Becoming the People of God 3: The Goal

October 30, 2011

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13

J.W. McNeill

The first week of this series we contrasted these two statements.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism	Our Affirmation of Faith
A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.	We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new.…

The second week we contrasted these two statements:

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism	Our Affirmation of Faith
God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.	We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen.

In today’s Scripture lesson, St. Paul writes to the people of God in Thessalonica:  

As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead  a life worthy of God, who calls you into God’s own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12)

What is a life worthy of God?

To live a life worthy of God is to seek God’s call on our lives and then to live out that calling. This flows from the two pieces of our affirmation that we have already considered:

Week 1: God has created us.

That is, in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, God’s purpose was to

reconcile and make new: Jesus Christ has come for the transformation of us and our relationships. Not to judge and condemn us, but to renew us into a different way of life based on justice, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness.

           

God is not at a distance simply watching over. God is continually, always and everywhere creating and refreshing not only the world around us, but us. Refreshing us to be God’s people, student followers of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Week 2: God has called us to be the Church.

We have been created and called out to a particular way of life that reveals God’s love and grace in our lives.

That particular way is summarized in our Affirmation as we talked about last week:

We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen. This is energizing and engaging! Not wimpy.

Called to be the Church:

Celebrate God’s presence:

·         That is, we worship. This is our central activity. This centers us and orients us to God. Because it is celebration, we are called to adopt the positive attitude that God is at work. We are not called to be whiners!

Love and serve others:

·         To love others means that we will want their good and work for their good, even if it costs us something.

·         We are intentionally living so as to be making real that kin(g)dom/dream/feast of God among us and pouring out into our neighborhood and our world.

Seek justice and resist evil:

·         Social holiness as well as personal. It means working to rid the world of social evil as well as personal evil. To be a part of seeing that the strong and powerful do not dominate the weak and powerless. To see that we ourselves do not become harbors, sheltering destructive forces in our own hearts.

Proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen

·         There is some clarity about who we have been called to follow. Jesus is our model. His teaching and his life are the central images to which we look as we understand how we are to live. As we said last time, Jesus is the Word made flesh – God living among us.

To live such a life:

            Celebrating God’s presence.

            Loving and serving others.

            Seeking justice and resisting evil.

            Proclaiming Jesus, crucified and risen

That is a life worthy of the love and creative being and energy God has lavished upon us and poured into us.

Last week I read a passage from C.S. Lewis’ book The Silver Chair, one of the Chronicles of Narnia.  You may remember that in that book Aslan, the great lion instructs Jill with four signs. He tells her that she must remember those signs to complete her mission. Those were four very specific and tricky signs to complete a unique mission give specifically to her.

I tell you this morning, however that these four activities are what we need to remember and keep clear about as we live the lives God has called us to.

Aslan told Jill:

But, first, remember, remember, remember the Signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing tum your mind from following the Signs.

And secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the Signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there.

That is why it is so important to know them by heart.

And so I encourage you to memorize at least this section of our Affirmation of Faith and to repeat it to yourself again and again so that you are always in touch with the broad outline of our call to become the people of God.

To live life worthy of God that St. Paul talks about is to seek God’s call on our lives and then to live out that calling.

This week is the midpoint in the series and this contrast is perhaps the central contrast and the central focus as we consider what it means to become the people of God in this day.

This morning we are looking at this fundamental contrast:

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism	Our Affirmation of Faith
The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.	We believe in God...who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God.

Why is this contrast fundamental?

I suggest three reasons.

Because

1.      The MTD statement is so basically pervasive and at odds with how we are called to order our lives as Christians.

2.      This contrast highlights our affirmation tenet about trusting in God is the first task of faith.

3.      This tenet of our affirmation makes clear that we believe that we are not the only people in whom God is at work. This third point is important to recognize so that we do not succumb to arrogance as the people of God.

Let’s look at the first point:

1.      The MTD statement is so basically pervasive and at odds with how we are called to order our lives as Christians.

How is at odds?

First this statement of what is most important is egoistic. It is saying that the most important thing is how things are with me. It is about the BIG SELF. And it says that I should feel good about myself being in the first instance having my most important goal as being happy.

To be fair, this may just be a matter of confused thinking. There is a sense in which we might think that happiness is our goal because we are happy when we achieve our goal. If I have a goal of helping someone out of a distressing situation, then I will be happy when I have achieved that goal. However, let’s be clear that my happiness was not the goal of my action, it was the byproduct of achieving the goal.

Indeed, Jesus was quite clear about how at odds egoism – the desire for our own satisfaction – is from the way of life to which he directs:

If we try to secure our lives we will lose our lives. But if we give up our lives for Jesus’ sake, we will secure them.

To give up our lives is to put Jesus’ way before following our own desires for our own happiness on our own terms.  Jesus assures us that fulfilling the goals Jesus sets before us will secure our lives – will satisfy us. Will make us happy. Not in an egoistic sense, but because we will have fulfilled our goal to be worthy of God.

God is at work within us to transform us into folks who will be satisfied with nothing less than becoming the people of God.

Where this third tenet of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism goes wrong is when it identifies my happiness with my comfort and convenience.

This is a difficult point. In the culture and the world in which we live, it is very hard to escape the notion that my activities ought to be directed most importantly toward me and my family’s comfort and convenience. That is what almost all advertising is directing us toward.

That is what our consumer culture exists to encourage. That is the Spirit of the Age. That is the chief competitor to God’s call on our lives.

Have a look at this brief video. 

I daresay that keeping ourselves active in the consumer culture and preparing our children to achieve in the consumer culture is the dominant obstacle not only to our fully becoming the people of God, but to our even fully desiring to become the people of God.

How do we begin to make inroads so that we are not overwhelmed by this seduction?

This is the second point:

2.      We trust in God. We trust in God. We trust in God.

Becoming the people of God means that we need not worry. We need not be anxious. We need not let fear overwhelm us. We are on a mission. There will be difficulties. There will be opposition. There will be discomfort. There will be setbacks. There will be times of uncertainty. But we trust God that God is with us. It’s about being God’s people, not about trying to work out our best interest with respect to our comfort and convenience.

And if we as the people of God are doing this together we will have companions on the mission so that we can encourage each other, support each other, comfort each other, and celebrate together those times when we see how God has been clearly at work as we live out our call, and find the patience together when we just don’t see how we will manage to make it through. That is why it is important to be connected in personal ways. Small groups for study and for service and mutual support. Until we catch on to those, we are not going to be at full strength.

Some of you may be skeptical about what I’ve said this morning. You might be thinking, I could never do this. This isn’t me. Precisely!

It’s not just that we trust in God in some abstract way, we trust that God is at work in us by the Spirit. Our job is to open ourselves to the activity of the Holy Spirit to work within us. We let the Spirit begin to take over and as we keep in mind an intention to follow God’s call on our lives.

Trust in God is not an abstract belief or theory about God, it’s about trusting that God is at work in us as we:

            Celebrate God’s presence

            Love and serve others

            Seek justice and resist evil

            Proclaim Jesus crucified and risen.

Which leads us to the third important point:

3.      This tenet of our affirmation makes clear that we believe that we are not the only people in whom God is at work. This third point is important to recognize so that we do not succumb to arrogance as the people of God.

The Affirmation states that we believe that God is at work in us and in others by the Spirit.

To become the people of God is not to reach some position from which it is up to us to condemn or to bully or judge others. It is in reality a vantage point from which to notice and appreciate all the ways that God is at work in folks who are also loving and serving others, seeking justice and resisting evil.

Of course, being the church connects us to the way of Jesus Christ in a particular way and that makes a difference. And there are plenty of folks who will be helped by finding a place with us becoming the people of God along with us. Plenty of folks will be helped by getting to know Jesus. Our proclamation is an invitation for those others whom God is also calling. We are not called to arrogantly assume that everyone is meant to join us on the journey to which we have been called.

So our contrast today highlights three central points that can help us on our way to becoming the people of God:

1.      We need to be aware of a pervasive egoism/selfishness that is a dangerous and seductive basis of our consumer culture.

2.      We trust in God. We trust that God is at work in us, so that we can together open ourselves ever wider to the Holy Spirit’s work within us and among us.

3.      We are not the only people in whom God is at work. God is not bound by those whom God has called and part of our joy is to notice that God’s spirit is already at work even before we arrive.

St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Thessalonica:

When you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.  (1 Thessalonians 2:13)

He had proclaimed to them Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. They had received that message and opened themselves to that word, that spirit, to work in them to become the people of God. They began to trust that God and live as God’s people.

            They began to celebrate God’s presence.

            They loved and served others.

            They sought justice and resisted evil.

            They proclaimed Jesus, crucified and risen, who Paul had proclaimed to them.

Imagine that!

More next week. Stay tuned.

A short video that takes this further: Are You a Trader?