The Peacemaker's Tool Kit - Part 3

The third tool of peacemaking is community. Peacemaking refers to the way we treat everyone - inside and outside of our community. No othering allowed. I think when we avoid othering we expand our community, opening it up, including others. Yesterday, I read a FOX article on Twitter about the burning of a mosque in Texas and one woman kept tweeting, "Not my neighbor!" That slams the door to the church community and Christians huddle behind locked doors, allowing no one to enter. 

Back to the sermon, the first story is how Christians helped during a great plague at their own risk. Although many Christians died, they saved many. They didn't flee out, they fled in. I think it was Mr. Rogers said helpers are the people who run toward danger. The heart of compassion is courage. 

Sociologist of religion Rodney Stark (I read, used, agreed, and disagreed with his work) said it was the Christian community that made this sort of thing possible. Pagan religions of the time were more individualistic. The Church began to explode in numbers after this event. I remember a quote from the time remarking on the love Christians showed to one another. 

Jesus's first move after baptism was to call disciples and thus start the community of believers. 

Israel is created as a people of promise. God and Israel make promises to one another - the covenant that Israel breaks through idolatry - but, after Babylon, the Jews no longer commit idolatry. But they made the mistake of placing all the blame on foreigners. Jesus pointed out the God loves foreigners too and the people in Galilee wanted to stone him. It wasn't Jesus proclaiming prophecy had been fulfilled in Him that upset everyone, it was Jesus's inclusiveness that provokes ire. We want to other, we want to shut our door to the stranger, we want to be safe. But, Aslan isn't safe, he's good. 

Christ created Christian community by turning the idea of home and community inside out, throwing open the doors and letting others in. 

The Holy Spirit lives in the Church. The Holy Spirit lives in us. It is a communal thing rather than an individual thing. When we come together, something special happens. 

The local church - living within a community - working things out, worshipping together - allows the Holy Spirit to work in us. The next step is to take that spirit and go out into the world. True Christian witness is the opposite of othering. Love others as Christ loves us, welcome others as Christ welcomes us, and always remember that love trumps fear. 

The Peacemaker's Tool Kit - Part 2

This week's sermon is based on Matthew 3:13-17, which is about the baptism of Jesus, but it starts with a lovely scripture (a new favorite of mine):

"Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins." I Peter 2:8

Galatians 5:6b reinforces this by stating that the only thing that matters "is faith expressing itself through love."

This week's tool is love. Love overwhelms wrong and love overwhelms difficulty. 

In Trevor Noah's Born a Crime he talks about what it means to always be the other. The podcast we talked about Wednesday talked about being othered. 

We live within a frame of reference, our culture is our bubble, and we other those outside it. The only solution is love. We are made in the image of God and God is Love. 

God made a covenant with Israel. A covenant is a relational agreement. We have a covenant with God. John the Baptist is the last "Old Testament" prophet and the baptism is the passing of the baton, the making of a new covenant. 

In the verse that says "heaven was opened" Mark's work literally means "heaven was torn open" and this implies it can never be closed to us again. Jesus opened God's presence to us. 

What do you think God is really like? I think the cosmos is too large for our conception of God. But Love bridges that gap between infinity and our ability to understand. 

We love because God first loved us, we love because we were made in the image of Love. But we do not have a monopoly on love. True Nature is "red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson), but that is not all Nature is. 

Learn to live in the flow -- receiving God's love and letting it flow through us to the world. 

"The regular cultivation of one's soul prepares one to love unconditionally and automatically."

The Spirit of God is here. The Spirit of Love is here. God wants to connect with you. 

The Peacemaker's Tool Kit - Part 1

What is a meaningful life? Peacemaking is the framework for a meaningful life. Peacemakers ask, "Where I spend my time and talent to do good?" 

There is a peacemaker's toolkit and faith is the tool we will talk about today. Atheists view faith as a cop-out and we cannot let this stand. Faith is not a denial of evidence. Neither is faith based on proven evidence - that's not how Paul described it. We need to challenge these definitions. 

Hebrews 11 is all about faith. Hebrews 11:6 talks about the centrality of faith. Bad news for me :(

Faith is knowledge plus belief plus lifestyle. When we live into what we believe, we live by faith. 

We can have either a closed mindset (fixed) or a growth mindset. Fixed limits and growth inspires. Fixed are defined by failures - growth learns from and builds on failures. Fixed blames others - growth takes responsibility. Good news for me - I'm definitely on growth mindset side.

You can adopt a growth mindset and your mind will change. Viewing challenges as opportunities gives you energy. 

The kind of faith the Bible calls us to encourages a growth mindset. 

Steps to a growth mindset:

1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset voice. 

2. Recognize that you have a choice. 

3. Talk back with a growth mindset. (Prayer is, for the pastor, the most beneficial tool for this.)

4. Take the growth mindset action. 

Baby boomers picked up a fixed mindset from punishment. Today's generation has picked it up by not being allowed to fail. 

What is a Peacemaker?

Today's sermon basically covers the mission statement of Ventura Vineyard. The scriptures referenced are Matthew 5:9 and James 3:18. 

Christianity in the United States is shrinking and one reason is that people, especially young people, are leaving. 

Ventura Vineyard's mission statement is, "Living life from the inside out." Mastering your inner world is important and Jesus is the master teacher. As we encounter God on the inside, we become better witnesses on the outside. 

Ventura Vineyard's vision statement is, "Provoking faith in those who have it and those who don't."

Ventura Vineyard's values are:

1. Engage - "We must engage God, ourselves, our community, and our world." Expansive faith sees science as a tool to teach us about God and Creation. Don't hide away from those who think differently. Seek true dialogue. 

2. Transform - We need to transform from the inside out and be a transformative presence in the world. 

3. Respond - We respond to God's initiative in the world to expand God's Kingdom. We have to be the presence of God in the world. We respond to God's initiative in the world as peacemakers. 

Peacemakers do not objectify people. Engage real people in real relationships. No stereotypes. Work to look past stereotypes and get to know people. 

Peacemakers work to reconcile people. 

Peacemakers bring the Kingdom of God where it is not. We need to include everyone in our definition of community, reaching out to those others reject. Go out to where the people are. Look to Jesus as an example. 

Listen rather than preach. True dialogue builds bridges. Work to reconcile. Check out Jeffrey Brown (inner city Baptist minister) on TED Talks. The Boston Miracle, following these rules in his community, led to a 79% reduction in violent crime. 

You changing will change the world around you. We can do something meaningful together. Let us be peacemakers. 

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Today's sermon is based on Ezekiel 16:1-63, Matthew 5:9, and James 3:18. It is subtitled, "The Inner Logic of God's Wrath."

The sermon explored the relationship between the wrath of God and the brokenness and sinfulness of people. Romans 7:14-20 points out that sin lives in us and we end up doing what we don't want to do. It goes against the idea of free will but is well in line with the social sciences. 

Evangelical Christianity, in trying to make things simple, can make the mistake of narrowing God's Truth, turning it into a caricature. God is not simple. 

God's wrath is actually redemptive. Our understanding of God's wrath, as illustrated in the Bible, grows in nuance over time. The view in Joshua is violent and primitive. Ezekiel's view is far more sophisticated. 

In Ezekiel 16, Israel is portrayed as an abandoned newborn found and adopted by God. Israel grows into a woman of great beauty and becomes God's bride and a queen. But Israel is an unfaithful wife, who trusts in her beauty, prostituting herself through adultery and sacrificing her children. The language is relational. 

People disregard this relationship through idolatry. Idolatry doesn't mean any non-Jewish or non-Christian religion, it is a betrayal, a willful turning away to what is Good. 

Trusting in the things that hold our society together - wealth, youth, power, individualism, etc. - is engaging in idolatry. 

The people who know God are most usually the focus of God's wrath. It was gradual in Ezekiel and began with a restriction of territory. We should likewise look for areas in our life where we are restricted. If we look for this, areas where repentance is needed, it becomes redemptive. 

The view of our relationship with God goes from the purely collective to the individual over the centuries. But we shouldn't forget the value of the collective. 

God's wrath is basically allowing us to bear the consequences of our actions. God's grace and God's wrath are two sides of the same thing, helping us to grow, heal, and mature. 

Just as the Buddha said that the things of this world are unsatisfactory and fail you in the end, part of experiencing the consequences of our actions is enabling us to experience the failure of our idols. 

God's wrath also at times goes outside the Church when it comes to those who disregard the poor. Being over fed and unconcerned is bad because, as the Catholic Church said, God has a special preference for the poor. 

God's wrath is redemptive and its aim is to lead us to become the person we are meant to be.