November Commentary
1st Sunday in November (Week 45) Faithful Servants (Isaiah 41:1-13; Phil. 4:4-13; Isaiah 30:1-18 and 35 and 40-42 and 45)
Overview
Desperate times demand desperate measures. What is required is not a program, a curriculum, a process, or even a counseling session, but courage and reassurance. We need to confidence that if we dare to reach up, God will reach down. If we dare to endure, God will provide.
Team Meditation
The confidence of Christians is rooted in the belief that “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” Christians take to heart the assurance of Isaiah, because they have not only heard about God, or believe in the principle of God’s eternal love, but they have seen, touched, and experienced it in the presence of jesus Christ. Incarnation is the missing piece. In order to have courage in difficult times, we need some more tangible sign or touch of the Holy. It is hard to find courage in abstractions. We find courage in relationships.
Worship Theme
The prophets actually believe that God will sustain the faithful. If you surrender to God’s will, God will come along side, walk along side, and uphold you in times of trial. It is a different kind of friendship. There are wonderful examples of people … even competitors … supporting one another in hard times. But God’s companionship goes beyond mutual support. God upholds the heart, and inspires absolute confidence. Unlike the human friend, God is already victorious over sin and death. No matter what happens, God promises absolute love. Yet in order to access that love, we must surrender absolutely to God’s will.
Worship Design
Small Group Discussion
Try this exercise. “Friday evening at midnight your neighbor phones you in panic. Your neighbor is not religious, but knows that you go to church. He tells you that his daughter has just phoned from college in deep depression, and is seriously threatening to commit suicide. His wife is keeping her talking on the cell phone, while he frantically calls you. You are religious. You must know what to say. You have one minute to tell him what to tell his daughter the one thing that will keep her from killing herself. Tomorrow she can see a counselor … but right now she has to survive the night. What core message of hope will you offer?” The words of Isaiah were spoken in just such a setting. What do they mean? What gives you strength? What is the core message that the public around your church desperately needs to hear?
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2nd Sunday in November (Week 46) Faithful Servants (Isaiah 55:1-13; Romans 10:1-17; Isaiah 52-53 and 55 and 58:1-9 and 61:1-11)
Overview
Isaiah 55:1-3 "Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness. 3 Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
It’s free? We of the consumer world have been taught to be skeptical about such offers. We know. You get what you pay for. So God’s grace is all the more amazing, and part of the barrier to receiving it is that it is so “unbelievable”. We need witnesses to the unbelievable truth. The question is: Do you believe it?
Team Meditation
The “nearness” of the Word is the core of the Gospel. It is another way of talking about incarnation, the “Word” now made “flesh”. We can not only know the word objectively, but also subjectively. It is no longer an abstraction, but a relationship. The Word is in our hearts and in our bloodstream and in our DNA. For Christians, the “Word” is “Jesus Christ”. He is the one sent forth who will not return empty. He is the wine that will quench every thirst. He is the relentless presence of God that will never stop talking to us, coaxing us, chastising us, and encouraging us. He just won’t stop talking! He just won’t go away! Jesus is a constant companion … and that may make us comfortable or uncomfortable. There just isn’t any “getting away” from God.
Worship Theme
Isaiah 55:10-11 0 "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 11 so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty …
God’s grace is as relentless and inexorable as it is good and fruitful. Even the skepticism of the world cannot stop it. The most profound pessimist cannot find sufficient explanation for the fact that the sun keeps rising again, or that life keeps surviving, or the relationships keep on loving, or that creativity keeps happening. What explains this instinct for survival that lies at the heart of creation? God’s promise is not only that we can survive, but that we can thrive. There is a purposefulness that goes beyond mere survival … a thirst for something more. That desire can be perverted and corrupted in many ways, but the desire itself, the yearning for something Good and Beautiful and True is a divine gift.
Worship Design
Small Group Discussion
Isaiah 61:1-11 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion -- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified. … 11 For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.
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3rd Sunday in November (Week 47) Jesus’ Purpose (Colossians 1:1-23; Isaiah 25:1-9 and 26:1-12; Luke 1 and Colossians 1:13-23)
Overview
The ancient church leaders who wrote the Chalcedon Confession knew what they were doing when they said Jesus the Christ was fully human and fully divine, and infinite mystery crucial for salvation. What is Jesus’ purpose? The salvation of the world. But what does that really mean at any given time … and beyond time itself? The experience of Jesus is the experience of redemption, but that redemption can have so many layers of significance and meaning. He is healer, transformer, spiritual guide, model of perfection, source of hope and vindicator … plus infinite shades of miracle, for infinite combinations of cultures, and infinite varieties of people.
Team Meditation
Isaiah 26:8-9 8 In the path of thy judgments, O LORD, we wait for thee; thy memorial name is the desire of our soul. 9 My soul yearns for thee in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks thee.
This is the only way to expect Jesus the Christ. This is the posture of all worship leadership, and indeed, of Christians in general. It may happen intentionally, through the spiritual discipline or conditioning of our lives. Yet more often than not, it happens unintentionally, spontaneously, or in the midst of great crisis, whether we are “believers” or “atheists”. We cannot deny what we are, or ignore the soul that is within us. That soul yearns for God. The name of God and the desire of our soul are one and the same. The experience of God is what fulfills the desire of our soul. The one flies to the other. Resolving your deepest need is God’s gift to you; reuniting with the originator of life quenches your deepest thirst.
Worship Theme
Colossians 1:19-20 19 For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
In these few words lies the internal consistency of God’s purpose that begins at Christmas and ends with Easter, about three historic years that turn the world upside down and inside out, one brief life that will change everything, forever, starting now. The ancients pondered the “fullness” of God, just as we do today. It is like trying to encompass in your brain every galaxy and star of the universe … once you get beyond a million the numbering of the layers and nuances and contradictions and surprises of God boggles the imagination. It is a kaleidoscope of goodness, and we humans on earth are only aware of a few colors. Yet all that fullness was in Jesus the Christ, focused as through a lens, on the tiny dot that is our existence, for the single purpose of making peace. Yet what exactly is that “peace”? Trying to imagine the multitude of ways humanity can mess up, destroy, and break the harmony of spirit, life, and living is just as difficult as imagining the universe also. Once we get beyond a million ways to screw up, the mind boggles. So how does one expect to reconcile the fullness of God on the one hand, and the fullness of human folly on the other? It requires an infinite sacrifice, the seeming death of hope, so that hope can rise again.
Worship Design
Small Group Discussion
The experience of Jesus the Christ, and the celebration of his purpose, always seems to lead to metaphor. Poetry and song are the only ways we can express what is inexpressible. You see this in the opening chapter of Luke and in places like Colossians, where the words are clearly borrowed from early church hymns, chants, and poems. It is the same thing that drove David to compose psalms, and exiled Israelites to sing them in foreign lands. Combine the reading of these texts with singing. Sing combinations of Christmas and Easter songs. See the hidden continuity between the beginning and end of Jesus’ life on earth.
4th Sunday in November (Week 48) Jesus’ Purpose (John 19:16-30 and 20:11-18; Isaiah 53:1-12; John 18-20 and Mathew 27:1-54 and Hebrews 8)
Overview
After all is said and done … after all the teaching and all the suffering … the Gospel boils down to this. Jesus appears everywhere and anywhere, when he is desperately needed and when he is hardly even expected, and when he appears he always says “Peace be with you”. And it is. Peace really is with us. It is this surprise that is the essence of the Gospel. Just when you think you are least deserving, or beyond redemption, or doomed to failure, or past saving, there he is again. Peace be with you. This is why Christians always seem to share the message of hope with a breathless astonishment. “I have seen the Lord!” “No! Couldn’t be!” “Yes! Really! I’ve seen him … just now, down the hall, on the battlefield, at the graveside! Come, let’s look for him together!”
Team Meditation
Most modern people have trouble with sacrificial theories of atonement. We are not in the habit of thinking that a sacrificial lamb can somehow make the human condition better. Our habit of thought is to assume radical individualism. A person is accountable for their own sins, not for the sins of the community. A person must atone for his own sins. Nobody can do it for them. So the idea that Jesus’ death can somehow release us from our own weight of justifiable guilt is foreign to us. On the other hand, forgiveness is a concept we can embrace. As people familiar with love, we understand that the hardest thing to forgive would be the willful and shameful murder of our most beloved child. If a parent can do that … really and truly … then surely they can forgive anything. Of course, that is the source of our doubt. We doubt that any parent could really and truly forgive anyone who had murdered their most beloved child. It can’t be done. It’s against human nature. So when God reveals that he really and truly has forgiven humanity its iniquity, and then proves that by sacrificing his own Son, the magnitude of God’s compassion becomes clear. Yes, we still tend to doubt it. Surely some part of God is still angry that we slaughtered his Son. Yet no, the Son keeps coming back to reassure us. The tragedy is behind us … our iniquity is behind us … and we have a clean slate and a fresh start.
Worship Theme
If modernity starts with Christmas and proceeds toward Easter, there is a sense in which post-modernity has to start with Easter and proceed toward Christmas. Like the ancient, pre-Christian, pagan world, we today have to approach Christ backwards. Unless we experience the pain of his death and the awe of his resurrection, we will never really be able to understand the prophecies that surrounded Jesus’ birth. After all, much of what we read about Jesus’ birth is retrospective. At the time, nobody other than Mary and a few shepherds heard the angels sing, and if they told anyone about it nobody believed them. It certainly didn’t make the evening news. It is only after the death and resurrection of Jesus that we are motivated to better understand how it all started. This is typical of genuine spiritual seekers. The poetry of Christmas is not really going to move them to faith. It is only when they see the risen Lord, touch the scars, hear his greeting, experience his peace, and stand in awe of a dead hero rising as an eternal ally, that the promise of Christmas is fully realized.
Worship Design
Small Group Discussion
Throughout most of history, sin was not merely personal. It was communal. The shame of one’s ancestors was passed down through the generations as a stigma to be overcome. The iniquity of a nation or a tribe was a shared disgrace from which no one was innocent, even if they personally had nothing to do with the incident. It is only modernity … and only western modernity … that has tried to abrogate responsibility by retreating into radical individualism. Who is correct? Modern western individualism … or the rest of history and most of the world? Slowly but surely organizational life in the west is beginning to recognize that the transgression of one implies the shame of many. We also share responsibility for the success or failure of a corporate culture, whether we work in the mail room or the board room. The problem is that if the purity of our individual heart is held hostage by the weakest link in the organizational life, we are doomed to constant guilt and anxiety. Maybe we should all become entrepreneurs, have no employees, and work at home! But as soon as you succeed, expand, and hire just one employee, or covenant in just one alliance, you reenter the world of trust or no-trust, and once again the purity of your heart is hostage to the weakness of your partner. It is this reality in which the idea of “sacrifice” emerges as a genuine hope. The “sacrificial lamb” removes a shared guilt, a shared uncleanness, and a shared iniquity, because like it or not, we are not just individuals but part of innumerable collectives. One such collective is humanity as a whole … and we have a lot to be ashamed about. Any sacrifice that is going to remove that collective load of guilt will have to be powerful indeed.