Person

If you want to be an individual - well, you can do that all by yourself. But, if you want to be a person, you have to be in community. In relationships we are most truly made.

Pastor

Watch the video interview of Eugene Peterson and then buy and read his book, The Pastor. Wonderful! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GIwdjOktJE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The Church IS Christ's Body

Ideally, then … the church, the community that hails Jesus as Lord and king, and feasts at his table celebrating his victorious death and resurrection, is constituted as "the body of the Messiah." This famous Pauline image is not a random "illustration." It expresses Paul's conviction that this is the way in which Jesus now exercises his rule in the world—through the church, which is his Body. Paul, rooted as he was in the ancient Scriptures, knew well that the Creator's plan was to look after his creation through obedient humankind. For Paul, Jesus himself is the Obedient Man who is now therefore in charge of the world; and the church is "his body, the fullness of the one who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:23).
                         - from a Christianity Today article (Oct. 2011) re N.T. Wright's book: 'Simply Jesus'

God's Reign

The proximity of God's reign does not change the fact that we are required to pray for its coming. But that is not because God is holding something back. That the reign of God is both 'already' and 'not yet' is not because it is only partially present or provisionally given, but rather because while it is given concretely and in the present, it may always be rejected and refused.
-- p 82, Bryan Stone, Evangelism after Christendom

Alpha, Beta, Gamma . . .

Scripture: Luke 5:27-31

Introduction

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. 'Follow me,' Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed Him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"

Jesus answered them, AIt is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

Introduction

There are many different ways & avenues

through which people may be introduced to Jesus Christ,

so they may come to place their trust in Him.

Our uniqueness are God's gifts and means too

that may be avenues of blessing He has given

to help us reach out in the diversity of our world.

People come to Jesus down various paths, rich with experience . . .

from different backgrounds - often laden with fears & burdens.

1.Thoughtful, Thinking . . .

Some are on a quest to know. They want answers.

They are looking for substance, for reality, for truth . . .

for the heart of the matter.

2. Heart, love, wounded, healing community . . .

Some are broken-hearted, battered and beaten up by life

by sinning and by being sinned against,

through the rotten choices & actions of themselves & others.

They have stopped daring to believe in the healing of the soul

or the body or the mind -- let alone in the healing of memories.

They do not expect to forgive or be forgiven

or to know the power of forgiveness.

They do not know how to start over, how to let go of the pastor the present

with all of its perplexity, confusion, angst & pain.

3. Physical needs, sickness, emotional distress. Healing groups. . .

Twelve-step programs, compulsions, addictions . .

There are those who have looked for love in all the wrong places.

They have made choices, or others have made choices for them,

that have left them addicted to something or other

perhaps addicted to sexual lust and pornography, addicted to relationships outside God=s plan for marriage.

But they have done their best, many of them,

especially given the influences & environments

with which they have to cope.

But they daren=t believe there can be release or an escape.

Many have adjusted their thinking & their theology

to justify or rationalize what they know to be wrong

as Paul shows us in Romans 1

or as something that God will overlook in love.

The searchlight of His Word, with its rigourous standards

& reflections of His holiness are quite beyond them,

and they don=t want to be involved with, or around,

anyone who can only point out their flaws,

without offering hope, help & healing in exchange.

They do not stay away from clinics & hospitals

when they know something=s broken

because they hope the doctor can help them

but they don't think that there is any healing for the soul,

let alone the body, in the church today.

Is there? Have you found any?

Or are we all deluded folk going through the motions?

I am so impressed and encouraged by the Alpha program

with its thoughtful presentations & opportunities for ineraction.

We eating together & offer each other community, friendship & support.

Listening, or perhaps the most simple comment can bring healing

into the soul of a wounded person

who for years has not been able to find the grace of God.

There are also many, practical & specific helps

to get KBC people involved (beyond Alpha).

Jesus comes with us as we encounter people at: house parties,

friendships, family times, daily circumstances

and "chance appointments"

especially when we seek to help the poor, the bereived,

the friendless, the alien and the outcaste.

In our text . . .new Christian, Matthew, throws a party for his friends

and invites Jesus!

There are Many Gospel Settings in the NT for Faith-begetting.

Jesus had so many different kinds of encounters

with so many different kinds of people.

Some were public and some were private.

Some were with large crowds, others were to one or two, or ten.

Here's Jesus on the mountainside teaching the Beatitutes,

with some of the most quoted texts of all history.

or at the seashore -- the waves lapping & sucking at the sandy beach.

riding the pulpit at the fore of a disciple=s little fishing boat.

In a rugged coastal picnic as thousands gather to hear His wisdom.

where afterward He fed them all

in the miracle of the loaves & fishes.

There's old Nicodemus coming in the middle of the night

to the rooms where Jesus was staying.

& there, following a prophetic exposure of his spiritual ignorance,

Jesus teaches him the absolute spiritual necessity

the mystery & the miracle of the New Birth

And there's a worn out Samaritan woman at the well, at mid-day.

Jesus at the local hospital

as sick-people lay about the pool of Siloam.

Jesus at the bedside of Peter's sick mother.

Jesus along the way, so often, in dusty roads & crowded streets,

stopping to talk -- and touch

the leprous, the blind, the lame, the infirm.

Just ahead of us, in our Luke 5 text, is the wonderful story

of Jesus in a house ministry
where the house crowded out

& some enterprising, not easily put off men emboldened by faith

lowered their lame friend down through a crack in the roof.

Today, wherever we go, Christian disciple . . . Jesus goes,

looking through our eyes, hearing through our ears,

waiting through our hands & arms to touch & embrace

the people that God is drawing into our life so they might find Him.

So we may find Jesus on the golf-course,

and in the curling rinks or bowling alleys of our land

when Christians go there.

- And Jesus in the school cafeterias and libraries and study rooms.

- And Jesus in our office and elevator corridors.

- And Jesus at the senior=s centre and lawn bowling green.

Matthew Threw a Party and invited His Friends -- and Jesus.

He invited those who knew him best -- his colleagues & friends

who had known, perhaps, his ability to cheat, or to swear,

or to take advantage of people.

not even sometimes by being dishonest

but just by being shrewd & mean

& by making sure that he got what was his,

whether or not they got to keep what was theirs.

Maybe they also knew, from hours of discussion,

his spiritual cynicism, that there was any truth to be had,

any answers to be found,

anything or Anyone beyond religious shyters

& forms without substance

Maybe, when drunk or depressed,

he'd admitted his own feelings of doubt & depression

or his despair over his own kids . . .

& they had not been able to help him

for they too had similar problems.

But now He had found something -- Someone

who had stirred up the dank pool of his heart

with fresh springs and eddies

so he found soul surging with longing but towards sure fulfilment,

& help -- from despair to hope,

from cynicism to fresh, child-like trust.

He had found Jesus -- or Jesus had found Him . . .

And he just had to tell his friends . . .

for his feet which had been wayward, perverse & rebellious,

were being turned into the Way of Jesus

that He knew now was the Way Home to Himself & to God.

Two paths converged in the woods, wrote Robert Frost, and I - I took the one less travelled . . . and that has made all the difference!

Life -- abundant, joyful, vast, vital and unending . . .

He believed now that it all lay in following this Man.

& he felt his whole being stirring into new life . . .

He hadn't felt like he hadn't for years since as a little boy

when the whole ocean of his life

with its adventure & beauty & discovery

still lay at his feet -- so vast and unending.

The most eager, energetic & effective witnesses to Jesus Christ

are those who have but newly found Him.

We cant get many longer-term Christians to come

& bring a friend to Church, to Alpha, to Jesus.

But those who are newly coming are excited about Him

and not too busy or embarrassed to bring a friend to Jesus.

The multi-faceted grace of God that St. Paull talks about in Ephesians

is reflected and refracted through our lives & personalities in various ways.

Phillips Brooks famous dictum about preaching -- truth through

personality -- applies to how each one of us shares faith.

Be yourself, and dare to share your faith -- tell your story

how it is that you came to know Jesus

& how He hears & helps you each day.

I have entitled the message: Alpha, Beta, Gamma . . .

not because we are in some exclusive sorority or fraternity

named by Greek letters

but because we are in a friendship group called the Body of Christ,

-- we have become friends with God & each other

and we want to be open & welcoming to life=s ellow-strugglers

-- seeking to share life in the embrace, encouragement & enabling

of Jesus Christ our Lord.

And Alpha, Beta, Gamma, frankly,

because our efforts cannot stop with a certain program at the church

when God wants to reach lots more people through you & me.

Alpha is one model that is being wonderfully used by Jesus

(through Catholics, Anglicans,Baptists, Methodists & others)

to win many to Christ.

There are many ways . . .

God blesses our attempts more than our plans to do it perfectly.

As D.L Moody used to say when critiqued

for his mass crusades:

I like the way I=m doing it better than the way you=re not.

A house party is another model.

And so is the men's supper,

or a luncheon at a golf club where we might invite friends

as our guests to hear a speaker winsomely share the story

of how he or she found Jesus

& help them to do the same.

And so is friendship evangelism, one-to-one through the week . . .

And so are all the pre-evangelism efforts we attempt, remembering that folk don't have

to go to Church if they want to find God.

The Gospel is primarily relational.

Alpha . . . welcomes those who are seeking

& people come -- not because of slick advertizing

but because a friend brought them.

We introduce folk to Jesus through our own handshake

and as we share food & table-talk. . .

& view the film & discuss the questions

& try to meet the needs that surface.

What do we know about Matthew? -- who became a disciple of Jesus.

He was rich enough to have a big enough house to throw a grand banquet.

He had a ministry to 'up-and-outers' who also need to find Jesus.

He worked for Revenue Rome.

He was the one who told you the government wanted more.

You can't run an army on a shoe-string,

and build those great buildings & water viaducts & castles

and keep up the temple environs without taxes.

Then as now the government wanted more -- qirh death & taxes ever sure.

Levi had a Jewish name but he was in league with the devil,

as far as his average poor Jewish compatriot was concerned.

He took from his own people & gave the proceeds to Rome

although - if he was like others of his ilk -

he might well skim off & pocket some of it.

AT Tax Time, allof us try to find ways of beating the system,

trying to keep more of what we've earned.

We want, of course, better roads, and health system,

and education, and child-care

but we don't want to pay for it.

Let the government pay, we say -- forgetting that that's us.

We're not sure (and no governed people in the history of the world ever has been)

that the government wants to help us and others,

rather than to fatten ts own salaries, & other perks of privilege.

Matthew was the kind of guy you would have loved to hate,

and no doubt plenty of folk did.

But God didn't hate Him. He loved Him with an everlasting love

as He does you and me

& sent His Son to save Him and change Him -- heart-side out

that he might become a whole new person.

that the real Levi might come out & begin to grow into maturity

in following Christ.

The Pharisees, of course, were quite annoyed.

Here was Jesus, that people thought was so good,

this self-annointed, they thought, prophet of God

rubbing shoulders with the rift-raft of poor, ignorant, sinners.

They thought they best stood up for God

by being indignant when people let themselves go,

instead of faking the fact that they were less than perfect.

There'll always be people -- religious types, who don't get it.

who think that their self effort & their do-gooding

& their abstentions from this-and-that

will credit them with God.

There were Pharisees in that day who had bruises all over their faces

and they were proud of them.

They got them by not looking at pretty women

in the narrow streets of Jerusalem,

even if it meant that, head down,

they rammed themselves into a gate post or cobbled wall.

Such people pretend they=re good, even when they're not.

They put on airs. They fake it.

They delight to pull down and expose the sins of others,

comparing & self-justifying their own existences.

I thank you, Lord, I'm not as bad as that guy.

You know what a good person I try to be.

They are always religious killjoys and party-poopers all around

strangers to life and love,

& to the legitimate creaturely joys God gives all people.

They are totally unaware of how love & grace & mercy

can possibly break down hostilities, prejudices & fears

& lead people to dare to believe and then to receive

the reality that God does love us

& is not willing that any should perish,

but that all should come to repentance & faith.

I. Another Call of Jesus and the response of obedience v. 27-28

II. A New Complication from the religious observers. 29-30

The key to a good story is: conflict, conflict, conflict. and there's plenty of it here.

III. A New Consideration from a Responsive Saviour. 31-32

Here is the Gospel . . . Jesus has come to call sinners to repentance.

When We Worship

To worship the living God, the God we know as Father, Son and Spirit, is to give voice to our faith, to celebrate our hope, and above all to express and articulate our love.
-N.T. Wright, After You Believe

Doing More With Less

On July 31st, 1917, the Allied Forces launched a ten day artillery bombardment using 3,000 heavy guns and 4,250,000 shells. Canadians are inspired by the story of Passchendaele where a relatively few band of brothers, Canadian soldiers, fought, bled and died in what was, many agree, a stupid, wasted war (as perhaps all wars are), believing themselves to be securing many of the freedoms and a new sense of national identity that we too often have taken for granted. Of all the Allied armies, the Canadians were most feared by the enemy. The Germans coined the phrase ‘storm-trooper’ to refer to us.

Remember how in the awful events of September 2001 New York fireman rushed in and up the stairs of the Twin Towers while others were rushing out? – entering in to save the lives of others while, quite understandably, office-workers were scurrying out to save their own. And, have you read of those heroic souls in the early Church who remained in, or actually journeyed to villages and cities, to care for those suffering deadly plague, which often resulted in the loss of their own lives.

In a day of economic downturn and shrinking budgets, of tired workers and flagging loyalties, how may churches with flagging zeal and resources respond to the challenges we face? We have biblical examples of God’s provision and of God’s People's faithful resolve and fruitful responses. There is a Gospel wisdom that shines through the (almost) planned obscurity of some of Jesus' parables that reveal that there may be other ways of communicating truth than through normally trusted, clear and logical precepts. In the Old Testament we find the Gideon story in which God kept sending home large numbers of Israel’s troops, culling the army down to the relatively few 300, a then-strategic, wise and faith-filled group of fighting men. There is a littleness, a weakness, a hiddeness, a ‘cracked-clay-vessel’ approach in which God’s purposes still get done (or normally get done in the greater Real of the spiritual realm). Gospel people appreciate these upsidedown strengths and realities of God's Rule so that they do not despair in such times. Inspired and enabled by God Himself, they rise to such challenges, see them even as opportunities, even though their numbers have been reduced and their seems to be only scant, meagre resources at hand.

Jesus pointed to the potency of tiny mustard seeds and the leavening power of wee bits of yeast. He revealed a God who ‘keeps score differently’ – who celebrates the sacrificial, miniscule contribution of faithful widows, in contrast the large (but ‘no sweat’) contributions of wealthy Pharisees.

Whether or not we have dreamed of winning a lottery, haven’t we all wished God would somehow grant us more dollars so we could bless the ministry of our church?. We could always do more with more, But God shows us that sometimes we can do more with less.

How does God us to do what we must, and more, in these times? With passion for the ‘missio Dei’ and in a desire to increase our loving service to our neighbour, how can we ‘lean into’ the times when others are leaning away from them. Many of us have experienced financial decline and even ruin in the downtown of world markets. Perhaps we are winded by uncertain markets, fearful of even further economic down-turn. The budgets of churches and Christian ministries have taken a hit and we have fewer dollars (discretionary and otherwise) to share. How will we look after our own families, churches and ministries let alone respond to the needs of others? Surely we have to curb our ministry expenditures; others will just have to look after themselves.

But these are the very times when others need our help. People are stunned by their own present economic realties. Many are depressed; some are homeless, starving, almost suicidal. They need our practical love, the ministry of our churches, our sharing of resources, even more? Can we cut back when they need us more?

Can we not be more imaginative in how, where and when we spend our shrinking resources? Can we at least give more ‘in kind’ – perhaps more of our time, our passion and creativity? Can we in other ways make shrinking dollars spread-out to close gaps between income and expenditures?

Some of us have lost thousands of dollars – perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars. It may have been ‘just on paper’ and we never really held it in our hands. It was faithfully, sacrificially set aside over the years, perhaps intended as retirement security or for that trip. But our security has been eroded. We might just as well have invested, and perhaps we still may, those dollars in more overt ‘Kingdom purposes,’ making eternal investments in the promise of heavenly rewards?

What if Jesus meant it when he talked of the lilies of the field that do not labour and the birds that do not spin – and of the Father’s similar concern and care for each of us? What if we’ve explained away, as mere advice or opinion, his command to: ‘take no thought for the morrow? Or, changing the metaphor, what if we ‘cast our bread on the water’ and faithfully, patiently waited to see its promised return?

What blessings await those who give themselves to our Lord and others in new and risky ways, who perhaps through utter abandonment, trust and give more away? What if these times give new opportunity for believers to show that they do indeed believe, in the faithfulness of God and in His provision precisely in such times. Joining still in Kingdom work and trust in such times, what if, with increased faith and ecstatic abandonment to God, we gave more?