Sabbath for Dummies

Sermon for Sabbath,October 29, 2011, at North Hill Adventist Fellowship

Texts: Exodus 20:8-11

Mark 2:27-28

I saw a funny cartoon this week about trying to help your mother trouble shoot her computer over the phone.  http://geekisawesome.com/192/fixing-your-mothers-computer/

Part of the reason this is so funny is that it hits close to home. I was listening to a some reporter this week describe his recent trip to Lagos, Nigeria. He used internet cafe's and discovered that within minutes after he left the cafe he would begin receiving classic Nigerian emails offering him a share in millions of dollars that someone had inherited. To avoid this spam he had to “dump the cache.” He had to dump the cache every time he went on line in one of these places. I'm sitting there listening and thinking, dump the cache? How would you do that? What does that mean?

Apparently the interviewer realized there were several other people listening who had the same question, so he said something about “deleting cookies.” Well, I have deleted cookies on my computer, but I don't remember how I did it. And I don't know the relationship between the cache and the cookies.

The reporter thought he was speaking plain English, but it was beyond me.

It's easy for something like this to happen in all kinds of areas of life. Someone tells us something. We understand all the words, but we don't really know what they meant.

When I first started working on my 1974 Volkswagen Beetle 35 years ago, I bought a manual that claimed it was written for the complete idiot. (This was before Books for Dummies.) One of the biggest problems with the book is that it did not have a glossary. And it didn't have many pictures.

So when it told me to do something with the wire that went from the coil to the distributor I was lost. What's a coil? What's a distributor? I hadn't lived in a world where people tinkered with engines.

Karin likes to recount a conversation she had with a young woman who wanted to know the secret of making pie crust. Karin told her, “Start with two cups of flour.”

Girl, “Where do you get flour? What does flour come in?”

Karin, “Haven't you ever made biscuits?

Girl, “Sure, I use Pillsbury frozen dough.”

Karin, “Well, haven't you breaded chicken?”

Girl, “Sure, Shake N Bake.”

It went on like this. The girl had never made anything from scratch. She had never bought flour. Karin had to start truly from the very beginning and get very specific. “Go to the store, go the baking aisle, the aisle where they sell chocolate chips, oil and sugar. There you will find flour. It comes in paper bags. There will be several kinds. Buy a five pound bag of Gold Medal Unbleached flour. Buy Mazola Corn Oil.

"Once you get back home, get a bowl that holds four to six cups. Measure two cups of flour into the bowl . . .”

It can be like this in religion. If you've grown up doing something, it is second nature. You instinctively understand it. But for someone without that background, what is second nature to you may be completely foreign and incomprehensible.

Today, I'm going to talk about keeping Sabbath. And I'm going to imagine that I am explaining it to someone who has never done it. I hope you will have your phones ready to comment and text so we can have a good discussion.

In the book of Exodus we find the famous “Ten Commandments.” The fourth commandment reads:

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. In it you are not to do any work. Six days you are to labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you are not to work. Not you nor your kids, not your servants or your animals or even a stranger visiting in your home. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore he blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:8-11

A couple of questions immediately come to mind: 1. What does it mean to keep a day holy? 2. What is work?

In the spirit of Sabbath for Dummies, or pie crust for the Shake-N-Bake crowd, I'm going get very specific. (The more specific I get, the more likely it will be that those who are experienced will disagree, just as skilled cooks will each have her own precise method for making pie crust. Experts are free to do all kinds of experimenting and creative alteration. But for beginners, the best approach is not to learn “the principles of pie making.” For beginners, you want to be very specific and concrete.)

I've created two lists. The list separates roughly into things to do and things not to do. I'm going to call the things to do, “The Holy List.” The things not to do are “The Work List.”

Do these things:

Pray

Eat something special

Drink something special

Visit with people you are related to

Visit with friends

Listen to good music

Watch uplifting movies

Go to church

Read your Bible

Go for a hike

Play with your kids

Visit with your parents

Take a nap

Show compassion

Do good

Visit people in prison or nursing homes

Visit your neighbors

Light candles on Friday night

Especially on Friday evening, SIT DOWN. (i.e. quit cleaning, polishing, fixing, preparing.)

Don't do these things:

Work.

Provide professional services

Punch a time clock

Make the boss happy

Earn a living

Secure your retirement

Do school work

Take tests

Engage in sports

Clean house

Wash the car

Do yard work

Watch television

Shop

Cut fire wood

Rototill

Watch the news

Clean the gutters

Making sense of the lists

Note that all of the activities on the “Don't List” are good things to do. Sabbath keeping is not about avoiding evil. We do not avoid evil on the Sabbath, we avoid good! This is really counter-intuitive for those who are new to Sabbath keeping. Why would you have a whole day every week devoted to avoiding doing good things? Because we avoid the good things to make room for a special kind of goodness.

The activities on the “Do List” are designed to enrich and enhance our connections with God and with other human beings. The point of going to church is not to get “church” checked off your to-do list. The point of going to church is to cultivate relationships with other believers and with God. The point of spending time with your spouse or your parents or children or friends or neighbors is to build relationships. Relationships take time. There is no meaningful relationship apart from shared time. Sabbath interrupts the crazy pace of our lives and orders us to slow down and actually be aware of actual individuals. Sabbath invites us to share unhurried conversation. The point of going for a hike is to experience God in the action of our body. If we hike in a beautiful setting, we experience God through beauty. If we hike with friends we are deepening our connections with them. The goal of every “recommended activity” is the cultivation of relationships.

What do I mean by “work?” Any activity intended to secure my place in the world. Punching a time clock to earn some money. Working on my retirement plan. Studying for school. Taking the LSAT or the MCAT or some other nationally standardized test. Painting the house (to protect my investment). Even the work of caring for my house or car. We leave all that alone in order to give ourselves wholly to the people and the Person who provide the real meaning in life.

Devout, mature Sabbath-keepers will have slightly different lists. That is natural, just as good cooks use different recipes and skilled computer people have different approaches to configuring computers. If you have approaches that work for you, that enrich your life and your relationships with God and the people you love, great. Keep it up.

If you are new to Sabbath keeping, I invite you to try these lists. Do the stuff on the “Do List.” Avoid the stuff on the “Don't List.” Try it for two or three months and see what happens in your life. See if it enriches your marriage and your relationships with your parents and kids. See if it opens a new sense of connection with God.

Sabbath is first introduced in the Bible as God's practice. God keeps Sabbath. Since we are made in his image, it makes sense to adopt in our own lives a practice that God himself embraces. God keeps Sabbath as a sign of his delight in us. When we keep Sabbath, we will move more deeply into our own awareness of God's love. We will experience richer and richer connections with God and people. Life will be better.

A couple of more notes:

There is a whole category of work that not only MAY be done on Sabbath, but, in fact, MUST be done on Sabbath. The commandment is written to the head of the household (a male in that culture) and orders him not to work and not to require work from any of the people subject to  his authority--kids, servants, farm animals. The commandment does not mention mothers or wives because given the role definitions in that culture the essential work of wives and mothers not only is permissible on Sabbath, but is obligatory. The stereotypical nurture provided by wives and mothers--feeding, changing diapers, nursing the sick--is not suspended on the Sabbath. By extension in our world, there is work that is required for the well-being of people. This kind of work must be done on Sabbath. It includes medical care. It also includes public services like police and fire. It includes the operation of utilities like electrical and water service and public transportation. The lines get blurry.

Finally, I invite you to treat these lists as suggestive. I intend no condemnation of people who observe Sabbath differently. However, I would challenge people: examine your habits. Do they enrich your life? Do they build relationships with God and people or are they merely your own version of the American frenzy? God's goal is human well-being. Wise people will seek to form habits that build community and enrich our own and our children's lives.

Disappointment with God

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, October 22, 2011.

Texts: Numbers 11; Matthew 26:36-46

Yesterday, was supposed to be the end of the world. That's what Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, said. Back in January he predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. Thousands believed him. Some poured their entire life savings into buying advertising on billboards and TV announcing the end of the world. May 21 passed. Nothing observable happened. Harold Camping refined his calculations and announced a new date: October 21.

This is the third or fourth or fifth date Harold Camping has set for the end of the world. They have all passed. Nothing has happened. I'm tempted to poke fun at Camping and his followers. Don't they get it? Why set themselves up for disappointment?

But I can't be too scornful. Our own church actually got its start with a date-setting movement. Here's the story:

In the early 1800s a well-to-do farmer named William Miller was involved in intense Bible study. As he investigated some of the prophecies, he thought he had discovered the date of Christ's return to earth. For a number of years he kept his opinions to himself. He continued studying, going over and over his interpretations and calculations. Finally, in 1831, a local church invited him to preach on the subject. That initial invitation led to more and with a few years, he was the central figure in a movement that swept the eastern seaboard.

Estimates of how many people joined the movement vary widely from 50,000 to 500,000. Whatever the number of actual adherents, the movement caught the attention of the nation. As the time predicted approached, Miller and others refined their calculations and predictions, finally settling on October 22, 1844, as THE DATE.

The day passed. Nothing happened. People were crushed. One of the leaders of the movement wrote: "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, and wept, till the day dawn."

They had been absolutely positive of the date. They had been studying their Bibles with a fierce intensity. They had been praying, confessing their sins, searching their souls. They had been absolutely convinced that God was leading them. All the prophecies lined up. Jesus had to come.

But he didn't.

What do you do when you've absolutely positive that God has been leading you and you end up in a cul-de-sac or worse. How do you deal with disappointment with God?

Most of the Milerites quietly gave up their beliefs and went back to life as usual. Some continued to set further dates. The group that became the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church decided they had the calendar right, but had misunderstood the significance of the date. They struggled to make sense of their experience. They had received the Millerite preaching as the sweetest thing they had ever heard. Jesus was coming – not soon, that nebulous word we use – Jesus was coming on a specific date. Eventually, it was, Jesus is coming tomorrow. Then, Jesus is coming today! Imagine, no more bills to pay. No more arthritis. No more dealing with impossible people. No more wrestling with your own inner conflicts. Paradise. Face-to-face communion with Jesus. Today!

These believers arrived at their convictions through listening to Bible preaching and through their own Bible study. It seemed to them that God had led them every step of the way. They had been following the Holy Spirit. Their confidence in God was totally linked with their belief that Jesus was coming on October 22, 1844.

The day came. They were euphoric, on cloud nine. Their entire religious experience was distilled into the joyous expectancy of that day.

Then nothing.

Some of us have experienced a little bit of this. We caught the excitement of the “soon-coming of Jesus” when we were children. We knew time would never last long enough for us to finish high school. Then for sure, in the chaos and fervor of the 70s we questioned whether there was even any point in staying in school. What use would a graduate education be? We would be in heaven well before we earned our degree. Then our children were born. Then our children grew up and had children. And we who were never going to finish high school were attending the high school graduations of our grand children. And we no longer knew what to do with the word “soon.”

The Great Disappointment experienced by the founders of our church is mirrored in our own small and gradual disappointment.

Beyond our connection with those 19^th century Adventists' disappointment that Jesus did not come when they expected him, their experience can teach us a deep and weighty spiritual truth: Sometimes, we follow God's leading and we end up in a place that is dark and heart-breaking. We find ourselves disappointed with God. (To borrow a title of a Philip Yancey book.) We wonder, was God actually leading us?

Two Bible stories:

Moses was retired. He had been part of the royal family in Egypt. He was heir to the throne. He carried major government responsibilities. Then he rashly acted to protect a fellow Hebrew who was being abused by an Egyptian official. Moses killed the Egyptian. Word of his action reached Pharaoh. Moses ran for his life and ended up in the Arabian desert. He married a local girl there and became a shepherd.

Forty years later, God called Moses out of retirement. God wanted Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the Hebrew people out of slavery and back to Palestine which God had promised to Abraham for his descendants 400 years earlier. Moses protested. God had the wrong man. Moses did not want the job. Eventually Moses let God talk him into taking on the job. Moses headed to Egypt to rescue the Hebrew people. It didn't go so well. After Moses talked to Pharaoh about letting the Hebrews go, Pharaoh increased their work load. The Israelites blamed Moses.

Eventually, Pharaoh let the people go and they were on their way.

Once they were out of Egypt, the people were constantly complaining and belly aching. When Moses was up on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments, the people built a gold statue of a cow and began worshiping it.

Moses didn't just have conflict with the people. He and God argued. After the golden calf episode, God proposed wiping out the entire nation and starting over with Moses descendants to create a new nation. Maybe they would be less rebellious. Moses protested and God backed down.

Another time the people were wailing en masse about the miserable food God was providing – manna. Of course, they didn't blame God, they blamed Moses. Moses couldn't take it any more. “God, what have I done to make you mad?” Moses asked. “What did I do to make you put the burden of all these people on me? . . . They keep wailing, 'Give us meat to eat!' I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin. Numbers 11:11-15.

Get that last line. Moses says, “If you care about me, if you approve of my work so far, just kill me.” Maybe you could put it this way, “Kill me before I do something stupid.”

Moses had followed God into this position. It wasn't his idea. And now, having followed God every step of the way, he finds himself in a situation where death appears to be the only honorable way out. He is begging God to die.

Moses lost that argument. God won. God set up 70 elders to take on some of Moses' responsibilities, but he doesn't let Moses step down.

Have you ever been there? Have you done exactly what you thought God was calling you to do and found yourself in a mess so perplexing, some complicated, so painful, it seemed the only way out was death?

Maybe parenting. You dreamed of pouring your love and life into a child. But the child God sent you has needs you cannot fill. The demands of parenting are beyond you. You feel trapped. Death sometimes seems eminently more desireable than the years of stretching out before you.

Marriage? You married the man or woman of your dreams, then their mind was bent by mental illness or they had trauma to the head that left them a genuinely different person from the person you married.

A job? God opened the doors. It seemed like a gift from heaven. Now, it's more like hell on earth.

Let's be clear. Moses arrived at this desperate place through obedience. Up to this point, he had not made a single mistake in his leadership. He had held face-to-face conversation with God. He had even won an argument with God, getting God to back down from his announced plan to annihilate the Hebrews. Moses was a good man who had been doing good things. And look where it got him. He was in such a deep mess he would rather die than keep going. The situation was so impossible the only out with honor he can imagine was death. He prayed for God to kill him.

God didn't, of course. And Bible history honors Moses as the greatest of all human beings after Christ himself.

One of the lessons we learn from Moses' story is that disappointment with God is no proof that we screwed up. Finding ourselves in difficulty does not mean we have gotten off track. Moses was doing exactly what God had asked him to do. Moses was doing exactly the right thing. And doing the right thing had brought him heart-breaking disappointment. He was in the right place, but it didn't feel right.

We find this pattern repeated in the life of Jesus. He repeatedly warned his disciples that bad things lay ahead. He told them, “I'm going to be seized by the chief priests. They are going to hand me over to be executed. It's going to be ugly.”

Then it happened just like he said, and when it did he prayed to get out of it. No matter how prepared he thought he was, the reality turned out to be unbearable. He had followed God all his life. He was right on target doing exactly what God had asked him to do, and when it came down to it, when it came to the actual experience, – even though he had been warned – he found himself begging God to let him out.

He ended up staying in. He remained faithful, but at a staggeringly high cost.

Faithfulness usually takes us to good places, “good” in the sense of desirable, widely admired, even happy places. But sometimes, when we follow God, we end up disappointed.

Which brings us to the question: Then what? What do we do when following God to the best of our ability brings us into a place of profound, soul-bending disappointment?

Following the pattern of Jesus, the first thing we do is reach out for support. Jesus did. In his case, unfortunately, it didn't work. His friends let him down. But he set the pattern for us. When God's call in our life brings us to a place of unbearable darkness, don't hide. Reach out.

The corollary of this principle is that when our friends are in places of darkness, we are called to go to them, to keep them company. You cannot dispel the darkness. You cannot change God or fix the misery. You can, however, be there. So . . . be there.

Another corollary: You can't call your friends if you don't have any. So make friends now. And don't think just coming to church and sitting here constitutes friendship.

Friendship requires you to do something with another person outside of worship. Spending time working and playing and talking together is necessary.

Your presence here in worship is a blessing to others. Your worship is contagious even if your worship is full of lament and struggle. Your being here on Sabbath morning is a blessing even to the people you never talk to, the people on the other side of the sanctuary that you never actually see. Your being here makes their experience of worship richer. And their being here affects you in a good way.

That's worship.

Friendship is something different. It happens outside of worship. Working together cleaning or doing children's Sabbath School or maintaining the building and grounds or serving at the Mountain View Community Service Center – these things done with others will create genuine friendship. Playing together, eating together, vacationing together, doing projects at your house together. These things will build friendships. It's really valuable to have friends when you find yourself engulfed in darkness. When God disappoints you, you really need friends.

If we go back to the early Adventists, we discover that one of the things those disappointed believers did that carried them forward is they hung on to each other. They met together to study their Bibles and pray. And it was in this times together that they began a new adventure, one that led them to the discoveries that created a new church.

They discovered the Sabbath—the weekly interruption of the frenzy of our lives.

They discovered the good news that there is no eternal torment.

They discovered the idea that adopting habits that enhance physical health is a reasonable part of Christian life.

Eventually, they developed a church culture that prized education and learning.

None of this would have happened if they had nursed their disappointment alone.

So the first principle for handling disappointment with God: Hang with friends.

A second principle, as soon as you can, begin asking the question: Now what? Where to from here?

The early Adventists obviously screwed up their prophetic interpretation. Jesus did not come in 1844. But they had some important things just right. For many of them, their enthusiasm about the date was absolutely linked with a life-altering enthusiasm for Jesus. They became radical disciples. As they carried forward their radical commitment to Jesus, they discovered the new truths of the Sabbath, health, no eternal torment, and eventually the value of education and learning.

These beliefs, these perspectives genuinely enrich life. They enhance the quality of life of everyone who embraces them. They found these things as they came together and studied trying to find a righteous way forward in the darkness of their disappointment.

Moses and Jesus, in their black nights of despair, hung onto their mission. They hung onto God, even when they could not make sense of what he was doing and eventually they moved through the disappointment to new ministry – a ministry that was empowered by their passing through the darkness.

A final lesson we can learn from the early Adventists: ultimately human experience is a godly teacher. Those early Adventists got so caught up in their theories of prophetic charts and calculations, they ignored the testimony of history about what happens to date-setters. Until their own experience overwhelmed their theories.

As their children, we want to learn from their experience. Because of their experience we don't allow ourselves to get caught up in date-setting schemes. No matter how persuasive. Because of their experience we don't go crazy if we find ourselves in a dark place in spite of our best efforts to follow God. Sometimes that happens. Because of their experience we acknowledge that our theories about the end time – no matter how absolutely positive and confident we are about them – are just that, theories. God will work out history according to his schedule and according to his will. Our interpretations of prophecies do not constrain God.

Often when I tell people I hope Jesus will come this afternoon, Bible students will immediately tell me, “Oh, that can't happen. Before Jesus can come there has to be a National Sunday Law and the Seven Last Plagues. The AntiChrist has to exercise more power. In fact, there are all sorts of things that have to happen first before Jesus can return.”

I laugh at them. The logical implications of their statements are that their interpretation is infallible and that is God is bound to their interpretation. Really?

Given the Great Disappointment, it would be wise for us to exercise a deep humility about all of our theological opinions, unless we are prepared to argue that we are vastly superior to those who founded our church.

Moses and Jesus were disappointed with God. Following him did not work out the way they expected. The founders of our church were disappointed with God. Their prayerful Bible study did not work out the way they expected. And we may at some point in our lives be disappointed with God.

If we find ourselves in the darkness of disappointment, let's join Jesus in reaching out to our friends. Let's join Moses in honest, confrontational prayer. Let's join our pioneers in persistent, stubborn seeking for new light, for new truth, for a way forward that turns our darkness into an incubator of light.

Standards -- Expectations

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship

North Hill, October 15, 2011

Imagine some friends of yours got married in Kansas three weeks ago. They are now back in Seattle where both of them have jobs. You have been invited to a reception at a venue in Seattle that is completely unfamiliar to you. There is one question you're very likely to ask yourself. If you're married, it's almost certain your wife is going to ask this question. “What are people wearing?”

Of course, the intent of this question is to come up with the right answer to another question: “What should I wear?”

Humans are social beings. And clothing is one way we signal each other. You don't want to walk into a party in a suit and tie only to discover everyone else is wearing shorts and T-shirts. You would want to show up for a concert in jeans and look around and see that every one is is dressed in formal evening attire.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about standards using as “the minimum acceptable level of performance.” I compared church standards to standards in the practice of medicine or in engineering. You don't want lab techs getting “creative.” You want them to run the same test the same way every time. If you are about to be anesthetized, you want to know the medical staff is going to do exactly right thing. One way hospitals work to eliminate errors is by through standards of care. There are certain procedures that must be followed every time. Without exception.

That's a standard.

When engineers are designing the construction process for a jet engine, they detail every step that must be followed in the assembly. Do it exactly this way! They prescribe the performance characteristics of every bit of steel that is used. The steel cannot be softer or more brittle or more susceptible to corrosion than is specified in the standards. If a part doesn't meet the standard it must be discarded.

There are very few standards of the church that fit this category. Forgiveness is one. If we don't forgive, we will not be forgiven. Abuse of children is another standard. Jesus said that if you harm a child, it would have been better for you to be drowned. The Ten Commandments are standards. Concrete, specific – and most of them – minimums. Don't kill, steal or cheat on your spouse is not a prescription for an idyllic life. This is a list of minimums for ordinary living.

Today, I want to talk about standards in a very different sense. I want to talk about standards as expectations. In every community way beyond rules or laws there are all kinds of expectations that just part of the culture. We expect these behaviors of one another almost without thinking about it.

Clothing is one example of this. When we go to a social event we feel more comfortable if we are dressed in a way that other people will find acceptable. And the easiest way to feel acceptable is to dress like everyone else.

The problem this raises for church is that once you manage to get everyone to dress in the same style, more or less, dressing in that style becomes the cost of feeling comfortable in church. So anyone who comes in, not knowing the community ahead of time, runs the risk of feeling out of place. Also anyone who finds the dominant style alien is likely to experience church itself as an alien place – a place where people like them don't belong.

One way we've attempted to address this here at North Hill is to encourage a wide variety of styles. Suits and ties, stylish dresses. Jeans and T-shirts. Polish shoes. Flip flops. Biker's leathers and preppy sweaters. This way, no matter what someone is wearing when they come through the door, if they look around, they'll see someone dressed just like them. They will see that they belong.

I guess you could say our dress standard (in the sense of minimum acceptable level of performance) is please wear some.

At North Hill we are not so laissez-faire about everything. One traditional standard that we vigorously uphold is a T-totaler's stance on alcohol. Certainly, there are some among us who use alcohol, but as a community, our public stand is crystal clear: we believe the damage consequent to alcohol use is so huge that the only responsible stance for us as adults is oppose it.

Let me ask a trick question: Have you ever known some one who was hurt while riding their motorcycle without a helmet?

In church, when I asked this question people began nodding and raising their hands. I warned them: Don't raise your hands yet. This is a trick question. My guess is that your friends who got hurt were not hurt while they were RIDING. They got hurt when they quit riding their bikes and began riding the pavement or a telephone pole or the side of a car.

If people who ride motorcycles without helmets could avoid accidents they wouldn't need to wear helmets. People wear helmets because accidents are hard to plan. We never know when some car or truck is going to switch lanes right into you. We never know when there might be some oil or sand spilled on a corner, right at the spot where your tires need maximum traction.

Because of the statistical likelihood that if you ride a motorcycle, eventually you will make unplanned contact with the pavement or another hard surface, we expect people to wear helmets.

Because of the statistical likelihood that if drinking is a common practice in our community some of us will make a wreck of life, we actively, publicly renounce alcohol as a beverage. Drink something else.

Using alcohol can appear very glamorous. Maybe all your friends are drinking. Or you think they are. We want to create expectations among us here at church that we will not drink. We want to create a community that deliberately cultivates an awareness that drinking is dumb. And getting drunk is really dumb. And binge drinking is really, really, really, really dumb.

It's not the unpardonable sin. There is no devil in the bottle. There are not even any verses in the Bible that explicitly condemn moderate alcohol consumption.

What the Bible does tell us is that we are to do to others what we would have them do to us. If I have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, would I want my friends at church encouraging me to drink? If my son or daughter had a weakness for alcoholism, would I want my church to encourage or discourage drinking?

In my time at North Hill, we've buried two young men who were killed in auto accidents. In both cases, our young men were sober. They were obeying the law. They were killed by other teenagers running red lights.

Alcohol is the most destructive drug in the world today. It is more destructive than cocaine or marijuana or heroin. Of course, part of the reason alcohol has such a high social cost is that it's legal. It's used more than all other drugs, so it gets abused more than all other drugs.

Alcohol ruins families. It is strongly associated with domestic violence and child abuse and neglect. Impaired drivers kill thousands.

So as a community committed to the ministry of Jesus—the ministry of healing—we are publicly, outspokenly against the casual consumption of alcohol. It causes too much havoc.

As humans we affect one another. Hanging out in a community where drinking is considered ill-advised, stupid and even immoral will tend to influence all of us away from drinking. The standard of not-drinking is experienced as an expectation of ourselves and others. And this expectation will influence our behavior. It will bear good fruit.

Now, it's important to recognize what this kind of standard cannot do. It can't fix the past. Healthy standards are forward focused. They have nothing to say about yesterday – about your performance or the performance of someone else. The standard does not tell how you should have acted, looking back. It only tells us about today looking forward.

I remember a while back asking someone if they had done their exercises that week. It was a bad question. The reason I asked it is that I suspected the person had not done them. If they answered truthfully, who would the information help?

I resolved to change the way I ask this question. From now on, I'm going to ask, “Will you do your exercise this week?” This now is a helpful question. It is rooted in a helpful standard. My expectation will add weight to the advice from the doctor and physical therapist. I'm letting them know that their well-being matters to me. I'm hoping they will find the motivation to get moving.

Jesus used standards this way. In the most famous instance – the woman caught in adultery – Jesus refused to say anything about the woman's past. But he did express an expectation about her future. “Go and sin no more.”

In Luke 13, some people asked Jesus what he thought about some people who had lost their lives. Jesus dismissed their question, basically saying, Don't ask about their past. Change your future.

Jesus boldly, strongly voiced standards, expectations. He was hopeful for people to change, to do better, to be better. He was gracious and forgiving toward their past and insistent and commanding toward their future. He wanted people to be well, to do good.

There is a second thing that standards cannot do. They cannot give personalized help to people who are trying to live up to the expectations. One of the values of AA is that it offers personalized, non-judgmental support for a person trying to change their life.

As the community of Jesus, we join him in communicating clear, challenging expectations of one another moving forward. We also join him in doing something that standards are utterly helpless to accomplish: we understand people's struggles. We look for personalized help. We practice forgiveness.

Curiously, this brings us back to the most fundamental, the most indispensable of all church standards: gracious forgiveness toward one another.

Behavioral expectations are important in the life of the church as they were in the ministry of Jesus. And as we move forward expecting good things from one another we rely on this most of all: here, there is grace and pardon, forgiveness and laughter. For all of us.

Would you watch streaming video?

We are talking about streaming the worship services of North Hill Adventist Fellowship. Maybe we would stream the Friday evening gatherings as well. Is this something you would watch if it were available? Often? Occasionally? Never?

Would you be interested if along with the streaming you were able to text questions and comments that would be responded to live at the end of the sermons/lectures? 

Smart People Obey

Manuscript for presentation at the second session of Spirituality for Thinkers and Seekers

Friday evening, October 14, 2011

In 1989 there was a 7.0 earthquake in northern California. The Loma Prieta earthquake killed 63 people. I read about that earthquake. I saw the pictures.

In 1994, there was a 6.7 earthquake in Northridge, CA. I didn't have to read about that one. We lived in Thousand Oaks, about fifteen miles from the epicenter. It was terrifying. The house felt like it was being dragged down a bumpy road. Every lamp fell over. All the dishes fell out of the china closet. Books fell out of the bookshelves. 60 people died.

In 2010, there was a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. The quake devastated the capital, Port au Prince. There are various numbers given for the death toll. The official Haitian number is 300,000. A revised U. S. estimate puts the death toll at between 46,000 and 85,000.

Those are huge differences. But whether the death toll was 300,000 or 46,000, a glaring, screaming question is: why does a powerful earthquake in densely populated areas of California result in about 60 deaths and a similar earthquake in Haiti kills tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people?

Both places are densely populated. Both overlie faults that are known to produce earthquakes. The earthquakes that happened in both places were powerful. But in one place tens of people died. In the other place tens of thousands die. What made the difference? Law.

Specifically building codes.

In California, most buildings are built according to strict building codes that require construction to take into account the risk of earthquakes. In Haiti, there is hardly any building code enforcement at all. I read in one place, that concrete blocks in Haiti often weigh half as much as blocks in the US because they have so little cement in them. Rebar is often skimped on or left out entirely.

The violated building codes do not make the buildings fall down. When the earthquake neither God nor the local building inspector goes and knocks down building that were not built according to code. The collapse of buildings is the natural consequence of ignoring the code – that is, the law. Buildings surviving the terrible shaking of a strong earthquake is also a natural consequence. The building inspector doesn't run around holding up the buildings that were built according to code.

While the precise details of the building code are somewhat arbitrary, the underlying rationale of the code is a concern for safety. And when an earthquake happens, we see the result.

This is the Bible's view of God's law. Law is a description of how life works. When we obey God's law, life goes better. When we disobey God's law, life goes poorly.

See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." Deuteronomy 4:5-6

Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time. Deuteronomy 4:40

Moses and other Jewish prophets emphasized the positive benefits of doing what God commanded and the risks of disobeying.

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today--to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul-- then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD's anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. Deuteronomy 11:13-17.

While there are exceptions, it is generally true that doing the right thing pays off. Usually, if you work hard and do right, life goes better than if you're lazy and crook. Sometimes it doesn't work out. Bad things do happen to good people. But that is the exception rather than the rule. When we follow God's laws for our lives, usually, even here in this world, life goes better. God's law is intended as a blessing. It is designed to protect life.

Psalm 119 celebrates God's law—the benefits that come from following it, the wisdom it contains.

O how I love thy law!

It is my study all day long.

Thy commandments are mine forever;

through them I am wiser than my enemies.

I have more insight than all my teachers,

for thy instruction is my study;

I have more wisdom than the old,

because I have kept thy precepts.

Peace is the reward of those who love thy law;

no pitfalls beset their path.

Psalm 119:97-100, 165 NEB

When we line up with God's law we are wise. When we do what the law requires, we experience peace. Life works better.

Jesus was also very emphatic about the benefits of obeying the law – or doing the right thing.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on solid rock. When the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and battered the house, it did not fall because it was founded on the rock. Matthew 7:24-25

According to Jesus, obeying the law is smart. Disobeying is stupid. God promulgated the law because he was interested in the quality of your life. He wanted you to enjoy life. He wanted your kids and your wife, your friends and business colleagues to enjoy life. So he gave the law.

One of the most famous expressions of God's law is the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20:1-20.

Ten specific rules for life:

Don't have any other God before me.

Don't make images and worship them.

Don't use God's name in vain.

Keep the Sabbath holy.

Honor your parents.

Don't kill.

Don't commit adultery.

Don't steal.

Don't bear false testimony.

Don't covet.

The Ten Commandments are the only part of the Bible that God claims to have written himself. In fact, he wrote them twice. He wrote them on stone tablets and gave the tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Moses took the tablets and headed down the mountain. When he got back to the people, he discovered they were already worship an idol, a gold image of a calf. Moses was so angry with the people he threw the tablets on the ground, shattering them into pieces.

A while later, God told him to make another set of tablets and bring them back up the mountain. Moses did so and God wrote the Ten Commandments again. So they are pretty important. What is the point of these commandments? Quality of life. It's really easy to see that with some of them. Don't kill, lie and steal. These are kind of no-brainers. Who wants to live in a society where these things are common?

Several places in the Bible law is summed up in even simpler terms.

Moses wrote: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. When someone asked Jesus, “What's the greatest commandment?” Jesus answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your hearth, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. This sums up all the law and the prophets.” (The law and the prophets is a phrase used in those days to refer to the Scriptures. It meant all of God's instruction, including the Ten Commandments and all the laws of Moses and all the wisdom in the prophets and all the inspiration in the Psalms.)

The apostle Paul wrote,

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:8-10

God gave the commandments because he wanted us to live well. He loved us. And he wanted us to love well, to be skillful in love. The commandments describe how love works.

Let's look at a couple of the Ten Commandments.

The seventh commandment is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It is a negative command, a prohibition. Most Bible students understand this command broadly as a call for sexual purity, as a prohibition on sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Does following this prohibition make sex more fun or less fun? Does it make relationships happier or more miserable? How does it work out in the actual experience of love. Does refraining from adultery hinder our free expression of love or does it enhance love?

The experiment has been done. People have tried it both ways. What is the outcome of the experiment?

I just read an article this week in the Atlantic. (This is not a religious magazine.) The cover article was titled, “Why Marry?”

The author, Kate Bolick, is a 39 year old single woman who has had a long string of boyfriends beginning in high school. In the world she grew up in, it was assumed that boyfriends and girlfriends would have sex. Love was all that was required. You didn't need to make promises that tied up your whole life. Love was all you needed. If you were in love, sexual intimacy was simply the natural outgrowth of that love.

Fast forward twenty years to the world of 2011. Kate, the mature career woman, is having dinner with a group of college women. In their world, sex was not just for boyfriends and girlfriends who were head over heels in love. Sex was the primary way boys and girls interacted. These young women assumed everyone in their colleges was having casual sex. (Which it turns out is not true of the college population in general. Rather it is true of a particular subset of the college crowd.)

Kate tells of being a bit taken aback at the amount of sexual experience these young women, barely twenty, had already had. She saw nothing immoral about it. To her nothing was immoral that was voluntary. As long as no one was getting raped, morality had nothing to do with it.

But even as a decidedly single woman, a woman who valued freedom over relationship, who valued opportunity over commitment, one thing leaped out at her as she listened to these young women: sex held no magic. Sex was the price of having any kind of relationship, even the most casual, with a boy. But sex was thoroughly disconnected from love. It held no sparkle, no allure. These girls figured they knew pretty much all there was to know about sex. And in their experience, sex was neither rapturous nor satisfying. They kind of dreaded the obligation to be available yet again.

Repeated studies show that couples who live together before marriage are far more likely to divorce than couples that don't live together before marriage. It seems counter-intuitive. Surely, living together before marriage would help couples figure out whether or not they were really compatible. You would think that living together would help weed out the unlikely prospects.

Instead multiple studies have shown that sharing an apartment and bed before marriage lessens a couple's chances of building a life-long marriage.

Finally, when we come to question of sexual adventures outside of marriage, most of us know that cheating in marriage is not rare. However, what nearly everyone also knows is that no matter how common it is, sex outside of marriage is cheating. It is negative. Religious people and secular people, married people and people who are living together, all have an ineradicable sense that when a man and woman are a couple, they are not supposed to be hitting on other people.

The bottom line: The commandment lines up with life and wisdom. Happiness in a relationship is far more likely when we follow the rules. Violating them may be exciting. Adultery may be thrilling – until you're caught or until you're dumped. Adultery does not produce the happiness it promises.

When God said, “don't jump in bed with someone you're not married to,” he wasn't being a scold. He wasn't trying to crimp your style. He wasn't trying to limit your fun or pleasure. To the contrary, he was offering you wisdom for life. He was offering you a guide to richer happiness, to lasting pleasure.

God likes sex. There is a fantastic, holy blessing in having sweet, rich sex. And research appears to strongly support the religious notion that sex is the sweetest and richest when it happens inside a life-long marriage.

This is the wisdom that lies behind the commandment, “Do not commit adultery.”

Let's take another commandment that radically contradicts contemporary culture.

Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.

One of the realities of contemporary life is a certain element of frenzy. There is constant pressure to produce, to perform. If you're not busy, you're not living.

Sabbath interrupts that frenzy. God directs us to ignore “the real world” for 24 hours every week. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you are to labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath fo the lord your God. In it, you are to do no work. No you, nor your son or daughter, your servants, your ox or donkey, or even the stranger that is in within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. Then he rested on the seventh day and made it holy.”

For me this makes instinctive sense. Because I've been involved in Sabbath-keeping for my entire life. But for many people, this is a radical idea. FOR AN ENTIRE 24 HOURS every week, from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, you are to reject work. Boycott the capitalist system (or socialist system). Both systems conceive of humans as primarily economic units.

Sabbath is a celebration of a different conception of human beings. It is a healthy expression of the romantic ideal that imagines the most important thing in the universe to be a relationship. When two people fall in love, everything else becomes secondary. Jobs, reputations, right and wrong, parental approval. Sabbath agrees with the core idea. Relationship is the most important. And not just relationship with God.

Sabbath balances hyper secular people and hyper religious people.

To secular people, the Sabbath says: There is something more important than the condition of your house, the size of your bank account, your GPA, the score achieved by your favorite team. More important than all of these is your relationship with God and with real, live human beings.

To hyper religious people, the Sabbath says a relationship with God is not enough. God did not make us for relationship with him alone. A genuinely spiritual person is deeply involved with family and friends. Healthy spiritual life includes taking time every week to deliberately cultivate primary relationships.

If you are married, Sabbath shows up reminding you that you are a sexual being and that God designed men and women to enjoy each other. (What else could the Genesis story mean when it tells about Adam and Eve being created on Friday and entering into the sacred time of Sabbath naked.)

There is also a rich theological meaning in the Sabbath. Sabbath was Adam and Eve's first full day of life. They were loved and approved of by God before they ever accomplished a single thing. Like a baby who is the delight of its parents when all it has managed to do is draw enough breath to cry, so humans are a delight to God merely by being alive. Our lives, your life, gives pleasure and joy to God, simply because you are breathing. What do you have to do to make God happy? Breathe.

Of course, God has dreams for you. Dreams that you will do good, make beauty and be successful in your relationships. He wants the baby to grow. He wants the student to learn. He wants the apprentice to master his craft. Of course.

But he is not waiting for your success before embracing you as his own. Sabbath celebrates God's delight in humanity. It is the first statement of the gospel. Our bright future is secured by the promise and competence of God.

God loves us even when we violate his law. The point of obeying the law is not to make God like you. The point of obeying is to participate in the good life God has in mind for you. Smart people obey. Dumb people end up wishing they had.

Life works best when we order it according to God's law. Relationships, society, families – all work best when we are lawful.

The commandments – the Ten Commandments, the Two Great Commandments, the commands Jesus outlined in his sermon on the mount – the commandments are designed to enrich ourselves, to help us be wise. The commandments are the natural overflow of God's love.

Spirituality for Thinkers and Seekers - part one

God Is Love

First presentation for Spirituality for Thinkers and Seekers

Friday night, October 7, 2011

(See previous post for announcement about the meetings.)

On Tuesday night I got a call from my daughter, Shelley, who is away at college. She and a friend were doing their physics assignment and couldn't figure out one of the problems. Did I have time to look at it? Inwardly, I groaned. This was going to take some time. I was tired and sleepy. I'd really rather head to bed.

But I didn't let on. Instead, I logged into her physics account and looked at the problem. A piece of space junk was orbiting the earth at a distance of two earth radii from the center of the earth. The junk weighed 206 kg. It was going to collide with a satellite headed the opposite direction in the same orbit. Find the kinetic energy of the space junk relative to the satellite.

This was going to be complicated. I pulled out some paper, made a sketch and scribbled some equations. We talked back and forth. I described my approach. Shelley plugged numbers into the equations and a few minutes later, she exclaimed, “Yeah! That's it.”

My chest swelled with pride. I had helped my girl.

That's the way it's supposed to be with dads and their girls. When daughters get into difficulty they call dad. And Dad goes to work fixing the problem.

Of course, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes dad's are tragically delinquent or abusive. Still we know how it's supposed to be, even if it wasn't like that with our dads. Even if it isn't like that with our daughters.

The most common metaphor for God in the Bible is Father. Moses challenged the ancient Jewish people:

Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you? Deuteronomy 32:5-6

In the Psalms we read,

As a father has pity on his children, so the Lord has pity on those who fear him. Psalm 103:13.

The prophet Isaiah wrote,

O Lord, you are our Father,

We are the clay, you are the potter;

we are all the work of your hand.

Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord;

do not remember our sins forever.

Oh, look upon us, we pray,

for we are all your people. Isaiah 64:8-9

This same metaphor is prominent in the New Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus asked his audience,

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 7:9-12).

Jesus assumes fathers are good people. They will not do rude and insensitive things to their kids. They will not mock or ridicule their kids. When Jesus uses father as a metaphor for God, he has in mind an ideal father. He has in mind a man who is the sum of all the good things we invest in that word.

The Bible also uses mothers as metaphors for God. In Isaiah, God is described as being more attentive and tenacious in his watchfulness than a nursing mother (Isaiah 49:15). Jesus describes his feelings for the citizens of Jerusalem as those of a mother hen watching over her baby chicks (Matthew 23:37).

If you summarize the very best attributes of the very best mothers and fathers, you're moving in the right direction of understanding God.

God is described as a shepherd that spends the night searching for a lost sheep. He is a lover pursuing our affection. He is a king who protects his people, a judge who ensures justice for the little people.

Building on all these word pictures, a writer named John describes God in this passage:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8

God is love. This is the bedrock of theology as Adventists understand it. Every other theological idea is tested against this conviction.

[One of the founders of the Adventist Church was a woman named Ellen White. She lived decades longer than all the other founders. She claimed to have received visions like prophets in the Bible. She became, by far the most influential of the founders of the church. And her most influential work was a five-volume narrative commentary on the Bible. The first book in the series begins this way:

"God is love" (1 John 4:16). His nature, His law, is love. It ever has been; it ever will be.

Ellen White then spends a couple thousand pages attempting to show that every Bible story, every Bible teaching is in line with this bedrock conviction. Even the weird stories, the occasions where God appears severe or capricious, are explained as a kind of “tough love.” God is not being peevish or vengeful. Instead, he is acting for the benefit humanity as whole. The last paragraph of the last book in the series goes like this:

The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.

I quote from Ellen White here, not to “prove” that God is love, but to prove that my assertion about the place of this in Adventist theology is not something I made up. This is not a new idea. It is not idiosyncratic to me, nor to Ellen White in her day. White's commentaries were put together with extensive help from assistants, some of whom were leading ministers in the church. The “God is love” theme that runs through these commentaries is something that was approved by White and was developed and supported by her cadre of literary assistants. Thus it is demonstrably a theme which belongs to the very foundations of our church, however, obscured it may have been by our apocalyptic enthusiasm.)

God is love. This is where we start. This is the filter we use when we evaluate theology and claims of spiritual truth.

The word “love” in this context is some specialized theological or philosophical term. The Bible writers use the word love precisely because it connects with realities we can understand – not perfectly, of course – but genuinely and helpfully. God loves the way a good father loves. God loves the way a “normal” mother loves. God loves like a mother hen or a mother eagle. God loves like a good friend. God loves us the way a shepherd loves his small flock of sheep.

To reiterate, in the Bible, “love” does not have some unique, hidden meaning. The word is connected with earthy, vivid metaphors that we instinctively understand. The Bible uses a multiplicity of metaphors so if one doesn't work for you perhaps another will. If your father was a jerk, then think of God as a mother. If Mom and Dad were both jerks, then think of God as a shepherd. If you don't know sheep, picture God as a dog owner. Find an earthly model of love that works for you then start building toward a life-shaping vision of God.

What does this mean for our theology?

Hell: There is no such place.

There is no such thing as eternal hell fire. We'll have more to say about this in a later chapter. We'll examine the actual Bible passages that deal with this topic. But right up front I want to be crystal clear: If God is love, if God is like a good father, a mother, a shepherd, a dog owner – if the statement “God is love” means anything – then the common idea that some people will spend billions of years being tortured by God or being tortured by the Devil on behalf of God is simply wrong. It cannot be true.

The Adventist Church denies eternal torment as part of our official doctrine.

A number of Bible scholars unrelated to our church believe the Bible offers no support for this odious notion.

There is no way a good and righteous judge could ever find a human being guilty of enough evil that it would be just and right to torture that person for billions of years. Eternal torment cannot be squared with a loving God. So we reject it.

(I'll do more on this a few sessions later, but it's important to put it out here at the beginning, so you understand how seriously we take our conviction that God is love.)

Bright Future

The Bible teaches us that God is powerful and will determine the ultimate outcome of human history. When you put that together with our conviction that God is love, it means that human history as a whole and your history as an individual has a bright future.

For now, I'm going to sidestep the classic question that believers and skeptics have asked for thousands of years: How can a good God who is genuinely powerful allow all the suffering there is in the world? It's a relevant question. One we will come back to. But for now we are going to look at the claims made in the Bible about the good future God is masterminding.

We can begin with a promise given to the Jews who were living in Babylon about 400 B.C. The king of Babylon had invaded Palestine and defeated the Jewish armies, climaxing his conquests by capturing and demolishing the city of Jerusalem. The Babylonian king then deported tens of thousands of Jews from Palestine to Babylon. It looked it the end of the nation. Then Jeremiah, a prophet who still lived in the ruins of Jerusalem wrote a letter to the Jews in Babylon. He told the exiles to settle down and establish themselves. Plant gardens. Engage in business. Marry off their kids. They were going to be there for a long time, for 70 years, he predicted. Then God would bring them back to their homeland in Palestine. Jerusalem would be rebuilt. Then comes this classic verse:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to propser you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:10.

Life was hard. God took notice of the difficulty then promised a bright future beyond.

This idea is presented in a more universal sense in the New Testament. The apostle Paul wrote,

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Paul doesn't write that everything that happens is good, but that in everything that happens, God is active to bring about a good outcome. But how do you know you are one of those people “who are called according to his purpose”?

A couple of passages address the question about what God is going to do about the “outsiders.” First in Psalm 87, we read that God plans to include in his final plans, the citizens of Babylon, Egypt and Tyre. These nations are classically described as the enemies of the Jews. They are the enemies of God. But in Psalm 87, God states that he will regard the residents of these cities as though they were actually born in Jerusalem. In the end, God transcends all the normal human tribal divisions.

Finally, there is a story told by Jesus in Matthew 18. A shepherd has a hundred sheep. One day when he's out with the flock he notices that one is missing. “What's the shepherd going to do?” Jesus asks. “He'll leave the 99 hanging together and he'll take off searching. And he will not stop searching until he's found the lost sheep.” Jesus wraps up his story with these words: In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost. Matthew 18:14.

In this story, the sheep does nothing to find himself. From what I've read, this is normal behavior for a sheep. Domestic sheep are pretty helpless, it seems. But the shepherd is not. The shepherd will not quit searching until he has found the lost sheep and brought it back. Then Jesus tells us: That's how God is. He is not willing that any one be lost.

Many Bible scholars interrupt this picture with a reminder that people have choice. While the shepherd will not leave a sheep helpless out in the wilderness, the sheep, if it were a human, would have some choice in whether the shepherd brings it home.

I understand the importance of respecting human freedom to choose. But I have a lot of confidence in the shepherd. Jesus is a savior and a pretty skilled one, at that.

Given the intensity of universality of God's love, we can confidently declare that no matter how wretched life is in your neighborhood, God has plans to give you hope and future. God has good plans and the power to see them through. I may not understand how that could be true in my situation or in the life of someone I love, still we affirm it. Our most fundamental conviction is that God is so loving he will not rest until he has brought about a good future, for all. Because that's what a good mother, a good father would do.

Love Has Expectations

Parental Love Imposes Rules

There is a lot of talk these days about unconditional love. We need to be careful that we don't use that phrase to suggest that God has only warm feelings. Like a healthy parent, God has warm affection for his children. And like a healthy parent, God has expectations. The classic expression of this is found in Exodus 20.

The chapter begins with God's statement: I am the Lord your God you brought out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I could paraphrase: I am your Father. I gave you life. I rescued you from the hell of slavery in Egypt.

Then immediately God launches into the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. Keep the Sabbath. Don't steal, murder or commit adultery.

A good father cannot honestly say to his son, do whatever you feel like. It's all good. No. Goofing off in school is not okay. Driving the family car before you get your license is not permitted. No, your girlfriend is not invited to spend the night. No, you may not store your friends beer in my refrigerator. There are rules in a healthy, happy home.

And the Bible unabashedly declares there are rules, laws, expectations, norms for people. God as a good father could not do less. Our conviction that God is love is coupled with an equally strong conviction that a humane religion, a religion that is good for people, is a religion that strongly affirms and celebrates and advocates good living. And good living is comprised of good habits: telling the truth, being kind, showing respect, focusing our sexual desires, engaging in regular spiritual practices, encouraging and supporting education, taking care of our health.

Because we love each other, we want the best for each other. That means we want each other to adopt healthy, life-enhancing practices. That means that as a community, we actively discourage life-destroying practices like smoking and drug use. Our love for one another means that while we allow one another freedom, we don't pretend that every choice is equally good.

The Test of Love's Authenticity

God is love is a reassuring statement. It gives us confidence that God likes us, that God wishes us well, that God takes delight in our existence. The declaration that God is love also imposes obligations on us. It gives us an ideal for how we interact with other people here and now.

The Bible pictures humans as being very closely linked with God. We are made in God's image. We are children of our heavenly Father. We are subjects of the heavenly king.

Because of our connection with God we are expected to manifest in our lives the character of God. Since God is a lover, we are called to be lovers. The fullest development of humanity is in loving interactions.

Love ought to be our dominant characteristic. As a church community and as individuals. Our primary purpose as children of God is to be lovers.

Obviously, we are supposed to love the people around us who have the conventional claims of normal relationships. We are to love our children, our parents, our spouses. Church members are to love one another. We are to love our neighbors.

This is sometimes a very difficult calling. But Jesus challenged us to go way beyond even this, beyond the affection and love common in traditional relationships. He called us to love people outside all our normal circles.

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:43-48.

This is a tall order, but one worthy of our entire life. Because we are the children of God, we are called to love. As we love, we enter ever more deeply and richly into an understanding of God. It is impossible to really know God while we are deeply alienated from people. Here's how the Apostle John put it:

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has gven us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:19-21

Genuine spirituality is inextricably linked with human relationships. Fractious people may love God to the best of their ability, but they do not yet understand God very deeply. Religious people who are constantly in conflict with their neighbors, their kids, the spouses have only a rudimentary understanding of God. God is love – not in some special theological, philosophical sense – but in the sense of being richly, happily, hopefully engaged with people.

At present, in the United States, in some circles Christians are famous for denouncing other people. Christians bomb abortion clinics. They hate homosexuals. They circulate emails of a naked woman who was supposedly President Obama's mother. (This last was sent to my by my 90 year old dad. It had been sent to him by church friends!) To the extent that our public and private speech is characterized by ridicule, condemnation, violence and harshness – to that extent we do not yet know God.

We understand God most deeply when we are happily, hopefully engaged with people. There is a place for religious theory. But we test that theory by how it works out in our relationships. When people claim they are loving, we can test their claim by observing how they treat people they disagree with.

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One of the things I like about natural science is the definiteness of the answers. In basic physics or chemistry, there is usually one right answer. A piece of space junk of a known mass orbiting the earth at a known distance has a specific kinetic energy. It's not a matter of opinion.

When I help my daughter, frequently even after helping her understand how to do a problem I'll arrive at a different answer from her. When that happens, we don't say, “Well, the numbers work one way for her and another way for me.” Instead I go through the calculations again. Because usually I've made a mistake entering the numbers into my calculator or I've copied something down wrong. Anyway, we keep working until we both have the same answer, because there is only one right answer, and if we keep at it long enough, we will come to the same answer.

In theology it's not so simple. There are some problems people have been arguing about for 2000 years. They read the same Bible, but they come to different conclusions. (And I haven't even started talking about the perspectives that come from religions other than Christianity.) Give us another thousand years to study, and we still will not all come to the same conclusion.

I cannot prove that God is love. I cannot prove beyond dispute that the statement, “God is love,” is the most important, the most fundamental of all doctrines. So I offer it as my testimony and the testimony of my church. We believe this is the core teaching of the Bible. We believe it is the closest thing to spiritual bedrock.

We invite you to read the Bible for yourself. We invite you to consider the testimony of the Spirit of God in your own soul. And if it makes sense to you, we invite you to participate with us in seeking to make this truth the foundation of your relationships, the core of your spiritual life, the pole star of your ideas and convictions.

God is love. This is our first conviction. We are called to be lovers. This is our first commandment, our first and greatest obligation. God wants partners in loving. He loves you and he wants you to partner with him in loving others.