OK, so maybe that isn’t so shocking of an admission.  It’s about as unexpected as a Miss America candidate announcing she is against poverty and for world peace.  But my love for the Psalms rises from deep inside of me.  I find them most helpful in guiding my prayer.  I love it when I open this centuries old document and find my voice in its pages, crying to God out of the depths.

One of my favorite moments in my devotions each week is when I open the Psalms to see what Psalm I will be living in for the next seven days.  Both of my favorite devotional guides, Job and Shawchucks A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants and Benson and Benson’s Disciplines for the Inner Life feature one Psalm per week.  It exciting to come each Monday morning and see what Psalm it will be this week, because it is always surprising to see the way God speaks into my life through that song.

Well, it usually is.

This week, I was directed to Psalm 26.  With eager anticipation I opened my Bible and began to read.

Psalm 26
Of David.
 ¹ Vindicate me, O LORD,
       for I have led a blameless life;
       I have trusted in the LORD
       without wavering. (all quotations from the NIV)

Already I knew I had a problem.  I couldn’t get past that first verse.

I’m supposed to pray “Vindicate me, because I’ve led a blameless life of unwavering trust”?

It just wasn’t happening.  All the well-what-about’s kept getting in the way. 

Well, what about that one time when you did…

Well, what about that thing you’re struggling with…

Well, what about the way you tend to take things into your own hands…

And it only got worse from there, as my eye drifted from the speedbump of verse one to the little brown tourist information sign that preceded it: ”Of David.”

Suddenly there were a lot more well-what-about’s getting in the way.

Well, what about the census?

Well, what about Bathsheeba, let alone poor Uriah?

Well, what about Absalom?

Of course, then the voice in my head was reminding me of another passage of scripture, this time from the beginning of Romans 2, and I knew I couldn’t make this Psalm about David, when it was supposed to be about me.  But a lot of good that did me…

I wish I could tell you I have it worked out.

I have managed to find some comfort, challenge  and direction in some of the rest of the Psalm. Verses 2 and 3 challenge me:

Test me, O LORD, and try me,
   examine my heart and my mind;
for your love is ever before me,
   and I walk continually in your truth.

Verses 6 through 8 inspire me. 

I wash my hands in innocence,
    and go about your altar, O LORD,
proclaiming aloud your praise 
    and telling of all your wonderful deeds.
I love the house where you live, O LORD, 
    the place where your glory dwells.

But every day I open up to Psalm 26, and still get all tripped up by that first verse. 

I’ve tried lots of different translations.  None have made that verse any more prayable for me.

I’ve started praying that God would help me get to the place in my life where I can pray that prayer with freedom and confidence.  But for the time being, Psalm 26:1 still is a struggle for me.

It has taught me the importance of the discipline of praying even difficult prayers and of living in a scripture that’s tough to get comfortable in. 

But in the meantime, right or wrong, I’m looking forward to Monday when I’m allowed to move to a new Psalm. 

Of course, with my luck it will probably be Psalm 17…

It’s Sunday, January 31 as I write this.  Unusual I know.  I don’t normally write on Sunday.  (Of course, I guess you could say lately, I don’t normally write.)

But I’ve got some time on my hands now.  I’m sitting in the food court at the mall while my son and a bunch of his friends watch To Save A Life with about 100 others from our church.  I went to the first showing with about 200 of my closest friends.  And as good as it was, I didn’t feel like sitting through a second round so soon.  So while he watches, I’m writing.

The movie is a big part of the sweetness of the day.  (I should probably be posting this in my “Why I Love My Church” series, but instead it’s here.)  We really felt like this movie was something God wanted to use to speak to our youth ministry and church.

We cast the vision to our church to buy out  a single showing of the movie to make it available free of charge to as many teens and their families as possible.  Generous donors stepped forward and put forward the money to purchase 210 tickets.

And then last Sunday morning we gave away 240 ticket vouchers.

Back to the drawing board.

Back to the donors.

Back to the box office to purchase 100 more tickets.

Talk about generosity!  People caught the vision, stepped forward, and gave!

And now that generosity is paying off.  Like I said, the second group’s watching the movie now.  It’s been a blast just watching the excitement this movie has generated.

And as I’ve been telling folks, To Save a Life doesn’t end when the credits roll.  We’re following up the movie with teen and adult Sunday School classes inspired by themes from the movie.  Exciting things are happening.

Tempering the sweetness of the day is the nagging realization in the back of my mind that today is also my last day in full time youth ministry, at least for now.

About three months ago our staff was warned by the finance committee that if things didn’t change financially for our church cuts would have to be made.  Like so many churches, and so many families, we’re feeling the pinch. After a lot of prayer, and a lot of hard decisions we were told that as of February 1, all our positions would be cut in half, both in terms of time expected and in pay received.

It’s seemed surreal for a long time now.  Mentally, I knew it was coming.  But it’s just now sinking in that it’s actually happening.  Good thing since the cuts go into effect tomorrow.

I can’t tell you how I really feel about all of this.

I can’t even tell you for sure what we are doing.

Looking at our budget, the plan right now is to tighten our belts and trust God for the rest.  I was called into full time Christian ministry.  And I was ordained for that calling.  I’m not going to work less just because they can’t pay me what they have been lately.  I didn’t answer the call on the provision that the pay offered met a certain threshold.

What’s more I was called to Middletown.  I didn’t come here because I needed a place to work.  I didn’t even come because I always wanted to work with Phil Rogers.  I did.  But I told Phil no when he first asked me.  I only said yes when I felt God clearly calling me to Middletown.  And if the financial uncertainty has done anything, it’s driven me to my knees.  I know now more than ever this is where God wants me, at least for now.

So I’m staying, and I’m working anyway.

Of course, it may be that our budget figures are off.  I may find out a couple months into this that tightening our belt isn’t enough to pay the bills.  I may have to look to replace some of the income lost by the pay cuts.

Jill, our children’s pastor suggested we all look for jobs at the local gas station so parishioners have to look a pastor in the eye to buy their cigarettes and lottery tickets.  Who knows?  Maybe.

But for now we’re trying to live frugally and trust God for the extras.  In the meantime, I’m trying to find ways to supplement things with ministry activities.  I’ll try my hand at some writing, and throw my name out there for speaking.

(Now that you mention it, if you need a speaker for anything, keep me in mind.  I know a guy who might have the time and some kids who could use the money.)

In some ways, I’m sad.  It would break my heart to have to cut back on ministry in order to make ends meet.  Hopefully this is just a short term reality.  Who knows where our church will be financially a year from now?

(Answer: God.  When things are uncertain, don’t forget that fact!)

But more than sad, I’m excited.  This is like an adventure.  I mentioned about  a year ago one of my New Year’s resolutions was to seek a way to live on less – about a sixth less, so we could be more generous.  I guess God just thought we just needed to step that up a notch.  I can’t wait to see what God wants to do through this.

When the news of the cuts first hit, God gave me this promise in my daily devotions:

You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the LORD’s renown,
for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.”
(Isaiah 55:12-13, NIV)

So as far as I’m concerned this is an adventure.  And I’m excited to see what God is growing for us.

Weekend Teaching Series: Avatar

Message Title: Avatars and Incarnation

Sermon in a Sentence: We do not need to fear rejection when we approach God, because He chose us.

Text(s): Ephesians 1:3-14

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, Again, a fairly straightforward message that was fun to preach.

Message Summary:

We began by watching the following clip.  (The embedded copy is from YouTube.  We got our clip from WingClips.com.)

In the clip Neytiri shows Jake around the Hometree, explaining to him one vitally important part of Na’vi culture – the Mountain Banshees they call the ikran.  Na’vi hunters and warriors ride these flying beasts.  Each warrior has his or her own ikran, and each ikran its own rider.  The bond formed between them will be one for life.

She also explains that in order to become part of the Omaticaya and to be accepted as one of the Na’vi people, Jake will have to prove his worthiness by climbing up into the Hallelujah Mountains and taming his own ikran. Only by becoming an Ikran Makto, a Banshee Rider, can Jake truly become one of the people.

And to make things a little more nerve-racking for Jake, she explains it’s not just a matter of choosing your own ikran and taming it.  The ikran must also choose you.

We then thought about times in our own lives when we had to wait and wonder if we would be chosen.  I told about the first time I asked Michelle (now my wife) to go out with me, and had to wait to see what she would say.  I asked if they have ever been there themselves, because we all have…

Whether it’s wondering if the person you asked out will accept your invitation,

Or if someone thinks you’re good enough to be chosen for their sport team at school,

Or if anyone likes you enough as a friend to want to sit with you in the cafeteria,

Regardless of how it happens, all of us have worried whether or not anyone will choose us before.

And even if we have a long history of being chosen, all of us from time to time struggle with the question “Am I still good enough to be accepted.”  Even after we get the date, make the team or find someone to sit with at lunch, we worry about something happening that will cause us to lose their acceptance.

In fact, psychologists tell us one of the biggest fears teens face is the fear of rejection.

I read from a poem by a teenager name Dee who expresses the same fears:

I have feelings of love for the guy I see.
Does he love me too, what does he think of me?

I wish I could tell him he makes me whole, but I’m afraid to say
what’s deep in my soul.

I don’t want to lose him, for I would be alone,
and some days I just can’t wait to hear his voice on the phone.

She goes on to finish the poem with these words:

I wish I could tell him what I feel inside,
but I’m afraid of what he’ll say, how he’ll act on the outside.

And Dee’s not alone.  In one Yahoo Answers topic, which asks teens what they feared the most, 17 out of 22 listed fear of rejection.

I also shared about my experience on ChaCha where in my spare time I answer questions.  Many of  the questions I get deal with a fear of rejection.

“How can I tell a guy I like him without him thinking I’m stupid?”

“What happens if all my friends look down on me for pursuing my goals?”

“How do I get people to like me?”

“What can I do so people don’t think I’m boring?”

At the heart of all these anxieties is a fear of rejection.  What if I choose someone, and they don’t choose me?

So whether its Jake standing on a cliff high in the Hallelujah Mountains, or me at a church Halloween party, or you wherever you happen to be, at some point or another we all deal with this fear:

What if they don’t choose me?

From there we went to Ephesians and read 1:3-14.

The passage starts with these words: “He chose us in him before the creation of the world…”

In fact it’s so important, Paul says it twice.

In verse 11 he comes back to the same theme.  “In Him, we were also chosen…”

When it comes to finding love and acceptance, there is one person we don’t have to wait on to decide if he wants to accept us or not. When we call out to God we don’t have to spend the next day worrying about what he is going to say, whether or not he wants anything to do with us.  In fact, long before we ever get to the point where we choose God, God already chose us.

How would the way you approach others change if you knew they already accepted you?

Seriously.

Do you think I would have had so hard a time asking Michelle out if I knew she had already decided to say yes?

Would you get nearly as nervous when it comes time to choose teams in gym class if you knew that one of the team captains already wanted you on your team?

Would you be nearly as frightened about talking to the strangers in the cafeteria at school if you already knew they liked you and were hoping you’d come talk to them?

It’s a whole lot easier to choose someone when you know beforehand that they have already chosen you.

And that’s what the Bible says about God.

God chose you.

Before the creation of the world,

Before the beginning of time,

Before you could do anything to earn his love,

Before you could do anything to lose his respect,

Before you even thought about calling out to Him,

God . Chose. You.

From there we examined what Ephesians says that God chose us for:

He chose to lavish on you the riches of his grace.

God is a God who is good at giving gifts.  And he chose you to be the recipient.

I told a story about growing up as part of a large family.  Every Christmas we drew names to decide who bought presents for whom.  And there was one uncle that everyone hoped would draw their name.  He had a tendency to spoil the person he was giving gifts to.

But as good as my uncle was a giving presents, he had nothing on God.  Talk about the ultimate gift giver.  God invented gift giving, and at no point in human history has anyone come even close to giving better gifts than God.  James chapter one says “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Every good thing you enjoy, and everything that is good for you is a gift from God.

And you don’t have to wait to see if God chose your name.  It’s not like family Christmas where there are only so many gifts to go around.  There is no limit on how many gifts God can give, and he has already drawn your name.  God chose you to be the recipient of the gifts that he loves to lavish on his children.

He chose you to experience forgiveness and redemption.

Sometimes when we know we’ve done something wrong and need to make an apology, we hesitate because we worry about how the person to whom we are apologizing will respond.  And so instead of admitting it, confessing it and getting it out in the open, we try to pretend that everything is OK, even when everyone involved knows  it isn’t, just because we don’t know how they will respond if we apologize.

We do the same thing with God from time to time, rationalizing away our choices, trying to convince ourself we’re OK because we’re afraid what will happen if we admit that there is something wrong.

But we don’t have to wonder how God will respond, because the Bible says what will happen.  If you will confess your sins, God is faithful and just, and he will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrightousness.

He won’t condemn you.

He won’t reject you.

He will forgive you.

He’s already chosen you to receive forgiveness.

And it’s not just forgiveness that he wants to give you.  He doesn’t just want to wipe away the past record of your sins and make everything right again, he wants to change you, to help you become more like him.  That’s the third thing he’s chosen you for.

He chose you to be holy and blameless in his sight.

God didn’t choose you just so he can pretend that everything is all right between the two of you.  Having lavished his gifts on you, and having offered you forgiveness, he also promises to help you change – to become the better you that deep down you know he wants you to be.  He has chosen you to become more like him.

He chose you to be adopted as his children.

As if the other things weren’t already good enough, God has also chose you to become a part of his family.  He not only loves you enough to forgive you, empower you and bless you, he thinks you are worthy of bearing his name and being a part of his family.

And when you stop to think about it, that’s a pretty big honor.

Because when you are family, how you behave reflects on the rest of your family.

Anyone who has to go to the same school their older brother or sister went to knows this.  When your teachers have had your brother or sister before you, they already have certain ideas and expectations about you even before you first set foot in their class room.  The choices of your family members effects your reputation.

Normally, we don’t have any choices in this matter.  We don’t choose our families.  Like them or not, we’re pretty much stuck with them.

But not so with God.  God isn’t stuck with you.  He chose to adopt you.  He doesn’t just tolerate having you in his family, he wants you to be a part of his family, and he wants that so much, he even sent his own Son Jesus Christ to die to make your adoption possible.

And finally,

He chose you to know the mystery of his will

God is not the kind of God to hide his plans and purposes from us, leaving us in the dark about what he wants to do in the world, or in us.  Life isn’t meaningless and without purpose – God has a plan and he wants you to know it, and to take part in it. God tells us his purpose is to rescue and redeem the world, and there is a role in that mission that he wants us to play.

Jesus himself noted this.  In John 15:15 he tells his disciples “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” I could just boss you around as if you were my slaves, Jesus says, but instead I invite you to be my friends and partners in the work I am doing in the world.

And you know what’s really interesting about that verse?  The very next words of Jesus are these:

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.”

I chose you.

But that’s not all that Ephesians chapter one has to say about our fear of rejection.   Because the fear of rejection isn’t just that we will never be chose, the fear of rejection is also the fear that the person who chose us one day will change their mind and abandon us for someone else.

Look at the way this passage ends in Ephesians 1:13-14.

Not only did God choose us, he sealed us. He put his mark of ownership on us so that there can never be any doubt.  We belong to him.  And having sealed us, he gave us a deposit guaranteeing our place in his inheritance.

I talked about why our youth group requires deposits on trips.  Sometimes, when there are expenses we have to pay for even in someone backs out at the last minute, we require deposits to cover those costs.  It’s our way of making sure people are certain of their decision before they make a reservation.

God is so certain of his choice of you, he put down a deposit.  He placed his Holy Spirit in you to reserve your place in his kingdom. From his perspective there’s no going back on that choice.

No, he doesn’t kidnap you.  He doesn’t trick you into saying yes to him and then refuses to let you go if you change your mind.  You can still choose to turn your back on God and walk away from him.

But God promises that he will never, ever do that to you.

When you come to God, this is one relationship in which you don’t have to fear rejection.

Then we returned to the question: “How would your behavior change if you knew the person you chose already chose you?”

The fact is God has chosen us, and that should make it easier for us to choose him.  We closed with an evangelistic appeal, sharing how students could accept God’s grace and forgiveness and begin a life with Him.

If you’d like, you can listen to the full audio of this sermon by checking out our podcast on iTunes or by downloading it from our RSS feed.

A busy schedule has kept me from updating my blog recently, but I’m working to get back into the swing of posting regularly.  I’m going to go back a couple of weeks with my reviews to include all three sermons from our Avatar series.

Weekend Teaching Series: Avatar

Message Title: Avatars and Incarnation

Sermon in a Sentence: Avatar provides hints and glimpses of the greatest story ever told, but Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God in whom we can trust.

Text(s): John 1:1-14

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, A pretty straightforward night with an enjoyable theme.

Message Summary:

In January we launched a three week mini-series inspired by themes from the new blockbuster movie Avatar.  In week one of our series we examined the story of the movie as a whole and asked the question “What makes this movie so compelling?”

We started by watching the trailer for the movie and summarizing the plot premise (attempting to avoid giving too much away.)  We explained the setting on Pandora, the concept of Avatars and the primary conflict of the story: the question over which faction of humans will shape the future of Pandora, the scientists who want to study the planet and do good for the people, or the corporate officials who wish to exploit the resources of the moon for financial gain.

Having summarized the premise of the movie we asked the question: “Why was this movie so compelling?”

Granted the movie is a bit predictable.  It isn’t a new plot, even if it is a technological triumph in filming.  Some have even noted it’s basically “Pocohontas” in space.  Granted it features 12 foot tall blue skined Na’vi, not brown skinned Native Americans, settlers who fly futuristic helicopters rather than 17^th century sailboats, and a hero named Jake Sully, not John Smith.  But other than that, it’s pretty much the same story.

And it contains some troubling connotations that go unnoticed while the viewer is enthralled by the cinematography.  Granted it is set in a fictional fantasy world where the people have their own religion, but the worldview it portrays and endorses reflects what we know as animism – the idea that everything in the world from the people, to the animals, to the plants and even the rocks and dirt itself, have a soul, and that god, known on Pandora as Eywa, and to animists as Gaia or Mother Earth, is the connection that exists between all these souls.  All life is linked together, and everything combined becomes the goddess that is worshipped and served.

What’s more, Avatar clearly also draws on Hindu beliefs as well.  The word Avatar, itself is drawn from Hinduism.  And one only needs to look at the pictures of the long haired, blue skinned incarnations of Vishnu from Hindu thought to see where the design of the Na’vi people came from.  In fact, the obvious connections with Hinduism have caused at least one American Hindu leader to ask James Cameron to put a disclaimer at the beginning and end of the movie that the movie itself has nothing to do with Hinduism and is not an accurate portrayal of what Hinduism believes.

But the moviegoer hardly even notices.  When all the Na’vi people get together and start praying around a tree, you find yourself hoping that Eywa will answer their prayers without even realizing that the movie is promoting an understanding of God that is at odds with our Christian faith.

So, is it all one great big conspiracy to try to force New Age paganism down the throats of audiences or to subtly slip a good dose of Hinduism into our entertainment diet?

Probably not.

James Cameron is a filmmaker, not a guru or a shaman.  His desire is to make the next blockbuster, not convert the world to a particular religion – especially since in a lot of ways he gets the religions to which he alludes wrong.  The religious themes of the movie probably reflect his syncretistic hodgepodge of personal religious beliefs, but Cameron is far more interested in getting you to buy a Blu-Ray than to have you baptized as a neo-pagan.

So given all these troubling features, why was the story so captivating?

Yes the technology of filming it is a stunning cinematic break through. But cutting edge special effects don’t necessarily create a captivating story.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.  Cutting edge special effects, yet it sold less than a third of the tickets that Star Wars IV: A New Hope (the first star wars movie) sold. The technology alone can’t explain the fascination of the story.

And, quite frankly, it can’t be the dialog.  Check out the most memorable quote from the movie: “You are not in Kansas any more. You are on Pandora.”  Seriously.  It’s most memorable line is a rip off of The Wizard of Oz.  The movie had no great lines.  And only a few laugh lines.  It appears to have been written to make translation into other languages easy, not for the art of literature.

So why does everyone want to see it again?

I think it’s because at the heart of Cameron’s story, whether he wants to admit it or not, is another story.  Cameron’s story is great because in some ways it reminds us of the greatest story ever told.

As I said earlier, the core conflict that drives the plot of the movie are the competing concerns of the two groups of humans on the planet.  On the one had you have the scientists, who are on the planet to study the native plants and animals, and who also want to do good for the Na’vi who live there.  The scientists have built relationships with the Na’vi and built schools to teach Na’vi children English so they can communicate. The desire is to live with them and do good for them.

On the other hand you have the corporate military, who refer to the Na’vi at best as flea bitten savages and at worst a bunch of blue monkeys. There is no concern for Na’vi civilization or culture.  The guiding principle is the idea that might makes right, and morality boils down to the fact that whoever is the strongest gets to make the rules.

The question is: Which viewpoint will have the power to shape the world of Pandora – compassion and kindness, or violence and oppression?

What’s really interesting to me are the people James Cameron chooses to personify these two worldviews.  The head scientist on Pandora is a woman named Grace Augustine. Do you think it’s an accident that the name that compassion goes by in Avatar is Grace?

And the person who personifies the notion of might makes right is a soldier by the name of Colonel Miles Quaritch.  Interestingly Colonel Quaritch is a name that Cameron stole from a book by Henry Rider Haggard, who incidentally is the same 19^th century author who created the character of Allan Quartermain (one of my favorite literary adventurers).

But I’m more interested in his first name, Miles.  Appropriately, the name Miles is the Latin word for Soldier.

So essentially the story of Avatar is a story which asks the question, which power will shape the world, Grace, or Soldiers, Compassion or Violence?

And the movie is captivating because in the end, Miles, the soldier is defeated, and Grace wins out.

But how does Grace win in Pandora?

With an incarnation from the heavens named the Savior.

Doesn’t get much more obvious than that does it?

Of course the names have been changed for the movie.  The male lead for Avatar isn’t named Savior, he’s named Jake Sully.  But he is definitely a Christ figure.  So much so that in Cameron’s original screenplay his name wasn’t Jake, it was Josh, or Joshua, which means “God saves” and is the Hebrew form of the name Jesus.

And how does Joshua, er, Jake manage to help rescue the Na’vi people?

By becoming an Avatar.

Avatar isn’t a word that Cameron made up for the movie.  In fact you’ve probably heard of Avatars before.  We use the word to describe digital representations of ourselves that we send into a virtual world to embody us on the internet or in games.  But the word Avatar has been around a lot longer than that.

Avatar is actually a Sanskrit word which literally means “He descends.”  It has long been used by Hinduism to describe the incarnation of their deities.  A Hindu god comes into the world by taking on a human form and living alongside humanity.  In fact, it was the use of the word avatar that upset so many Hindus about Cameron’s movie.

Jake Sully becomes an Avatar to the Na’vi because he takes on their form, is embodied in their flesh, and for a time, becomes one of them.

Remind you of anyone you know?  Saving the world by taking on flesh?

John chapter one tells the story this way:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.” (John 1:1-2, NIV)

John goes on to write:

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, NIV)”

In a lot of ways, the story of Avatar reminds us about the story of Jesus. But Cameron’s story is what I call not quite true.  Despite the fact that the story line points to Jesus and the way in Christ God became human and lived with us, it’s not quite a faithful representation, or what the church would call a true image of Christ.  Despite their similarities, Jake isn’t Jesus.

In Jake we have someone who is strong and brave, but in many ways clueless. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, or how to do it.  And he is as apt to make a mistake as he is to succeed.  The Na’vi call him an infant to his face.  And behind his back they call him a moron.  Everywhere he goes, everything he does, he makes a fool of himself. At least at first.

But Jesus wasn’t a bumbling hero.  Clueless was never used to describe Christ. Not even from the start.  Luke tells us that when Jesus was 12, at the age when a Jewish boy became a man and took upon himself the responsibility of keeping the law, Mary and Joseph took him to Jerusalem.  There he got into some discussions with some aged experts in the law.  And even the men who had studied God’s word all their lives were amazed at his answers and had to admit that Jesus had special knowledge and understanding.  Unlike the Na’vi our fate doesn’t rest in the hands of someone who is likely to fail, and we don’t have to wait and worry to see if he pulls it off or not.

Likewise, Jake is a man torn by competing loyalties.  The driving force of his story line is the question what side will he choose? He’s a marine by training, so there is something about Colonel Quaritch and what he stands for that Jake admires and believes. But there is a growing sense within him that what Quaritch wants to do is wrong.  But as long as he’s trying to please two masters, he is bound to make mistakes.  Ultimately, Jake has to fail, has to betray the Na’vi before he can learn from his mistakes and rescue them.

Jesus on the other hand was not plagued by competing loyalties.  The Bible says that though he was tempted in every way just as we are, he never made the wrong choice.  His first and only allegiance was to God, and because of that he loved humanity.

Perhaps most the most disturbing point of comparison is the way in which the Avatar saves the world.  Despite the fact that in the end Jake represents Grace and what Grace stands for, the means by which they achieve victory is through violence. Jake wins because in the end, he (and his fellow Na’vi) are the last warriors left standing.  They take the fight to their enemies and eventually win.  Jake ultimately triumphs when someone manages to kill the Colonel.  Miles dies, and Jake lives.

However, it wasn’t by violence that the true incarnation of God changed our world.  Jesus didn’t come into our world as a warrior who would eventually win by killing everyone who got in his way or opposed his agenda.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  Jesus knew that lasting victory is not achieved by violence, but by love. Jesus isn’t the victor because he’s the last warrior standing.  Jesus wins when he lays down his life for the world. Unlike Cameron’s version, Jesus dies so that we might live.

So in a lot of ways, Avatar points us to the truth about Jesus.  It gives us hints and glimpses of the greatest story ever told.  Grace wins when a Savior takes on flesh and enters the world.

But in the end, it comes up short.  Jake Sully has nothing on Jesus Christ. His story is interesting and compelling, but on Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, can save our world.

If you’d like, you can listen to the full audio of this sermon by checking out our podcast on iTunes or by downloading it from our RSS feed.

My Apologies: Normally I’d wrap up a weekly review with a recap of our worship set and my favorite memory from the night, but it’s been a few weeks and all those things are running together in my mind.  I’ll go back to including these in future reviews, but they won’t be included in these “catch up” postings.  Sorry.

Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Foolish Vow

Sermon in a Sentence: God is not honored when we treat him like the idols that surround us.

Text(s): Judges 10-11

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, A straightforward night, with one of the tougher stories in the Bible.

Message Summary:

Heroes moved into its sixth week with the story of Jephthah. We’re working our way through the book of Judges with our students, and we’re into the homestretch now.  That’s a good thing, because if you know anything about Judges, you know things are getting bad, fast.

We once again picked up where we left off last week.  Abimelech, son of Gideon, claims the title of king for himself, and sees his reign come to an end when the people rebel against his leadership and a besieged woman drops a millstone on his head.

Following Abimelech’s death, we have a short interlude in which two minor judges are named: Tola and Jair.

We don’t know much about either, but the way their short stories are presented show us that a transition is taking place.

Tola’s story is presented much like the other judges up to this point.  He rescued Israel in a time of distress, led Israel for the rest of his life, and then died and was buried.

Jair, however, is different.  Jair doesn’t rescue Israel from anyone.  He simply leads Israel for 23 years.  During that time he sets himself up like a king, he has 30 sons, gives each of them a donkey and a city, and renames the land Havvoth Jair (the villages of Jair).  No longer is this Israel, the nation that grapples with God.  They are the land of Jair, and their judge is more interested in consolidating his own power than leading as God directs.

In five short verses the book of Judges takes a turn for the worse, and we learn that the downward trend we noticed in the story of Gideon and Abimelech is not just a anomaly, but rather a pattern.

And then the next major cycle of Judges begins.

It starts with Rebellion.

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. (Judges 10:6a, NIV)

The usual suspects, the Baals and Ashtoreths, are here.  But there is also something different.  Notice all the nations listed: Aram and Sidon to the North, Moab to the south, the Ammonites on the East and the Philistines on the West.  North, South, East, West, it’s almost like the author of Judges wants us to know that there wasn’t a god or a religion that the Israelites didn’t chase after.

They liked the idea of being spiritual, and the spiritual ideas of every nation around them were considered equally valid.

Of course, that means that the religious ideas of every nation around them, including their own, were equally untrue.  None were true enough for them to give their lives to.  But they were convenient for making the Israelites feel more spiritual.

Sound familiar?  Interested enough in seeming to be spiritual, they are willing to dabble in everything, but not willing to surrender themselves to anything.  Just enough religion to make them feel better about themselves, but not enough to require them to actually live any better.

What’s more, they were all up in God’s face about this adultery.  They did evil in the eyes of the Lord.  Nothing secret or shameful about the shameful way they were acting.  They were out in the open about their infidelity to God.

Following rebellion comes retribution.

God hands them over to the consequences of their choices, and sells them into the hands of the Ammonites and the Philistines.  Up until now, Israel has been facing regional enemies who pose a threat from one direction.  Now Israel is getting it from all sides, from the Ammonites on the East and the Philistines from the West.  They’ve been selling themselves out to the foreign gods of these lands, so God sells them into the foreign powers of these lands.

Following retribution comes repentance.

Eventually Israel wakes up to the fact that their idolatry is making them miserable.  They cry out to God for rescue:

Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, “We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals (Judges 10:10, NIV).”

And everyone knows that following repentance comes a redeemer.

God responds to the repentance of his people by sending them a Judge to rescue them.

Only this time he doesn’t.

The LORD replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands?  But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble (Judges 10:11-14, NIV)!”

It’s as if God says “Haven’t we been here before?  Haven’t we already done all this?  Every time you’ve called out to me, I’ve rescued you, and still, every time I rescue you, you turn your back on me.  Well, fine.  If you want to serve all these other Gods, if you think your spirituality means you have all your bases covered, then let all these other gods that you are worshipping come and rescue you.  Learn first hand just how empty these idols you keep selling yourself to really are.”

Surprisingly, the people didn’t give up on God.  Even though he rejected their first request for rescue, they followed through on their repentance.  They got rid of the idols they had been worshipping, and they began to worship and serve God and God only.

And only then did God decide to act on their behalf to raise up a redeemer.

Often our poor choices result in unpleasant consequences.  And when we are faced with the consequences of our own poor choices, many times we too cry out to God for rescue.

But just because we repent doesn’t mean that God will always remove the consequences of our choices immediately.  We can know that he will remove the guilt for our choices.  He does forgive us and give us a new start.  But often he leaves us to suffer the consequences of our sin.  It’s his way of teaching us to make better choices next time.

The key is to not give up just because God doesn’t deliver us from the suffering caused by our sin.  The secret is in serving God anyway, trusting him to keep us through the storms of our own making, rather than simply making all our problems go away.

And because that is what Israel did, God acted on their behalf to raise up a redeemer.

Israel has still been suffering from foreign oppression.  It’s become so bad that the Ammonites, the enemies of Israel, are camped out on the very edge of Israel ready to attack.  Gilead, the part of Israel being threatened, has offered to make anyone who is willing to stand up to the Ammonites their leader, if only someone will step up to the plate and lead them into battle.

Judges 11:1 introduces us to this new leader.

Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute (Judges 11:1, NIV).

What do we know about Jephthah?

• He was a Gileadite, this was his home country.
• He came from a dubious background. His mother was a prostitute. And as a result, no one really knew who his father was.  Gilead is the name of a place, not the name of a person, at least not at this point in the story.  Most scholars agree when it says that his father was Gilead, that was just a nice way of saying anyone in town could have been his dad.
• He was a mighty warrior.  It’s the same phrase God used to describe Gideon when he found Gideon threshing the wheat.  But unlike Gideon, this does not appear to be an ironic description for a cowardly farmer hiding out from the Midianites.  Jephthah was one mean dude, and everyone knew it. But rather than making him popular, this actually worked against Jephthah.

No one liked him.  They all knew what kind of woman his mother was, and no one knew who his father was.  To make matters worse, everyone was afraid of him, scared of what he would do next.  Between his history and his personality, he was not popular, and before long the people drove him away from his home.

And Jephthah left.  Judges tells us he gathered around himself a “group of adventurers.” It’s the same phrase used to describe the men Abimelech hired to fight for him. Literally it means empty men, men empty of any sense of ethics or morality, men whose lives had no meaning or purpose.   Together they formed a band of outlaws who lived in the land of Tob and pillaged defenseless villages for a living.

Driven away from his home and his people, Jephthah leaves to become a gangster.

But now things have changed in Gilead.  The Ammonites are camped out, ready to attack.  Everyone is wondering who could be strong enough to defend them.  Someone remembers the bully they chased away.  Could the warrior they feared become the warrior they needed?  They send word to Jephthah begging him to return and defend them.

How do you suppose Jephthah reacted?

Yesterday you were too good for me.

Today you’ve decided you won’t survive without me.

Yesterday you rejected me.

Today you want my help.

Sound familiar?

In many ways this is exactly the same way Israel has treated God.  When things were going well they were too good, too spiritual to be bothered with God.  They rejected him.  Drove him away.  Shut him out of their life.

But when things stared going bad, when there was no way they were going to survive without a miracle, when they desperately needed help, where did they turn?

We wouldn’t do something like that would we?

Anyway, the people turned to Jephthah and beg him to come back and fight for them.  Jephthah calls them on their duplicity.  “Aren’t you the same people who drove me away?”  But the people of Gilead are desperate.  They even promise if he will come back they will make him their leader.

From outlaw to king, life’s looking up for Jephthah.

Only Jephthah appears to know he can’t do it on his own.  He points out that the only way he can win is if God helps them.  He seems to know that there must be a place for God in this plan if it is to have any prayer of succeeding.  Maybe just because he finds himself in a bad place in life, he’s not all that bad of a person after all.  With that provision – as long as God helps us – Jephthah agrees to fight for Gilead.

When he comes back to take over, he doesn’t resort immediately to violence.  Instead, in an act that seems to run counter to his gangster image, but which also reveals a great deal of wisdom on Jephthah’s part, he first attempts to find a peaceful solution.

He sends a messenger with a pretty simple question.  “Why do you want to attack us?”

The Ammonites reply “Because when you came out of Egypt, you Israelites stole our land.”

Jephthah replies “Actually, this land wasn’t yours.  We purposely tried to stay out of your land.  The Amorites were living in this land, and God gave this land to us.  Besides, we’ve been here 300 years now.  If you had a problem with this you should have said something back then.  You live in the land your god gave to you.  We will live in the land that our God gave to us.  And if you have a problem with that, we’ll let God be the judge who decides our case.”

This last little bit wasn’t very conducive to a peace settlement.  It basically was a polite way of saying, let’s go to war and see whose god is stronger.  And that’s exactly what happened.

Ammon marched against Gilead.

Gilead marched against Ammon.

And just before the battle was about to start, Jephthah made a promise to God.  He seems to have understood all along that the only way they could win was if God helped them.  And so he promised God to make a sacrifice.  Everything I have is yours.  Name what you want and I will sacrifice it to you, if only you will give us victory in this battle.

Only that’s not quite how Jephthah put it.

His words: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering (Judges 11:30-31, NIV).”

Now just like in some parts of the world today, the Israelites in Jephthah’s day not only were born in a barn, they lived in one too.  Frequently houses were divided up into two sections, one where they family kept their livestock which provided food for the family, and one where the people themselves lived.  So Jephthah is basically saying to God, “Choose whatever you want that I own, and I will sacrifice it to you if we win.”

But this promise becomes problematic.

Gilead goes to war.

Gilead wins.

Jephthah returns home, remembering his promise.

And what comes out to meet him?

His daughter.  His only daughter.  His only child for that matter.

Jephthah knows he has made a promise he must keep.  But he is distraught.  “What have you done to me?” he says to his daughter.  As if somehow his stupid promise is her fault.  “You have made me miserable and wretched because I have made a promise I cannot break.”

He goes on to explain what he has promised God.  And his daughter accepts it.  “If that’s what you promised God,” she says, “that’s what you have to do.  Just give me two months to go out into the wilderness with my friends to mourn what is going to happen to me, because I will never marry.”

He gives her time.

She leaves to mourn.

Surprisingly, she comes back home.

“And he did to her as he had vowed (Judges 11:39, NIV).”

What are we supposed to make out of this story?

Well there are some pretty obvious questions raised by it.

Questions like “Did he really kill his daughter?”  (Which is a tough one.  It certainly seems like it – what else are we supposed to make out of the words “He did to her as he had vowed.”  Though the fact that her concern seems to be about the fact that she will never marry, as opposed to the fact that she is about to die, makes one wonder if perhaps instead of killing her she was taken to the tabernacle and placed in God’s service for life instead.)

Questions like “Why would God let Jephthah do something like that?”  (Which is pretty tough too.  Certainly Scripture indicates that God is not looking for, nor is he pleased by such actions.  But God lets us live with our own mistakes all the time.)

But laying aside these questions, what is the meaning of this story?  What is it’s point?

I think the core issue in this story, as with the entire book of Judges, is idolatry – mixing the worship of other gods in with the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

You see, Jephthah is a flawed hero.  He is hardly a role model that scripture sets up for us to imitate (though he is listed as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11.)  Jephthah is part of the second half of the book of Judges.  Remember what we said at the beginning of the lesson about Tola and Jair?

Something has happened here.  We’re moving away from the exemplary judges like Othaniel, Ehud and Deborah, visionary leaders who trusted God even when (at times) others had their doubts.  We’ve already seen the problems begin with Gideon, who although he said all the right things about not wanting to be king, still acted like one.  In Jair, we have a judge who didn’t even bother pretending that he didn’t want to be king.  We’ve found our way into a downward spiral, and Jephthah with his foolish vow is another step down, not up, from those who came before him.

And Jephthah’s great mistake was in thinking that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one and only true God, creator and sustainer of the universe, was just like all the idols that all the other people worshipped.

We see it in the bribe he offers God.

That’s right.  Jephthah’s mistake wasn’t in being so vague that his vow might possible be construed to suggest he must sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering, it was in promising God a sacrifice in exchange for victory in the first place.

He should have known better.

Jewish law is clear, judges are not to be bribed.  Both Exodus and Deuteronomy specifically prohibit judges from accepting bribes.  Deuteronomy 27:25 places a curse on anyone who would accept a bribe.  And just in case there was any confusion about trying to bribe God, Deuteronomy 10:17 states:

“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes (NIV).”

But as soon as Jephthah finished his big speech about appointing God to be the judge in the territorial dispute between Israel and Ammon, he turns around and offers God a bribe if only God will make sure that Israel wins . . .

Why would he do something so stupid?

Because that’s what all the other gods wanted.

Seriously.  If you wanted Baal to do something for you, you left him and offering and in doing so you bought your favor from him.  The same with Ashteroth.  It was even true of Chemosh, the God of the Moabites who Jephthah referenced in his message to Ammon.  If you wanted any of these idols to do anything for you, you had to bribe them with a sacrifice.

Not that they actually could do anything for you.  They were, after all, merely dead statues.  But still, you had no chance at all if you didn’t at least attempt a bribe.

What’s more, if it was really important you offered them your child as a human sacrifice.  2 Kings 3:27 makes reference to this practice when the Moabite king offered his firstborn son as a sacrifice in the hope he could change the outcome of a war he was losing.

Maybe that’s why Jephthah, while disappointed, wasn’t dissuaded from his vow when his daughter walked out of his house.  He assumed that Yahweh was just like Chemosh.  Rumor had it that Chemosh required the sacrifice of a child in exchange for victory.  Why should Yahweh, God of Israel be any different?

Jephthah made the mistake of thinking that God was just like all the other idols the other people chased after.

When in reality, God is nothing like the idols of our world.  He is completely different, wholly other.

And maybe that’s the lesson we’re supposed to take from this story.

You and I will hopefully never be tricked into vowing our children as burnt offerings to God.

But every day people sacrifice their families and friends for the idols they chase after.

Granted, it’s not normally as a fiery bribe to Baal or Chemosh, but people sacrifice relationships for money, power, popularity and pleasure all the time.

I mean, if you are going to get ahead in life, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices.

And every day, Christians come away making the same mistake that Jephthah did – that if we are going to get ahead in this world we have to operate from the same set of values and make the same kind of sacrifices as the rest of the world.

Values like relativism which argues that the end justifies the means or the idea that as long as you’re headed toward the right destination, it doesn’t matter what you have to do to get there.

Values like materialism which argues what matters most in this world is stuff, and whoever has the most of it wins.

Values like egocentrism, which argues you have to take care of yourself first, and then if you have anything left you can afford to look after others.

Our world operates on assumptions like those every day.

But God is different.  He isn’t like all those other liars.

He’s not shallow.

He’s not temporary.

He’s not just an illusion.

He is God.

And because he is different, his people operate from a different set of values.

The ends do not justify the means.  We’re not free to do whatever we want as long as we get where we are going.

Success is not measured in what we have, but what we give.

Our first priority is not how we can look out for ourselves, but how we can love others.

So, having seen in Jephthah what happens when you treat God just like all the other idols, will you make a real vow, a vow that matters, a vow not to live that way any more?

Worship Set: Revelation Song, Hosanna (Brooke Fraser version), How He Loves, The Stand

Favorite Moment: The teaching time.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, attendance wise.  A lot of sickness has been going around, and winter sports have started up.  But we had a great group of students there this week.  And not only did we have a great group of students, they were really engaged in the lesson.  It wasn’t a struggle to keep their attention, they were right there with me.  I love nights like that.

I was recently asked to write a guest post for Tiger Bytes, a relatively new blog from my alma mater Olivet Nazarene University.  I chose to write about how the recent closure of Geocities and the archiving of many of the Geocities sites by the Internet Archive serve to illustrate the public and permanent nature of digital communications.

I think the principles are important ones for youth leaders to understand, and to pass on to students.  The impact of careless words “spoken” in the digital public can be severe and long lasting.  You can read the entire post here.  And while you’re at it check out the rest of Tiger Bytes, and if you like what you see, follow OlivetNazareneU on twitter too.

The Title Slide from Sunday's Message

This Sunday our church tried something different.  That in and of itself would be enough for me to love our church — we have no problem at all trying something new.  However, in the famous words of Ed Valenti, “But wait. There’s more!”

Pastor Phil Rogers spent all week telling people they did not want to be late for church this Sunday because something was in the works that has never happened at our church.  And we could tell something was different from the first moment we entered the sanctuary.  The customary greeters met us at the doors and handed us a packet of sermon notes that had been sealed, along with a stern warning not to open the folder until we were instructed to do so.

The worship team led us in a brief time of worship, followed by the typical announcements and offering.  Then Phil began to preach.  We’re in the third week of a series on Romans chapter 12.  Phil was up to preach a little earlier than normal, but no worries there.  He proceeded to preach for a total of about ten minutes on Romans 12:6-8 on the subject of Spiritual gifts.  The last lines of his sermon notes for the day instructed us “When you get home, break the seal on this folder, read and complete the mission described inside.”  30 minutes after the service started he prayed and told us we were dismissed.

I was stationed in the video booth Sunday morning, and I’m not sure what my favorite part was — listening to the voices in the balcony mutter in confusion when we were dismissed, or the sheer number of my teens asked me on my way out of the sanctuary “Is church really over?”

My response?

“No, I think we’re supposed to take this home and do what it says.”

After getting my herd of kids (including my own five children, two nephews and a pair of my oldest son’s friends) home, we gathered around the dining room table to find out what our mission was.  Here’s what it said inside the folder:

Your Mission:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to take action as soon as possible to use at least one gift God has give you.  You may act alone, as a family, or as  a small group.  If possible complete your assignment today, but it must be completed by the end of the week.  Your mission is complete only after having returned the enclosed response form.

Action Idea Starters

Prophesying: (used in proportion to my faith)

Is there someone you know with whom you need to share your witness?  You’ve known for some time that God has been laying them on your heart, and the time has come for you to, by faith, talk to them about Jesus.  (Remember, success is not measured by the response the person gives, but by your faithfulness as a witness.)  Maybe there is someone you have not seen at church for some time and God is leading yu to call on them and let them know someone cares about them and misses them.

Serving: (let me serve)

Who do you know has need for some help?  Perhaps they are an older person, or a single mom, or a handicapped person.  Take the time to do something that really helps them out.  Maybe it is cleaning their house, raking their leaves, washing or maintaining their car.  Use your imagination!  Don’t ask, just do!

Teaching: (let me teach)

Do you have a skill or an ability that someone else would benefit by learning?  Maybe it is teaching someone to cook, change their oil, grow things.  You may have a hobby or sport you could take time to teach to a child or someone else who would never get to do something if you didn’t take them.

Encouraging (let me encourage)

Are you aware of anyone that you know who may be discouraged, sad or lonely?  Perhaps you know of someone who is ill, shut-in, or in a nursing home.  You may even want to consider taking some time and just go to the nursing home and visiting with perfect strangers.  Consider asking the staff for the names of any patients who rarely receive visitors.  You can encourage by taking them something special, visiting and talking with them.  Get to know their stories.  Give them the most precious thing you have, your time.

Contributing to the needs of others (let me give generously)

Do you know of anyone who is going through really hard times right now?  Perhaps they are unemployed, or have experienced an illness.  You may know of a single mom who is having a hard time making it.  This may be the time God will lay on your heart to give to them out of the generosity of your heart.  Perhaps you can take them some food, pay a bill, or just give them some money.

Leadership (let me govern diligently)

What needs are you aware of in our church and community that are not being met?  Are you aware of anything that someone just needs to take the initiative to do?  Leadership is not telling someone else what to do, it is empowering and enabling things to be done.  Our greatest tool for leadership is the leadership we model.

Showing mercy (let me do it cheerfully)

Who do you know that has hurt you or someone you know?  Do you know someone who has made some big mistake and is suffering consequences.  God may want you to be his instrument of His grace, love and mercy.  Perhaps God wants you to be the one who will reach out to them and let them know someone still cares for them.   Remember, showing mercy to someone does not imply approval, but rather the possibility of forgiveness and restoration.

I had the chance to talk with my kids about what each of the gifts meant, and then we discussed what we could possibly do.  After a good group discussion we finally decided to head to the house of some of our friends who, because of kidney dialysis and some pretty severe allergies have a problem raking leaves.  Our mission was to use the gift of serving and rake their yard for them.  After borrowing some rakes from J-Dubs to supplement our own supply we headed out to fulfill our mission.

The yard wasn’t too big.  It really didn’t take us too long.  In just a couple hours we had it completed.  But it was great all the way around.

We had a blast.  It was something the whole family could get in on.  Even our youngest (Mackenzie and her cousin Timmy, age 4) could hold the lawn bags as we gathered up the leaves.  And not only were there enough hands to make for light work, there weren’t enough rakes, so everyone got a chance to relax and watch from time to time.  It was one of the best Sundays our family has had together, and we got to learn about our spiritual gifts by putting them to work.

But we’re not quite done.  We haven’t turned in our mission report yet.  The kids are off at Bible Quiz practice right now.  But they’ll work on it when they get home.  We’ve already told them it’s their responsibility to fill out the paper work.  That means we get yet another chance to think and talk about what we learned today.

Now, I realize this is nothing revolutionary.  There’s even a whole prepackaged campaign you can purchase for your church to do something similar.  (I know, we purchased it, and then decided it wasn’t quite right for us.)  But this was more our speed, more our style.  Part of an expository preaching series, rising out of the text, not for the publicity, but simply for the kingdom — this might be something we’ve never done before, but it’s exactly the kind of thing we do.

And I love being a part of this kind of church…

So, I know that some of you reading this are Middletowers too.

So, what did you do?

Haven’t done it yet?

You still have time.

What are you going to do?

(HT to Tim Sanders whose Tweet sent me to this video.  Told you I was a Sanders fanboy.)

Earlier this month I linked to an outline of a talk he gave about what it takes to lead your business out of the recession and suggested there might be some important implications for those of us in ministry.  This week, he’s is at it again, expanding on his thoughts about what it takes to find yourself on the leading edge of the recovery.

You really need to head over to Sanders Says to read the whole post for yourself.

But I’d like to reflect on some of his points from the perspective of ministry here. 

(The bold print points are his words, not mine.)

1.  Leadership balances reality with hope – They are practical, but foster a positive mood state which creates a good backdrop for innovation.

I could be wrong, but I think this is even more true for those of us in ministry than those in for-profit business.  Economic uncertainty often causes those who rely on the charitable giving to pull back from innovation.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, our audacious confidence in God’s provision inspires us to careless risks or keeps us from taking corrective action because we’re convinced “God will provide.”

Our budgets need to reflect realistic expectations about how giving will be effected by the economic climate, but ministry needs to continue to boldly innovate.  Uncompromising reality viewed through the lens of undaunted hope is precisely the perspective from which we ought to operate.

2. User experience is the unifying purpose that the entire company rallies around.

One of the most valuable lessons I took from my ministry internship at Lansing South Church of the Nazarene was something I heard at one of their board meetings.   The Board was discussing concerns that students who went into the gym to shoot hoops after worship might damage some of the tables and chairs that were still set up from Sunday School small groups which met in that room earlier in the morning.  The concern was how to keep students from shooting baskets.  It was then Dr. Demott, South’s senior pastor at the time, suggested that the real question should be how do we make sure the tables and chairs get put away after Sunday School.  “After all,” Dr. Demott said, “the church is in the business of people, not property.”

Recessions sometimes cloud our perception of this fact.  Properties cost money to maintain.  The more we can do to preserve our property, the less we have to spend on maintenance.  A mindset of scarcity makes that concern even more urgent.  But properties aren’t our calling.  People are.

4. Leadership cultivates a culture of execution.  Non promise keepers are excised out of the organization in favor of people that finish what they start.

There will always be times that events have to be canceled or plans need to change.  But making a habit of doing so robs momentum from your ministry.  I’ve seen first hand what happens when people get so used to plans being changed they no longer care to invest in anything you suggest.  Constantly changing plans trains our people to think:  “Why should I invest myself in this idea?  It’ll never happen anyway…”

Don’t use the recession as a convenient excuse to not follow through.

These are my thoughts on just three of Tim Sanders’ six points.  Be sure to visit Sanders Says to read them all.

Weekend Teaching Series: You Decide

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 5 of 10, A fairly typical week for us.

Message Summary: Our You Decide series was in it’s fifth week Tuesday night.  That’s encouraging.  When we started asking students to send in questions they might have about the Bible, I wasn’t sure just how well it would go or how long it would last.  But questions are still coming in to our Poll Everywhere poll and now I’m beginning to wonder how many good quesitions we’re going to have to leave unanswered.

As has been our custom in the series, I answered a few of the frivolous questions like “What’s Pastor Brad’s favorite Harrison Ford movie?” just for the fun of it.  (BTW, it’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, my favorite movie of all time.)  Another good one this week was “Is there anything Chuck Norris can’t do?”  (And as everyone knows, Chuck Norris cannot sit through an entire Taylor Swift concert, because even he knows that Beyonce made the best video of all time.)  This has become a fun part of the series as every week students try to get their goofy question into the queue.

Then we moved on to the one question I chose to deal with this week: Should a Christian celebrate Halloween?

Allan Quartermain and Lady Gaga at Water's Edge

Given the fact that I had come in my best impression of Allan Quartermain from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I figured by looking at me they could figure out my answer to that question.  (My family’s Halloween theme this year is Superheroes…)

But we set out to talk about it anyway.

First we talked about what Halloween really is.

Halloween derives it’s name from the phrase “All Hallow’s Eve” or, like Christmas eve, the evening before All Hallows’ (or All Saints) Day.  All Saints Day, November 1st, is a Christian Holiday on which we remember the saints who have died before us.  It is a part of Hallowtide, a three day celebration that along with All Souls’ Day on November 2nd remembers and celebrates our heritage.

As part of the celebration of the feast of All Saints, the party overflowed to the evening before.  Many of our Halloween customs can be traced back to similar celebrations surrounding the Christian holiday of All Saints Day.  Granted, in modern times Halloween has been separated from an observance of All Saints and has become a largely secular holiday, but its roots are in Christianity.

So why would anyone be opposed to Christians celebrating Halloween?

To answer that question, we looked at the final pages of “Boo!” a tract from Jack T. Chick Publishing.  It starts with the sensational story about a mass murderer who kills 19 teens at a Halloween party in a woodland cabin.  It turns out the murderer is none other than the devil himself, who eventually meets his match in a young boy and faithful pastor who know the truth about Halloween.  The final pages claim to reveal the Satanic foundations of Halloween.

After reading all that, one wonders how any Christian COULD celebrate Halloween.  But are those claims really true?

Is Halloween Satanism’s most solemn holiday of the year?

It does appear to be true that Satanists are trying to claim Halloween as one of their major celebrations.  Likewise Neo-Pagans, are attempting to resurrect the celebration of Samhain (more on that later).   But that doesn’t mean that Halloween is a Satanistic holiday.  Just because someone else tries to take over a holiday doesn’t mean it belongs to them.  The fact remains that Halloween was orginally part of Hallowtide, and Hallowtide is a Christian celebration.

Was Halloween started in the British Isles with the Druids?

First, Mr. Chick would do well to work on his terminology.   The Druids weren’t from England, they were from Gaul, now France. The term Druid (used for a pagan priest) was adopted into English to describe pagan priests in there as well, but they weren’t Druids, they were Celts.

However, neither the Druids or Celts started Halloween. Halloween started with All Saints Day, and All Saints day was started by the Christian Church and has its origins in Rome.

However, the Celtic priests who were called Druids were at times pretty spooky dudes.

Was Samhein (pronounced Sow-ain) a night of terror celebrated on October 31?

Simply put, No.

First, Samhein was a month, not a night.  The Celts had their own calendar – no October for them.  And Samhein (which means “Summer’s End”) was the name of the month which fell about the same time as the Roman October-November.

At the beginning of that month they had a three day festival also called Samhein to celebrate the end of summer and the end of the harvest.  This feast of Samhein did fall close to Oct 31 – Nov 1 every year.

But it was a festival of celebration, hardly a night of terror.  There is limited archeological evidence of human sacrifices carried out by the Celts and their priests.  Some bodies have been found that appear to have been slain ritualistically, but many scholars are divided over whether or not such deaths were intended as sacrifices or whether these were punitive executions.

There are some accounts of such sacrifices from Roman historians.  Minicus Felix writes:

“As for the initiation of new members, the details are as disgusting as they are well known. The novice himself, deceived by the coating of dough (covering a sacrificial infant), thinks the stabs are harmless. Then, it’s horrible! They hungrily drink the blood and compete with one another as they divide his limbs. And the fact they all share knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence. On the feast-day they foregather with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of either sex and all ages. Now, in the dark, so favorable to shameless behavior, they twine the bonds of unnamable passion, as chance decides. Precisely the secrecy of this evil religion proves that all these things, or practically all, are true.”

But that wasn’t about Celts or Druids it was about Christians.  Now we know the Christian eucharistic meal did not involve baking babies into loaves of bread and drinking their blood, nor was the Christian love feast a sexual orgy.  The Romans had a tendency to make up all sorts of bad things about there enemies to justify their wars.  So one wonders if the rumors they made up about Celtic human sacrifice were made up, or at least greatly exaggerated, as well.

Anyway, there is limited and ambiguous evidence of Celtic human sacrifices, there no evidence that human sacrifice was especially associated with Samhein.

Did they leave a Jack-O-Lantern in exchange for a human victim?

Given the fact that there’s no evidence they went around on Samhain kidnapping victims for human sacrifices from Celtic homes, this is especially dubious.

Second, there were no pumpkins in mideval England.  Pumpkins are a New World Vegetable and hadn’t been taken to Europe at that time.

Third, the term Jack O’Lantern was not coined until the 1800’s and it came from America, not the British Isles.

So where did this idea come from.

There is some history of the carving of turnips into lanterns in the British Isles to ward off evil spirits, but this was not uniquely Celtic, nor was it associated especially with Samhain or human sacrifice.

Now, here are some things that are true.

While Samhain and Halloween did occur at about the same time every year, they are not the same holiday.  People celebrating Halloween today are not unwittingly celebrating Samhain, any more than those celebrating Hanukkah are unwittingly celebrating Christmas because they both occur in December.

It may be true that the church celebrates All Saints Day when it does because of the holiday of Samhain with it’s emphasis on celebrating one’s ancestors.  This probablility is only increased when one considers that it wasn’t originally celebrated in November.  Originally All Saints Day was in May to replace the Eurpopean pagan holiday of the Feast of the Lemures, which also honored one’s dead ancestors.  It appears that it was moved to November because of the similarity between Lemuria and Samhain.  The church appears to have instituted Hallowtide to replace the pagan festivals of Lemuria and Samhain.  If people are going to celebrate, why not celebrate something worth celebrating?

However, to say we shouldn’t celebrate a holiday because it is a Christian replacement for a pagan holiday would mean we can’t celebrate Christmas (which is in December because it replaces the pagan winter solstice celebrations).

But what does all that mean.  Should we stop celebrating Halloween?

What does the Bible say?

Deuteronomy 18:9-12
When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [a] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.  Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the LORD your God.

First, it is obvious that God stands opposed to witchcraft and sorcery.  They are just another form of idolatry.  They represent the idea that we can magically become our own gods and replace the one true God with powers of our own.  We try to replace Him with our own secret knowledge of rituals and incantations by which we attempt to manipulate the supernatural world.  Such a mindset is a rebellion against God, and we should not celebrate Halloween in such a way that glorifies the occult.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6
So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

In this passage, the Apostle Paul addresses those who have concerns about eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol for fear doing so would imply support for that idol’s divinity.  He points out that just because some people think that little statue is a god, that doesn’t mean that statue is a god.  It’s just a statue and those who think otherwise are confused. The supernatural world is not populated by a pantheon of divinities competing for our allegiance.  There is only one God.  The idol is really “nothing in this world.”

I think that applies to Halloween celebrations as well.  Just because a child dresses up like a witch or a ghost or a mummy does not mean it is a celebration of the occult.  They are fantasy creatures and we know such things are nothing at all in this world.  There are real world witches and sorcerers who assume they have some sort of arcaine powers.  But the Halloween representations of witches and ghosts aren’t them.  They are imaginary.  And Paul says we don’t need to tip-toe around the imaginary for fear of offending God.

But Paul doesn’t stop there…

1 Corinthians 8:7-9
But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak

Not everyone knows what we know, and not everyone has the same views of Halloween that we do.  We should be careful not to act in ways that causes others to stumble.  It’s not our place to criticize others for their convictions or pressure them to abandon them.

1 Corinthians 10:23-26, 31
“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it….”

…So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Finally the guiding principle for the follower of Christ should not be what am I allowed to do, but what is the most helpful thing for me to do.  Can I do this in a way that builds up and doesn’t destroy?  And can I do it in a way that glorifies God.

There are ways to celebrate Halloween that are beneficial and constructive.

But first we can’t let the secularization of Hallowtide ruin the true meaning of the Holy Day, any more than you let the secularization of Christmas and Easter to strip them of their meaning for the Christian.

This is what has always confused me about Halloween.  Every spring when Easter rolls around, we Christians get all defensive about the secularization of our holiday to the point that some of us won’t even let our kids have Easter Baskets or get treats from the Easter Bunny, for fear it distracts from the real meaning of Easter.  And every December, we will boycott stores if the cashier wishes us a “Happy Holidays” because somehow by doing so they are trying to take Christ out of Christmas.

But when the world tries to secularize Halloween, we all retreat and leave them to it, even criticizing other believers who still celebrate what started out at our holiday!

Instead of abandoning Halloween, or worse yet neutering Hallowtide into just another “Harvest Festival,” celebrate!   We serve a God who loves celebrations.  We serve a God who has even COMMANDED his people to celebrate.  So do it.  Reflect the joy-giving God you claim by having a feast.  Have fun!  Celebrate!

But Celebrate what’s worth celebrating.

Celebrate community. One of the things that I love about Halloween is getting out with the kids and going from door to door visiting people in our community.  There’s something about knowing your neighbors that is worth celebrating, and something tells me that God smiles when we do.

Celebrate faithfulness. Don’t let your Hallowtide celebration end when you get home with your bags of candy on Halloween night.  Remember why we celebrate!  All Saints’ Day is a celebration of the people who have lived lives of faithfulness to God.  Spend some time thinking about those whose example we can follow, as they follow Christ.  Choose a saint and learn some more about them.  Maybe it’s one of the Biblical saints, maybe it’s someone from history whose life we can learn from like St. Francis or Mother Teresa.  Maybe it’s someone from our own theological tradition like John Wesley or Phineas Bresee.  But whomever you choose, don’t let the focus on candy and costumes distract you from the celebration of  faithfulness to God this Hallowtide.

Celebrate heritage. Few people these days remember All Saints’ Day.  Even fewer remember All Souls’ Day on November 2nd.  Originally All Saints’ was a celebration of the poeple we know are in heaven.  All Souls’ was a celebration for those good people who may still be in Purgatory.  But we don’t hold to a doctrine of Purgatory because we don’t find any warrant in Scripture for such a belief.  Instead, All Souls’ has become a celebration of our personal heritage in Christ.  All Saints’ is a celebration of the people throughout history who have shown us the way to follow Christ.  All Souls’ is a celebration of the people in our family who have lit the way for us.  Do you have a family member who has exemplified what it means to be a Christian?  Celebrate them on All Souls’ Day.  Maybe you’re the first in your family to ever follow Christ.  But who are the people you know that showed you the way and have become your spiritual parents in Christ?

Element of Fun/Positive Environment: One of my teens sent me a text Tuesday morning.  “You should text everyone and tell them to wear a costume tonight.  Even if no one else does, I will!”  And I said “Why not?”  After school sent out text messages promising we’d have a costume contest, complete with prizes for the best costume if anyone wanted to come in costume.  Because it was a last minute thing, we didn’t have a whole lot of takers, but we made a big deal out of those who did.  Then, in celebration of Hallowtide, we sent everyone home with a bag of candy, because what says “Celebrate your heritage” more than free candy!

Worship Set: Trading my Sorrows, Sing Sing Sing, I am Free, Marvelous Light

Favorite Moment: I love the creativity of my students!  Here’s a picture of some of the costumes from Tuesday night: