Awakening in Christ<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } .indent { margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  Awakening in Christ </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Luke+24:28-35"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Luke 24:28-35</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <div class="indent"> <em><p>Our pulpit guest at Cliff Temple this past Sunday was Suzii Paynter, Director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission. She was gracious enough to share her manuscript with me, and I wanted to share it with you.</p> <p>Glen Schmucker</p></em> <hr /> </div> <p>Thank You to Glen for this invitation to be here with you. I spent the first of this week with the flu it left behind a cough. I will try to manage that nasty holdover today.</p> <p>It is a real blessing to look out on your faces as the church gathered. How many millions of faces are gathered to worship God just as we are today. More than an audience or spectators or a crowd, not a gaggle or a pride or - what a powerful part of our week to come together as a congregation of collected believers, the Scripture if full of the people of God gathered "and the Kingdom of God breaks in.</p> <p>As I look out at you , I am reminded of one of the basic, scandalous principles of God's expression</p> <p>God CHOOSES to LOVE US and WORK THROUGH us for HIS KINGDOM.</p> <p>God CHOOSES to LOVE US and WORK THROUGH us for HIS KINGDOM.</p> <p>It is a humbling to think that God gives us a role of partnership towards the His great Kingdom. He must know something that we don't know'and indeed He does.</p> <p>In their powerful book "Kingdom Ethics", Glenn Stassen and David Gushee have this to say about the Kingdom of God:</p> <div class="indent"> <p>The Kingdom of God is NOT about what God does while humans stand BY passively. Nor is it about our human efforts to build the kingdom while God passively watches.</p> <p>The Kingdom of God is God's performance". in which we actively participate. He is already at work. and we join in.</p> <p>God is up to deliverance and grace - - This is His transforming initiative. He is moving in on the world breaking in with LOVE.</p> </div> <p>This Emmaus text is a Kingdom snapshot -</p> <p>We catch up with the pair of travelers, on the road to Emmaus. They have been walking for a longtime ( unbeknownst to them) with Jesus Christ himself. Jesus walks and talks to them AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT. Doesn't that make you "well nervous? They are with Jesus Christ 2 by 2 - not a crowd of thousands, not in the temple. Jesus is with them and THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT. These two blessed travelers even tell Jesus that after the crucifixion, the women go to the grave and find no body and that the angels said he was alive.</p> <p>I didn't include this part for Jerry to read... but Jesus isn't exactly easy on them either He says ( about verse 25) "How foolish you are. And HOW SLOW OF HEART TO BELIEVE all that the prophets have spoken. Then he talks about Scripture for the next few miles.</p> <p>These travelers were already believers, followers, they were close enough to hear what the women said. BUT they were still foolish aren't we all - Jesus draws up beside them and is persistent in teaching them beyond belief - to a point of ACTION.</p> <p>We witness the picture of two travelers who are <strong>awakening in Christ</strong> to a kingdom life. THEY BOLT UP AWAKE to the Kingdom of God. God rings a cosmic alarm clock right in their ears wake Up and they return in the dark to Jerusalem their own political and religious hotbed of turmoil and uncertainty. They go back because God has broken in and God is ahead of them.</p> <p>Thru grace like this - Christ takes shape in us. What did they say after Jesus disappears? "Were not our hearts burning with in us?" Christ was taking shape in them during that walk. "He wasn't just moving the interior furniture," as CS Lewis says, "Jesus was renovating the whole house."</p> <p>Stassen and Gushee call this <strong>"Christo-morphic grace"</strong> - it has a very specific shape, a shape revealed in Christ. It is not just a warm feeling, not just a passion, not just a restlessness for a good deed but it is a Christ-shaped grace. It is the shape of the kingdom, the way of Jesus.</p> <p>I want to focus on two questions:</p> <ol> <li>How does this Kingdom transformation take place?</li> <li>What is it like in the public square?</li> </ol> <p>Christo-morphic Christ shaped grace transforms our lives through changes in our character. We are after all to "put on the character of Christ." So what is character?</p> <p>A friend of mine quipped "Oh you remember character... it is what we had before their was "attitude".</p> <p>Christ shaped grace changes our character. There are four components of character:</p> <ol> <li>Our way of Seeing ( Emmaus They SEE)</li> <li>Our way of reasoning _ (Emmaus They change form too late to go on, to Get up and Go)</li> <li>Our Loyalties, Interests, passions are central to our character When the kingdom of God takes shape in your life, you often get a new set of loyalties or passions, (Emmaus we don't know exactly about these two, but we know that the post resurrection Christ-followers pretty much turned the world upside down.)</li> <li>Our basic convictions what we believe enough to ACT on.(Emmaus went from belief to something much more Christ shaped and powerful something that made them willing to run in the dark)</li> </ol> <p>How does the kingdom transformation occur? Often in retrospect, but sometime in the moment we are AWARE of what is essentially a transforming act of God on our character.</p> <p>Richard Rohr (in his book Everything Belongs) calls these "liminal moments" Liminal doorway, threshold.</p> <p>We do not know when God will FRAME out our character with a threshold to step over."</p> <p>Several years ago, I suffered an injustice. I worked for a large urban school district and because of the ego of a powerful city official I was told that I would lose my job. ( you have had some experience here I believe with the ego strength of at least one powerful city official?!) Well I was devastated - at first then I got lots of support form other people and there were lawyers, and pretty soon we had a very tasty little case. It was SWEET! In a very well orchestrated way , we were set to win. It felt great, lots of people were on my side.</p> <p>That is until one night about three months into this drama, my best friend in the school district a superintendent who had been my immediate supervisor, showed up at our backdoor stumbling down drunk and completely destroyed by this ordeal. Faced with this collateral damage...</p> <p>I was standing in a "liminal moment" for my character. In as clear a voice as I have ever heard God I was told that the path was not revenge, but forgiveness.</p> <p>I was willing to forgive of course just AFTER I had won a lawsuit! But that was not God's way. The destruction of my dear friend and my own delight in being OH so right were warning signs of something very ominous. God was offering me forgiveness I could accept it OR NOT. What shaped my character was taking forgiveness on God's terms not mine.</p> <p>I was not popular with my supporters when I said, "drop it all." But it was a liminal day - something Christ shaped began to grow in me I took a spiritual gift of forgiveness over the temporal gift of revenge.</p> <p>I was left with a very Christ shaped question: "So why isn't compassion / forgiveness as contagious as judgmentalism/ revenge?"</p> <p>The last thing I want to speak to is how do we live out the Kingdom of God in the public sphere?</p> <p>It is my conviction that God is moving in the public sphere He always has. There are people of character, emerging leaders in the legacy of Weston Ware a generation - God is calling them in special ways to reconcile the world to himself. God's kingdom is out there in ministry and in Issues.</p> <p>ISSUES a word about issues. We live in a divisive time. If we are going to be a part of God's kingdom reconciling the world to Himself, we have to know how to navigate issues.</p> <p>I want to give you a mental picture about issues. You pick the issue - Property taxes, Medicaid and CHIP, war in Iraq, energy, Child abuse. Picture the issue like a street.</p> <p>You are walking down Issue Street Let's say it is "crime in your neighborhood" street - as you go down this street, you are walking past the fenced yards of many houses. The sidewalk is very close to the chain link fence and behind the chain-link fence are barking dogs, big , vicious barking dogs. Now you believe that God has some way of revealing himself to reconcile the world and not ignore this issue, but oh my Gosh there are these terrible barking dogs that make you just want to run away, and ignore the whole street.</p> <p>Every issue has these barking dogs that scare us to death one dog is <strong>Labels</strong> labels / name calling these are scary accusations given by other people; you are "hawk" "Dove" "soft on crime" "liberal" "fascist" "redneck" "feminatzi" "chauvinist" "idiot" "elitist". If we are going to be a part of God's work to reconcile the world, we have got to get past the barking dog of Labels, and get on with learning an doing in God's name.</p> <p>Another barking dog along the street of issues in the public sphere is the barking dog of <strong>Special Interests.</strong> Special interests are everywhere. Who benefits? Who gains from the status quo? Who benefits from proposed changes? It is very hard to get on with God's calling until we both recognize the role of special interests and also be HONEST about expressing our own special interests.</p> <p>The last barking dog on the street is <strong>Party Identification.</strong> Even if you manage to pass by Labels and Special Interests with your God spectacles on, you may find It difficult to make it past the barking dog of party identification. In truth, many issues of our day do not belong to one party but there is a very concerted effort to paint the picture that way. You are not a real <u> </u> if you don't <u> </u>.</p> <p>We cannot do away with the barking dogs, they are a part of our political reality but we can address issues knowing that they are just barking dogs they are not the issue itself. That God is calling us to meet human needs, redeem and support our society, God is reconciling the world to himself and he does not need more spectators. Get in the game., God says, " Do not be scandalized by the sinful and the tragic."</p> <p>Where is God in the public sphere?</p> <ul> <li>Poverty</li> <li>Addiction</li> <li>Immigration</li> <li>Stewardship</li> <li>Health</li> <li>Prisons</li> </ul> <p>The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is most likely at your side, and just about the time you invite him in for supper - you'll wake up to find he has changed you inside out. and you are willing to even run in the dark for those he loves.</p> <p>May we pray -</p> <p>Lord Jesus Christ we seek to follow you <div class="indent"> Against our lust for power, you took the cross,<br /> Against our pride and arrogance, you washed the disciples" feet.<br /> Against our upward mobility, you preach good news to the poor.<br /> Against our tight circles of family and friends, you reach out to strangers.<br /> Against our safe non-involvement, you confront the powers.<br /> Against our violence, you demand that we love our enemies.<br /> Create in us a clean heart. Oh God. </div> <hr width="100%" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Suzii Paytner, Director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission </td> <td> <div align=right>  March 25, 2007 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2007, Suzii Paytner </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>