What Matters

Two Adams

Our Easter theme at Newlife was The Tree (borrowed from Rob Bell and John Ortberg).  This is an excerpt from my Good Friday message that reminds us of the incredible gifts we have through the death and Resurrection of Jesus (the second Adam)! 

On Good Friday we remember that Jesus was hung on a tree. The gospel is the story of three trees: one at the beginning of Creation (Genesis 2:9), one at the end (Revelation 22:2), with the Cross of Christ in the middle. 

Sin began at the first tree with the first Adam. The Bible gives Jesus the title the second Adam.  Sin was defeated at the Cross by Jesus, the second Adam. The first Adam came from the dust; the second Adam came from heaven. The first Adam sought to exalt himself by becoming like God; the second Adam humbled himself, becoming one of us. The first Adam ignored God’s will; the second Adam only did the Father’s will. 

The first Adam was tempted and quickly gave in; the second Adam was tempted again and again and always overcame. The first Adam heard the serpent say ‘take and eat’ and tragically, he did.  The second Adam says to us ‘take and eat’ and joyfully, we can.  The first Adam brought upon us a curse; the second Adam liberated us from curse’s grip. Through the first Adam, sin and death entered our world; through the second Adam, sin is defeated and death is conquered. 

Because of the sin of the first Adam we live with suffering; because of the suffering of the second Adam we are healed.  The first Adam was condemned by his sin; because the second Adam was condemned, we are set free.  The first Adam was estranged from God; through the second Adam we are reconciled to God.  God breathed into the first Adam the breath of life; the second Adam breathes into his disciples the Spirit of God. 

The first Adam ran from God in shame; through the second Adam, God runs to us. The first Adam lost his crown and gained death; the second Adam tasted death and gained his crown. Now, we bear the image of the first Adam; if we die in Christ we will be transformed into the likeness of the second Adam.  In Jesus, the second Adam, the cross has become the Tree of life.

What was intended by human beings to be the tree of death has become, by the mercy and love and grace of God, our tree of life!

Defining Moments

There are defining moments in life; moments when decisions we make and actions we take will shape the course of our future.  Defining moments in my life included the thirty or so seconds I watched Sue walk down the aisle and the terrifyingly beautiful hours in the labour ward as our children were born.  Life-defining was our decision five years ago to move 2000 kilometres north to the Gold Coast as we responded to God’s call.

We all experience many and varied defining moments in life.  This is true for us individually as well as corporately.  Organizations, most especially churches, face defining moments – opportunities to embrace the future or retreat to the past.  Here at Newlife we face a year - a season - of defining moments unlike perhaps any we have faced in the past.  Four years after the dream was born we stand on the cusp of establishing a new campus on the Northern Gold Coast.  As we have stepped out in faith God has provided us with the person in Orrell Battersby to lead this vital outreach.  God has also provided us with much of the resources required to establish this new community on a firm financial foundation.  We have been blessed!  Over the coming months we will have the opportunity to watch in awe as God provides the core team of people who will pioneer this ministry.

Through 2011 we will face a series of defining moments regarding our property.  Plans have been finalized and now need to be approved for Stage One of the redevelopment of this incredible site.  Later this year we will seek to raise a substantial proportion of the cost of the redevelopment through the sacrificial generosity of all who call Newlife their spiritual home.  Then there is the building process itself!  All in all, 2011 promises to be a year of exciting, scary and faith-stretching possibilities.

One of the eight core values of our church is Adventurous Faith; we believe that faith is an adventure that God calls us into.  There are defining decisions that God gives us the freedom to participate in.  In these moments we can choose to step back into the security of the past, or we can settle for the certainty of the present.  Alternatively, we can step-up and embrace an adventurous, faith-fuelled future.  Biblical and church history suggests strongly that the church is at its best when it steps-up and out and risks following Jesus into the future (Hebrews 11-12).  May this be our witness!

Affluenza

Sue and I grew up in a rural town (Naracoorte, SA) where Sue’s parents still live.  Sue’s dad Reg owns and runs a car-yard with his son and Sue’s brother, Bruce.  It is a tough business and Reg and Bruce are always looking to diversify to offset the ups and downs of the car trade.

About ten years ago Bruce stumbled on to their most lucrative ‘side’ business yet; selling and leasing shipping containers.  Naracoorte is 60 miles inland and hundreds of miles from the nearest Port, so it seems a strange business to be in, let alone to make money from.  But the containers sell and lease well.  Farmers, businesses, families all order them.  And they all use them for pretty much the same purpose; to store ‘stuff’. 

The so-called self-storage industry is one of the fastest growing markets around.  The industry even has its own peak body and website (www.selfstorage.com.au)   Did you know that around Australia there are 1100 self-storage sites, a number that is rapidly growing?  Or that 5.7% of the population currently uses self-storage services, up from 3% in 2006?  (Is it wrong that I find those statistics fascinating?!)  We store cars, boats, wine, caravans, furniture, and documents – actually, you name it and someone, somewhere stores it.  We are a nation of hoarders.

This Sunday we are exploring a story of Jesus about a hoarder (Luke 12:13-21).  At so many levels it is a confronting story.  Above all, it challenges and confronts our ‘Affluenza’.  Affluenza is not a real disease; the term was coined in a TV documentary about 10 years ago.  It defined affluenza as ‘The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses.’  Our need for more and more space to store our stuff is a symptom of the disease.

In the end Jesus’ story of a rich fool offers us two very clear choices; will we seek the temporal riches of stuff or will we seek the eternal riches of God?  God gave us appetite, and there is nothing wrong with having one.  The critical decision we make is where we seek to satisfy that appetite.  Appropriating the words of a famous church father, our appetite is never fully satisfied unless it is satisfied in, through and for God.

Disunity is Death

There is a story told about some monks who lived in a remote monastery deep in the woods.  They followed a rigid vow of silence. Their vow could only be broken once a year—on Christmas—by one monk. That monk could speak only one sentence.

 

One Christmas, Brother Thomas had his turn to speak and said, "I love the delightful mashed potatoes we have every year with the Christmas roast!" Then he sat down. Silence ensued for 365 days.

 

The next Christmas, Brother Michael got his turn and said, "I think the mashed potatoes are lumpy, and I truly despise them!" Once again, silence ensued for 365 days.

 

The following Christmas, Brother Paul rose and said, "I am fed up with this constant bickering!"

 

Given the opportunity, Christian brothers and sisters will find something to bicker over.  We will often bicker over inconsequential things.  Bu we can also fiercely debate matters which go to the substance of the faith we hold.  There are times when our disagreements need to be wrestled with to a point of resolution, and other times where it is appropriate to ‘disagree agreeably.’

 

One of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit is unity – the ability to move past that which divides us to discover the liberating community we can enjoy through Jesus Christ.  In his final prayer for us, those who follow in the steps of the original disciples, Jesus implored God the Father:

 

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me...May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

(John 17:20-24)

 

May Jesus’ prayer be the witness of our lives.

Allowing the Bible to Read Us

The last week’s news has been filled with threats of burning Islam’s ‘holy’ book, the Koran.  Passions have been inflamed in both America and overseas, with counter –threats (some fulfilled) to burn the Bible.  In fact the (Christian) Bible has been burned, banned and ridiculed for much of its two thousand year history.

The first Bible I remember reading was a big children’s picture bible.  I was captivated not so much by the words, but by the Cecil B DeMille style pictures.  Graphic illustrations of some of the Old Testament stories were truly of biblical proportions!  Since deciding to follow Jesus as a teenager I have read my bible with a mixture of wonder and confusion.  The bible has both inspired, and at times infuriated me.  To this day my eyes can glaze over when dutifully reading what can seem at first glance to be archaic reflections of no apparent relevance to my 21^st century world. 

Of course nothing could be further from the truth – the Bible is, as it has always been, ‘relevant’.   It is relevant in that in its pages, across its 66 books and through the contribution of its myriad of human authors I can hear the Word of God.  The Bible is God’s story for God’s people.  JI Packer has said, ‘God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture.’  When I read the Bible with the Holy Spirit as my guide, mere words on a page can become a Living Word in my heart. 

 

In the end I do not read the Bible for information, although it is full of fascinating history, beautiful poetry and incomparable wisdom.  No, I read the Bible for transformation – that God might change me from the inside out.  As WH Auden states, ‘A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.’

Wesley's Theological Method

John Wesley, the 18^th century founder of Methodism, was a pragmatic, insightful theologian.  Wesley identified four primary sources for our understanding about God.

 

The first and most important is Scripture.  Wesley stood with Calvin and Luther and the early church Fathers in believing that all the truth about God can be found through the pages of the Bible.  But he knew that we don’t come to the Bible as empty vessels.  We read the bible through particular lenses.  And those lenses provide us with different ways of viewing God’s truth in the Bible.  It explains why two different people can read the same passage and come to different conclusions.

 

First, we read the bible through the lens of tradition.  Tradition is the understanding of God that is formed in us by our background, what we have been taught and read and so on. 

 

Second, we read the bible through the lens of reason.  God has given us the capacity to think and reason and we bring this intellectual capacity to our reading of scriptures.  God has given us a brain and expects us to use it.

 

Last, we read the bible through the lens of our experience.  We are all as unique as the different experiences of life that we have.  And those experiences shape how we explore truth in the scriptures.  How does what the bible say stack up against our experiences.  Is our interpretation of the Bible consistent with our experiences, and if not, why not?

 

What Wesley said makes sense.  We form our understanding about God as we read the bible through the lenses of tradition, reason and experience. But Scripture always is our primary source in coming to know and understand God.  It is through the written word of Scripture that we encounter the Living Word that is Jesus Christ, and in Him, the truth that sets us free.

The Power of Story

I love a good story.  I grew up devouring books – reading them by torchlight well after my mother told me it was time for ‘lights out’!  The Famous Five, the Magic Faraway Tree, Sun on the Stubble…these were just some of the narratives my imagination escaped into as a child.  We hear and experience stories through books, films, songs, poetry – even painting (a picture paints a thousand words, so they say).

 

The Power of Story continues long past our childhood.  Human beings are wired for story.  We are storied creatures.  From the earliest days of civilization to today we have been telling them – from ancient campfires to last week’s 3D animated extravaganzas.  At their best, stories narrate the truth about ourselves and our world.  Most powerful of all are stories that recount events that occurred in real time and space – true stories.  The Bible is full of stories like that – including Luke’s recounting of Saul’s Damascus Road transformation (Acts 9:1-20).

 

In Saul’s (Paul’s) story we hear the fundamental truth that the gospel has the power to transform a human life.  In Saul’s dramatic conversion we are reminded that transformation comes when our lives intersect with the grace and mercy of God experienced through Jesus Christ.  When this happens we are irrevocably changed.

 

Perhaps the greatest blessing I have as a Pastor is to get a front row seat to view such transformation in the lives of people in our church.    I see our vision – changing lives, transforming the world – graphically illustrated in the stories of men and women of our community.  Just a few of those stories we have been committing to film.  These stories can be viewed on our website anytime (www.newlifeuniting.com).  Watch and listen - I know you will be blessed

Missional Motivation

Persecution of the early church did not curtail the proclamation of the gospel – it fanned it into flame.  A sudden upsurge in violent attacks against Christians drove disciples out from Jerusalem into the Judean hills, and further into Samaria (Acts 8:1-4).  The seed of the gospel was scattered and took root wherever brave men and women witnessed to Jesus with their words and their lives.  At its inception and always at its best the church is by definition a missionary movement.  It is certainly not a static institution.

 

One of Jesus’ last commands to the disciples was to go, and in the process of moving – to make disciples not just of their kin, but of all nations.  Settling into the status quo was never an option for them, and nor is it for we who walk in their footsteps.  We are called to participate in God’s mission in the world. This is both our privilege and the adventure God calls us into.

 

In 1928 the International Missionary Conference met in Jerusalem.  A declaration emanated from that meeting stating: Herein lies the Christian motive; it is simple. We cannot live without Christ and we cannot bear to think of others living without him. ... We believe in a Christlike world. We know nothing better; we can be content with nothing less.

 

We can be content with nothing less than playing our part in God’s reconciling work in the world.  That work starts here on our doorstop – in our city.  God loves the Gold Coast.  In the power of the Holy Spirit we are called to proclaim that love in word and action.  We are filled with the Holy Spirit and sent out by Jesus to declare and demonstrate the saving grace of God.  And we get to do that together in this thing we call ‘the church’. Thank you God!

Sign of the (future) times

A couple of weeks ago in our morning services we discovered that miracles are signs that point to a future where everything that is broken will one day be made whole.  This day will come when Jesus returns and heaven and earth are reunited in a glorious new creation.  Miracles are a taste of things to come –a foretaste.

 

If miracles are a foretaste of a new future, so too is the church.  The church is a sign of things to come.  The church, with all of its many failures, is a community formed by Jesus Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit.  The church is a community of reconciliation where those who were once alienated from God and others by sin now call God Father and each other brothers and sisters.  It is a new family that offers the promise of a future where all will bow their knee and acknowledge Jesus as Lord and enjoy God’s full and free presence.  Archbishop Rowan Williams has stated that the church’s purpose is to reveal to the world its horizon.

 

This all sounds great.  But we live in the here and now.  We live with people who may be our brother and sisters in Christ, but who also hurt us – even betray us.  We are not perfect, and nor is the church.  This idea of the church being a sign or foretaste of a wonderful future sounds like naïve utopian idealism.  The reality is the church has always been one, big, happy and yet dysfunctional family.  Until Jesus comes again this is how it will always be.  Far from being discouraged by this reality, I am blown away that God uses imperfect people like us to carry out His perfect will.  I am staggered that we get to participate in God’s rescue mission for our world – that we join with others in this Holy Spirit fueled Uprising of love, grace and mercy.  Wow!

Pentecost Reflection

On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was an experienced phenomenon – a violent, house-shaking wind and tongues of fire that rested on each believer (Acts 2:1-4).  That life-shaping and faith-defining experience compelled Peter and the rest of the disciples into the streets where they testified boldly to salvation found through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  The first Holy Spirit empowered act of the disciples was to point to, and testify about Jesus.  This was no accident.

 

Jesus’ promise to the disciples and through them to us was that ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’  (Acts 1:8)  And so Luke’s historical record of the early church (The Acts of the Apostles) records the growth of the Christian community throughout the Roman Empire as believers were compelled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to give account for the hope they had through Jesus Christ.

 

On the Day of Pentecost a spark was lit that soon smoldered into small fires scattered throughout the Roman cities of the first century – like Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch and eventually Rome itself.  Like sparks leaping ahead of a fire front, from its first-century origins fires have been lit on other continents and down through ages up until this one to the point that today hundreds of millions proclaim Jesus as Lord with their lips and their lives.  And so every church that proclaims Jesus and Lord and Saviour is in the end a Pentecostal Church – because we trace our roots, our origins back to a small room in the dusty streets of ancient Jerusalem, and more particularly to a God who fulfilled his promise to pour out the Holy Spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28-29).