But lets just think for a moment what that might mean to see salvation as a creative act – if that was our “jumping off place.”  Creation itself is about growth, reproduction, change, even adventure. Imagine those being the antonyms for “salvation”!

I feel in many ways my eyes opening wider and wider.  Now that is not about some grand pastoral insight – because we all know that is in short supply.  It is about eyes widening as I witness more and more people living into a church that is in itself a creative endeavor.  Just this week ….

Baseball: Angel gave Angela 3 Philly baseballs from the NLCS for me to give Brayden Walsh and his parents.  Brayden, as many of you are aware, is a young man battling some serious health issues.  Brayden’s comments to his mom, on receiving the gifts, was that he was never going to wash his hands again.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a a gift creation.

Roofs: Sam wanted to know the name of a pastor I referenced in a service, a pastor who moved from the Main Line to Kensington because that is where he felt could best use him.  Sam wants to get in touch with him so he can offer to repairs roofs for those in need for free.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift of creation.

Cleaning: Elizabeth would like to get a group together to help clean the office.  I am not sure how she knew it needed cleaning – alright actually I do know – because it is dirty.  Our office serves small groups, as well as a being our “home base” during the week.   So that helps all of us.  Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift of creation.

Tithing: From an online viewer in Canada, “We are committed to modeling a tithe and beyond….The Vision of sharing these beautiful truths through meaningful contacts with a world that so desperately needs them is just as compelling as the day we signed on to help build a better distribution network to share these precious truths with the world. With this in mind, we are committed to placing our modest gifts with those parts of our worldly organization dedicating themselves to expanding efforts to reach out to others.”   Beautiful stuff.  That gift was a gift creation.

So yes, salvation is an act of creation.  In our own way, lets be an act of creation as we join that wider project singing into our hearts.   What a great place to jump off from!

Alright, maybe not so neutral.

American culture is a funny thing, and I am part of it.   I am so very much looking forward to this event.  I like the competition.  I like the easy breakdown of “good” and “evil.”  I like the fact my wife will actually ask that I pick up a bunch of buffalo wings.  The only reason I find the Patriots “evil” honestly is because (a) they aren’t the Steelers and (b) Boston wins a lot of championships in many sports.  So yes, in one word they are “evil” because I am jealous.

And in the end, the Superbowl does not matter outside of a fun distraction.  And some days, a meaningless, fun distraction is actually ok. (As long as the “good” guys win!)

And yet mission lies in a deeper place than taste.  Mission connects us far more closely to the heart of God than individual taste, creating a living link to the famous passage in Matthew.    “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:37-40  Restated, God appears little concerned with taste but deeply concerned with mission.

Anchoring our spiritual life on taste anchors our spiritual life, in turn, on our own desires and judgments – not the soft ground where God’s grace transforms.

That soft ground of mission based Christianity is a doing place.  It is a place of action, a place of angels!  ”Hidden deep within the desires of every angel’s heart is the current that draws his or her mind to do something.  In that the mind finds peace….   (Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity)

The mission is the place to be.  Tastes?  Yes they will be different, and in reality, the sooner I think we put them aside to allow for the ascendancy of Mission, the more we will find the the humble place where God can do His best work.  Google and God!  What appears different – as we see God – is very much the same.

We start with a candid acknowledgement of what is.  In the book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins wrote of the “Stockdale Paradox.”  To restate the paradox, it is the ability to (a) candidly acknowledge the brutal facts and (b) maintain hope.  From a spiritual perspective, it is the prophetic imagination which is able to live in both of those worlds.

And what “is” – the brutal facts –  is that fact that a model of church that many of those reading this blog grew up in is unraveling.  There is less interest in and financial support for traditional churches and schools. This is arguably part of a growing apathy around the topic of “church” evident in America today.  (A recent survey listed 15% of Americans as having no religious affiliation.  In 1951 that number was 1%.)

So where does one go?  I believe a starting point is simply repentance – candidly acknowledging that church and religious education are irrelevant to many because we as the church body have made it so.   The author Donald Miller, author of “Blue Like Jazz”, got that and in an evangelization effort on the campus of Reed College set up a confession booth not to hear confessions but to make them, to apologize on behalf of Christianity for all the misguided ways in which church as an institution hurt others.

What are the sins we need to confess?

1. Church has become far too synonymous with politics.
2. Church has largely disengaged from the world and its problems
3. Church has become more concerned with theological correctness than healing (Water or grape juice at the holy supper anyone?)
4. Clergy often view themselves as detached resident experts vs. fellow travelers

That was last night.  Just one night.

The Adkins, Scott, Karl, Angela, Pat, Bryn, Tom. Others.  Other Pastors.  Other churches.  A mom, Penn State class of ’89. with two teen age sons.  She cried.  One person I did not net meet.

The instruction. Pastor Abu Bradley with his son and daughter in tow: “Lets pray.  These are guests.  Do not eat until they eat.  Clear their plates.  Ask them if they want seconds.  Children get served first.  Sit with guests.  Smile.  Free flu shots in the other room.  Who wants to watch the restrooms?  I want to make sure our guests even have a good experience there. Thank you.  Lets pray.”  A buffet line, serve-yourself, makes so much more sense but it doesn’t.  Life is not serve-yourself.

Heaven as the grand banquet to which all are invited.    Jordan, 7, loves the Steelers.  So do I.  Lynne worries about her son.  So do I.  ”We” – a bunch of “beautiful fools” – I love that line Ray.  There is grace in all things.

And what we know to be true, our sacred fire, is often buried, softened, and narcotized by the culture find ourselves.  Buried so deep in fact that we no longer “know it” until the prophetic wakes us from our sleep.

One part of King’s genius was in pushing through those layers to get at the bed rock of the human heart, a heart that does want to feel, a heart that does want to live, a heart that is built for compassion, not hate.  Hands that want to build.  A head no longer satisfied with theological conjecture about God but yearning to know God.  His “I have a dream” speech spoke directly to what we all knew and know and yet had forgotten.

That waking will put us at odds with culture.  We will, to many, appear drunk.  King was a “beautiful fool.”  Our lives, if we choose to allow ourselves to fall deeper into “what we really know,”  will appear “foolish” as well.  How can they not?   But what beauty …!

Our lives desperately need that second opening.  We are so bloody self obsessed!  One friend told a rather pointed joke.  ”So this guy demands of God proof of God’s existence. God responded somewhat perplexed, ‘I thought creation was enough.’”  I certainly have been in that place and find myself in that place still, a place where  all the beauty around me lies unseen as I obsessively stare into the mirror, caught in the narcissistic hell of painting my own self portrait again and again.

Thankfully, that particular approach to life inevitably fails.  I know as a Pastor, that is why I am far more relieved when someone calls in tears than in almost any other emotion.  I know when they “break” and gaze up and beyond the canvas of their thoughts and feelings they will see – and experience – a grace and beauty beyond words.  Then we see what is important and we realize we have just enough time to accomplish it.

In the life of faith, we are consistently presented with the premise … “and there is more ….”  Every “eureka”, every “I get it now”, every insight is met with another portal.  I see the “picture” and then witness it slowly dissolve, becoming a window of something beyond.  As the authored noted, it is hints of eternity stealing through the smallest activities and perceptions.

And how different church becomes and faith becomes when held this way.  There is a human natural tendency to nail it down, to place church and faith within four walls, under prescribed times and set sacraments.  And yet even those in the end will be shot through with eternity, with a limitlessness, with an invitation to more movement.

Much of life is the pivot toward gathering around the Work, written eloquently of here by Richard Rohr:

The Christian life is a matter of becoming who we already are, and allthat we truly are! Can you imagine that? Is the seed already within you—of all that God wants you to be? Do you already know at some level who you authentically are? Are you willing to pay the price? Even the mistrust of others? Could that be what we mean by having a unique “soul”? Most saints thus described the path as much more unlearningthan learning. There are so many illusions and lies that we must all unlearn. And one of the last illusions to die is that we are that different or that separate, and finally we are all one and amazingly the same. Differentiation seems to precede union and communion, for some strange reason.

As he notes, it is the True Self in God coming alive.  And there is a cost.  Are we willing to pay the price?  In a culture that worships the private, the individual, and the inviolate sanctity of personal thoughts and opinions – which are very good, to a point – the price is obvious.  We may in the end be called to give up those vary things that got to that point, to the “pivot.”  ”Unlearning” carries a cost.

As the New Church theologian Emanuel Swedenborg put it, our task then is straightforward in this great “unlearning.”

Abstain from evil, and do what is good, and believe in the Lord with your whole heart and your whole soul, and the Lord will love you and give you love for what you do and faith in what you believe. Then you will do what is good because of love, and you will believe because you have faith, which is confidence.  And if you persevere like this a reciprocal partnership [with God and others] will develop and become permanent.  That is salvation itself and eternal life.   

To get our selves out of the way, we need to allow the Work to gather us.  What is the Work?  It is the work of compassion, love, service, sharing, teaching, reaching, stretching.  If you put that all into one word it would be “church”, not in an institution of orthodoxy but as a living, breathing universal BEING.

So for 2012, lets allow the work to gather us!

Economic Dislocation Will Continue
We are in a time of sea-change. Many of these shifts I believe are permanent and will create not only anxiety but dislocation. And the fact is that humanity does very well, usually, at the rock bottom. We figure it out. (Sounds crazy right!) I think that happens because we start looking for places other than our pocketbook for meaning. As Richard Rohr notes “in desperate and dark situations where the old god doesn’t work anymore, the old self and the old attitudes don’t work anymore. “Our gods much each die until we find the True God.” Each dying god is another darkness and another death.” Finding the True God is HOPE.

Expect To See Signs Of Hope
The hope will not come in ever expanding financial resources. It will come, I believe, in a “settling.” Love whispers. Fear screams. Love will whisper some powerful messages in 2012!

Live Into Solutions
And if you are reading this, you are part of the solution. Live into it. There is a lot of work ahead. NewChurch LIVE is just one part of a different sea-change, a different shift that will meet new economic realities through alternative offerings. We are in the end to be just that – an alternative – an alternative to fear, anxiety, hatred, and need.

We are ready for 2012! May God bless your journey. May God bless this congregation. May God bless this world.