the world, but the Lord and I are on very good terms."

I've written a couple of times about that statement of my grandfather's.  I wrote about it this past Easter along with Timothy Keller's speech about doing evangelism in a postmodern world.  Both of these events were instrumental in bringing me through that final lap of conversion.  Honestly, I had to fail before this could happen.   I had to burn out.  I had to realize my failing and frailty.  I had to realize my own brokenness and inability to grow a church.  I had to realize that I was using Jesus as a means to an end and not as an end in and of Himself.  I had to die to all of that.  I had to be humbled.

It wasn't pleasant, but there is now something different within me.  There is peace.  There is joy.  I'm not trying to treat my congregation as a means to an end.  I don't get angry or frustrated with others when they make decisions which are not in line with having Jesus at the center of their lives.  Hey, I spend a long time doing the same thing, and if I am honest with myself, there are times when I still do such things.  I know Jesus is still working on me.  I know Jesus will work on them.  I simply need to proclaim the gospel.

And that gospel is rather mucked up these days by the church.  I mean, most of the time we spend talking about what we should do.  We consume ourselves with the transformation of society or hammer folks with ideology.  We focus on a lot of shoulds.  Shoulds are important, no doubt, but you cannot talk should in the church until you talk redemption.  You cannot talk about living the Christian life until hearts have been turned toward God.  Only after folks become converted to the Christian faith can we begin trying to wrestle with how we are supposed to live it out.

Too often, in the church, we make the assumption that folks hearts are already tuned in. We make the assumption that they have already been changed by the gospel.  I think making that assumption is deadly.

I think making that assumption has caused many of our congregations to either become "liberal" or "conservative".  We embrace a particular ethic or social stance or ideology to become acceptable to those outside; then, those folks will want to become a part of us because our ideology matches as well as the things we do.  In my estimation, this has transformed many churches into clubs.

I once asked members of one particular congregation what made their church different from any other social organization.

It was quite awkward for a few moments.

What distinguishes the Church of Christ from any other organization is its focus on the Gospel of Jesus Christ--God's reconciling the world unto Himself through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is the power of the Gospel to change lives--to bring a sense of lasting peace, joy, and fulfillment which makes us different.

Our salvation; the world's salvation is of the Lord!  It's of the Lord!  Our self-worth; our status; our identity comes from the Lord!  It's of the Lord!  I don't have to go around proving myself.  I don't have to be important in the eyes of anyone or any institution.  I don't have to have a congregation grow in order to be happy or fulfilled.  I simply need Jesus.

I somewhat understood that with my head, but it hadn't sunk deep within.  It didn't  govern my heart.  I think it does now.  I still struggle.  I still find myself becoming a little disappointed when worship attendance isn't where I think it should be.  I still get a little upset when people tell me they are coming to worship and then don't.  I still find myself wanting to be right about all kinds of things; but these things no longer dominate.  These things are no longer my ultimate pursuits.

I've changed.

Maybe you seek that kind of change too.
Maybe you are tired of getting your worth from all sorts of things.
Maybe you are stressed out; burned out; unhappy; unfulfilled.
Take a deep breath and examine whether or not Christ is at the center of your life.
Examine whether or not you are pursuing Him or other things.  (This may be extremely difficult; as I noted earlier, I wasn't aware of what I was doing.)
Perhaps you will have a moment of clarity.
Perhaps not.  Be patient.  Wait.  Seek.  Ask God for it.  (Read my next sermon for some insight into how this process may look as it plays out.)

But don't go around thinking you can continue to do all the same things.
Don't think that you can continue to pursue the things you are pursuing now.
Change will have to happen.
It will be painful.  I am sorry to say that as we tend to avoid painful things, but it is necessary.
But once broken through, when Christ orients your heart toward Him, things change

And for the better.

The Truth--Jesus--sets you free.