Sola Fide

When it comes to faith, everybody has it. I have often heard people say that they are unable to have the same faith that I do because it is just too hard. The idea that some people have faith and others don’t is a very popular, although it is not true. Everybody has faith! Everybody is following someone or something. Over the majority of modern history, Christianity has been under the scrutiny of the world’s religions for being “closed-minded” and believing that Christians are the only ones with faith and this is not true. No matter what your perspective is on life, it is a faith perspective. The person that says we are here by random happenstance is using faith to determine and follow that notion. An atheist is a person of tremendous faith. We are not talking about faith or no faith, belief or no belief. We are talking about faith in what? Belief in what? The real question is not if we have it or not, but what we have put it in.

The tension of faith is not a new one. Paul argued this point for the Gentiles that had received Christ in Galatia, when they faced the challenge of what to believe, how to believe and what should be the expression of their belief. (Gal 4) This argument transcended time and raised its head again in the 16^th century and was the wedge that created the Reformation and formation of the Protestant church. Martin Luther stated that Sola Fide (Faith Alone) is “the principle on which the church rises or falls.” John Calvin later affirmed this statement by saying that “justification by faith is the principle hinge by which religion is supported”. But the message the moves through the minds of men for the dawn of time is how to get the all knowing, almighty, all seeing God on your side. Mankind seeks acceptance, and questions what will be enough to get the thumbs up from the creator.

The fight of faith was exposed in the lives of the first family with the first sibling rivalry between Cain and his brother Able. This story of a favored offering that sparks untamed anger and leads to ultimate destruction is a conflict between Cain and Able, but it is an insight for works vs. faith and even deeper, religion vs. revelation. Psychologically man becomes uncomfortable with the notion that what I do, what I participate in, and what I offer through my actions may not be good enough. What can I do to be enough? I mean, we live in a quantifiable world. I know when enough is enough with every intersection of my life, but this invisible God leaves this unquantifiable gap between humanity and divinity. But does He? Does an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful, almighty God leave justification to be an ambiguous undefined subject in our existence?

This is the question that man attempts to answer with the creation of religion. Man uses religion to restore himself to God due to his unpleasing fallen state. But there is a fatal flaw in religion. Religion will always find its strength in what my hands do themselves. Religion puts the emphasis on the work that I do. The problem with religious justification is that what I do is already flawed, if I am doing it for myself. Religion only gives you the credit for what you did. Religion will always honor itself and a faith in that is misleading. This is the tension that Cain found himself in. The work that he did with his hands; the plowing, the tilling, the hoeing, and the harvesting was not acceptable enough. This was because Cain was his work. Cain was his religion and to separate the two meant destruction to who he was, not knowing there is a difference between religion and revelation. True faith brings about revelation. It was this revelation that Able operated in. If man is going to be in right standing with God, it is going to take blood. It is the shedding of blood that will redeem a fallen state of man. Able had the revelation from God that it is not about what I raked and hoed and labored to do. But it is through only what God can give that I can obtain righteousness. Because what God demands, God will give. What God asks, God will answer. What God needs, God will supply.

“It strikes us, when year after year our longed for perfection of life does not appear. The only thing one can do is accept the fact that you’re accepted. This is grace. You may not know more than before. You may not feel different than before, but everything it transformed”-Paul Tillich

CHURCH!

Going Outward

Gen 12:1-4: Real pivotal point in scripture. God is creating a new initiative for connecting in a relationship with the people that He calls His own. This doesn’t mean that this is the first time that God communicates with His people, that is obvious because God was in a relationship and communicated with His people since Gen. 1, but things change in this chapter. God comes to Abram and says I want you to leave everything that you know, because I’ve got something different for you. This something that God had in store for Abram was a blessing. It was something that he had never seen or experienced before. This blessing was so gigantic that it would change his life so much that Abram would have to change his name.

God’s Blessing is:

Instrumental: God’s blessing for Abram does not end with just Abram. It was not just a single blessing for one person. Abram received the blessing so that he could become a blessing. It was received to be distributed. Abram is a new means to an end. The good life that Abram was promised and did receive wasn’t just so that he could chill and enjoy it, and live life playa style. Abraham has become a medium of God’s blessing.

So the same suit fits us. We are not just chosen, or predestined, elected or called, just to be called. God says that you predestined to be holy, you are called to be a Son of God, you are chosen for His glory. These things exist as windows of opportunity for us to be something outside of ourselves for someone else. It is not just about me.

Universal: God’s blessing is in response to the sin separation in the world. God’s blessing is no respecter of ethnicity, color, political affiliation. God’s blessing doesn’t pay attention to policy, or timeline, or economy, or even morality. It’s for everyone, everywhere. God invited Abram to live out this blessing and to become a light in a dimly lit world. Abram says yes. But as generations pass, more and more people forget that the plan was to be lights and they disconnect from the mission.

We go OUTWARD because this is what God is like. God doesn’t just exist for Himself, and God doesn’t live just for Himself. He wants His love to be on display to everyone. We go OUTWARD because the heart of God goes OUTWARD. This is what He is calling His church to. So what can we learn as a church about this.

A good life is not about talking about all the things that you would not do just because you have been called by God. I used to think that living such a good life meant explaining to people what I don’t do now. “I don’t do this”, and “never do that”, and “you can’t do this until”, and “you may have done that, but you need to feel sorry for it”; are all things that we have heard or said about the “good life” we have in God. But a good life goes beyond the type of books you don’t read, or movies you won’t watch, or that type of people that you would never hang out with. A good life is more about what we choose to do. How do I choose to spend my time? Where do I choose to give my money? Who do I choose to associate with and why? Who do I invest in? What am I passionate about? How has God shown me love, so that I can show that to other people? When you live life in such a way as this, you become compelling and not repelling. What is it for you? How can you find and promote the divine in the daily?

Jesus calls his church to be a compelling force for good in the world. God uses people as agents of change, to relieve suffering and fight injustice; living out the transforming message of the resurrected Jesus. We believe that the church is at its best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves caring about the things God cares about. We were created to live for something larger than ourselves.

CHURCH!

It's All Good!

The style of the beginning of Genesis is as a Mesopotamian poem. There is a rhythm that is created in this poem. “It is good” continues to pop up time and time again. The “good” is woven into the beat and rhyme of the scripture. The scriptures even end with a new rhythm, “it is very good”.

Death, destruction and curse are temporary invaders. The story begins in Chapter I; not in Chapter III. The story begins with good, not with curse. Sin, death, corruption, curse, and exclusion are not the way God intended things to go. These things come in later in the story, after God claimed that everything was good. The world with these temporary invaders isn't how God made it; it isn’t the way God intended it to be; and it isn’t how it will be forever. So that means, there is no amount of human sin can push out the good. This is because sin was simply a second thought. God made it and said “IT IS GOOD!” The world was already good before anything contaminated it or invaded it. This statement only holds true if you believe the story begins in Chapter I and not Chapter III. If you believe that the world was good before it was invaded, this should make a huge difference with the way that we live on earth today.

Everything that God created is good. He will continue to prove the things that he created are good. We see this happen from time to time in places that we would not expect. Don’t completely write anything off, because God will always prove that something He created is still good. If we believe that the story starts in Chapter I and that the resurrection is a reality, then we believe that life can come out of any dead situation. We want to reclaim the good, where ever we find it.

The Resurrection Story is about the pivotal moment in time where death, destruction, disease, pain, hurt and any other temporary invader gets ousted. The invaders have been removed so that we can live the why we should have if we had never been invaded. Now that the invaders are gone lets get on with the life He intended. Let’s CELEBRATE as we go UPWARDS.

We believe that the world the Lord God created is good; and that He creates people in His image and no amount of darkness can erase that divine imprint. Because we believe that all of life is sacred, we look for God’s fingerprints everywhere. We celebrate the divine in the daily; pursuing lives of hope, gratitude and worship. God invites everyone, everywhere into this way of life, and we believe that it is the best possible way to live!

CHURCH!

Mini Message 3-22-09

If we want to go forward, sometimes we have to take move backward, to understand the forward motion. But we are moving backward because we want to know and define where we came from.  If you are a Christian then you are part of an ancient historical stream, thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. It is a stream of people that believe that we are not just here by random happenstance, but that there is a creator that put this world together. A Creator that has redeemed us, and a creator that has a plan for this world. So being a Christian is having a historic faith about how the world was created, and what it means to take action in the world with a God who made it.

All a Christian is a person that says: ‘there are these things that Jesus taught about compassion, and injustice, and mercy, and the interaction with other humans on this planet, and I am going to go with that”. I am going to base my world around those things. This is a beautiful stream to be connected with.

 So when we dive into our roots, we have to be honest. You will find in our roots really great things, but at the same time you will find things that are dark and that are not so good. So part of being a Christian is excepting the dark things that are also part of our history. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Hunts, American Slavery; these are all things that were done by other Christians in the name of Jesus, that Jesus had nothing to do with. It was dark, but it is a part of our linage. The bible has been used in the wrong way. It has been used to manipulate, coheres, defame, oppress and exploit other people, all done against the will of God.

We see ourselves in a long line a generations, taking part in the endless conversation between God and people. We believe the bible to be the voices of many that have come before us, inspired by God to pass along their poems, accounts, stories, and letters of response and relationship with each other and the living God.

To know where we are going, we have to know where we’ve been.

CHURCH