Cultivating Missional Living Sermon 8
Waking up from the American Dream; God’s Mission and Our
Resources
Our Lord has provided a plan for a sustainable and vibrant
society. But, it doesn't just happen. God’s plan as revealed to us through the
Bible portrays a caring community of Jesus followers who are both sympathetic
and sacrificial in their approach to their possessions and financial resources.
If we hope to bear fruit for the
Kingdom of God, our eyes and hearts must be fixed on people and things beyond
ourselves. Our hearts must be open in order for our hands to be open.
So, ? How should the concept of a caring community change
the way a local church thinks and functions in its local setting?
How should the
concept of a caring community change the way we think and act on a daily basis?
What areas of our lifestyle may need to change?
Read Mark 4:18-19… In this passage Jesus says that
three things-the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the
desires for other things-make the Word of God unfruitful in people’s lives. A
good question for each of us is to ask how this applies to our lives.
Read 1 John 2:15-17….In what ways have you been tempted by
“love of the things of the world.” …How does this relate to your life, …how
important are things and what does your life look like in regard to resources
that you consume.
Read Acts 2:44-45….Other than money at church, how do you
currently, not how you want to, but do you currently practice, sharing your
resources. …..Now a good question might be, how do you imagine yourself sharing
the resources God has given you?
Read Matthew 6:24-34….Reflecting on this passage, does worry
affect you frequently in regard to your own daily needs?
Open Hearts, Open Hands
In spite of the recent economic recession, the US remains
the wealthiest nation on earth. We have more than enough to go around. Our
biggest problem is not so much having enough. It is more likely that we are not
sharing enough. As the Body of Christ, the core values of the church embody the
only viable answer to the issue of enough. However,….the so called American
Dream crashes against God’s dream for His Kingdom to manifest on earth as it is
in heaven. The values of God’s Kingdom clash with the values of this world on
most every front. And in one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables, we are
confronted with the key to God’s Word taking root in our lives, in order that
we may bear fruit and give a taste of the Kingdom.
Mark 4:18-19
The importance of this passage cannot be emphasized enough.
Jesus says this parable is the key to understanding all of his other parables
(V13). It is the master key. Tens of thousands of sermons are preached every year
across America. Millions of books are sold every year. And a great many
Christians read this scripture every day. Yet,
our culture remains unchanged by it. Our neighborhoods remain unchanged by
it. Our City remains unchanged by it. Why? How can this be? Might the truth be
that we, the body of Jesus Christ, remain for the most part unchanged? And in
order for us to be change agents, salt, light, we must first be changed
ourselves?
The “isms” Thorns
If you have ever got yourself tangled up in a thorn bush,
you know how aggravating and even painful it can be to get out. And thorn
bushes in gardens or flower beds can literally wrap around plants and squeeze
the very life from them, leaving them fruitless and eventually lifeless. Jesus
says this is exactly what happens when our lives become wrapped up in the
values and agendas of the present age. We can spend endless hours of Bible
Study and church activities with no visible fruit produced in our lives on account of our entanglement with
worldly pursuits and concerns.
Let me share a few
“isms” that effectively choke out not only our ability to live on mission with
God, but also our imagination of what we could possibly do missionally.
One of the critical admissions for Christians is that consumerism, the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically
desirable; also : a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of
consumer goods, has the propensity to shape and dictate our very
identity. When our identification is one of a consumer our true identity as
citizens of the Kingdom of God-which is supposed to be, strangers and aliens to
this earthly Kingdom-fades away. We can’t then even begin to conceive of a
Kingdom life in Biblical terms of Risk, Time, Finance and Energy. We just can’t
get our heads around how we could possibly afford
to be missional. And this is exactly what the apostle John warned us
against.
1 John 2:15-17
The very essence of the church, the fragrance it emits to a
world watching so closely, lies in its living as an authentic community. ….In
other words, the church doesn’t have a social strategy; the church is the
social strategy. We have an unmatched opportunity to show the world the type of
life that can never be achieved through social programs or our governments’
intervention. But, authentic biblical community can never be practiced alongside
the American lifestyle of individualism.
(a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically
supreme)
Risky People
Even the hastiest reading of the Book of Acts paints a
picture of an open-hearted and open-handed Christian people who are fueled by
an unrelenting, risk-it-all resolve. To become this type of people, we will
have to make some serious choices that most likely will necessitate significant
lifestyle changes. Just like an out of shape athlete, we must get our lives
into missional shape. …Some people may want to run a marathon. Some, like me,
would just like to be able to run a few times around the block. But we love
Blue-bell too much. We like our cookies and brownies and tortillas. And in the
same way most Christians really do want to have an impact on the world, or even
just their block, but they have never shaped their lives to be able to keep
pace.
Currently, the average American family lives in a home that
is over three times the size of the average American house from 1950. This is
despite the fact that family units are smaller now than they were fifty years
ago. A sign I often use to define our over consumption is the phenomenon of
this past few decades of the use of self-storage units. It is now reported to
be a 23 billion dollar industry that rakes in more than the entire
entertainment industry.
Our Lord is pleased when we enjoy the fruits of our labor,
but our appetites need to remain in check. God has carved out an economic
design for the Body of Christ that is full of life for us as well as others.
How to Inherit the Earth
Those who are meek and who are submitted to the government
of God will seek for His Kingdom to come before everything else in this life.
Why, because they treasure His Kingdom more than they treasure personal wealth.
They are attentive to those who are weak and who are trampled on by those more
powerful. They turn into great filters of wealth, sending out possessions to
those in need and stretching arms out to those on the margins of society.
This isn’t trickle-down economics where a few at the top
might spill some of what they have accumulated over the years down to the
masses at the bottom. No Kingdom economics is pictured in the poor widow who
was so insanely generous that she gave away the little bit that she had to live
on. In Kingdom economics the followers of Jesus pool their resources and then
dole them out to each one as they have need, Widows and orphans are cared for
in their distress. Homes are opened for the homeless and clothing is given away
to those who need it. The economic blueprint in God’s kingdom works against
personal increase and selfish accumulation and works toward distribution out to
the extremities. Maybe that’s why Jesus said it was impossible to serve both
God and money; people can’t submit to the desire for personal accumulation and
submit to the desire for God at the same time!
See, for our lives to genuinely be fruitful for the Kingdom
of God, most of us must change our habits and lifestyles. You know, junk food
and fluffy sofas don’t pump out many marathon runners. And the church in the
book of Acts had a habit of producing changed lifestyles for the sake of the community.
A return to that mindset would certainly go a long way toward our forming a
missional community. Towards our cultivating a Missional Lifestyle.
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