Call & Response: Blessings & Curses, Part IV
If you’ve been following along this week, you are aware that I am posting some of the things I’ve discovered while preparing for this Sunday’s message. The message is titled “Call & Response: Blessings & Curses.” It will explore the idea of God calling His people into action and watching for how we respond. Built into this idea of call and response is the concept of blessings and curses. God has uniquely blessed His followers. But, His blessings are not simply for the sake of the one He blesses. The blessings are meant to be shared…to be utilized…to be worked to bring about a greater good. When our blessings are put into action, the result is often more blessings. When we fail to put our blessings into action, the end result could be curses. We’ll be wrestling with the difficult words of Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, Jesus talks about His judgment…that it will in large part deal with how we respond to the needs we see around us. For those who respond in appropriate, tangible, practical, and helpful ways there is a reward. For those who fail to respond in appropriate, tangible, practical, and helpful ways there is a curse. If we need any motivation to help meet the basic needs of those around us, it lies in this passage. It’s a pretty uplifting thought (judgment) to deal with on Thanksgiving Sunday. We’ll have some fun with it. We’ll laugh. We might even cry. Hopefully, we’ll all leave with more than just a desire to do something…hopefully we’ll leave equipped and motivated to actually do something.
Today, as I continued to study and craft the message, I found myself sifting through Brennann Manning’s book, “The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus.” It’s a great book I devoured a few years ago. While sifting, I stumbled upon several passages that challenged me and at the same time confirmed the direction of this Sunday’s message.
“The mind of Jesus is focused on the fulfillment of God’s will through the proclamation of the Reign of God. Jesus’s intimacy with God and awareness of God’s holiness fill him with an all-consuming thirst for the things of God. His interior life of trust and loving surrender is not simply a matter of personal prayer, private religious experience, and delight in God’s intimate presence. Such a limited relationship with God would ignore the real world and its struggle for redemption, justice, and peace. No, the inner life of Jesus Christ takes expression in a special, vital quality of presence in the world in the most active situations. There was a towering desire within Jesus to reveal his Father in serving the poor, the captive, the blind, and all who were in need. Jesus was entirely devoured by this mission. It was Jesus’s experience of God’s holiness that created the imperative of preaching the reign of God’s justice, peace, and forgiving love.”
“So often we are self-moved and self-motivated rather than moved and motivated by the Spirit. When our sense of self is derived from our base desires, we act in ways intended to win approval, avoid criticism, or escape rejection…The cure for our selfishness is to develop discerning hearts. When we put on the mind of Christ and focus our thinking and behavior on the kingdom of God, we can begin to evaluate our choices, our decisions, and our motivations with new clarity…in our self-centered desires we have twisted the notion of boundaries to serve as an excuse for ignoring the needs of others.”
“We cannot claim to have the mind of Christ and remain insensitive to the oppression of our brothers and sisters. We cannot stay oblivious to the world’s struggle for redemption, freedom, and peace.”
I know I shared a lot. But, this just barely scrapes the surface of what I was struck by in re-reading through a few sections of this book. Thinking about my own response to the needs of those around me, I know I have a lot of work to do. So, the crafting of this message has been challenging and difficult for me. It’s spurring ideas and actions in my own life.
I hope you’ll join us this Sunday at Center Chapel. We worship at 8 and 10am. We have coffee available before and after each service. And, as an added bonus, this Sunday we will share in our Thanksgiving meal. It’s a great time of food and fellowship. Stop in and say “hello.” Maybe together we can begin to make a dent in address the needs of those in our community, our country, and our world!