Igniting Your Christian Imagination

I was very blessed this past week to be the guest preacher at the Texas A&M Commerce Wesley Foundation's weekly worship service. (They also let me play my bass a bit, which was fun!) The campus minister at A&M Commerce is a wonderful friend: the Rev. Dana Coker. She is just an amazing pastor, theologian, and person! I was honored to be asked to preach. Below you will find the manuscript of the sermon (which I must admit, was being written pretty much up till I gave the thing!). Like pretty much every other sermon I've ever preached, there was quite a bit of deviating from the manuscript as I got to know the congregation. Here it is:

Igniting Your Christian Imagination

Let us pray…

Let me get this out of the way right up front: I am a dork, I admit it. I also admit that I am a political junkie: so last night I found myself watching President Bush’s last State of the Union address. Did you watch it? I’m not going to lie, the speech got me all excited but it wasn’t the content that excited me. It was the fact that we’ll have a new administration this time next year and I love all of the stuff that goes along with that. I love the ritual and speeches and the pomp and circumstance that come with American politics. So I always, and again, I’ll own this, because I’m a dork, I’m that guy that always take the day off of work when inauguration day comes and I watch the coverage of it on TV.

The best part of the inauguration for me is the speech! I am hopeful to hear a great orator who will give our nation a vision and goals to work for. I’m looking for a speech that will challenge us to give our lives to something greater than ourselves. I so want to hear words like Roosevelt’s, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Or Lincoln’s, “ With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” That’s great stuff! Those first few public words can set out an agenda, a vision, and a mission for the country.

If we look around in life I think we find these kinds of inauguration speeches everywhere, from Steve Jobs at Mac World for Apple to nearly every new college president. These speeches are an important part of human life and can be a meaningful expression of leadership.

But I must tell you, as inspiring as a junkie like me finds the words of Lincoln and Roosevelt to be, their words absolutely pale in comparison to the inaugural statement, if you will, of Jesus. The words that Jesus speaks to the world at the beginning of his public ministry challenge, inspire, puzzle and comfort me, just as they have millions of people for thousands of years.
So let me ask you a question, and feel free to answer out loud: what were Jesus’ first public words in ministry? Anybody know? The content is the same in the synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

It’s important to get this because Jesus is telling us what he’s about! He’s speaking about the point of his life and death and resurrection. Jesus is talking about the reason that God sent Him. They were the words that ultimately got him executed. They were the words that Jesus was willing to go to the cross for. Do you know what they are?

Give them a second to answer…

Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” What is the good news? It’s the Kingdom of God!

Matthew 4:17: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” These are Jesus’ opening words!

Luke 4:18-19: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In the Gospel of Luke we get a fuller explanation of what the Kingdom of God is like by Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah. Jesus tells us what the kingdom will look like: the poor will have their needs met, the captives will be liberated, the blind will have their sight restored, the oppressed will be set free and the year of the Lord’s favor will become a permanent reality.

Now, I am a big believer in taking the Bible seriously and it strikes me that if you or I want to call ourselves Christians than we had better be on board with what Jesus is about and doing the work that Jesus did for the reason that Jesus did, wouldn’t you say?

For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was what it was about.

When Jesus said, Repent, the Kingdom of God has come near, what he meant was that God is at work in this world! God’s redemptive work was made most manifest in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We’ve often been taught that the main work that Jesus accomplished on the cross was to save us from our sins. That is partially true. Jesus did come to save us from our sins. But, he saved us for more than just ourselves! We are saved to become partners with God in building the Kingdom of God on this earth and in this life! God wants us to partner with God in restoring and recreating the world into God’s original intention: which is for it to be a place of justice, beauty, and healing.

The Kingdom of God is how God deals with the evil in this world, first through Jesus on the cross and then through working with us!

Do you feel the full implication of this? In order for evil to be defeated, in order for things to be put right, we must, as people who live in the time between Jesus’ victory on the cross and God’s final redeeming acts, we must work with God to bring help bring about the Kingdom.

That’s what Jesus is talking about in the Lord’s Prayer when he teaches us to pray: Thy Kingdom Come, thy Will be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Pause…

This is tough stuff to grasp. Jesus’ own disciples often missed what he was talking about in regards to the Kingdom.
Sadly, in the last few centuries the church has failed to teach and work for the Kingdom of God appropriately. And because of this, the Church, in many cases, stopped trying to nurture and ignite the Christian imagination in their people. And now, in the popular mind, the Church is the last place where many people think to go to give their life to something bigger than themselves.

Thanks be to God there are signs everywhere that this is slowly beginning to change.

You know, we will all give our lives to something. It’s inevitable. We all choose to live and fight for something. Some of us choose to fight for ideas and causes that are substantial and meaningful, some of us choose to fight over petty and stupid things. Do you know what else is inevitable? God has a calling for each one of us and work for us to do in the Kingdom.

So, what are you living for? What are you fighting for? What would you die for?

Maybe you already know your calling and you are here in this place working and studying and practicing what God has called you to at this moment.

But if not, let me ask you another question that might help you figure out what God is calling you to do: what ignites your Christian imagination?

What are you passionate about? Where has God gifted you? What do you do that gives you deep peace? What fires you up? What do you do so well that only you can do it the way that you do? How might you use that work to serve God’s Creation? How can you help God’s will be done on earth as in heaven?

Consider these famous examples: for people like Billy Graham, it’s communicating with people through the spoken word. For J.S. Bach or Matt Redman or Paul Baloche, it’s writing music for God’s glory. For a coach like Tony Dungy he says his primary job is to prepare his players for their most important work in life, which will occur after they are done playing football.
For Wendell Berry, it’s writing poetry to honor God by bringing beauty and a prophetic word to the world. Dana and I had some of the same professors in seminary and I know for many of them their deep passion runs in twin streams: scholarship and teaching. That’s the work that God has called them to do for the Kingdom.

When we talk about calling we often ask questions like the ones I just did, like where do you feel most gifted, or what are you best at, to help try and figure out what you might be called to. But, as Rob Bell has reminded us, there is another line of questioning that is just as important and often overlooked and it is this: Your Christian imagination can also be ignited by what makes you mad.

What makes you so angry that you can’t stand it? What makes you so filled with a righteous anger that you say, “somebody’s got to do something about this?”

You know, Jesus got righteously angry at times. In Mark 11:15-18 we find Jesus cleansing the temple in a furious way! He ran the business people out of the temple to return it to a place of prayer. Anger is simply an emotion that we all experience. It’s what we do with it that counts! You can use your anger to do beautiful things, to make the world a better place, or you can use your anger to hurt people and to destroy.

In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 3:1-5 we find Jesus angry.

Read the story…

Jesus chose to use his anger for beauty and for healing.

You know, God might just be using your anger to get your attention!

Do you angry about things that matter? We live in a society of people who get angry about things that simply do no matter and who don’t get angry about things that do matter!

Do you get angry about the things that God gets angry about? Injustice, abuse, exploitation, war, violence, poverty, HIVAIDS, these things matter! They are worth fighting for! These things stand in the way of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God, friends, is worth fighting for. Justice, peace, reconciliation, wholeness, these are things worth fighting for. For the saints who have dedicated themselves to the Kingdom of God, their fights took on different focuses based on their passions and callings. For Mother Teresa, that fight looked loving on people who were near dying and were cast away from society. For Francis of Assisi the fight looked like rebuilding God’s church through mystical experiences and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. For Martin Luther King, Jr., the fight looked like working for the rights of all humanity to be given respect and for all people to be treated with dignity. For Shane Claiborne, or Brian McLaren their fight looks like trying to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ literally and articulating the Gospel of Christ in profound ways that resonate with our generation. For myself, my Christian imagination is ignited by the work of creating meaningful worship experiences that Glorify God and my passion for returning the mainline church’s focus on the Kingdom of God.

What does that fight look like for you?

What fires up your Christian imagination?

Make no mistake; God has work for you to do! God has a calling for each of us.

Right now, in regards to your calling, you are in one of the most important and seminal stages in life. St. Francis was a young man when he received his call from Christ to rebuild the church. Martin Luther King was 26 when he was elected by his fellow pastors to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The German theologian who stood up to Hitler in World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in his mid-twenties when he began the most fruitful work of his career. I was reading an article about a mathematician/genetic biologist who has dedicated her life’s work to beating cancer and she is 25. She is passionately aware that most creative period for the majority of mathematicians end when they hit 30. To bring it closer to home both Dana and I responded to the church to God’s calling on our lives in our late teens.

In most of the fields in which you are studying many of most famous scholars did their best and most important work in there twenties and thirties. So now is the time to begin to answer that question: what are you giving your life for?

St. Ignatius said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Know what: he was right! Have you examined your life? How does it fit into God’s story? Have you given your life for a big, beautiful cause that is greater than yourself? Or are you settling for something of lesser worth, something that’s perhaps safer?

What are you giving your life for?

If you don’t know yet, that’s cool. What’s not cool is if you don’t do the work to struggle with it! Talk to Dana, you can talk to me, talk to the folks in your life about your calling. God uses all of us, whatever our chosen field to do the work of God in our world. I gave you a lot of famous examples but the vast majority of God’s saints do their work in their own spheres of influence, whether its in teaching or in business, or in the church, or in raising a family, or in the creative fields, you name it, your calling will be fulfilled by using your Christian imagination. How can you do what you do for the Kingdom of God? The world never recognizes the majority of Kingdom work but God does recognize it.

God has made us to give ourselves to something great! God is calling us to make a better world. How will you respond?
Know this, above all else: God loves you, God wants you and God has noble work for you to do! If you want to know the real secret of fulfillment in this life it is this: devote your life to serving others through the mediums that God has called you to. Devote your life to serving others through the mediums that God has called you to. That’s the secret. That is how you fulfill the greatest commandments to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So, what will you give your life for?

29 January 2008