The Walls Come Down!

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

Focus: Racism

Function: To help people see how racism is addressed in the gospel message.

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

I am going to work very hard at keeping this positive, but I need to face a little bit of our national pain and discuss what the Bible has to say about it and help us understand just how far this passage of scripture must go if it is going to inform our Christian lives together in America.

I just returned from our Church's Annual Conference. AC is always very inspiring and at times it can be very sad.

And, in one sense, this sermon will be my AC report.

I went to some really, really great events and insight sessions.

I think the highlight, for all of us, was the ministry that we shared together from our Brothers and Sisters in Nigeria, the EYN Church in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Woman's Choir performed throughout the conference in worship services, in insight sessions and during meals and luncheons.

I wish you could see the joy with which they share their faith.

It is electric!

It is so inspiring to see the HOPE within them even though they are still suffering in ways that we cannot imagine.

Kathy and I discusses whether or not I would give my tithe for last week on the 5^th of July or today. I suggested today because the 1^st Sunday is always the biggest and we might even it out.

But, sorry Joe and Peg, I gave my tithe to the Nigerian Crisis fund.

We take an offering every worship for some sort of cause or another and it generally averages between 3 and 5 thousand dollars.

Our Sunday Morning offering, the Nigerian relief offering was over $14,000!

The COB decided to raise 3 million over the next two years for immediate relief for Nigeria and then we were given a more to come estimate.

Well, I am happy to tell you that we have already raised 3,1 million dollars! And, we have decided to raise 2.1 million more.

To see the pictures of whole housing subdivisions, with farming acreage for each house being built on land that we already purchased is comforting. By the way, although we are building them for our EYN brothers and sisters, because of partnership with another organization, we are also building them for Muslim families. Yes, in a compound much like a trailer park, but with permanent concrete/block houses, Christians and Muslims are living together in peace and real live harmony!

And, the Church of the Brethren is the inspiration behind this.

To see families living in refugee camps who are alive, and living in relative security warmed my heart and filled me with tears of joy.

There was a lot of tears of joy.

On Monday afternoon, we spent most of the afternoon's business session focusing on and praying for our brothers and sisters in the faith.

3.1 million is small by government standards, but for a denomination as small as us, it is absolutely phenomenal. THANK YOU! Praise the Lord Jesus Christ!

Because of our partnership, instead of raising just 5.2 million overall, we now have an additional 6 million promised to EYN's efforts by another Christian Charity.

We learned that over 1700 hundred churches have been burnt. The toll of those displaced is over 180,000 and there are at least 8,000 of our Brethren brothers and sisters who were murdered so far. The kidnapped girls is just a small part of it.

And yet, the joy and hope is overwhelming! It is electric! It is truly inspirational!

What a joy to be part of that.

Meanwhile, in 1915, the Ottoman Turks instituted a pogrom against Armenian Orthodox Christianity in Turkey.

It went largely unnoticed by the world and its press. But back then, the COB gave over $250,000 for relief. That is, coincidentally, worth about 5 million dollars by today's standards. And, we were much bigger then with more resources, so, this effort in Nigeria really is huge.

1.5 million were murdered. And we got the privilege of helping the survivors. Sadly, there were to few, estimates are around 300,000 people.

But they lived because of us. We fed, clothed and housed them for years until the war was over.

Members of the Armenian Church were there to thank us on the 100 year anniversary and they were happy that we were still doing the same thing today, with the same personal and corporate sacrifice.

There were many stories of the way Brethren gave sacrificially to help those in EYN.

Again, THANK YOU!

And, coincidentally, this fits well with the theme of this passage of scripture.

This passage is about how God brought down the walls of separation between the races in Christ Jesus.

This passage is about Jesus' peace bringing enemies together. It focuses on the power of God's love to transform people. God does it.

And God, according to this passage, has acted in the atoning sacrifice not only to save us from sin, death, hell and brokenness, but also to reverse the process that God started at the tower of Babel.

God wants the races together, as one, mixed in a common faith, worshiping together as more than Americans, Armenians, Hispanics, the Undocumented, Blacks, Whites, Russians, Jews, Germans, Europeans, Africans, every single race, every single gender, every single person in all of humanity together in perfect love and harmony and listen to this final caveat: “because of Jesus.”

However, people will choose to divide for many reasons.

The one that breaks my heart the most is the “because of Jesus” attitude of some.

At AC, instead of people at microphones making long speeches, before we have microphone debates about controversial issues, we sit at tables and discuss the issue.

It is a great idea and it works. The idea is to see the “other” person as sincere in their beliefs.

AC also acknowledges that issues, perspectives and debates do not often enough consider how those decisions are played out by those with minority representation or status.

Most specifically years and years ago, we agreed together and overwhelmingly approved a call to accountability about minorities and women who are on the ballot and who ultimately get elected.

The commitment was not a command to the nominating committee to provide diverse candidates, but also to structure ballots in such a way that diverse candidates get actually get elected.

So, if no woman, for example, has been called to serve as moderator for several years in a row, then the ballot may reflect only two women intentionally so that we can be more diverse.

After the results of the main slate of elections was announced, there was also a report on how well we did with our own decision to hold ourselves accountable to gender and racial equality.

We did poorly, by the way. I wish I could say I feel good about it. But actually, the results were very alarming from my perspective.

However, what really gave me pause was the table discussion.

The fellow across from me at the table said that they only way to ensure gender and racial equality was to list candidates without a name, without a gender, without an age, and without a race.

We have a qualification section on the ballot and he suggested we merely use the qualifications section.

And then, for some reason, he asked ME (no one else at the table) what I thought of it.

In a few seconds, I had to try to figure out a way to help him understand what racial and gender privilege is.

I didn't do so well. It takes time to help people see it. And, I failed miserably.

I told him some stories that my daughter in law has told me about privilege.

Before she met my son, she was going with another white man. He regularly uses marijuana. He picked her up from work one night right after smoking pot. She doesn't do it.

He got pulled over, and it was her, with her face literally ground into the mud under the officer's boot who was accused of smoking the demon weed.

He didn't understand.

So I said: “here is the thing, we do not even know what we do not know about systemic racism in our culture. If we vote that way, we will continue to do our work in ignorance of how believers of other races and genders suffer. The only way we can be aware, so that we can fulfill Christ Jesus' mandate to do justice, is to intentionally, for a season, stack the deck with minorities and women and then, I hope that qualifications alone will work because it will only be then that we learn what qualifications we actually need to fulfill Matthew 25 and Luke 4:18 better.”

His answer left me speechless and I hate to report it because Jesus loves him and I am sure that he is as sincere as me. He just doesn't know and it is up to us to patiently help him see it.

He said: “well, there are several of them (repeat OF THEM) in my church. All of the coloreds in my church know that I love them.”

If that is his term for them, then he is either lying, or his ignorance, and I don't use that to demean him, he simply doesn't understand, but it is his ignorance that keeps him from understanding. He doesn't know what he doesn't know.

This passage of scripture is about the good news. It is about the good news as it affects our racial attitudes. It is as much about racism, systemic racism as it is about salvation. They do indeed go hand in hand.

So, I am greatly encouraged and proud, in a Brethren humble sort of way, of who we are as a people.

We are Brethren. The name does exclude our women. But it also emphasizes our community and love and support for everyone.

Yes, we always have a way to go to implement the onus of this teaching by Paul.

But we have moved forward.

God help us move more.

Help Me!

Text: 2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Focus: Why is there suffering?

Function: To help people rest in faith (trust)

Form: Bible Study

Intro: For most of my pre-teen years, my dad pastored a Church about an hour north of our house. So, Sunday morning with 4 boys, early breakfast, dressed for Sunday clothes, potty breaks and timing was a fairly large undertaking for my mother. She was good at it.

And my favorite memory of Sunday morning was the way she woke us up on Sunday mornings. She got on the piano and belted out as loud as she could the song: “It is morning, the Son is in our heart, everything is happy and gay!”

it was pleasant. It was so positive. It set the stage for peaceful and organized Sunday mornings. The other thing that I remember about those mornings was coming down the stairs and seeing the TV on. Sunday was God's day, so Sunday TV, if it was on, was always Christian. Good for dad that he wasn't a football fan.

So, the way the timing worked, it seemed to me that every single Sunday morning, just as I hit the landing to the stairs I would hear Oral Roberts on the TV say: “Something good is going to happen to you.” or “Expect a miracle.”

How many remember that?

Now you know that I believe in miracles and I would never want to mock either God or a brother Christian but all of that reminds me of a joke that sort of sets up the sermon this morning. The joke is absurd and it is about faith healers.

It goes like this: When Oral Roberts died and went heaven, he approached the throne room of God and God says to him: “Oral, I've got this pain in my back...”

It took me a while to get that joke when I first heard it. I'm sort of slow.

He was a great faith preacher and let me just say this about preaching faith: “without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach God must believe that God exists and that God rewards those who seek God.” Heb. 11:6

And the great love chapter mentions faith when it says:

And there are three things that remain faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13

Love is what we preach here, but scripture says that faith is sort of the beginning.

So, I preach faith also.

Obviously, God doesn't need a healing. But the joke expresses the dilemma of faith.

Brother Roberts preached that if you have enough faith, then everything that you ask for will be given you.

And we know that he took the meaning of that out of context because prayer must be according to the will of God.

When I preach faith, I preach that people should ask, but I remind people that we are commanded to pray “Thy will be done.”

And I say that because, at times, God's answer is this: My grace is really all you need.

I wonder: how was that for Paul?

We read of miracle after miracle that he prayed for and then POW something supernatural happened. People everywhere were getting healed when he prayed. But he himself has some sort of ailment, probably physical, maybe spiritual, some surmise that maybe it was even a problem with sin that always kept reminding him that he still needed a Savior and he was never any better than anyone else.

We don't know what his ailment, his thorn in the flesh was, but we know that God decided that he was not going to get over it.

Because he makes reference to his failing eyesight in several places, many think it was blindness, maybe even a leftover problem from his Damascus road experience when he was converted to Christianity.

How would that seem to his detractors?

Paul was a leader. And every leader has people who do not like them for one reason or another.

As a matter of fact, this part of 2 Corinthians is Paul defending himself against his critics.

And this is big ammunition for them.

I can just imagine what was said: “if this guy is so full of faith and is so close to God, how come he has this problem?” Or, “why doesn't he just lay hands on himself and get himself healed?”

(look up in question) I wonder: before God's answer to him in this passage, did he have the same doubt before this?

(look up) “Why can't I get healed?”

When something goes wrong with me, the first thing I am tempted to do is blame myself and wonder what is lacking in my own faith.

That is probably not healthy.

Here is the thing that we must always remember about God's answer to him: We belong to God.

I am convinced that since God loves us, God is more interested in our health and welfare than we are ourselves.

Every parent or every child knows this. When one of my children rebellious and doing some destructive things I said: “I just wish you loved yourself as much as I love you.”

God cares. God cares for us.

And, God cares enough to keep us humble so that we rest in God.

Rest in God.

This isn't God's ego trip.

This is F.R.O.G. Fully Rely On God.

God cares enough for us to allow circumstances that remind us to trust God.

Rest in God.

Do not be afraid.

There has been a lot of anger on the news and arguing back and forth among different people of faith lately.

My biggest concern about all that is that the discussions be done with Christian love.

But fear over the future has entered into the discussion. And that bothers me.

And the problem with fear is that it isn't faith.

We don't need to fear.

I submit that more than anything what is happening is that Christianity is losing its privilege in our nation.

And that, I believe, is a good thing.

But the church isn't dying and it isn't defeated.

History has shown that when we live in power, when we are the dominant culture in a society, it seems as if our Christianity becomes more about what we are entitled to as Believers than us living sacrificial lives for the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of love and peace.

Let me explain it with two events from the last two weeks. Charleston, and SCOTUS.

Dylan Wolf is an angry young white man. He killed black people because he fears that white people are losing the privilege of power over black people.

And against racism, we say: “Amen! That is the way it should be! God has called us to do justice.”

But he said, no way! I want my power and I will do whatever it takes to keep it.

And who knows? Maybe a national movement of repentance over racism will happen and we will purge the Confederate flag because it was the rallying banner of those who refused to give up their so called right to oppress others.

Who knows what God is doing?

So. Enter this morning's text again.

This is about faith.

Rest in God.

He let fear drive him to murder.

Paul learned about faith in God's power, not his.

This is about faith in the fact that God is moving, still, in the Church.

This is about faith that God said that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church.

Now to the Supreme Court.

Many Christians believe that we lost last week.

They didn't lose anything except their privilege to dominate culture.

But we are in a post-Christian world.

And in that post-Christian world, Constitutional protections are now being given to those that traditionally the Church had nothing good to say about.

I suppose Libertarians and Constitutional purists would agree.

For those who raise the alarm of fear over this, I want to ask them:

Is God still in control?

Is Jesus still true to His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church?

And then, what are you afraid of?

Is fear from God?

When things don't go our way, does that mean that God has failed?

Even if this means that your position is now from weakness instead of the strength of the law, isn't our weakness something to rejoice in when it opens the door to more and more of God's work and power?

To everyone, I want to say, Have faith!

It is about faith that God is doing what God wants to do in and through the Church.

Nothing can stop God.