Lecture 8 Trust us with Your Story


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TRUST US WITH YOUR STORY This morning I want to talk with you about several things as we conclude our series, No Time to Be Timid – several things that aren’t all that related. But that I feel a need to say. Here’s the first. 1. WITHIN THE CHURCH WE MUST CONTEND FOR THE FAITH You’ve heard me say over the past seven sessions that we will redeem the culture not by screaming louder but by serving more. And before I’m done today, I’m going to drive that home one last time. But I want to take a minute and talk to you about the battle that’s going on in the church. I’ve spoken to you about this a bit and I have told you that all of the mainline churches have changed their views on sexuality from what the Bible clearly teaches to a more progressive view. The largest Lutheran and Presbyterian denominations and the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists now all marry gay couples and ordain practicing homosexuals. But the reality is that we are divided on more important, essential beliefs. One is whether the Bible God’s word. The pastor of our largest UM congregation has written a book where he says that you can place what the Bible teaches into three buckets.

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1. Parts that have always been true and are true today. 2. Parts that once were true but no longer are. 3. Parts that never were true and still aren’t. Believe it or not, he’s not considered a liberal. He’s considered a centrist. Many years ago now, a UM pastor stood on the floor of General Conference and said, “We don’t go back to the Bible for the last word on anything.” Believe 2 Timothy 3.16-17: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Believe that and you are a right winger, a conservative, a fundamentalist or some other terrible thing. Is Jesus the way and the truth and the life? Is John 14.6 true? John 14.6: Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus necessary for our salvation? You might think that even if nonchristians disagreed with that statement, Christians would be able to agree on that one. Not so. Story about episcopal candidate Believe it or not, it’s very common for UM pastors to say Jesus is my way, but who am I to say he’s THE way for other people. Remember earlier that I quoted a past president of one of our UM seminaries where he said that if you feel a need to evangelize persons of other faiths, you don’t understand what it means to follow Jesus.

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Can the Bible be trusted to tell us the mind of God because it is God-inspired? Or are we free to dismiss the parts we find offensive? Is Jesus the Son of God, the Savior of the world and Lord of all? Or is he a good teacher who tells us some important truths about God but is no different really than Mohammed or Buddha? These are bedrock issues. Not as foundational, but shocking nevertheless. One of our bishops has appointed one of our pastors, Laura Young, to be the director of the Ohio chapter of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The RCRC is a radical pro-abortion group that supports abortion for any reason – including after the fact birth control, gender selection, or a couple not wanting a child with Down Syndrome – and at any time including late term and partial birth abortion. Regardless of whether you think there are ever circumstances that justify abortion, I hope you are scandalized as I am that a United Methodist pastor has been appointed to be the director – this is her full time ministry – of a group that teaches that any abortion committed for any reason at any time is a choice that can be celebrated and blessed by a United Methodist pastor. And blessed is not too strong a word. picture of article http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/10/08/3710251/clinic-blessing-ohio/ Here’s an article from the liberal news site Think Progress which reports that Rev. Young and other clergy are going to bless an abortion clinic.

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How we respond to nonbelievers who are lost and how we respond to persons within the church who are distorting the faith and causing others to follow a false Christianity is very different. Jude 1.3-4: Dear friends, … I (feel) compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals … have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

What are we told to do? Contend for the faith. And what were the issues Jude was most concerned about? Sexual immorality and Jesus Christ being proclaimed as Lord. Do we love nonbelievers who think our views are wrong? Do we love believers who are struggling to understand the truth and have ideas that are wrong? Do we love and accept people who know what is right but are having a hard time changing their lives and living that way? Yes, yes, and yes. But when church leaders are teaching what is false and promoting doctrines that undercut what God has revealed to be true and when these are not small, peripheral matters – it’s no time to be timid. It’s a time to contend for the faith. Look at this passage. In this part of the book of Revelation the risen Jesus is speaking to the church in Thyatira. Jesus begins by praising the church for its love and faith. But then he continues:

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Revelation 2:20-21: Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.

The church’s leaders are not engaged in false teaching – that’s not the accusation. The charge is: they tolerate it. They allow it to occur. They act like it’s no big deal. We can tolerate and love sinful, mixed-up, messed up people. We can and we should. But we cannot tolerate false teaching by church leaders. We cannot be silent when leaders in the church promote doctrines that deny who Christ is, that teach that the Bible is not God’s inspired word, and that lead people into immorality. We must contend for the faith. Y’all know this is what I try to do on a national level with Good News. I fight this battle not just because I love the United Methodist Church, but because I believe the truth matters. What God has done for a world that is lost, what he has revealed about himself, the truth that leads people to faith and eternal life, the truth that tells us how to live lives that are righteous and please God, I believe that truth matters. It matters more than or how the stock market is doing, or how much I have in my retirement account, or where I’m going on vacation next summer or whether I am tired and weary.

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When it comes to relating to nonbelievers and young believers, you’re going to find me incredibly gracious, patient and loving. But when it comes to fighting for the truth of the Gospel within the church against those who would pervert the truth, I pray to God you will find me contending for the faith, strong, vocal, unbending and as far from timid as heaven is from hell. GC Second unrelated thought. 2. WITH OUR CHILDREN WE MUST ILLUSTRATE THE FAITH The culture is changing. But you can remember what it was like when people believed there was such a thing as moral truth, when being tolerant didn’t mean having to accept and celebrate every decision everyone makes, and when God told us who we should be and we weren’t so arrogant as to tell God who he should be. But your children and grandchildren have never known that world. A postmodern culture that teaches all spiritual truths and moral choices are equally valid – that world doesn’t feel strange to your kids. It feels normal. It feels right. It feels like home because it’s what they get from the tv shows they watch, the entertainers they like, and the schools that many of them attend. Somewhere down the line, they are going to have a moment of truth.

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They will have to decide between the faith you hold to and you have tried to teach them vs. the way everyone else thinks and makes decisions. It will be important that they know what we Christians believe and why. If you’re getting one of the books we offered last week and you have kids, share some of what you’re reading and learning. It will help you understand it better, it will help prepare your child for what lies ahead, and it will help you begin having spiritual conversations with your child. All good and important. But, they will be a part of the “I need to see it to believe it” generation. And they had better see it in you. One thing most people believe about Christians is that we are supposed to love our neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give water to the thirsty, care for the sick. And when you tell your kids that the Christian faith is the truth and their friends and their teachers and their professors tell them it’s not, they are going to think not just about what you said you believed but how you lived. And they have every right to do so. Timothy was Paul’s son in the faith. A young man when Paul wrote to him. 2 Timothy 3.14-15: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

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Continue in the faith you have become convinced is true. Remember what the Scriptures teach. And what? Remember those whom you learned the truth from. What difference does that make? When you’re young and the world tells you that you’re wrong to look to religion for answers and you’re foolish to deny yourself what everyone else is giving into, what you saw in the lives of the ones who taught you the faith will make a great difference. Your parents, your youth pastor, the men in your church, what did their lives look like? Did you see the faith producing integrity and compassion and care for the least and the last and the lost? When others tell you that Christians are intolerant and hateful, are you able to remember a father who cared for the poor and showed you that following Jesus means helping those in need? Here’s a clip from Religulous, Bill Maher’s attack on faith. clip: Religulous My answer is: Bill, my friend, if you think that believing the world is going to end keeps you from helping others, you just aren’t very well versed in history.

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Who has fed more starving people, built more hospitals, drilled more water wells in the developing world, and brought more medical care to the most desperate places on earth, atheists or Christians? Who gives more to charity? Who’s underneath the overpasses of Houston every night, giving out sandwiches? Who’s running the Star of Hope mission for the homeless and the Salvation Army’s efforts to care for the poor and the addicted? Atheists or Christians? Who’s in the prisons and jails, caring for men and women who have done terrible things and who often have had terrible things done to them when they were young? Who will you find more often in our inner cities telling poor people and people of color that they possess inherent worth? Who fought to end slavery and to reform child labor laws in the past? Atheists or Christians? Guys, you and I know the answers to those questions. But your kids won’t – unless they see it in the people who are teaching them the faith. And that’s supposed to be you. I want to encourage you to be active in your children’s lives. And in your grandchildren’s lives. And I want you to teach them by your example, and by taking them along with you, that Christians are not who the culture says we are. We are the ones who love and care. We are able to be people of conviction and compassion.

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We don’t yell, scream or attack. We love and serve and care about those that no one else does. Find some way to serve – here locally or on a family mission trip. And do it with your children. What will your child think of when he or she remembers those who taught him or her the faith? What they remember will make it easier or harder for them to hold onto the faith and remain true to Jesus. Children 930 3. WITHIN THE CULTURE WE MUST BE SERVANTS I’m going to beat this drum one more time. Some of you have heard something similar to what I’m about to say. The Christian faith was born in Palestine, modern day Israel. It spread into other parts of the Roman empire, first when Christians fled Palestine to escape being persecuted by other Jews who were scandalized by their claim that a man executed by a foreign power was their Messiah. But in a relatively short time, believers purposefully took the faith throughout the empire to fulfill the commission Jesus had given them to take the Good News to all nations. When early Christians stepped into the Roman world they encountered a culture that was the antithesis to all they believed.

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Power, not servanthood, was the highest value. Hedonism and promiscuity, not restraint and faithfulness, were accepted as the norm. Life was cheap. Slavery was ubiquitous, with slaves having no rights. Children born deformed or weak or even female could be discarded in Roman society, left exposed to the elements to die of starvation, freeze to death or be mauled and eaten by wild beasts. And those who first accepted the Christian faith and hoped to change the culture were often poor and uneducated, lacking influence, and without power. And yet, three centuries after it began as a Jewish sect in faraway Palestine, the Roman Emperor Constantine announced his conversion. And before the year 400, Christianity had become the official religion of the Empire, embraced, some estimates state, by nearly half of its inhabitants. How had a despised sect, with no political power, that appealed at first primarily to the poor and the uneducated, born far from the center of power and culture, that was persecuted severely, and that worshipped a crucified Messiah – how did that lowly band so change the hearts and minds and eventually the culture of people who were cynical, promiscuous, and arrogant?

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Simply put, they lived the way Jesus lived, they loved the way Jesus loved, they served the way Jesus served, and when persecuted, they died the way Jesus died, praying for the forgiveness and the salvation of those who had ordered their deaths. And over time the Romans came to see that the way of life of the early Christians was simply – better and it could make them better, and they came to believe that the most outlandish thing was true – God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, offering real life to all who would repent and believe. How did the early Christians love and serve? The deformed and unwanted babies, left to die, female babies unwanted and discarded because of their gender so much so that there were three boys for every two girls in Roman families, Christians would go into the woods and find those abandoned children and raise them as their own. In times of plague, the Romans commonly abandoned their relatives at the first sign of illness, even pushing them into the streets before they died, in hopes of escaping the disease themselves. Not so the Christians, who not only cared for their own but they also took in unbelieving neighbors and strangers, caring for them, many themselves as a result contracting the disease and dying.

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They provided food and assistance to the poor regardless of their faith, and to both sexes, though Roman welfare was given only to males. They were faithful to their wives and kind to their children. And in the midst of the decadence and the cynicism and the hedonism of Rome, and the emptiness and the loneliness it leaves within the human heart, the Christian way, the way of compassion and purity and service looked like life, real life, a superior kind of life. And what was once despised became treasured. And the foolish One crucified in weakness and shame on a cross, became adored as Lord of all, God in the flesh. And a culture was changed. I think you could make the case that the Christian conversion of the Roman empire is the most incredible sociopolitical event that has occurred in the course of human history. We live in a culture that is cynical, materialistic and hedonistic, that deems human life cheap, and that is as empty and as lost as Rome in the time of Jesus. And what will gain its attention and grab its heart are people of God who live for the highest purposes and who care for the lowest of people.

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How will we change our culture? Not by screaming louder, but by serving more. Not by condemnation and criticism, but by kindness and compassion. Not by telling others how they should live, but by showing others what it means to be truly alive, loving the Lord our God with all we are and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Find a way to serve the last, the least and the lost – because Jesus told you to and because ultimately that’s how our culture can be redeemed. I’m now going to attempt something that I don’t know I can pull off. I want to set up a scene for you and then share how it can be a picture of how we can engage our lost culture. The scene is from a movie called Saving Mr. Banks, directed by John Lee Hancock, who grew up on the same street, four houses down from me in Texas City, and attended the Baptist church in town and later received two degrees at Baylor. When Randall Wallace, who is a Christian and who wrote Braveheart, was here, he told me that Johnny, as we knew him, attended the same church he did. Johnny also wrote and directed The Blind Side. Saving Mr. Banks is the story of how the movie Mary Poppins was made by Walt Disney. Picture: Mary Poppins Disney’s children loved the Mary Poppins books when they were young, and he promised them that he would make a Mary Poppins movie.

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For twenty years he pursued the author, P. L. Travers, but she rebuffed all of his overtures. Finally, when her books had stopped selling and she needed money, she agreed to fly to LA from London to see if Disney’s plans for the movie were in any way agreeable to her. Mrs. Travers, is not mean, but difficult in just about every way. She is proud, independent, standoffish, certain that she is always right, insists on things being done her way, and very willing to make you aware of how foolish and ridiculous you are. Here’s her first reading of the proposed script to give you a little feel. Clip: 26.10-27.47 Her demands grow more and more difficult. Dick Van Dyke is not to be in the film. Nor does she want the color red to appear in the movie. There is to be no animation and the film must not be a musical. Ultimately, she leaves in a huff, flies back to England, and refuses to give Disney the rights to make the film. Disney, who enjoys life and who delights in bringing joy to others both in his films and at Disneyland, the happiest place on earth, cannot comprehend why he cannot reach Mrs. Travers.

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Then he learns something that changes everything. Clip: 1.35.20-52 He’s been talking to the wrong person. Remember how we said last week that to reach secular people we must understand them and like them. We must know who they are or we’ll be talking to the wrong person. And we’ll approach them in the wrong way. Throughout the movie, scenes are interlaced from P L Travers’ childhood – her real name being Helen Goff. I wish I had time to show you some. Her father, Travers Goff, she has taken his first name as the last name in her pseudonym, P L Travers, her father is a man that she adores. He possesses what he describes as a Celtic soul, and he tells Helen that she possess the same. It’s an ability to see what others don’t, live with a spirit of adventure, and see the wonder of creation wherever you look, and imagine how the world might be, how it should be. And as a little girl she tells her father, “I want to be just like you.” But he is also an alcoholic who finds it hard to keep a job as a bank manager. She and her sister are raised in Australia because he has become unemployable in England.

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Her father ill, her mother depressed and lost, the children relatively unattended, an aunt comes to be the nanny, promising that she will fix everything. Helen’s father dies shortly thereafter at the age of 43. Quick scene when she learns that her father has died. Clip: 1.36.27-1.37.28 With the death of her father, she loses her connection to a world of wonder and beauty, the world the way she believed it could be. Her father promised earlier in the film, never to leave her but now he’s gone. And she lives with that loss and disappointment. And the nanny who has come as her savior, proclaiming that she would fix everything, has failed to save what matters most to her. And she is lost. Back to P L Travers all grown up after she has flown back to England, only to have a most unexpected visitation. This will help you to understand the scene. Mrs. Travers has created the character of Mary Poppins to be the nanny in the lives of the Banks children – get it – the father figure in her books is Mr. Banks; her father in real life worked in a bank –

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Mary Poppins in her books is that nanny who has come to save not only the children but Mr. Banks himself, and to do what her nanny in real life could not do. Mary Poppins is her fictitious attempt to create someone who can bring order to the lives of the Banks children and at the same time keep her father, her hope for a better life full of wonder and grace and beauty, alive. Note her reaction when she sees Disney at the door. Her words convey what she does not truly understand. This is a divine encounter, her salvation draweth nigh. But don’t think of Disney as God but as us – trying to bring the presence of God into the lives of others who have been hurt and disappointed by the world that has promised them so much Long scene with some edits for time’s sake. 1.38.27 (door opens) – 1.38.48 (“… tea right now.”) 1.39.30 (pouring tea) – 1.40.53 (“… but Walt Disney.”) 1.41.11 – 1.41.28/29 (I’ve been wracking … I have my own Mr. Banks.”) 1.41.46 (“Ever been to KC …”) – 1.46.26 (“… will be saved.” Her face) Here’s what we can learn from this scene. 1. We must understand the people we want to reach. And the most important thing to understand is that everyone carries something. A loss, a hurt, a broken dream. Guilt, emptiness, loneliness.

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And on top of their personal stories, the culture that has promised so much – salvation through technology, pleasures, possessions and experiences, has failed to fulfill them. Mary Poppins, the savior Mrs. Travers has created for others, hasn’t saved her. Mary Poppins is fictitious, an imaginary creation, a hope and a wish that has never come true. Life has disappointed people in our culture. They have experienced all that this world has to offer and are left wondering is this all there is. People may appear to be P L Travers, proud and together, but inside there is Helen Goff, who hurts inside, who feels like she has lost something, and who wonders why life is not what it once promised it would be. 2. We must remember our own stories. Disney connects with Mrs. Travers when he remembers his Mr. Banks, his own hurt and disappointment. He remembers his story. And instead of thinking, look what I did with my life, I found a way to be successful and happy, so should everyone else; he remembers how hard his life once was and it causes him to feel compassion for someone he once saw as a problem.

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To reach people we must be with people. Not over people, not against people, but with people, regardless of whether they are where we think they should be. We are all human. We all have a story. We are all in this thing called life, with its wonders and its horrors, we are all in it together. And our faith in Jesus should not make us identify with lost people less, but more. I love the fact that he sees the good in her. You must have loved your father a lot. You must have admired him greatly. We can, we should see lost people – the good that’s in their lives, how hard they have tried – we should see that and honor that. And we should tell them the good that we see in them. 3. We must care about their story. Disney asks Mrs. Travers to give him her story. That’s what the whole movie is about – Disney convincing her that he can be trusted with her story. And that’s what we are asking people. Trust us with your story, trust us to help you write a different ending. And you don’t get that kind of trust by telling people how badly they have lived.

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You do that by caring enough about their story that you want their hopes and their dreams and their world to be redeemed. You do that when you want the things they care about most in life to be honored and saved. Trust us – when we point people to Jesus, that’s what we’re asking them to do. Trust us; we will not disappoint you. Trust us with your story, we will help you rewrite it and make it, with God’s help, maybe not perfect, but better, good – a story of redemption and hope. 4. We must persevere. Disney pursued Mrs. Travers for 20 years. Every year for 20 years he asked her for the rights to her story. It took him twenty years before he understood her and could ask in a way that would speak to her heart. And it took her that long to trust him. Some people, and certainly this culture, it will take a long time to reach. But lost people, and this lost world, including our lost culture, they matter to God.

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And so they must matter to us, and we must persevere in caring for them even if we are rebuffed and misjudged. This is no time to be timid. It’s time to stand up for our faith unafraid and unashamed. But it’s also no time to be timid in loving those who are lost in a world that has promised so much and given so little. We must fight for them and care for them, and love them with strength and courage and a willingness to sacrifice ourselves for their salvation.