pastor steve: February 2009

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Fight for grace over shame (Revelation 3:14-22)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 22, 2009

I am going to continue to tackle hypocrisy, the disconnection in knowing the biblical truth and not living it out consistently and faithfully. One of the traps of hypocrisy is the way we deal with shame.

1. When you compensate shame with hiding, shaming and blaming…

When I was a teenaged boy, I begin to notice a trend in my family. Each moving led us to a smaller home, going from a four bedroom house with a second floor balcony with nice big front garden, to a three bedrooms condo, and finally to a basement unit with two bedrooms shared by a mother, a grandmother, and three teens with an outdoor bathroom with no seat.

Along with this downgrading trend in housing, I also noticed a trend of diminishing number of friends who came to my home and diminishing disclosure about my family to my friends. An absence of my father who lived in the U. S., poorer living arrangements, my mom working so hard to make ends meet running a tinny bar serving barbeque chicken as anju for Korean soju and beer, I didn’t share what was going on with my family to anyone, not even to my close friends. God knows how much I loved my mom, but I wasn’t too keen on talking about what she did for living.

Shame is a powerful force that affects the fabric of human relationships. There is this subtle difference between guilt and shame. While Guilt is judicial in character, shame is relational.[1] Or, put it another way, I quote, “While guilt occurs when an absolute standard is violated, shame occurs in a relational context.”[2] Shame can be caused by guilt, but it doesn’t always. Did I feel shame because I did something wrong and caused hardships in my family? No, I felt shame not because I did anything wrong but because the image of my family didn’t seem to fit an image of a good and socially acceptable family. So, I remember growing up feeling shame about my family and even myself. So, I hid it. I did it very well.

Then, there is a way of relating to others through shaming. Often parents are masters at this sadly. You give a child this look of disappointment, rolling of eyes, shaking your head side to side, or yell at him in front of the whole world with your disapproval and disdain. It is to convey a clear message to a child that his behavior is embarrassing to parents and to him and this is the reason why he should stop behaving badly. When we learn to deal with shame caused by wrongdoings in healthy ways, it will result in doing what’s right for the sake of living with integrity and clear conscience.

But, shaming is an unhealthy and destructive way of dealing with shame. Shaming conditions us to avoid doing things that might bring shame to our family and us. So, if you grew up in shaming culture, you might have become very good at avoiding getting caught doings things that may shame and embarrass your parents and yourself; and if you are good at learning and excel in school, yours parents would love you and you feel like you are doing just fine, but beneath the iceberg of appeasing your parents, you are blinded to your ugliness. If you are not good at school, then, you live with this nagging feeling of shame; and you are convinced you are no good. This is what shaming does.

Another unhealthy, sinful response to shame is blaming. Consider Adam and Eve. When they didn’t listen to God, but instead trusted the serpent’s lies, they experienced shame which was good thing. If they didn’t feel bad about not trusting God and breaking trust with him, what we have here is two sociopaths. No, their initial sense of sin, shame over their guilt of distrusting God was good thing. The problem was not they felt shame, but how they responded to their shame. When they heard the sound of the LORD approaching them, in Genesis 3:9 we see them responding to their shame by hiding from God. That’s what sin does; we hide from God. When God confronted Adam and Eve about their sins, they didn’t come out clean with sincerity and remorse and shame, instead Adam blamed Eve and God for his sin, Eve blamed serpent for her sin (Genesis 3:11-13). Instead of dealing with their legitimate shame over guilt, they hid from God, shamed and blamed each other; their interest was not dealing with their own sins, but saving face.

Here are “Signs of Toxic Shame in Us” according to Paul Tokunaga.[3]

When someone tells us, “What a great job you did!” we fire back, “No, no, I messed up with several parts of it.”
When our personal piety seems “too good to be true” to others because it probably is. There is no shame that our “spiritual cosmetics” attempts to hide our true spiritual condition.
When we are reluctant to talk candidly about our family, especially our relationship with our parents.
When we have a hard time looking our spiritual leaders in the eye.
When admittance to grad school at Cal or the University of Michigan or Columbia feels like a rejection of our personhood because Harvard and Stanford turned us down.
When our public prayers are “I’m such a warm” offerings: filled with remorse, guilt, shame, and total unworthiness. Translation: “How can God stand me? He probably can’t.”
When there is a reluctance to “own” our ethnicity. “I’m American (period, end of conversation, how’s the weather?).”

In the domain of relationship, we need to watch out for the temptation to deal with shame by hiding, shaming and blaming others to save our own face.

2. Acknowledge your legitimate shame over your crucified and buried flesh of sin.

There are ways to ensure we don’t become subject to toxic shame of hiding, shaming and blaming.

First, we need to learn to acknowledge our legitimate shame. Jesus said in Revelation 3:16, “So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold- I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” What is that lukewarmness that Jesus was so bothered by and couldn’t stand it? It’s hypocrisy of disconnection between what we know as truth and how we do not live it out consistently and faithfully. We need to acknowledge the legitimate shame over hypocrisy of disconnection.

Laodicea was famous for being important center of trade and communication. Its wealth came from the manufacturing a high quality of glossy black wool. And, it was also a famous for what was known as “Phrygian powder,” with potency to cure eye defects.[4] Wealth, fashion, and medicine… they seemed to have it all. What else did they need? Indeed, many lived as though they needed nothing else. When you live this way, you are going to be prayerless and dry because you lack sense of need before God.^{^[5]}

But, Jesus broke news to them. “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Some of you may say, “Well, this isn’t something I struggle with since I already feel like a worm and worthless.” I want you to know that there is a real difference between acknowledging legitimate shame and feeling sorry for yourself. Acknowledging legitimate shame requires seeing your self at the cross, where Jesus crucified your worthless self with him, put it to death; it requires you to see your own self remain dead at the tomb where Jesus was buried. Thereby, it seeks to understand your self having no power to govern or rule you any longer. What you have is the habits and memories of sins that must remain dead. But, self pity, feeling sorry for yourself, refuses to see your self crucified at the cross and buried at the tomb.

Ken Fong says this about healthy shame: “Healthy shame is an intermittent, proper awareness of being a limited flawed human being. It leads to the acknowledgement of your need for help from a higher power. It is the source of creativity. It is the core of true spirituality. It is the healthy sense of sin that led many of the tax collectors and prostitutes to Jesus to receive forgiveness.[6]”

How do we deal with hypocrisy of disconnection? We deal with it by going back to the cross and to the tomb and seeing our self crucified and buried, remained dead. There at the cross, at the tomb, we need to see with clear judgment the ugly and hopelessly dark and evil, completely bankrupt, wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked flesh of sin.

3. Fight to respond to Jesus who pursues relationship with you.

When you take each daily moment to see with clear judgment and with honesty your crucified and buried sinful flesh, it is then time to fight for relationship with Jesus.

Jesus said in Revelation 3:18, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

Whether you wake up from engrossed in the false promise of wealth, fine fashion and health to satisfy you or wake up from lost in self-pity of rejecting Jesus’ death on the cross for you, the battle that you must fight is fighting for relationship with Jesus.

Jesus says, “You don’t need to hide in shame any more. You don’t need to shame others or blame others any more. Look at the cross where I died, look at the tomb where I died, your shame is crucified, buried, and remain dead. Come to me because it is I who can cover your shameful nakedness.

Jesus says in Revelation 3:19, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Jesus doesn’t stop at dealing with our shame by covering our shameful nakedness with his death. That’s not the end goal he had in his mind when he took up the cross and died. He wants to go further. He wants to dine with you. He wants relationship with you. He pursues you. Do you know that he’s been pursuing you? Do you know that he’s been knocking at your door? Do you hear his voice calling your name? If you would acknowledge your shame at the cross, at the tomb, there you will hear the knocking from your Savior and there you will hear his voice calling you.

[1] biblical theology shame

[2] Stan Inouye, The True Samurai of God: Christ, the Cross and Culture, The Kaki See, winter 1984, p. 1.

[3] Paul Tokunaga, Invitation to Lead, IVP, 2003, p. 42.

[6] Kenneth Vyeda Fong, Isights for Growing Asian-American Ministries, Rosemead, California, Evergrowing, 1990, p. 95.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Fight for brutal honesty about yourself (Romans 7:24)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 15, 2009

Last several weeks, I’ve been exploring the ways to fight against the disconnection between what we know to be true and how we live it out. It is a fight against hypocrisy. Today, I want to explore with you how learning to be brutally honest about ourselves lays down a firm foundation to fight against the rampant and insidious poison of hypocrisy.

1. Fight against feel good psychology of building up self-esteem.

I picked up a book this past week by Don Matzat, titled Christ-Esteem and subtitled Where the Search For Self-Esteem Ends. As the title and the subtitle suggest, the author seeks to establish the biblical case against self-esteem while affirming Christ-esteem. Self-esteem is looking inwardly to find solutions to problems in life while Christ-esteem is looking to Jesus as the solution to our problem and learning to love, adore, respect, honor and prize Jesus.

For now, let seek to understand why we need to fight against the feel-good psychology of self-esteem.

Self-esteem is about finding oneself and feeling good about self by improving one’s self image through positive-thinking and affirming self worth.

When I was a ninth grader in Korea, my best friend’s home room teacher established a ritual that could be heard through the walls of many classes. Every morning, and throughout each school day, this teacher would have all his students stand up and recite aloud in unison this phrase countless times, “나는 할수있다,” “I can do it.” By repeating this phrase 10, 20, 30 times and more day after day, week after week, through the whole school year, this teacher sought to raise positive and self confident thinkers who can positively solve all problems. I don’t know how much change took place because this teacher’s effort to boost the self esteem of his students. I did see my friend improving academically and in his leadership. Things got little confusing since this teacher reinforced his students’ positive thinking with fear of punishment from him for their substandard performance.

Here is my point. If I can achieve self-confidence and positive self image about myself and begin to really like myself and love myself, and be able to tackle life’s problems in stride, would I need Jesus after all? If I can become a good person simply by way of disciplined positive-thinking, telling myself, “I can be good, come on! I am going to be good because I can,” would I need Jesus?

Let’s be honest! We’ve all done this, haven’t we? Haven’t we tried really hard to fight off temptations that are common to us all and temptations that each of us find uniquely more vulnerable to than other temptations? We’ve peppered our earnest effort with good dose of positive thinking, “Oh, I can do this,” but only to find, “I cannot do this.” And, we find our expression in Paul’s words in Romans 7:18-19, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing.”

If we could ever succeed in improving ourselves enough to be righteous by beefing up our self-esteem through thinking positively about our ability to be good, then Christ would have died in vain. Paul said in Galatians 2:21, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Christ died precisely for our utter inability to gain righteousness by trying to be good, to get better and to improve.

So, building up self-esteem, feeling good about yourself by boosting your own confidence through the self talk, “I can do it” may lead you to feeling good about yourself. But, when the moment of good feelings passes, you end up crawling right back down to the cycle of shame and guilt and increasing disconnection between what you know and how you live. Building strong self-esteem, self-confidence cannot take out the poison of hypocrisy. It only leads you to further shame, guilt and despair.

2. Fight for brutal honesty with yourself; you were the problem.

To detoxify the poison of hypocrisy, we don’t need to waste our time trying to like ourselves more, love ourselves more; building self-esteem only takes us further away from the solution to the problem. If you are serious about dealing with the poison of hypocrisy, if you are serious about demolishing the gap between the truth and the practice, then what you need is a real solution. And, the Bible teaches no other solution than Jesus Christ.

So, here is the game plan. If Jesus is the solution, we need to make sure we frame our lives so that we go to Jesus who is our solution. We need to fight against anything that would prevent us from drawing near to Jesus. We begin by naming the illusive danger of seeking to bolster our own self esteem.

What we need is to move away from being self-sufficient person with strong self-esteem to move towards growing in Christ-esteem that is finding our confidence, self worth, self-image, self-value in Jesus alone.

But, to move from self esteem to Christ esteem, from self-confidence to Christ-confidence, you and I need to learn to be brutally honest with ourselves, that we were the problem. Apostle Paul talked honestly about himself as being the problem in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Let me explain this by telling you about a leaky ceiling in my house.

Some of you know that our living room ceiling has been leaking since last September. Whenever it rains heavy, or heavily accumulated snow starts to melt, water starts to collect above the ceiling and soaks through ceiling materials and leaks.

Last year, a patch of roof was replaced, it didn’t work. Lately, the effort has been to seal off the roof with tar stuff. Well, it still leaks. The patch work and the application of tar stuff have not worked because the problem is extensive.

I have this suspicion that the few hundred dollars of patch work and applying tar here and there will not solve the problem. Why? The problem is not about the little cracks and holes here and there. The problem is the roof. The roof itself has reached the point where no amount of small temporary fixes will be able to reverse its fate. The house needs a whole new roof because the current roof is the problem.

You and I were like my roof. We think that Jesus died to take care of the little cracks and holes of problems and sins here and there. We think that little bit of the blood of Jesus and his death would do to cover our problems and sins. But, the truth is Jesus didn’t leave the Father’s side to come down, to dwell with us, to suffer unjustly, to walk to the cross, to lay down his body to be crucified, to shed his blood, to be raised up on the cross, to hang on it and to lay down his life just because we had little problems and sins for him to deal with. The reality is that we were in much deeper trouble than my roof that needs to be replaced with the new one. We were more like a condemned house that needed to be bulldozed to make a way for a completely new house.

The truth is Jesus did what he did not because I had few problems, but because I was the problem.

Don Matzat wrote, “We erroneously believe that God is in the repair business; that he compassionately repairs human lives like a friendly father fixing his children's broken toys. We make up a list of our specific problems and go about seeking the Lord for specific solutions, but nothing ever gets checked off the list and it seemingly never ends.”[1]

Until I come to understand that I was the problem, I will not fully know that Jesus was, is and will be the solution for me, the problem. Unless I descend as Paul did to consider his life as wretched, whatever was to his profit to consider loss for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:7), to consider them rubbish in order to gain Christ and be found in him (Philippians 3:8), I am only dealing with the surface of the problem, just the tip of the iceberg.

I was the problem that could not be fixed or repaired into a good shape with just few patch works here and there. I was the problem that needed to be crucified with the Lord, to be put to death. And, now it is not this crucified self, but the new me hidden in Christ that lives following his resurrection from the dead and ascending with Jesus to be seating at the right hand of God.[2]

And, this is why Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

My old self crucified no longer lives. This is why trying to build on our old self through building self-esteem makes no sense. It is like digging the grave and exhume the dead body hoping to revive it back to life, to repair it back to the old shape of life. God is not in the business of repairing our old condemned self. But, God is in the business of raising people who are in Christ, his Son, who find Jesus as their esteem, their confidence, their honor, their adoration, their hope, their everything, and their salvation and who will inherit his righteousness, his holiness, his joy and his peace.

Here is the tricky part about our old self. Paul says in Colossians 3:5, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature [that is the old self crucified and put to death]: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”

Some one said, “The old life is dead; they must let it die.”[3] Although our old self was put to death with Jesus when he was crucified, the habits of sin die very slowly. Another scholar illustrates this by likening believers to immigrants who have moved to new country. In this new country with new culture, new way of living, immigrants have not yet become adapted to the new ways of life.[4] Or, another image would be to likening to a person who gets his finger stuck and drawn between rollers of a giant machine. “Another minute and he will be flattened to a shapeless bloody mass. He catches up an axe lying by and with his own arm hacks off his own hand at the wrist… It is not easy nor pleasant, but it is the only alternative to a horrible death.”[5]

When you and I see the habits of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed creeping back from the old self that has been crucified, we are to be brutally be honest with ourselves and declare, “I was the problem, and I was crucified with Jesus, and the old me that was put to death on the cross with the death of Jesus, must remain dead.

Whenever we allow the old self, the problem that was slayed on the cross with Jesus back to new life hidden now in Jesus, it is like living the old movie, Night of the Living Dead.

When we recognize that we were the problem, and our old self, the problem had to be crucified with Jesus on the cross, now when we see the old habits creeping back to the stage of our new life with Jesus, we now have only one thing to do. Show no mercy to the habits of sin and do whatever it takes to let them remain dead.

3. Conclusion

Paul after recognizing he was the problem when he said in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He answers his own question in Romans 7:25, “Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

When we remember that our old self has been crucified with Jesus and we now live hidden in Jesus, it makes no sense trying to exhume the old, condemned, expired self by feeding the old habits of sin. When we fight for brutal honesty about our old self, then it only make sense to do all that we can to actively put to death the remnants of old habit of sin. And, it is more than possible in Jesus to put to death that which was already put to death by Jesus.

[1] Don Matzat, Christ Esteem: Where the Search for Self-Esteem Ends, 1990, p. 52.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Fight for change in grace (John 4:1-42)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 8, 2009

This week, I picked up a book titled “Growing Healthy Asian American Churches.” I want to quote from this book for you. It says,

congregations grow most optimally when their explicit (theology, that is proclaimed faith) and implicit theologies (practiced faith) are congruent with one another and thus reinforce one another[1]… when our congregations’ belief and actions mirror one another, when our churches are orthodox and engage in orthopraxis, our churches will continue to grow as healthy households of God.[2]

Along with this book, I just finished reading, “The Emotionally Health Church.” And, here is a quote from the book about the author’s reflection from the movie, “The Apostle” by Robert Duvall. He plays Sonny, a preacher, an evangelist from his boyhood, but terribly marred by his temper, lust, addiction to alcohol, and in rage he killed a man with a baseball.

Sonny, like most of us, is a complex individual. He is a zealous committed Christians whom we admire, and yet he is also terribly inconsistent. Most painful, perhaps, is his lack of awareness of the harm that will come from appearing more than he really is. In some ways he is an imposter. He easily compartmentalizes his faith and spirituality from the totally of his humanity.

Does believing about the right stuffs, orthodox, explicit theology, proclaimed truths get readily translated into the right living, orthopraxis, practiced faith? What we believe and how we live our lives… are they congruent, or is there a gaping disconnection between them? I’ve been doing quite of soul searching lately. This gaping disconnection between what we know as truth and living out this truth, Jesus calls it hypocrisy. When hypocrisy rules, we measure the spirituality with the yard stick of whether we’ve done our quite time, whether we prayed, whether we attend serviced, whether we abstained from the obvious moral failings. We neglect the whole vast domain on how we treat each other, strangers, the poor, the people who are different. When hypocrisy rules, we don’t want to deal with the angry heart that resents, attacks, lying heart that betrays trusts, lusts that erodes purity, the numbed emotions that only gets excited over entertainments. When the gaping disconnection takes place between what we believe and how we live, we would become “disturbed by the thought of an alcoholic, adulterer or exconvict sitting in the pew next to them in Sunday’s worship service,” to quote from Nancy Sguikawa and Steve Wong.[3]

I am asking myself, if God is truly awesome in his incomprehensible love for us in his Son, why isn’t there growing affection for God, why are we not getting restless in growing excitement for him, why are we not zealous and passionate, why are we not jumping up and down and dance like David when the Ark of God returned?

I am convinced that unless I attack this gaping disconnection of head and heart, orthodox and orthopraxis, proclaiming truth and living out truth, we as church will grow dead, we as individual may be nice, but become cynical hypocrites who are no good for the kingdom of God.

So, I’ve been looking for the truth that will help me draw this gaping disconnection of hypocrisy. And the Lord led me to today’s passage. The remedy for hypocrisy, the gaping disconnection of head and heart is to fight for change in grace.

1. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who connects with you.

Imagine sitting next to you now is an alcoholic, sexual addicts, homosexual person, filthy and dirty homeless guy smelling like urine, and imagine your unspoken reactions. In many ways, this is how the Jews felt towards Samaritans.

John 4:9, the Samaritan woman speaks to Jesus about this disparity, distance, disconnection, even hatred, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans)”. Let me speak to the historical background that might help you see this disconnection.

Samaritans were not pure Jews. After the northern kingdom of Israel were conquered & exiled by Assyrians in 722 B.C., Assyrians repopulated the Samaria from all different places. So, purity of Jews ceased to exist, instead Samaritans were the Jewish remnants mixed with Persians and other conquered peoples. By adopting relationships with non-Jews, Samaria also adopted the many practices of paganism. Eventually, Judaism won over the paganistic beliefs and practices, but severely affected their belief system.

Samarians rejected all scripture except Pentateuch that is the first five books of the Old Testament because other books emphasized Judaism centered on Judea and David’s line. Samaritans rejected the worship in Jerusalem, but instead created their own center of worship on Mount Gerizim. By Jesus’ day, a smoldering tension existed between the regions of Judea and Samaria for racial and religious and even political reasons.[4] “Samaritan woman” represented this off shoot of Judaism, hostile to the Jews; Jews too found the Samaritans as appalling moral failures to be shunned away.

And, add to this the culture of Jesus time when it was not common at all for men to speak to women in public, even if they were married, and the absolute taboo for single men to speak to or touch women at any time.[5] What you have is a shocking account of Jesus, a Jew, talking with a Samaritan woman.

This is why John 4:27 says that when the disciples returned, they were surprised to find him talking with a woman.

John 4:6, “Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour,” that is noon. We see a glimpse of Jesus’ humanity here. He got tired just like we get tired. In his humanity seeking for rest from his tiredness turned into the divine moment. He crossed the cultural, religious, political, emotional barbed wires to engage the Samaritan woman, unthinkable to human eyes, but it just the sort of thing Jesus did all the time.

“Will you give me a drink?” Jesus asked in John 4:7. He was countercultural and reached out to the Samaritan woman; and he did it by asking for her help. This is how Jesus began reaching out to the untouchable, through his humility of acknowledging his human need as the Son of God.

This is how Jesus connected in grace counterculturally and humbly!

2. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who gives you the living water.

The Samaritan woman knew all the locations for every water source around Shechem, but here was Jesus talking about “living water.” John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Living water is water that is kept fresh through constant streams of flowing like a spring or river. The Samaritan woman knew that in Shechem there was no fresh living water source with steady streams. That is why going way back even Jacob had to dug well for water (John 4:12).

But, we know that Jesus wasn’t talking about physical living water, but spiritual living water.

Concerning this living water Jesus said in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

What Jesus said about him being the source of this living water is reflected in what God said about himself in Jeremiah 2:13 says, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

The living water is offered to all who are thirsty and it was already envisioned in older days of Isaiah. Isaiah 55:1 says, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the water.” And, Zechariah 14:8, “On that day living water will flow from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western sea, in summer and in winter.”

Jesus picks up the theme of living water again in John 7:37-39, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believed in me, as the Scripture had said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”

It is this constant flow of living water, the Holy Spirit from Jesus, his grace overflowing, the key remedy for the disease of the gaping disconnection of the head and the heart.

3. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who overcomes your shame and isolation.

When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus in John 4:15, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water”, we see that she was thinking literally physical water.

It is interesting that instead of answering her directly that she was mistaking spiritual living water with temporal physical water, he told her to bring her husband. What may have been a benign request since it was a common understanding for a woman to talk with a man only with her husband present, now became a moral probing over her life that has been crippling her with deep spiritual shame and social isolation.

She drew water at noon which was far from the ideal time; early morning or at dusk was when the women came to the well to avoid the Mediterranean heat. In John 4:18, we see Jesus revealing why this woman isolated herself. She was socially stigmatized as morally loosed woman; she had five husbands and the one she was with currently was not even her husband. Ill-informed theology, her immoral lifestyle disconnected from her knowledge of what was right from wrong, her misplaced hope in men… she tried very hard to hold on to these false securities. But, Jesus kindly but firmly dealt with her sins.

But, the heat was too much. The Samaritan woman did what any of us would have done if someone were to encroach into our personal space and yet we don’t want to completely close the door on conversing with this person. Her strategy was to take the focus off herself, and to talk about something else. In her case, she deflected the focus from the reality of her shame filled life of sexual promiscuity and isolation to an impersonal and lofty theological controversy of her days.

John 4:20, the woman deflected Jesus’ omniscient probing eyes; “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” The Samaritans argued for the superiority of worship in Shechem rather than in Jerusalem because they rejected all the books of the Old Testament except the first five books. According to Genesis 12:6-7, it was at the site of great tree of Moreh at Shechem, the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” And, by rejecting the rest of the Old Testament that speaks to God’s choice of Jerusalem for worship and the line of David to rule, the Samaritans legitimized their false worship.

Jesus refuted them by affirming the inadequacy of Samaritan worship in Mount Gerizim because salvation is from the Jews (John 4:22). But, to Jesus this argument over where God should be worshiped either in Jerusalem or in Schechem was irrelevant because worship was no longer restricted to certain places; instead worship was to take place in one’s relationship to Jesus. John 4:23, Jesus said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” The time Jesus referred here is the time of his crucifixion and his resurrection from the dead. His sacrificial death and his rising from the dead was the key pivotal moment in the history where we now get to worship God in Jesus and through the enabling power of the Spirit regardless where we may live.

So, the notion that we only worship on Sunday right now here in the church is misnomer. You are called not only to acknowledge God’s loving rule over you with his Almighty power in this given moment, but in 24/7 anytime, anywhere. This is why we must attack the hypocrisy of reducing worship to the domain of Sunday worship services. It also means we can fight for grace of Jesus who overcomes our shame and isolation without limitation.

The Samaritan woman didn’t grasp the truth about Jesus. So, she tried to deflect him. She said in John 4:25, “I know that Messiah… is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Essentially she was saying to him, “Well, you have very good points, but really the Messiah will decide on who’s right about this.”

The Samaritan woman tried very hard to deflect Jesus from seeing her shame and isolation. But, Jesus already knew. The fact was that he knew her better than she knew herself. Jesus shined his light on her but in shame she sought to isolate herself from him. But, Jesus didn’t pull back. He didn’t give up because he knew that what she really needed was his grace to break her from shame and isolation. So, he declared to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

To a woman who lived with deep shame and lonely isolation, Jesus offered to her his grace to overcome her shame and the power of isolation.

4. Fight for change in grace of Jesus who gives you testimony.

John 4:28 says, “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of the town and made their way toward him.”

She was touched by Jesus. Jesus helped her to move from seeing Jesus as an ordinary Jewish man, countercultural, possessor and dispenser of eternal life, the Messiah. And in Lean Morris’s word, “She abandoned the bringing of water for the bringing of men.”

She went from a woman who lived in isolation poisoned by in shame and guilt to a woman who now invites others to discover the Messiah who knows her so completely. She went from a woman in deep shame who picked the hottest noon time to draw water to isolate herself from the judging eyes to a woman who now was zealous to tell others about the person she met at the well; she met the Messiah who knew everything about her, yet didn’t distance himself, instead drew near to her. Shame and isolation no longer defined her; she was now a transformed, changed woman in grace of Jesus Christ.

This narrative about Jesus and the Samaritan woman is interrupted by the disciples who returned. Jesus told them in John 4:35, “open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” As Jesus was speaking about the plants ready to be harvested at any moment, the Samaritan woman was leading the crowd to Jesus. They were making their way to Jesus because of the testimony of this woman.

What was the effect of her testimony? John 4:38 shows the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” Their faith journey did not stopped here. They believed in Jesus because of her testimony, but later they said to the woman in John 4:42, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

When a person is gripped by grace, giving testimony isn’t done out of obligation, but out of living relationship. In that living with relationship with Jesus, he gives us testimony about him.

Conclusion

Do you have a testimony of what Jesus is doing in your life? Is your gap of disconnection being narrowed? Is Jesus changing you? Let’s fight for change by staying in grace of our Lord Jesus.

[1] Peter Cha, S. Steve Kang & Helen Lee, ed., Growing Healthy Asian American Churches. IVP, 2006, p. 13.

[2] Ibid., p. 14.

[3] Ibid., p. 30.

[4] Burge, Gary M. “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (4:1 – 26)” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: John. By Gary M. Burge, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000. p. 141.

[5] Ibid., p. 142

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Fight to excel in generous giving (2 Corinthians 8:1-15)

Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon February 1, 2009

God’s been incredibly gracious to me these days for capturing my heart and growing it to fight for the faith. There has been this deeper stirring inside of me that says there’s got to be more for my marriage, for my parenting, for my calling as a pastor, for my flock, you guys. So, I’ve been fighting for the things that are worth fighting for with God’s help.

One of the ways I’ve been fighting these days for my marriage is to fight for true fellowship as husband and wife. Biblical fellowship happens when God takes the center stage of our conversations. So, I’ve been sharing intentionally with Lyn what God’s doing in me. And, Lyn’s been doing the same. By sharing deeper about what God is doing in us, we’ve been fighting for authentic fellowship in our marriage.

So, it was during these conversations last couple weeks I shared with Lyn my reflection on what we are missing. What we are missing is the element of living on the edge beyond our comfort zone. Living on the edge as in doing things that are difficult, that requires determination and perseverance and stretch me to the breaking point, that unless I learn to depend on God and unless I learn to walk with God and work with his enabling power, things won’t get done. Am I engaged in the things that will stretch my faith? Am I engaged in the things that will make me uncomfortable because it requires deeper trust in Jesus? Am I engaged in the things that require boldness? Am I engaged in the things that deeply matter to God?

How much boldness, courage, and faith do I need to love myself, pamper myself? Not too much! We don’t need to live on the edge when life is about creating comfortable and exclusive cocoons for ourselves and for the select few individuals we may care. Everybody does that, Christians or not.

But, as Christians, we cannot simply engage in creating comfortable spaces for ourselves. That’s not the way Jesus went about living. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” Now, this is what I am talking about when I speak about living on the edge. Living on the edge that demands boldness, courage, perseverance, patience, deeper trust in God of hope and transformation… living on the edge happens when you and I live beyond the comfort zones of ourselves.

God has highlighted for me last year in the month of December one specific area that he wanted us to work on that will require from us sacrificing our time, effort and money to take care of the poor. Last year, I took Mike, Adelaide and Sarah to a church called, House of Prayer in Chicago. It is a church ministering specifically to homeless people. And, this coming Saturday, we are going to have an opportunity to prepare dinner for about 50 people and bring it to the church to serve the homeless while celebrating God’s grace with them in their vibrant worship service.

God wants us to live counter-culturally. While everyone is scrambling to take care of themselves in recession, we as a church is going to take a baby step to come out of our cocoons to live out God’s love for the poor. It’s going to require generous giving of our time, energy, effort, money and it is going take some good recipes and creativity to serve well.

2 Corinthians 8 & 9 explains what God wants to do through you and me. He wants to raise us to fight for generous giving. In these two chapters, Paul gave reasons why the Corinthians must excel in grace of giving, specifically for the poor living in Jerusalem.

1. Fight to excel in generous giving because God is generous to you.

2 Corinthians 8:9 sums it up for us. God’s call, his expectation, his command to fight for generous giving is based on the reality of what he has done for us through his Son Jesus Christ. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

What is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? It is the fact that although he was rich as God’s Son came down and took on human body, became poor for our sakes, lived as God-Man subjecting himself to humility, suffering and ultimately facing death on the cross and in three days being raised from the dead by God the Father. Jesus did this for our sakes so that we through his poverty become rich.

Some gravely misinterpret and misuse this verse to argue that God wants us to become rich financially. So, they argue that giving gets you rich. But, this is far from the plain teachings of the Scripture. Jesus didn’t die for us so that we can be all rich people. He died for us so that we can live in his grace to be generous giver. The goal is not about getting rich materialistically, but it is about being generous giver out of God’s abundant supply that meet all our needs; it is about being generous giver as Jesus gave up his rich and took on poverty in order to enrich us with spiritual blessings.

I love how God has more than one way to help us understand the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for us. How do we go from the status of being poor, spiritually bankrupted, to being rich, saved and delivered from sins into abundant life of Jesus Christ? We don’t go from being poor to rich by the conventional wisdom of working really hard and saving enough to be rich. No, we go from being broke and destitute, from being nobody to the royal sons and daughters of the Almighty God by trusting in Jesus Christ for forsaking his rich and taking on poverty for us.

And, this work of God in Jesus Christ, this grace is the reason for our generous giving. Because God has given us so much, we as his sons and daughters give much out of God’s abundant blessing. Because God is the generous giver, we fight to excel in generous giving.

2. Fight to excel in generous giving because it is your privilege.

Paul highlighted to the Corinthians about the Macedonian churches to illustrate how generous giving works. Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 8:1 about how the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches manifested in their lives.

Grace of God did two things for them. They were generous out of the most severe trial meaning they didn’t wait until it was safe to give. They were also generous out of their overflowing joy that resulted from their relationship with God. God’s grace enabled them to experience joy and out of this joy, they gave generously.

For Paul, the amount they gave wasn’t important because what mattered to him was how they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability, meaning they gave the maximum they could give and top of that gave even more although it affected them financially. And it was entirely on their own; they weren’t responding out of guilt or grudgingly, but simply in response to God’s abundant grace in Jesus.

Here is what’s remarkable in verse 4, “they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.” They did it not out of guilt, nor grudgingly, but out of their deep conviction that it was their privilege to share for those in need. English Standard Version, translates NIV’s “urgently pleaded” as “begging… earnestly.” Do you get how different this is? When the Christians from the Macedonian churches learned about the poverty of the Jerusalem Christians, they saw it as their problem that must be addressed. It is like us begging the House of Prayer for us to come down and to share meals with them, to have heartfelt fellowship with them, to share what God is doing in us, because we are convinced that it is our privilege to do so.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:8, “I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others.” Paul was not commanding them because giving generously isn’t something that God expects out of us. God does expect us to be generous giver because he is the generous giver. But, what Paul was getting at was the spirit of generous giving that flows out of deep and sincere gratitude and love for God’s grace through his Son Jesus. Paul didn’t want the Corinthians to do merely what they were expected to do as Christians. Paul wanted not just duty, but privilege, thankful delight to meet the needs of others that flows out of living relationship with gracious God.

3. Fight to excel in generous giving through the principle of willing and proportional giving

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:12, “For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.”

The principle of proportional giving is very important. Even in our midst, we have varying degree of income levels. If we were to measure generous giving in terms of dollar amount, whoever gives more would be considered generous giver. But, Paul tells us that this isn’t the way it works. Generous giving is measured by willingness and proportional giving.

In order to give because God is generous to you and to give because it is your privilege to give, it requires your willingness to give. No one needs to compel or motivate to give, to share, because you are more than willing. And, giving proportionally to what you have equals the plain field. It doesn’t matter how much you earn, you can contribute and share meaningfully and generously if you give from what you have. If you have $100 and you need $50 to meet your needs, to give $20 will be giving 20% of what you have. But, if you have $10,000 and need $5000 to meet your needs, to give $500 although so much more than giving $20, it will be only giving 5% of what you have. What counts is how much you give out of what you have that will please the Lord.

Conclusion

I am very excited to see what God’s going to do as we take baby steps out of our comfort zone and live on the edge where we cannot do things on our own, but we must seek God’s grace and work together.

More I explore God’s word, more I become convinced that fight to excel in giving generously to meet the needs of the poor will not only fulfill our duty as Christians, but it is going to revive us because it is going to move our hearts to deeply rejoice in God’s abundant grace, enable willing spirit, deep gratitude and love for God and to give generously.