MeChurch
Following Jesus, part 6
Wildwind Community Church
November 13, 2005
David Flowers
Right now we’re talking about following Jesus, and I have realized this week that there’s one thing that keeps me from following Jesus as faithfully as I would like, and I know that it’s the exact same thing that keeps you from following Jesus as faithfully as you might like. That thing, frankly, is me. That thing in your life is you. The biggest struggle in my life is getting over myself. It’s easy for me to watch that video and laugh because I think, “I’m not like that.” But then I stop and think about it and realize that the truth is that on the level of my emotions and expectations, maybe I’m a lot more like some of those people on the video than I’d like to think. Maybe I do have some ridiculous expectations. Maybe I do sometimes see the church as a vehicle for meeting my needs. Maybe in my own mind and heart sometimes I work and worship at MeChurch.
Have you ever been to MeChurch? Maybe you identified yourself in one of the people on the video, or maybe you can see other areas where you sometimes show up to MeChurch on Sunday, or relate to others during the week as if you attend MeChurch. This is easy to slip into, isn’t it? It’s easy for us to think about church as the place that’s here to meet our needs, and to look at other people in the church as being instruments for the meeting of those needs. The church, my small group, the programs at my church, the staff and workers at my church – they are there to meet my needs and if my needs aren’t getting met, then I’ll leave. Worse yet, I’ll stay and just complain anytime someone or something doesn’t meet my needs.
I don’t want anyone to feel chastised this morning. I am not preaching this today because I think our congregation is any more susceptible to selfishness than any other church. In fact, I’m preaching this today because I want to remember, and I want you to remember, that we are probably not LESS susceptible to it.
I struggled as I wrote this message last week because it’s hard to get people past themselves when I sometimes struggle to get past myself, and it’s hard to get people past themselves in a message where you turn a mirror on people and ask them to look intently for a half hour at their own reflection, even if it’s a spiritual reflection. I think that’s why there’s a hymn that says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus – look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.” We need to spend less time looking at ourselves and more time looking at Jesus. We need to spend less time examining our lack of love and spend more time in the love of God. We need to sing fewer songs that have the word I in them, and sing more songs that have the words You (referring to God) and we (referring to the body of Christ) in them.
But how do we do that? How do we get people to turn their eyes upon Jesus? How do we get up on Sunday morning to attend the church of Jesus Christ and not slip into MeChurch mode? It’s hard in a MeCulture. Turn on your TV and watch Oprah for a moment – the high priestess of MeCulture. Read a current magazine. Watch the news. Even listen to some preachers. You’ll hear about what you can do to accomplish this, how you can make your life better, how you can be happier, how you can be more successful, how you can get ahead, how you can live up to your potential, five steps to getting rid of fear, etc. Me, me, me, me, me. You, you, you, you, you. We spend nearly all of our week immersed in MeCulture.
Then we come to church. And we hear a preacher talking about God. And our natural question is how God can help us accomplish things, how God can make our lives better, how God can make us happier or more successful, help us get ahead and live up to our potential, get rid of our fear, give us our best life now – we just assume that everything we encounter that could possibly be good must help us meet one of these goals. Isn’t that the standard for even deciding whether or not something is worthwhile in the first place?
Many of us think this, but it’s very scary because most of the time we don’t even know we think it. These ideas are part of The Matrix, you might say. They form the set of assumptions that make up the world we live in. They convince us that we are pursuing God and convince us of our holiness, when all the while we are still pursuing our own self-interest, it’s just that now we have brought God into the mix and are trying to get him to fight these battles for us. It’s the oldest trick in the book – claiming that God is on whatever particular side that I happen to be fighting on.
I even have to consider that in preaching this message I am making the problem worse. As I said, perhaps I would be better off to spend this time having you look at Jesus, like I did last week. Reading his words to you, talking about his life, praying that the anvil upon which your life is shaped would be that of Jesus and God’s Word and not the anvil of self, and asking you to pray that prayer for me. It may only be because I have the normal human pre-occupation with self that I decided to talk to you about this today instead of just talking about Jesus. My friends, God help us all, for without Him, without learning to think the way He thinks, without seeing the world the way he sees it, we are pilots in a storm, flying our planes upside down with broken instruments – no reference point, no way to know whether the world is wrong and we are right, or whether we are right and the world is wrong, some of us hurling ever faster toward the ground. And I have to tell you that what I just said may well be the best and only thing I have said worth taking out of here today.
There are four things in this world that are closer to the human heart than anything else: God, our time, our relationships, and our money. If I were to sit you down right now and ask you to tell me in detail about how you approach the idea of God, how you handle your time, how you manage your relationships with others, and how you handle your money, I would know what kind of person you are. You might say, “Not everyone believes in God,” to which I would simply say, “Then that is how they have approached the idea of God, isn’t it, and that tells us quite a bit of important information about them.” We could simplify this quite a bit by presenting it this way:
Connection: Religion/Relationship
Contribution: Time/Treasure
Today I want to talk to you about the first two of these. Now anyone sitting here right now who is here for the first or second time and is thinking, “I knew it – all churches just want our money,” I want to suggest three things to you. First is the question of whether your sensitivity to the money issue does not prove the point I am trying to make – that money is one of the most precious and personal things in our lives. If I’m not correct about that, why would you be so offended? And if there’s any chance I am correct about it, I ask the second thing of you which is that you listen with an open mind to what I am about to say about these four things. I just ask you to hear me out and decide after you have done so. Third, I’m not getting to the money part until next week, so see what you think about this week and decide if you’ll come back next week to hear what I have to say about time and money.
Connection – Religion/Relationship
Contribution – Time/Treasure
I believe your approach to these four things tells more about you than anything else. I believe that no matter what you say your life is about, no matter what you WISH your values were, your approach to these four issues is a dead-giveaway. And in each of these vital areas, we struggle to get over ourselves. We struggle to allow God to get in and matter in just the areas that are closest to our hearts. I want to have you consider this morning whether you agree that these four things are incredibly close to the human heart. Even if you don’t agree that they are the top four, do you agree that you can tell a great deal about a person by looking at their ideas about God, their relationships, their calendars, and their pocketbooks? If you basically agree with that, answer for me this question. How can any church that has as its goal the formation of its people into the image of God possibly overlook these four areas? Are we to back down simply because some of the same people who tell us they want to be shaped into the image of God might turn right around and tell us hands off in exactly some of these areas that have the most to do with whether they end up shaped like God?
Religion. Eugene Peterson has written that everyone has a hunger for God – a deep and insatiable hunger – but none of us really has much of a desire for him. In other words, we all need God deeply, and that hunger shows itself even through the broken pieces of our lives. But we don’t really desire God very much. I mean, sitting here in this church service right now we say we do, and we feel like we do. But many of us will leave here today and return to what feels like “real life” where we will again indulge those favorite sins that continue to call to us; and in those real moments where decisions are made and we cast a vote for or against God with our decisions and actions, we often vote against. Many of us will do so with simple neglect. In the day to day boredom of our lives, we often have little desire for God. We are much like the Hebrews after Moses led them out of Egypt. Moses is up on Mt. Sinai receiving the commandments from God, and the people have been waiting quite a long time for him to come back down. They grow impatient and appeal to his brother Aaron to make them a new god.
Exodus 32:1-8 (NLT)
1 When Moses failed to come back down the mountain right away, the people went to Aaron. "Look," they said, "make us some gods who can lead us. This man Moses, who brought us here from Egypt, has disappeared. We don’t know what has happened to him."
2 So Aaron said, "Tell your wives and sons and daughters to take off their gold earrings, and then bring them to me."
3 All the people obeyed Aaron and brought him their gold earrings.
4 Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded and tooled it into the shape of a calf. The people exclaimed, "O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt!"
5 When Aaron saw how excited the people were about it, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD!"
6 So the people got up early the next morning to sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings. After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and indulged themselves in pagan revelry.
7 Then the LORD told Moses, "Quick! Go down the mountain! The people you brought from Egypt have defiled themselves.
8 They have already turned from the way I commanded them to live. They have made an idol shaped like a calf, and they have worshiped and sacrificed to it. They are saying, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt.’ "
We often read these Old Testament stories and think to ourselves, “Silly Hebrews – worshipping calves made of gold. Good thing we’re more enlightened today and don’t get stuck in things like that.”
But is that true? Do we never give our allegiance to things other than God? Is God always first on our loyalty list? In the moment of decision, do we always choose God, or do we choose other gods that might be more attractive at the moment – the TV, the computer, our latest toy, politics – whatever. How different from the ancient Hebrews are we? How much progress have we made in 5000 years? These people were interested enough in religion, but they really wanted to make their own god and worship in a way that was convenient for them. You might say, “God had just led them out of Egypt – parted the Red Sea right in front of them. How could they be so myopic? But how long are we willing to wait for God? What about when we are in the desert of pain, or loneliness or fear? Do we begin to build new gods? Do we lose faith and turn back to those things we used to take pleasure in before, like alcohol or food or porn or anger or even just plain isolation? That’s all these people did was fashion a Me-God, one they built with their own hands and could worship so that they felt religious, but would not require them to wait on Him and certainly would not obligate them to live their lives in any ways that were uncomfortable. Don’t we create golden calves today? Don’t we create God after our own image? Don’t we sometimes tune out when we hear something in a sermon or read something in a book that hits close to the bone so that we can keep ourselves comfortable? Don’t we sometimes want the comfort of religion without the discomfort of reflection?
And folks, notice it wasn’t just the people who got all excited about the cow. Their priest, Aaron, the brother of Moses, is the one who fashioned and built this god for them, and he was caught up in their excitement about it. All people have a desire to fashion their own gods, and a leader’s desire to fashion his/her own god can often lead to willingness to take the people’s interest in Me-religion and cook up whatever god they are willing to worship.
How about relationships? How does “self” get in the way of the pursuit of godly relationships? In our MeCulture, we are used to thinking about everything in terms of convenience. 24 hour restaurants and even grocery stores feed into our notion that we should be able to have anything we want anytime we want it, and not only that, but if a certain store or website can’t get you what you want when you want it, it is BAD, and you will take your business elsewhere. I’m not saying this is always bad when it comes to business, but it’s always bad when it comes to relationships, and we don’t always see the difference. I believe one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high is because people conditioned to view others as instruments for the meeting of their own needs bring that view into their marriages and, when it eventually becomes obvious that their spouse cannot meet all their needs (as it always will), it’s adios and off to find the “right person.” And by definition, how will I know when I’ve found the right person? They will meet my needs.
I’m convinced this is the reason for the Bible’s strong emphasis on the idea of the church as the ‘body’ of Christ, as the ‘family’ of God; why Paul compares Christ’s relationship with us to the marriage relationship; why in the New Testament we see the formation of these incredible little clusters of relationships that become house churches and these amazing results that come from those networks. God’s desire for us is to learn to live in close relationship to one another, to become human beings – so much more than little clusters of need! The commitment that requires will do more to form us spiritually than almost anything else.
1 John 4:20-21 (MSG)
20 If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see?
21 The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
In Matthew 25, we find out why loving God includes loving people.
Matthew 25:37-40 (MSG)
37 "Then those ’sheep’ are going to say, ’Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink?
38 And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’
39
40 Then the King will say, ’I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
So that’s why! Loving people IS loving God. To the extent we love people, we love God. To the extent we relate to people, we relate to God. To the extent we serve people, we serve God. And most important, to the extent we commit to people, we commit to God. We either accept this as spiritual fact or we make it so symbolic as to not mean anything. In the spiritual world there is a direct relationship between how we treat others and our capacity to love God. As we grow able to love others better, we will be better able to love God. Most of us want it the other way around. Most of us want to get closer to God and we hope that in doing so he’ll help us love our neighbors and families better. In the spiritual world, what we need to be doing is praying that God would simply help us be obedient to loving our neighbors and families as we should and keeping us mindful that as we love them (or don’t love them) we are loving Him (or not).
That’s why to be a member at Wildwind people have to be willing to be in a small group. Now you can be in a small group and chew other people up and spit them out just as easily as you can if you’re not in a group. But if you’re that kind of person, that tendency will come to light in an environment of closeness and personal investment and you will have to eventually face that fact about yourself. And that can lead to maturity. It’s hard to really be close to other people and not eventually find out that you’re going to MeChurch.
That’s Connection today – Religion and Relationships. Do you see how we’re not much different today from the Hebrews of 5000 years ago? What calf have you been building lately? What is your idol? What do you find yourself wanting to serve more than you serve God? Folks I, just like you, am an idol-maker. This is part of the fallen condition in which we find ourselves. But I have moments of lucidity where I realize I don’t want to fashion God to look like me, or I’ll quickly find I don’t have a god worth worshipping.
How do you approach the most important relationships in your life? Are you willing to let others get close to you? Have you stepped out and joined a small group yet where others can help keep you on track? If not, what’s stopping you? Do you view the relationships in your life primarily as a channel for getting your own needs met? Are you still putting together the puzzle, getting your arms around the fact that you cannot love God any more than you learn to love others? Are you ready to link up in a group and learn what that means?
I don’t want to just use the relationships in my life for the meeting of my own needs or I’ll miss the way God has surrounded us with relationships in this world specifically to teach us how to get out of ourselves once in a while, and only by getting out of ourselves will we be able to let God get into us. God can’t get into us when we’re full of ourselves!
We covered Religion and Relationships today. There’s two other areas where most of us are chronically self-obsessed and that’s with our time and our money. I want to talk to you next week about how spiritual growth simply will not happen unless we learn to make regular contributions of our time (serving) and money (giving). Controversial. I’ve had people leave before because they happened to be here on a Sunday where I talked about that. For their own sake I hope they ended up in a church where their new pastor is telling them they need to be serving and giving, because without those two things they simply will not ever get out of themselves so God can get in. I realize not everybody WANTS God to get in, but for those of us who do, these things are essential! Let’s pray.
