February 15, 2004 - Dr. Stephen C. Lien, "Broadband to God"

Before I read our Scripture lesson for this day, I want to call to your attention this beautiful piece of artwork that Fielden Harper created. One of the paraphrase versions of what I am about to read talks about how we are to let our roots grow down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love so that we can understand God's ways with us. Sometimes I think we come to the Christian faith thinking that it is just static; we come and it is just a matter of understanding certain propositions. All throughout the Old and New Testament, the Bible talks about our relationship with God as if it were an organic, growing, developing, maturing, changing thing. We need to have that kind of understanding when we come here to be the people of God. None of us is at a place in our faith where we can stop. We need to keep growing, maturing and developing. And the Scripture that I want to read from Ephesians, chapter 3, talks about some of that and is the basis for the broadest of ideas for my sermon because I want to take up where we left off last week. I am reading from The Message by Eugene Petersen. The apostle Paul, when he is writing to the church--like us and Ephesus--is talking about the scope and the wisdom of God's plan and it is so awesome for me because when I think of that, this is my prayer for you.

"I ask [God] to strengthen you by His Spirit--not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength--that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite Him in. And I ask him that with both feet firmly planted on love, you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God."

And then this, (when we are talking about Vision)

"God can do anything, you know--far more than you can ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us." The Message, p. 409

Will you join with me in prayer? God, we pray that you would take this word on a page or spoken in the air and put it on the road. Give us handles on the truth or maybe you need handles on us to steer us and drive us and change us, God. Whatever it is, we pray that you do your miraculous work in our lives, just as miraculous as other things that you do to change us from who we are into who you want us to be. To that end, God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Last week somebody said that my sermon was Vision on steroids! And so I was going to slow down today, but judging from the time, I might have to crank up the speed again because I have a lot more I want to tell you about. To back up a little bit, in case you weren't here, last week's sermon was called "Hotspot to the Future". The title came from a computer term on my wireless Internet card and my little laptop and being able to sit at Starbucks or almost anywhere else in the world and find this 'Wi Fi hotspot' to the Internet. You can log on and be anywhere in the world on the Internet in a matter of nanoseconds. What I talked about was that BPC, as a congregation, we're that hotspot! Not the building, but we as people: living, breathing, connected, the resourced, the people that we are, the places where we live. We are a hotspot! We are wired, we are so wired, not just to the world, but to the future of the world. I truly believe that God wants to do awesome and amazing things through us and in us.

So today, keeping with computer technology terms, the sermon title is Broadband to God. If you know anything about computers, you know that when we first started to connect computers to computers and computers to mainframes, we did it through a modem. Modems started at about 300 bods or bytes per second and they were excruciatingly slow. If you ever had one of those first modems, you could go out and get lunch and come back before your message was loaded on your computer! We moved up to 9000 kilobytes, then 144+, 288+, 906+. Now we have broadband. We've got DSL, cable modems and broadband so that our communications from computer to computer is instantaneous, almost real time, and it is absolutely awesome. And if you are used to that on a daily basis, and then when you travel, you have to go through a phone line, you break out in zits waiting!

In today's sermon-Broadband to God-is a way of understanding this Vision and what God wants for us: an immediate broadband connection to the heart of God. I am so convinced that this image, this vision, this mission that is given to our congregation is a broadband connection to the beating heart of God, because God is so concerned with all of God's people. Not just those that are sitting here. And we have a job, we have a responsibility, we have the privilege of inviting others to be part of the party that is ours when we belong to God and understand that.

But before we get to the Vision itself, some people say this is pretty big, hairy, audacious and might be impossible. Judging from the buzz and excitement, the email and the voice mail and the letters and calls that I have gotten, people don't think it is impossible. Somebody sent me this: "Impossible is a big word thrown around by small people who find it easier to live in a world they have been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact; it is an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration; it is a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary." I was down on the Promenade yesterday and walked by an Adidas sports shop. They launched a nationwide campaign in February and you know what the tag line is? "Impossible is nothing." If Adidas can do it, so can we.

Impossible calls forth our faith and that is exactly what God is calling us to do. If we are planted here, at this moment, on February 15, 2004, and we want to be in a different place, in a different ministry and it takes faith to get there, then our faith is going to have to grow. And that is the point. We can't do what I am dreaming about with the faith we have today. That's the point. God wants to change and deepen and mold our faith and change and mold and deepen our lives, in our relationships with one another and with the disinterested, secular people from the Westside of Los Angeles that we're called to reach out to. We're going to get there.

Let's put it up on the screen-the Vision-"To welcome disinterested, secular people from the Westside of Los Angeles to a dynamic Christian faith community in a life-changing relationship with Jesus and together to change the world for the better." I want to unpack it a little bit. We need to understand this because when we do, we're going to fall into step with each other-we're going to fall into alignment and synergy-we're going to find energy and a focus we sometimes lose sight of. This isn't brand new stuff for this congregation. We've lived on the cutting edge most of our existence, but we're going to focus it, we're going to energize it; we're going to link arms; we're going to refuse to major in minors and get stuck on the details. And we're going to say, "This is the big picture-let's go there." Because nothing else will matter very much if we're going to the big picture.

Disinterested secular people from the Westside of Los Angeles. I told you all kinds of things about our zip code 90049. Thirty-four thousand people. 51% of them have no faith involvement. If you think that's not a challenge, within a 20-minute drive time, there are 1,175,000 people and 51% of those don't have any faith connection. We've got our work cut out for us! OK. Not only are they disinterested and secular, and I am not saying 'they', except linguistically, 'we' are the 'they'. It's us! We are these people too. Hear that well.

Not only are they disinterested, many times they are antagonistic as well. They don't like church. They don't like the talk about Jesus and they've got good reason. Many of them have been hurt and wounded and scarred by the church. For many of them, their faith has collapsed under them just when they needed it most. They feel like their faith and God and the church has totally abandoned them and disappointed them. This is a huge challenge because these people don't want to hear what we have to say. These are people who watch the news. These are people who read about all the priests that have been accused of child molestation or television evangelists accused of fraud. These are the people who watch the news about churches that are trying to raise millions of dollars to fund their building plan when children's bellies are bloated and people are dying of starvation all around the world and they say, "What's the church doing about it? I thought the church had something to do with changing our world." Unfortunately, the church has done little in recent decades to change peoples' understanding.

So many people, and maybe we are among them, have a very difficult time differentiating between the church and the Christian faith-they think they are one and the same. They have trouble differentiating between Christians, church people and the Christian faith. A famous detractor of the church said it so well, "I could abide the Christ were it not that he comes to me in his leprous bride, the church". [DeQuincy ] A scathing indictment for the way we live and the way we behave-our infighting and our majoring in minors. We need to understand that these people are disenfranchised; they have an anti-church bias. I want us to be a church for people who don't like church. I want to shock them when they come in. I really do. I want to shock them with our exuberance and our joy and our passionate embrace and our love and our inclusivity. I want to shock them. They are going to say, "Whoa-has this changed!!" That's what they need to hear. That's what they need to see. Because we are going to invite them to a dynamic Christian faith community-that's us. But it is a too well kept a secret. A dynamic Christian faith community-that's who we are-that's how we have defined ourselves. We're just going to be more of that: becoming more and more Christ-like, letting the world see us for who we are, not for who we want to be or think we should pretend to be. Hear me well. We are flawed. We are broken. We are hypocrites. Be honest about it. We don't have our act together. I used to think I had my act together and then I realized I didn't know where I put it. That's us. A dynamic Christian faith community is not a museum for saints on display behind glass cases; it's a hospital full of sick people. It's one beggar telling another beggar where to find food. That's who we are. Can we be real? Can we be authentic about it? Or do we have to go through our lives so when you come to church, shaking hands and greeting people, they say,

"How are you doing?" and you say, "Everything's fine, thank you." Can we be honest?

A number of years ago an alcoholic friend of mine gave me his big book, The Twelve Steps-The Big Book by Bill. Alcoholics Anonymous has us beat hands down. You walk into one of those meetings and you say, "My name is Tom and I'm an alcoholic." Can we find that kind of gut-level honesty among ourselves when we get down on the same ground? Can we say, "You know what? I don't have it together. I'm broken. I'm wounded. I'm struggling. My relationships feel like they are going to hell. My job is on the line. I don't have it together. We're all kinds of people in the same boat. That's authentic community and it leads to a dynamic Christian faith community if we can only quit pretending to be who we think we are.

Robert Fulghum has this fascinating image and I just love it. He told about us observing kids outside his office window, playing hide and seek and how one kid hid too well so that the others couldn't find him, and they were getting ready to give up and leave. And he thought that is like the image of us as adults: we play hide and seek with God and one another. Sometimes we hide too well. But, he says, God is into seeking, not hiding. And more than hide and seek, I love the image he quotes about the game of sardines. Did you ever play the sardines? I have delightful memories of playing this game when I was a child at my parents' cabin. All my cousins were there. Everyone is together and "it" goes and hides. And what you do when you find "it", you get in real close so no one else will find the two of you. And then you keep searching until number three finds you, then four and five and six, until the last person finds you. I remember one time we were under an overturned rowboat. And there were probably twenty of us under that rowboat and imagine how hard it was to find us. We were laughing hysterically. Isn't that a neat image of the church! We've been found. And people just can't stay away from the laughter and the joy that is exuding from us. That's what a dynamic Christian faith community is all about. "I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found in the same way everyone else gets found in Sardines - by the laughter of those heaped together at the end." (Quoted by John Ortberg in Everyone's Normal, p. 185)

We're going to talk about a life-changing relationship with Jesus. You know, someone said to me that last Sunday's sermon was like my coming-out sermon. And maybe it was. Mentioning the name of Jesus is hard sometimes on the Westside because we want to be very respectful of others and indeed we do and we want to continue to be. But I think it's time that we speak about Jesus unashamedly. We're talking about a life-changing relationship with Jesus because that is what the Christian church is about. I want to take away a lot of the baggage that's often accumulated around that idea of a life-changing relationship with Jesus and I want to look at it purely. To do that, we (who are here) are called to a radical life-changing relationship that will change our values, our behaviors, our lifestyles, our beliefs, our assumptions, and our dreams. We will be healed and changed and freed and made different and born anew and given a fresh start and oriented in a whole new direction. And here is the flash: it's not a weeklong seminar. It's not a yearlong Bible study. It is a life-long apprenticeship, called discipleship. Until the day we die, we are to become more and more like Jesus and that's what the deal is.

And then together we're going to change the world for the better. We're going to learn and discover little ways and big ways as the people of God to make an impact on this world. It was Dallas Willard who once said, "In a pluralistic world, a religion is known by the benefits it brings to its non-adherents." What are we going to do in the name of Christ around this community and around the world that people are going to say, "Whoa!!!"?

I said last week we can double our budget and give away half of it. Why can't we? To be our own United Way agency. To roll up our sleeves week in and week out. Not imposing guilt on us when we can't go, but celebrating when we can and celebrating when others can go on our behalf. The way we're going to do is to put the whole thing together and say it-To welcome disinterested, secular people from the Westside of Los Angeles to a dynamic Christian faith community into a life-changing relationship with Jesus and together to change the world for the better. It's hard for us to do. We're going to do by our welcoming, our celebrating, our nurturing and our serving. In our welcoming, you already know people and yet you tell me that you don't dare talk about your faith. Tell me what you do when you have a new kid or a grandchild or a get a new puppy or a new car or new cookware? Don't you tell others all about it? Why should our church and our faith be any different? We can do it non-offensively through an authentic relationship with people we already know. We already love them and care for them.

Here are some specific things. We've got Lent and Easter coming up. We're having Wednesday night and Sunday morning services during Lent and here's this marvelous theme-"A Hunger for Wholeness." Who in our world does not hunger for wholeness? We're going to talk about a hunger for acceptance, a hunger for hope, a hunger for peace-Sundays and Wednesdays both. Many people who don't belong to a church are much more apt to come on a Wednesday night than they are on a Sunday morning. Invite them and bring them. Dinner 6:00-7:00 p.m. (so they can't say I've got to go home and eat dinner.) 7:00 p.m.-worship here in the Sanctuary-a quiet, reflective service.

Dallas Willard is coming and people are flying in from all over the country to hear him speak on Saturday, March 6th. Come and be here. Use Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion, to spark some conversation with friends. Look for the newcomer. Observe the three-minute rule when you leave worship-just for three minutes talk to someone you don't know because maybe they are a newcomer or a visitor. Here's a real radical idea: maybe you should give up your pew! Consider giving up your pew if you see somebody you think might be a newcomer. You can sit down next to them and say hi to them and show them how to open the hymnal and when we stand and sit and lead them out to the coffeepot, for the sake of those who are panicked about being here.

Becky Pippert tells this wonderful story about a congregation in a university town that was really strait laced and did things by the book; it was many years ago in the early 70's. There was a guy named Bill who had become a Christian who went to the university. Bill was a hippie guy-really funky with jeans that were torn and long hair and never, ever wore shoes. He became a Christian and thought he should to go to church and he chose this church. He got there late and the pastor is in the middle of the announcements and Bill starts walking down the aisle. The whole church is looking at him because he is a terrible distraction. There is no place for anyone new to sit and he comes right down to the front, in front of the pew, and sits down and disappears from view and is right there in front of the preacher. An Elder in the church, an elderly gentleman, comes walking down the aisle with his cane and slowly, while the service is progressing and the people are thinking "We knew this was coming. He is probably going to reprimand the hippie or tell him what to do or where to go." And you know what that man did? He came and lowered himself down and sat right next to Bill. [Becky Pippert Out of the Salt Box and into the World] That's the kind of church I want us to be: that we go out of our way to welcome people, all people. And we're going to it by our celebration of worship that is engaging and welcoming.

Right now there isn't time to talk about all this. But we're going to nurture; we're going to grow up and nurture and take responsibility. We're going to move out of adolescence and desire the meat of the Word. That may necessitate that worship on Sunday mornings does not always feed you who have been here for many years. If we're trying to speak in a language to people who have never been here before, maybe you are going to have to find another place to be nurtured rather than the one-stop shopping on Sunday morning for 60 minutes. Come during the week or find an accountability group or a Mustard Seed group where your faith can be nurtured.

And we're going to serve. We're going to serve like people won't believe! I want to tell you one other thing and then I'll be done. You know sometimes people, particularly little children, have a hard time understanding who the pastor is and occasionally they mistake the pastor for Jesus. There was this little boy in my last congregation whose name was Tyler, who was just an absolute delight, three or four years old with a big, broad smiley face. Tyler thought I was Jesus. When I wasn't at church on a Sunday, he would turn to his mother and ask, "Where's Jesus?" She had a hard time explaining. But one day, there was a big event at church and we were going to have hundreds of people there and I happened to be on the phone, calling people asking them to bring some cookies. I called Tyler's mother and she wasn't there and I left a message on the voice mail saying we needed a few dozen cookies and wondered if she would be willing to make some. And when she got home and pushed play and Tyler was right there at her knee and the minute he heard my voice he just froze. He just froze and she finished listening to the message and Tyler looked at his mother and asked, "What does Jesus want?" And his mother said, "He wants some cookies." And Tyler said, " Well, then give him cookies!"

You know, Tyler had the personalities wrong, but the question is the right one. The question is the right one. "What does Jesus want?" Not what we want, not our agenda, but what does Jesus want of us? It is this I believe: to welcome and invite these disinterested people from the Westside of Los Angeles to a dynamic Christian faith community in a life-changing relationship with Jesus and together to change the world for the better. I believe that. I really do and I trust and hope and pray that God gives all of us the faith and courage to do exactly that. And all God's people said Amen.

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