4474 El Cajon Blvd.  |  San Diego, CA 92115  |  (619) 955-6718  |    Contact  |

Making Life Count: A Vision for the Future

  • Stephen Phelan
  • Nov 8, 2009
  • Series: Making Life Count

Making Life Count:  A Vision for the Future

Rev. 7: 9-12 Mid-City, Nov. 8, 2009

 

Don’t pay attention to the outline in your bulletin.  I told Jesus it was a   great outline—he said otherwise, so we’re going His way.  We’re in a series on Making Life Count and this morning we’re going to talk about the future.  If you don’t have a vision for your future, then your destined to flounder in the present.  Here is why—if you don’t know where you want to be or should be in the future, then you will have no clue about what you should be doing on a day-to-day basis to get there. 

 

This is just common sense.  Stephen Covey calls this “Beginning with the end in mind.”  You think about where you want to end up and then start making short term goals to reach that long term end.

 

So it is pretty critical to know the end or the future so we can start making short term goals and plans accordingly.  And here is the good news—John gives us a vision for our future in Revelations. In the book of Revelation, John has this amazing experience.  He is welcomed into the presence of God and God gives him a prophetic vision of what the future will look like in the new heavens and new earth. If you want to know your future, here it is.  V9, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language.”  Your future is going to be spent in community with the most diverse group of people you could ever imagine.  It is going to be like City Heights on steroids.

 

And it is City Heights on steroids in worship—v9 they are standing before the throne in worship.  This is church—the heavenly church.  A community of people that grew up on earth separated by racial barriers, cultural barriers, class barriers and now those barriers have melted away.

 

This vision of the heavenly church gave birth to the vision for Harbor Mid-City.  As you hear me say often, “If the heavenly church has every tongue, tribe, nation, and people, then, “why not now?”  Why not snag a little piece of heaven and pull it down to earth?  Why not inch toward this goal week by week.  Now, we won’t ultimately get to the vision John is describing, but why not try to get as close as we can. 

 

Historically, the early church in the first few centuries did just what we’re trying to do.  For those of you who are not yet followers of Jesus, this will probably surprise you.  I often hear skeptics talk about how narrow and intolerant and oppressive Christianity has been historically.  At times, yes, but, in the first few centuries, Christians were far more progressive and liberating and tolerant than the surrounding Greco-Roman culture.  Consider the city of Galatia.  

 

In Galatia, there were three central ways that you learned to identify yourself.  And the city was completely polarized along these 3 categories.  Those 3 categories were your race, your class, and your sex.  The two primary racial groups were Jews & Greeks.  And they hated one another.  Jews thought of the Greeks, who were Gentiles, as dogs.  In fact, listen to what one Jew said about the Greeks of the day, “ They were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell.” (Milne 21).  There is not a lot of love there.  Incredible racial tension in the city.

 

The 2nd barrier that divided the city of Galatia was gender.  Women had no status or standing, regardless of whether they were Jewish or Greek, slave or free group.  They were simply at the bottom.  Josephus, a 1st century Jewish historian, articulated the prevailing cultural view among both Jews and Greco-Romans at the time which was this, “Woman is inferior to man in every way.” In fact, women were thought to be so unimportant that sociologist Rodney Starks points out that female infantacide was extremely common in the Greco-Roman world, which involved takingvalueless & burdensome female infants to die from exposure. Professor John Boswell wrote a book on this and listen to what he said.  Somewhat hard to stomach, but I’ll read it, “The overall rate of child abandonment in the 1st - 3rd centuries is extrapolated to be in the area of 20-40 percent of all live births resulted in the child being abandoned.

 

There was no prohibition against it or even shame associated with it in Greco-Roman culture.  Christians emphatically said this can’t happen.  The Didache, which is a manual of early Christian principles dating back to most likely the 1st century, spoke out against it, as did Athenagoras, Tertullian and others all universally speak out against the practice.  Not only did Christians speak out against it, they started to ADOPT these young female babies and in the church they were treated with an equality never before heard of. 

 

“More than merely condemning infanticide, however, early Christians provided alternatives by rescuing and adopting children who were abandoned. For instance, Callistus (d. c. A.D. 223) provided refuge to abandoned children by placing them in Christian homes, and Benignus of Dijon (3rd century) offered nourishment and protection to abandoned children, including some with disabilities caused by unsuccessful abortions. (http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2009/01/22/abortion-and-early-church/)

 

What caused Christians to value women so much more than the Greeks & Romans?  What caused Christians to be so much more racially inclusive?

 

I will give you 3 things.  (1)  They were in a community centered on Jesus.  Galatians in 3: 26-28.  Are you ready for this.  6You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  Do you hear how radical this is?  He says the old ways that you used to define yourself—by race, by class, by sex—they are a thing of the past once you become a follower of Jesus.  He is your identity. 

 

He said the same thing to the city of Ephesus.  Listen to what he said in Eph. 2: 14-18, “6 For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups – Jews and Gentiles – into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us…create[ing] in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. Sound familiar—same thing he said in Galatia.   Racism is a thing of the past once Jesus gets involved.  Jesus is your principal identity—not your race—and he has created one new humanity. 

 

(2)  They formed cross-cultural relationships through meals.   According to the cultural customs of the day, you ate with people like you.  If you were Greek, you ate with Greeks.  If you were a Greek slave, you ate with other Greek slaves. 

It reminds me of playing football at UVA.  Our team was roughly half-black and half-white.  We ate together after practice.  On the field we blead together, sweated together, joked together, but then something really strange happened at meal time.  Our unity disappeared.  The food was in the middle and the blacks sat on one side and the whites on the others.  This is late 90s people—don’t start acting like I played back in the 60s.  And we jokingly called the buffet line the railroad tracks.  Every once in a while someone would cross the tracks, but for the most part there was a racial barrier when it came to meals.

This is what was going on in Corinth.  Racial tension wasn’t black/white, but Jew/Greek.  They not like each other, but the Jewish community had all of these strict dietary laws and the Greeks—well, if you saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you know that the Greeks love food and eat anything, including food sacrificed to idols.  What should they do now?  One solution was to just keep eating separately according to race?  Pastor Paul, in I Cor. 8: 8-13, Paul says it isn’t about what you eat or don’t eat.  By no means allow racial customs to separate you.  Rather, eat together and demonstrate the new unity you have in Christ.  This just gives you an opportunity to serve your weaker brother by putting his interests above yours and they started to do this.

But during the meal together in Corinth another problem developed.  Not only did racial problems exist, but  class problems arose also.  Slaves and masters, rich and poor didn’t normally eat together, but in the church they were beginning to in a meal that became known as an agape meal.  It was what we call the Lord’s Supper, only it was a full meal.  The food was brought almost entirely by the wealthy as a way of sharing their resources with the poor.

But in Corinth the wealthy were starting to revert back to their old ways.  They got to the meal first b/c they had less work than the slaves and the poor.  Rather than waiting and allowing the meal to be a picture of their unity, Leon Morris points out that “they ate and drank in cliques…[so that] the food was gone before the poor got there!” 

Pastor Paul got wind of this & brought down the thunder on them in            I Cor. 11: 17-22, “In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 20When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, 21for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk….Do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

Paul says no more.  You’re one in Jesus.  Start acting like it and don’t you dare make distinctions according to class.  And they did just that.   Christians in the early church became known for the way that the rich and poor, the slaves and free did life and church & meals together. And they didn’t just care for their poor, but they indiscriminately cared for and were in relationship with the poor who weren’t followers of Jesus, so much so that non-Christian Roman named Pliny wrote to the non-Christian Roman Emperor named Trajan, that these Christians, [they even care] for our own poor!”

(3) early church kept the end in mind.  In Christ, they were a new humanity consisting of every tongue, tribe, and nation being together, not separate, every race, class, and culture, and they demonstrated a new humanity where the old divisions of race, class, culture, and gender no longer separated them and their light shone into the darkness of oppression.  Christianity swept through the Roman empire and exploded with a liberating and unprecedented force.  It spread faster than other religion or movement b/c people said, “Yes, something                                              deep inside me yearns for that new humanity.”   

But something tragic happened along the way, particularly in the American church.  We lost our way and we began to do church the old way.  We resorted back to doing church along the old distinctions of race & class.  Why do the hard work of bridging & reconciling, let’s just have                   separate but equal churches.

In fact, there is an article that chronicles this well called, “Why Many Americans Prefer Their Sundays Segregated.”  Notice the article didn’t say why many Americans preferred their Sundays segregated (in the Jim Crow days)—no it says prefer today.  This was written in 2008.

American churches haven't traditionally done a good job at being racially inclusive, scholars say. Slavery and Jim Crow kept blacks and whites apart in the pews in the nation's early history. Some large contemporary black denominations, like the African Methodist Episcopal church, were formed because blacks couldn't find acceptance in white churches.  Large denominations like the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians split over race in the 19th century when their members clashed over the issue of slavery, [says]Michael Emerson, a scholar on interracial churches,in his book, "Divided by Faith."

Uggh.  We lost our way, and so did most of the other major denominations here in America.  We lost sight of the heavenly church in Rev. 7.  We gave up on it b/c it is too hard.  The article goes on to say that less than 5% of churches are interracial and half of those are currently in the process of becoming monoethnic, meaning that about 2 & ½ % are interracial, much less multi-cultural with different languages.  There isn’t even a percentage for that category.

Why?  Well, the article tells you why. “Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president (this was right before the election), but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating.”  My friends, there you have it—just like in society.  The church is no different than society.  What do you think Pastor Paul would say to us if he could write a letter to the church in America.  It wouldn’t be kind, I can guarantee that.  See we have lost sight of the end, of our future where every tongue, tribe, and nation is present.

One caveat, I am not saying that every church that isn’t multicultural is in sin.  Some churches are in all-white communities or all-black communities and that is fine.  But that is not the case we find ourselves in here, is it my friends.  We have no excuse—we are smack dab in the middle of what is called the Ellis Island of the West Coast.  And we’re going to do everything we can to keep the end in mind.

At least 3 things will be required if we’re going to keep inching our way towards the new humanity in the heavenly church.       

(1)  It will require sacrificing personal preferences at times just like Paul encouraged the Corinthians with dietary habits.  Maybe you don’t like songs in Spanish; maybe your not too keen on translation; maybe your kids are exposed to some things that they wouldn’t be in a more sterile facility.  Friends, keep the end in mind. Let’s don’t let those old things of race, class, and culture to divide us like most of the American church, let’s go a different way.

(2)  Building Relationships with people different than yourself.  Kim & Jeremy, Justing & Melissa, Dan Baits, and the other educators have created this beautiful opportunity for us to do so through this refugee tutoring program.  People—what they have created is beautiful.  Take a Monday off from 4:30-6:00 and put your hand to the plough of helping create the new humanity.  You won’t be sorry.

(3)  Jesus—The Lamb—must stay at the Center.   Jesus, the lamb, is the one at the center of the new humanity in Rev. 5 & 7.  Jesus, the Lamb who died not for those who looked like him, not just for those who were of his race and class---he died for every tongue, tribe, nation, and people, every race, class, and culture.  He died to give birth to a new humanity where old distinctions no longer apply.  If we’ll keep him at the center, then He’ll create the new humanity.  That is what he died to do.

The question is, my friend, have you been grafted into this new humanity by putting your faith in Jesus.

Making Life Count:  A Vision for the Future

Rev. 7: 9-12 Mid-City, Nov. 8, 2009

 

Don’t pay attention to the outline in your bulletin.  I told Jesus it was a   great outline—he said otherwise, so we’re going His way.  We’re in a series on Making Life Count and this morning we’re going to talk about the future.  If you don’t have a vision for your future, then your destined to flounder in the present.  Here is why—if you don’t know where you want to be or should be in the future, then you will have no clue about what you should be doing on a day-to-day basis to get there. 

 

This is just common sense.  Stephen Covey calls this “Beginning with the end in mind.”  You think about where you want to end up and then start making short term goals to reach that long term end.

 

So it is pretty critical to know the end or the future so we can start making short term goals and plans accordingly.  And here is the good news—John gives us a vision for our future in Revelations. In the book of Revelation, John has this amazing experience.  He is welcomed into the presence of God and God gives him a prophetic vision of what the future will look like in the new heavens and new earth. If you want to know your future, here it is.  V9, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language.”  Your future is going to be spent in community with the most diverse group of people you could ever imagine.  It is going to be like City Heights on steroids.

 

And it is City Heights on steroids in worship—v9 they are standing before the throne in worship.  This is church—the heavenly church.  A community of people that grew up on earth separated by racial barriers, cultural barriers, class barriers and now those barriers have melted away.

 

This vision of the heavenly church gave birth to the vision for Harbor Mid-City.  As you hear me say often, “If the heavenly church has every tongue, tribe, nation, and people, then, “why not now?”  Why not snag a little piece of heaven and pull it down to earth?  Why not inch toward this goal week by week.  Now, we won’t ultimately get to the vision John is describing, but why not try to get as close as we can. 

 

Historically, the early church in the first few centuries did just what we’re trying to do.  For those of you who are not yet followers of Jesus, this will probably surprise you.  I often hear skeptics talk about how narrow and intolerant and oppressive Christianity has been historically.  At times, yes, but, in the first few centuries, Christians were far more progressive and liberating and tolerant than the surrounding Greco-Roman culture.  Consider the city of Galatia.  

 

In Galatia, there were three central ways that you learned to identify yourself.  And the city was completely polarized along these 3 categories.  Those 3 categories were your race, your class, and your sex.  The two primary racial groups were Jews & Greeks.  And they hated one another.  Jews thought of the Greeks, who were Gentiles, as dogs.  In fact, listen to what one Jew said about the Greeks of the day, “ They were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell.” (Milne 21).  There is not a lot of love there.  Incredible racial tension in the city.

 

The 2nd barrier that divided the city of Galatia was gender.  Women had no status or standing, regardless of whether they were Jewish or Greek, slave or free group.  They were simply at the bottom.  Josephus, a 1st century Jewish historian, articulated the prevailing cultural view among both Jews and Greco-Romans at the time which was this, “Woman is inferior to man in every way.” In fact, women were thought to be so unimportant that sociologist Rodney Starks points out that female infantacide was extremely common in the Greco-Roman world, which involved takingvalueless & burdensome female infants to die from exposure. Professor John Boswell wrote a book on this and listen to what he said.  Somewhat hard to stomach, but I’ll read it, “The overall rate of child abandonment in the 1st - 3rd centuries is extrapolated to be in the area of 20-40 percent of all live births resulted in the child being abandoned.

 

There was no prohibition against it or even shame associated with it in Greco-Roman culture.  Christians emphatically said this can’t happen.  The Didache, which is a manual of early Christian principles dating back to most likely the 1st century, spoke out against it, as did Athenagoras, Tertullian and others all universally speak out against the practice.  Not only did Christians speak out against it, they started to ADOPT these young female babies and in the church they were treated with an equality never before heard of. 

 

“More than merely condemning infanticide, however, early Christians provided alternatives by rescuing and adopting children who were abandoned. For instance, Callistus (d. c. A.D. 223) provided refuge to abandoned children by placing them in Christian homes, and Benignus of Dijon (3rd century) offered nourishment and protection to abandoned children, including some with disabilities caused by unsuccessful abortions. (http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2009/01/22/abortion-and-early-church/)

 

What caused Christians to value women so much more than the Greeks & Romans?  What caused Christians to be so much more racially inclusive?

 

I will give you 3 things.  (1)  They were in a community centered on Jesus.  Galatians in 3: 26-28.  Are you ready for this.  6You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  Do you hear how radical this is?  He says the old ways that you used to define yourself—by race, by class, by sex—they are a thing of the past once you become a follower of Jesus.  He is your identity. 

 

He said the same thing to the city of Ephesus.  Listen to what he said in Eph. 2: 14-18, “6 For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups – Jews and Gentiles – into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us…create[ing] in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. Sound familiar—same thing he said in Galatia.   Racism is a thing of the past once Jesus gets involved.  Jesus is your principal identity—not your race—and he has created one new humanity. 

 

(2)  They formed cross-cultural relationships through meals.   According to the cultural customs of the day, you ate with people like you.  If you were Greek, you ate with Greeks.  If you were a Greek slave, you ate with other Greek slaves. 

It reminds me of playing football at UVA.  Our team was roughly half-black and half-white.  We ate together after practice.  On the field we blead together, sweated together, joked together, but then something really strange happened at meal time.  Our unity disappeared.  The food was in the middle and the blacks sat on one side and the whites on the others.  This is late 90s people—don’t start acting like I played back in the 60s.  And we jokingly called the buffet line the railroad tracks.  Every once in a while someone would cross the tracks, but for the most part there was a racial barrier when it came to meals.

This is what was going on in Corinth.  Racial tension wasn’t black/white, but Jew/Greek.  They not like each other, but the Jewish community had all of these strict dietary laws and the Greeks—well, if you saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you know that the Greeks love food and eat anything, including food sacrificed to idols.  What should they do now?  One solution was to just keep eating separately according to race?  Pastor Paul, in I Cor. 8: 8-13, Paul says it isn’t about what you eat or don’t eat.  By no means allow racial customs to separate you.  Rather, eat together and demonstrate the new unity you have in Christ.  This just gives you an opportunity to serve your weaker brother by putting his interests above yours and they started to do this.

But during the meal together in Corinth another problem developed.  Not only did racial problems exist, but  class problems arose also.  Slaves and masters, rich and poor didn’t normally eat together, but in the church they were beginning to in a meal that became known as an agape meal.  It was what we call the Lord’s Supper, only it was a full meal.  The food was brought almost entirely by the wealthy as a way of sharing their resources with the poor.

But in Corinth the wealthy were starting to revert back to their old ways.  They got to the meal first b/c they had less work than the slaves and the poor.  Rather than waiting and allowing the meal to be a picture of their unity, Leon Morris points out that “they ate and drank in cliques…[so that] the food was gone before the poor got there!” 

Pastor Paul got wind of this & brought down the thunder on them in            I Cor. 11: 17-22, “In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 20When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, 21for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk….Do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

Paul says no more.  You’re one in Jesus.  Start acting like it and don’t you dare make distinctions according to class.  And they did just that.   Christians in the early church became known for the way that the rich and poor, the slaves and free did life and church & meals together. And they didn’t just care for their poor, but they indiscriminately cared for and were in relationship with the poor who weren’t followers of Jesus, so much so that non-Christian Roman named Pliny wrote to the non-Christian Roman Emperor named Trajan, that these Christians, [they even care] for our own poor!”

(3) early church kept the end in mind.  In Christ, they were a new humanity consisting of every tongue, tribe, and nation being together, not separate, every race, class, and culture, and they demonstrated a new humanity where the old divisions of race, class, culture, and gender no longer separated them and their light shone into the darkness of oppression.  Christianity swept through the Roman empire and exploded with a liberating and unprecedented force.  It spread faster than other religion or movement b/c people said, “Yes, something                                              deep inside me yearns for that new humanity.”   

But something tragic happened along the way, particularly in the American church.  We lost our way and we began to do church the old way.  We resorted back to doing church along the old distinctions of race & class.  Why do the hard work of bridging & reconciling, let’s just have                   separate but equal churches.

In fact, there is an article that chronicles this well called, “Why Many Americans Prefer Their Sundays Segregated.”  Notice the article didn’t say why many Americans preferred their Sundays segregated (in the Jim Crow days)—no it says prefer today.  This was written in 2008.

American churches haven't traditionally done a good job at being racially inclusive, scholars say. Slavery and Jim Crow kept blacks and whites apart in the pews in the nation's early history. Some large contemporary black denominations, like the African Methodist Episcopal church, were formed because blacks couldn't find acceptance in white churches.  Large denominations like the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians split over race in the 19th century when their members clashed over the issue of slavery, [says]Michael Emerson, a scholar on interracial churches,in his book, "Divided by Faith."

Uggh.  We lost our way, and so did most of the other major denominations here in America.  We lost sight of the heavenly church in Rev. 7.  We gave up on it b/c it is too hard.  The article goes on to say that less than 5% of churches are interracial and half of those are currently in the process of becoming monoethnic, meaning that about 2 & ½ % are interracial, much less multi-cultural with different languages.  There isn’t even a percentage for that category.

Why?  Well, the article tells you why. “Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president (this was right before the election), but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating.”  My friends, there you have it—just like in society.  The church is no different than society.  What do you think Pastor Paul would say to us if he could write a letter to the church in America.  It wouldn’t be kind, I can guarantee that.  See we have lost sight of the end, of our future where every tongue, tribe, and nation is present.

One caveat, I am not saying that every church that isn’t multicultural is in sin.  Some churches are in all-white communities or all-black communities and that is fine.  But that is not the case we find ourselves in here, is it my friends.  We have no excuse—we are smack dab in the middle of what is called the Ellis Island of the West Coast.  And we’re going to do everything we can to keep the end in mind.

At least 3 things will be required if we’re going to keep inching our way towards the new humanity in the heavenly church.       

(1)  It will require sacrificing personal preferences at times just like Paul encouraged the Corinthians with dietary habits.  Maybe you don’t like songs in Spanish; maybe your not too keen on translation; maybe your kids are exposed to some things that they wouldn’t be in a more sterile facility.  Friends, keep the end in mind. Let’s don’t let those old things of race, class, and culture to divide us like most of the American church, let’s go a different way.

(2)  Building Relationships with people different than yourself.  Kim & Jeremy, Justing & Melissa, Dan Baits, and the other educators have created this beautiful opportunity for us to do so through this refugee tutoring program.  People—what they have created is beautiful.  Take a Monday off from 4:30-6:00 and put your hand to the plough of helping create the new humanity.  You won’t be sorry.

(3)  Jesus—The Lamb—must stay at the Center.   Jesus, the lamb, is the one at the center of the new humanity in Rev. 5 & 7.  Jesus, the Lamb who died not for those who looked like him, not just for those who were of his race and class---he died for every tongue, tribe, nation, and people, every race, class, and culture.  He died to give birth to a new humanity where old distinctions no longer apply.  If we’ll keep him at the center, then He’ll create the new humanity.  That is what he died to do.

The question is, my friend, have you been grafted into this new humanity by putting your faith in Jesus.

 

Service
Amount $