May 13th message
Okay, so after I gave this message back in May, I was so embarrassed by it that I didn't want to post it. Given a little time to forget, I'll read it again after I get it posted so I don't chicken out again...
May 13th, 2006
WELCOME
Welcome to Via Christus Community Church. It's a place where we're constantly trying to give birth to this incredible vision that God has put inside us: to love Him and love others. We want to celebrate God passionately and creatively, become the people He originally intended us to be, and pursue the glimmerings of Him that we find all around us. We love others, valuing the beautiful diversity of talents, experience and personhood we see everywhere, embracing a life shared deeply together, and pouring ourselves out joyfully from our abundance.
Pastor Mike is away at a church conference in Texas and meanwhile, Julie and Emma are taking the opportunity to visit family. In their absence, we are all ministers one to another - a serving priesthood of believers. Tonight it is our prayer, that we come together under that incredible vision God has put inside us: to Love Him and love each other well. Let's pray.
PRAYER
Lord, we stand in the middle of your kingdom and wonder where it is. We forget that everyone is part of the kingdom, even those we don't like. Your son sat and ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. So we wonder- if we saw him today, would we welcome him into our homes knowing the company he keeps? Kill our egos, God. Sometimes we act like we own the kingdom. We make up rules and say they're yours. We pronounce judgements and say they're from your lips. Wake us up Father. Help us. Open our eyes so we may see the world as your son saw it. Open our minds to see the possibilities we shut out. Open our hearts so that we may love as Jesus loved, without judgement or condition. Open our lives so that we may accept the rest of the world as Jesus accepts us. Amen.
READING (Wendy) Luke 6:1-11
JASON'S STORY
BACKGROUND (slide of verses with highlighted text)
When Mike asked me to do the message on legalism I laughed. Or maybe the most correct picture was along the lines of "hehehe"(rubbing hands together). I thought it would be easy, I love talking about it and what it's done to me. However, when I began trying to get some thoughts down on paper and doing some research, I realized what a tremendously complex subject it was. Legalism touches on so many of our basic problems as people. It touches on our desire to be in control, our desire to be accepted, our wanting to put ourselves first and our wanting to oversimplify. It's about how small we want to make God. It's both as simple and as complex as saying that it is "the law" versus "love." Or as simple and complex as saying that it is trying to have power over someone or God having power over someone. Or settling for some rules rather than a real relationship with God. Or God as an intellectual subject vs a living loving creator. Or putting the rules higher than God. Growing vs stagnation. Power from God vs power over God. Seeking the good, right and true vs. seeking self assurance. The letter of the law vs. the intent. Serving the law rather than serving God. It's the difference between a human being and a human doing.
Let's start off this evening by taking a quick romp through some history to glean an idea of what legalism looked like in Jesus time and then from there we'll try to get at the root of what it is or isn't and what causes legalism. After that we'll try to translate the "old" legalism, into what it looks like now, in the churches, between people, and between us and God. Hopefully, we come away from tonight with our heads and hearts spinning a little, but better able to follow Jesus.
I have to admit I'm falling in love with Jesus. Jesus has this incredible ability to see to the very heart of people. It was like the external stuff wasn't even noticeable, except where it infected people's hearts. He was so much more than just a bunch of rules. It's such a contrast with the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and Scribes or teachers of the law. Their concern was that every little external observance was carried out to its fullest extent. They had limits on how far a walk was allowed on the Sabbath, limits on the amount of effort that could be put out before you were "working" on the Sabbath and violating its rest. It's the difference between seeing a human being instead of just a human doing. It's the difference between little nitpicky god, and a God so complex and unfathomable that we hardly understand a fraction of his creation.
(Jesus healing slide)
In Luke's gospel, it's the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who are constantly challenging Jesus. The Pharisees themselves were a religious group much like the denominations we have within Christendom today - instead of Methodist, Presbyterians or Catholics, Israel had Pharisees, Saducees, Essenes, and numerous others. However, the teachers of the law were different. The "teachers of the law" refer to the scribes, an official religious office. These were the Rabbis, teachers, religious judges., In Jesus time, they were the ultimate authority on all questions of faith and practice.
(Pharisee photo)
When a human being is reduced to a human doing and God is put in a small box labeled rules, the technical term for that is legalism and if you compared it to a disease, legalism infected Israel in Jesus' time like a plague. A large part of this was due to the role of the teachers of the law. From the time of Nehemiah, the office of the Scribe was largely intended to preserve and teach the law of God. However in reality that role expanded farther. The scribes divided into three areas of study, the Midrash which focused on scriptural investigation (think CSI), the Halakhah aimed at what rules were to be observed (kind of like the tax and the IRS), and the Haggadah (think street preachers) focused the oral tradition in the broadest sense.
(Pharisee painting)
By Jesus time, the law was not simply a matter of the directives laid out in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, but also all the traditions of the forefathers, all the teachings of various Rabbis through the years, and all the scriptural interpretations and conclusions drawn. The purpose was perfect adherence to the laws of God - and by extending and adding to its provisions they proposed to protect anyone from accidently or intentionally straying across its sacred boundaries. There was a strong tradition that not only had God given Moses the written laws and traditions, but also a large body of unwritten oral tradition of equal or greater importance. This tradition was added onto by successive generations and came to carry more weight than the scripture. The greatest merit a Scribe or Rabbi might claim was the strictest following of the traditions he had received from his teacher. Even the Sanhedrin, the ruling council could not set aside the rulings of the preceding council. Everything was focused on the actions, a persons outward behavior. Either you were righteous - to them that meant right acting - based on your behavior, or you were a sinner.
(Sanhedrin slide)
Throughout the gospels and especially in this segment of Luke that began with the stories we looked at last week of the leper, the paralyzed man, and Jesus eating with the tax collectors and these two stories we listened to today - of the disciples eating grain they had gathered on the Sabbath and Jesus healing the withered hand on the Sabbath, it's obvious that Jesus is working from a completely different view of the world. Jesus sees Human beings. He sees into the heart of who and what we are and are meant to be. Jesus sees God as bigger than any set of rules, no matter how complex. Jesus doesn't put either people or God in a box. Where the Pharisees and Scribes view the outward actions of a person as what are important... and their laws, traditions and regulations apply to the external appearance. Jesus looks inside the people first - he touched the leper, he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, he kept company with tax collectors and sinners. This inner view of people is summed up in the two stories we are looking at today: Jesus watched his disciples eat grain picked from the field and he says "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" Jesus looks at the man with the withered hand and asks "What is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil?"
(The pharisee and the harlot slide)
For Jesus the law was a tool meant to serve man not subjugate him. In Mark the story of the grain is recorded similarly, except with the additional explanation "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The law was intended to point to a good relationship between God and men and when the law was broken, bring about a consciousness of the broken relationship. The law was not intended to be an end in and of itself. What a person did wasn't supposed to define who they were!
What went wrong? The law overwhelmed the relationship with God. Rather than the law pointing people to God, the law became an end in itself.. Those who considered themselves righteous were setting themselves up against the law as the standard, rather than allowing God to judge them. They were self assured instead of God assured. Rather than the complexity of a real relationship with God, many chose to simply keep the rules so that God was neat, orderly and compartmentalized. It degraded God from a living loving creator, to an impersonal third party.
(Adam's creation slide)
Not only did it affect the relationships of people with God, it affected people's relationships to one another. The law became a tool of power. Power for oneself because rather than God being the source of judgement, the law was a tool that people wielded against others. Those who could keep the law were part of the in crowd, those who could not were sinners and outcasts. Those who kept the law would be loved and accepted by God, and obviously those who didn't, weren't. It only mattered that you were a human doing...
(Pharisee and publican slide)
It shocked me to get a glimpse of this burden on the people of Jesus' time. Legalism wasn't just replacing God with rules, it was also seeing people as merely a checklist of whether you looked okay on the outside. Instead of revealing truth and giving insight the law was used to judge and condemn people in their relationships to God and each other.
There is an essential element of legalism that is also an embodiment of the original sin -stealing God's power and position for ourselves. When the rules are used to give people the power of judgement that rightly belongs to God, when people control who is acceptable to God and who is not. There is an element in this of wanting our relationship with God to be easy, something we have control over. It's easier to run through a checklist and say "everything's fine" than be challenged continuously to grow. It's easier to control people if you have rules that they have to measure up to. Every one of us realizes in our heart of hearts though, that God is so much more than this.
(Contrast slide)
With two phrases of Jesus set up his contrasting Kingdom."The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." And "Which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it." It's easy to read the first and think, of course Jesus is lord of the sabbath. However, the phrase Son of Man is used by Jesus constantly ... he constantly self identifies with his humanity. Humankind is Lord of the Sabbath. Mark writes Jesus's words as "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The Sabbath was a tool to help people, not a goal for people to achieve. And not just the Sabbath, but all of the law. In Jesus's new Kingdom, the law serves its intended place as a truth-teller, as an informer of what good looks like and what breaks relationships. The law is banished from its role as taskmaster and slave owner, it is a servant of mankind.
So we've romped through history and seen how crazy the law was in Jesus' day. It wasn't simply a matter of the directives laid out in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, but also all the traditions of the forefathers, all the teachings of various Rabbis through the years, and all the scriptural interpretations and conclusions drawn. And from this "law", the religious leaders of the day, divided people into the "righteous" and "sinners" based only on what showed on the outside. The law wasn't intended... as a means of stealing God's power and position of judge... for ourselves and what it was intended for: serving as a tool to help people see how relationships between people and God should be. Under the law, we were considered human doings, now we are human beings. God's Kingdom is larger and more wondrous than we can imagine.
Now obviously, we don't have the rules and regulations of the Pharisees and Scribes now a days, but we do have others. We're going to take the next 15-25 min and do some brainstorming together about what legalism looks like now... in our churches, between people, and in our own lives. After that, we're going to have some quiet time set aside to talk directly with God, and it has to do with the paper and pencils you found on your chair. But I'll tell you more later.
BRAINSTORMING ON WIPE BOARD
Let's start with some concrete ideas of some of our new "laws" (who what where when how)
God, world, church, people, me
What aren't you supposed to do in church? What actions are okay, what actions aren't? When can the law heal? When does it separate people from others in the church? When is it a tool of social exclusion? Status exclusion?
Would it be equally valid to discuss this as "the ways churches, leaders and people divide over rules, regulations, and interpretations" (rephrased however you choose).
C.S. Lewis " In the end, there will be two groups of people, those that say to God "Thy will be done" and those to whom God says "Thy will be done."
How big is your God? Have you accepted Him in and made a tidy little room in some compartment of your life? Then you have made Him into an idol and put Him on a shelf. Perhaps the rules are followed still, but your god is small - he is not the God of the Universe, the Creator of this intricate beauty that surrounds us. Do you realize you are surrounded by the Kingdom? Can you let go of the god of your little compartment and allow the God who surrounds you in to overwhelm your defenses and love you - shape you like you had shaped that former idol, bandage your pain, heal your scars and wounds, inflame your heart with His love and the wonder of all He is and created you to be...
Other thoughts for brainstorming:
Legalism - human doings
power over someone
rules
God as an intellectual subject
rules more important than God or people
stagnation, finish line
power over God and people, manipulative
self-assurance
letter of the law
serving the law
asks the question "what am I doing?"
creates hostility, results in division
extrinsic motivation for rules God having power over someone
Love - human beings
real relationships
a living loving creator
people and God more important than rules
growth, life as a journey
power from God and people, healing
good, right and true for their sake
intent of the law
serving God
"Who does God intend me to become?"
creates peace, heals broken relationships
intrinsic motivation for growth
CONTEMPLATION PAPER (write a message to God on dissolving paper)
LORD'S PRAYER (Laurie)
COMMUNION (Karen)
So, that was the service.
May 13th, 2006
WELCOME
Welcome to Via Christus Community Church. It's a place where we're constantly trying to give birth to this incredible vision that God has put inside us: to love Him and love others. We want to celebrate God passionately and creatively, become the people He originally intended us to be, and pursue the glimmerings of Him that we find all around us. We love others, valuing the beautiful diversity of talents, experience and personhood we see everywhere, embracing a life shared deeply together, and pouring ourselves out joyfully from our abundance.
Pastor Mike is away at a church conference in Texas and meanwhile, Julie and Emma are taking the opportunity to visit family. In their absence, we are all ministers one to another - a serving priesthood of believers. Tonight it is our prayer, that we come together under that incredible vision God has put inside us: to Love Him and love each other well. Let's pray.
PRAYER
Lord, we stand in the middle of your kingdom and wonder where it is. We forget that everyone is part of the kingdom, even those we don't like. Your son sat and ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. So we wonder- if we saw him today, would we welcome him into our homes knowing the company he keeps? Kill our egos, God. Sometimes we act like we own the kingdom. We make up rules and say they're yours. We pronounce judgements and say they're from your lips. Wake us up Father. Help us. Open our eyes so we may see the world as your son saw it. Open our minds to see the possibilities we shut out. Open our hearts so that we may love as Jesus loved, without judgement or condition. Open our lives so that we may accept the rest of the world as Jesus accepts us. Amen.
READING (Wendy) Luke 6:1-11
JASON'S STORY
BACKGROUND (slide of verses with highlighted text)
When Mike asked me to do the message on legalism I laughed. Or maybe the most correct picture was along the lines of "hehehe"(rubbing hands together). I thought it would be easy, I love talking about it and what it's done to me. However, when I began trying to get some thoughts down on paper and doing some research, I realized what a tremendously complex subject it was. Legalism touches on so many of our basic problems as people. It touches on our desire to be in control, our desire to be accepted, our wanting to put ourselves first and our wanting to oversimplify. It's about how small we want to make God. It's both as simple and as complex as saying that it is "the law" versus "love." Or as simple and complex as saying that it is trying to have power over someone or God having power over someone. Or settling for some rules rather than a real relationship with God. Or God as an intellectual subject vs a living loving creator. Or putting the rules higher than God. Growing vs stagnation. Power from God vs power over God. Seeking the good, right and true vs. seeking self assurance. The letter of the law vs. the intent. Serving the law rather than serving God. It's the difference between a human being and a human doing.
Let's start off this evening by taking a quick romp through some history to glean an idea of what legalism looked like in Jesus time and then from there we'll try to get at the root of what it is or isn't and what causes legalism. After that we'll try to translate the "old" legalism, into what it looks like now, in the churches, between people, and between us and God. Hopefully, we come away from tonight with our heads and hearts spinning a little, but better able to follow Jesus.
I have to admit I'm falling in love with Jesus. Jesus has this incredible ability to see to the very heart of people. It was like the external stuff wasn't even noticeable, except where it infected people's hearts. He was so much more than just a bunch of rules. It's such a contrast with the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and Scribes or teachers of the law. Their concern was that every little external observance was carried out to its fullest extent. They had limits on how far a walk was allowed on the Sabbath, limits on the amount of effort that could be put out before you were "working" on the Sabbath and violating its rest. It's the difference between seeing a human being instead of just a human doing. It's the difference between little nitpicky god, and a God so complex and unfathomable that we hardly understand a fraction of his creation.
(Jesus healing slide)
In Luke's gospel, it's the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who are constantly challenging Jesus. The Pharisees themselves were a religious group much like the denominations we have within Christendom today - instead of Methodist, Presbyterians or Catholics, Israel had Pharisees, Saducees, Essenes, and numerous others. However, the teachers of the law were different. The "teachers of the law" refer to the scribes, an official religious office. These were the Rabbis, teachers, religious judges., In Jesus time, they were the ultimate authority on all questions of faith and practice.
(Pharisee photo)
When a human being is reduced to a human doing and God is put in a small box labeled rules, the technical term for that is legalism and if you compared it to a disease, legalism infected Israel in Jesus' time like a plague. A large part of this was due to the role of the teachers of the law. From the time of Nehemiah, the office of the Scribe was largely intended to preserve and teach the law of God. However in reality that role expanded farther. The scribes divided into three areas of study, the Midrash which focused on scriptural investigation (think CSI), the Halakhah aimed at what rules were to be observed (kind of like the tax and the IRS), and the Haggadah (think street preachers) focused the oral tradition in the broadest sense.
(Pharisee painting)
By Jesus time, the law was not simply a matter of the directives laid out in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, but also all the traditions of the forefathers, all the teachings of various Rabbis through the years, and all the scriptural interpretations and conclusions drawn. The purpose was perfect adherence to the laws of God - and by extending and adding to its provisions they proposed to protect anyone from accidently or intentionally straying across its sacred boundaries. There was a strong tradition that not only had God given Moses the written laws and traditions, but also a large body of unwritten oral tradition of equal or greater importance. This tradition was added onto by successive generations and came to carry more weight than the scripture. The greatest merit a Scribe or Rabbi might claim was the strictest following of the traditions he had received from his teacher. Even the Sanhedrin, the ruling council could not set aside the rulings of the preceding council. Everything was focused on the actions, a persons outward behavior. Either you were righteous - to them that meant right acting - based on your behavior, or you were a sinner.
(Sanhedrin slide)
Throughout the gospels and especially in this segment of Luke that began with the stories we looked at last week of the leper, the paralyzed man, and Jesus eating with the tax collectors and these two stories we listened to today - of the disciples eating grain they had gathered on the Sabbath and Jesus healing the withered hand on the Sabbath, it's obvious that Jesus is working from a completely different view of the world. Jesus sees Human beings. He sees into the heart of who and what we are and are meant to be. Jesus sees God as bigger than any set of rules, no matter how complex. Jesus doesn't put either people or God in a box. Where the Pharisees and Scribes view the outward actions of a person as what are important... and their laws, traditions and regulations apply to the external appearance. Jesus looks inside the people first - he touched the leper, he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, he kept company with tax collectors and sinners. This inner view of people is summed up in the two stories we are looking at today: Jesus watched his disciples eat grain picked from the field and he says "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" Jesus looks at the man with the withered hand and asks "What is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil?"
(The pharisee and the harlot slide)
For Jesus the law was a tool meant to serve man not subjugate him. In Mark the story of the grain is recorded similarly, except with the additional explanation "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The law was intended to point to a good relationship between God and men and when the law was broken, bring about a consciousness of the broken relationship. The law was not intended to be an end in and of itself. What a person did wasn't supposed to define who they were!
What went wrong? The law overwhelmed the relationship with God. Rather than the law pointing people to God, the law became an end in itself.. Those who considered themselves righteous were setting themselves up against the law as the standard, rather than allowing God to judge them. They were self assured instead of God assured. Rather than the complexity of a real relationship with God, many chose to simply keep the rules so that God was neat, orderly and compartmentalized. It degraded God from a living loving creator, to an impersonal third party.
(Adam's creation slide)
Not only did it affect the relationships of people with God, it affected people's relationships to one another. The law became a tool of power. Power for oneself because rather than God being the source of judgement, the law was a tool that people wielded against others. Those who could keep the law were part of the in crowd, those who could not were sinners and outcasts. Those who kept the law would be loved and accepted by God, and obviously those who didn't, weren't. It only mattered that you were a human doing...
(Pharisee and publican slide)
It shocked me to get a glimpse of this burden on the people of Jesus' time. Legalism wasn't just replacing God with rules, it was also seeing people as merely a checklist of whether you looked okay on the outside. Instead of revealing truth and giving insight the law was used to judge and condemn people in their relationships to God and each other.
There is an essential element of legalism that is also an embodiment of the original sin -stealing God's power and position for ourselves. When the rules are used to give people the power of judgement that rightly belongs to God, when people control who is acceptable to God and who is not. There is an element in this of wanting our relationship with God to be easy, something we have control over. It's easier to run through a checklist and say "everything's fine" than be challenged continuously to grow. It's easier to control people if you have rules that they have to measure up to. Every one of us realizes in our heart of hearts though, that God is so much more than this.
(Contrast slide)
With two phrases of Jesus set up his contrasting Kingdom."The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." And "Which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it." It's easy to read the first and think, of course Jesus is lord of the sabbath. However, the phrase Son of Man is used by Jesus constantly ... he constantly self identifies with his humanity. Humankind is Lord of the Sabbath. Mark writes Jesus's words as "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The Sabbath was a tool to help people, not a goal for people to achieve. And not just the Sabbath, but all of the law. In Jesus's new Kingdom, the law serves its intended place as a truth-teller, as an informer of what good looks like and what breaks relationships. The law is banished from its role as taskmaster and slave owner, it is a servant of mankind.
So we've romped through history and seen how crazy the law was in Jesus' day. It wasn't simply a matter of the directives laid out in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, but also all the traditions of the forefathers, all the teachings of various Rabbis through the years, and all the scriptural interpretations and conclusions drawn. And from this "law", the religious leaders of the day, divided people into the "righteous" and "sinners" based only on what showed on the outside. The law wasn't intended... as a means of stealing God's power and position of judge... for ourselves and what it was intended for: serving as a tool to help people see how relationships between people and God should be. Under the law, we were considered human doings, now we are human beings. God's Kingdom is larger and more wondrous than we can imagine.
Now obviously, we don't have the rules and regulations of the Pharisees and Scribes now a days, but we do have others. We're going to take the next 15-25 min and do some brainstorming together about what legalism looks like now... in our churches, between people, and in our own lives. After that, we're going to have some quiet time set aside to talk directly with God, and it has to do with the paper and pencils you found on your chair. But I'll tell you more later.
BRAINSTORMING ON WIPE BOARD
Let's start with some concrete ideas of some of our new "laws" (who what where when how)
God, world, church, people, me
What aren't you supposed to do in church? What actions are okay, what actions aren't? When can the law heal? When does it separate people from others in the church? When is it a tool of social exclusion? Status exclusion?
Would it be equally valid to discuss this as "the ways churches, leaders and people divide over rules, regulations, and interpretations" (rephrased however you choose).
C.S. Lewis " In the end, there will be two groups of people, those that say to God "Thy will be done" and those to whom God says "Thy will be done."
How big is your God? Have you accepted Him in and made a tidy little room in some compartment of your life? Then you have made Him into an idol and put Him on a shelf. Perhaps the rules are followed still, but your god is small - he is not the God of the Universe, the Creator of this intricate beauty that surrounds us. Do you realize you are surrounded by the Kingdom? Can you let go of the god of your little compartment and allow the God who surrounds you in to overwhelm your defenses and love you - shape you like you had shaped that former idol, bandage your pain, heal your scars and wounds, inflame your heart with His love and the wonder of all He is and created you to be...
Other thoughts for brainstorming:
Legalism - human doings
power over someone
rules
God as an intellectual subject
rules more important than God or people
stagnation, finish line
power over God and people, manipulative
self-assurance
letter of the law
serving the law
asks the question "what am I doing?"
creates hostility, results in division
extrinsic motivation for rules God having power over someone
Love - human beings
real relationships
a living loving creator
people and God more important than rules
growth, life as a journey
power from God and people, healing
good, right and true for their sake
intent of the law
serving God
"Who does God intend me to become?"
creates peace, heals broken relationships
intrinsic motivation for growth
CONTEMPLATION PAPER (write a message to God on dissolving paper)
LORD'S PRAYER (Laurie)
COMMUNION (Karen)
So, that was the service.
posted by Charlotte Wyncoop at 10:05 PM
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