Horror and Our Desire to Watch

A friend of mine was telling me about a video going viral on YouTube. It features a young boy in China getting run over by a truck, about people just walking past, about another truck… He had to turn away. I found the link, but I couldn't bring myself to watch it. It seems to cover everything wrong with our world, violence on children, the cheapness of human life, how little we might get involved… And we may blame this story on "them", over "there", but how many people are watching over here? Shocked and appalled but riveted?

If I didn't believe in a God that I had faith could overcome even THAT, I would despair. If I did not believe that even things so horrendous, so…God-awful…could not be overcome by the grace in Jesus, I don't think I could do this job. It has taken me a few days just to think about it, just to pray about it, just to consider blogging about it. But if I don't, it is just going to slip away, another bit of horror in a sinful world, and no reaction to it.

I hope calling what happened "sinful" helps to restore the full, ugly, evil meaning of the word. It's not just a 'church word' that has been so over-used as to be meaningless. It is evil in the world, it is horror in the world, it is the full extent of what humanity can perpetuate against humanity. It does recognize, I hope, that there are monsters in the world.

It is ironic that I enjoy Halloween so very much. I like the 'monsters', the vampires, werewolves, zombies, mummies, and the variations therein. It has gotten me some negative feedback as a minister that I will dress up as something dark and foreboding. I do it because it is make believe. There are real monsters out there, but they are us.

But I am not here to dwell on the dark side. If 'sin' can be re-infused with all that is horrid and terrible in the world, I believe 'grace' can be infused with "the powers of good" to overcome any such sin. I have to admit, I am not sure how to turn something like this video around. A boy is dead, horribly, and thousands of people have watched it, maybe repeatedly. But if we are talking about it, if we are figuring out what needs to be done to respond to it, if we dare to say that Jesus is stronger than that, that the Kingdom of God here on earth can bring comfort and grace and goodness to overcome even that, then we are already letting Jesus flow.

Apostleship: the Third Ship…

We worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we seek to be Jesus' followers, to be His disciples, and finally, we seek to be His apostles, we seek to serve.

Faith without works is dead. James said that. For us, apostleship is the process of using our faith in a matter to help other people. Our Core Value statements-our Anchors to continue the nautical reference-are all acts of apostleship, reaching out to our neighbors. We emphasize this service, this ministry, because it is vital to the growth, sustainability, and progression of our Neighborhood. Serving one another in the name of Jesus is fundamental to the exercise of our faith. When we begin to serve someone else in His name, we have taken our faith out of the realm of a mental exercise, something we just give mental assent to, and we actually start to change our lives for the more Christ-like.

How is apostleship different from simply being a nice person? How is church different from a walk-a-thon for cancer research? Both serve others, both can happen on a Sunday morning. I think the difference is the neighborhood. You might have a friend or a group that goes with you on the walk-a-thon, but in the Neighborhood, you can build a network of people willing to push through to the Next Step. A church mobilizes people in the name of Jesus so that the church may become a sponsoring agency of the next walk-a-thon.

And maybe they can move the time to let more church-goers participate…

There is something else to apostleship. I am a pastor, it is my vocation, it is my call. I am daily trying to do "the Jesus thing." In the church, our members are busy people, busy with their jobs-especially in a time when the job market is so very fragile, busy with families-both the children being raised and the parents watched out for, busy with priorities, with commitments, with all the things that make up life. Many times, those choices are dictated from the outside. The boss, the family, the other thing is the driving force of how time is spent and time is given.

When engaged in an act of ministry, when being an apostle, the member of our Neighborhood has re-prioritized to put their relationship with Jesus on top. Coming to the realization that doing for another person in the name of Christ, for the love of Christ, by the grace of Christ, because you choose to, because you want to, because it is what you believe you do as a good person, a helping person, a saved person, and not because you 'have to' or are obligated to or because it is your turn or your job, I hope you realize that in that moment, to use the language of Scripture, you have been Christ for that other person. It is tough to get your head around that, but a marvel to get your heart around it.

Adoring the Bringer of our faith, learning to bring to others as the Bringer of our faith brings to us, and bringing to others the gifts that we have been brought, that is our purpose as a church. In accomplishing that purpose, we are building up our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God.

Discipleship, the second ship of our church…

It means to be a follower. There is a motor cycle club of that name. It is the designation of three discernable groups in the New Testament who surrounded Jesus. There is a generic designation to all those who followed Jesus. There are the 70 who were 'sent out'. There was the Blessed Dozen, starring with Jesus in a great Leonardo Da Vinci painting of the Last Supper.

It's who we are as we grow for a lifetime in the tutelage of Jesus Christ. When we give our lives to Him, we have entered officially into that covenant of disciple and Rabbi, student and Master, learner and teacher, guided and mentor, those who want to live life as it ought to be lived and the one who has actually done so, by the power of the Living God. To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus. Everything that we learn, from what book has the hymns in it the first time we come to worship, to the stories from the Scripture, to figuring out how to run a bake sale, to recognizing and surrendering sinful practices in our lives, those are all in the Syllabus of "Being a Disciple."

Discipleship follows and grows out of Worship. In Worship, we have stepped into the Light of Jesus. In Discipleship, we step back out and start the process of allowing the Holy Spirit to mold us into reflectors of that light, witnesses of the triumph, evangelizers of a world that needs the healing power of Jesus so badly.

A couple of other 'ships' follow on to Discipleship. I'm thinking of Fellowship and Stewardship. Fellowship is the deliberate mingling and befriending of the others in our Neighborhood of faith. It beings with the passing of peace in church, where we, in an act of worship, reach out to wish the peace of Christ to the rest of our "pew-mates". It continues into larger events, usually involving food, that the church prefers. It may include social contact outside the church 'sphere', sharing time, sharing interests, striking up friendships among the congregation members. We do this to build the neighborhood, to build our contacts in that neighborhood, we do it to create around ourselves a support network of the faithful, recognizing, at the very least, that we are not alone.

Stewardship touches on the Great Idol of our time. Yes, we are created to be stewards of our time and talents to God's service, but the Elephant in the pew is the piece about money. You are a disciple of Jesus? You are growing in the neighborhood you are in? Are you supporting that neighborhood, that church, with your pledges and offerings? Do you truly turn from spending habits on your own life to realizing that if you give 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, God is letting you keep 99%, 98%, 95%, 90%? Or are you uncomfortable with the thought that what we give is a measure of our discipleship of Jesus?

The other 'ship' in Discipleship is "Education-ship". Yah, it doesn't quite fit, but it is the learning component, learning what Scripture says, learning what the church teaches, learning the history we have (so we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes). Maybe 'intern-ship' or 'apprentice-ship' doesn't sound quite so awkward as we keep hammering this metaphor.

But all of it is about becoming more like Jesus.

Worship: Our First Ship…

We were created to glorify God. Simple, end of discussion. To do so is to worship God. Worshipping God is an experience, it is an opportunity, it is to bathe in the Light of the World. We do this thing called worship on Sunday mornings. We get together for an hour, gathering our neighborhood into our sanctuary, and for that time, we go to another place.

That other place is none other than God's presence. To worship is to praise God, is to adore God, is to be in the power of the Living God, is to celebrate the One God, Yahweh, our Father who art in heaven. Ultimately, the description of worship is more metaphor than it is logical progression, more symbolic entry into the divine than it is something we can break down and describe piece by piece. That is because to worship, our eyes must be turned upward. They must be turned to God.

The liturgy of the worship service is designed to keep our eyes on the prize. In worship, we are not trying to solve problems, we are not trying to run programs, we are not trying to build the structure of the church up. Rather, when experienced powerfully in the Spirit, while we worship, we transcend just for a little while. We step out of the mundane world, out of the sinful world, out of the world of pain and destruction, and for a few minutes we are hanging out with the angels. For a few moments, we may just touch the grace of the Almighty.

When we can do that, we have the reason for building our neighborhood in the Kingdom of God. When we have touched the divine, had our eyes opened to something new, taken the focus off ourselves and put onto the author of our creation, we have seen the love and the grace and the blessings and the caring and the perfection that is God. And it something to be anticipated, something to be pursued, something to be experienced, in body, soul, mind, spirit, emotions, holistically.

Sunday morning can be the time to charge your batteries for the week ahead, fill up at the pump of Living Water, build you up on Sunday so that you can face Monday. To work best, it doesn't just happen on Sunday. What happens on Sunday, the corporate gathering of the people of God, is the BIG ONE. But each of us, in our own lives, daily can worship the Living God, touch the perfection of heaven, and bask in the Light of the World.

This happens in devotional times that we set aside for God each day, times of reading God's word, coming to the Lord in prayer, communing with our Father. In those moments, we pursue individually what we celebrate all together on Sunday morning.

It starts with those delightful words, Let us worship the Living God…