Church on Morgan
November 8, 2015 | Luke 6
- Our scripture reading for today, our scripture is from Luke's Gospel, the sixth chapter. Here now, the word of the Lord. Jesus also told them a parable. Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. And now skipping ahead to verse 46, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like, who comes to me, hear my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house who dug deeply and laid the foundation on a rock. When a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell and great was the ruin of that house. The word of the Lord for the people of God. Thanks be to God. - Well, it's good to be with you this morning. What an exciting day. And I wanna say at the beginning, I'm gonna try, if you know me, I've got a habit of going long. This morning, I'm not gonna let that happen. I'm also, I got one word of advice from a fellow church planter friend. And last night he said, dude, it's gonna be like your wedding day and like when your child was born. And so my only advice is don't cry, dude, don't cry. (congregation laughing) And so we're gonna go real quick and I'm probably just gonna keep looking at this screen because when I start to look at some of you, I kinda well up with gratitude. And if this is your first time with us though, we're so grateful, like so grateful you're here. And you're here on purpose. In fact, I would say we built this very space and place for you. You've been invited here today by people who care a great deal about you. And there's a small group of us who've experienced something really rich and profound over the last year or so. And we're just hopeful that we could share it with you because we feel like life would be better if we got to do this together and not just on our own. But we have no, I'm not, we don't wanna convince anybody of anything. We're not trying to convince anyone. But we found something really beautiful and we wanna share it. And so this morning just for some of us who've been on this journey for a while together, I wanna remind you just who we are, why we exist. And then just say a little thank you at the end. And if you're new, this is a great morning because I'm gonna tell you who we are, why we exist. And thank you, thank you for coming. So this week I emailed about 20 random people in our community with this question. And I just sort of said, hey I've been thinking about this lately. It's been a while, a couple of years since good old Barbara Walters did her like 10 most fascinating, interesting people, whatever she calls that thing. But I was just curious in our community, the people that have been gathering for the last couple of months together, who we might sort of list as people that we just constantly curious about. We wanna read about all the time, we're kind of following. If they're on a podcast, we're gonna tune in. If they're coming to town, we wanna go hear 'em speak, right? And that was it, wide open. And some of you guys are like rule keepers and it's, but I got like five emails back with clarifiers, right? Like, you know, who exactly, like how many people, and does it matter if they're like in business or like celebrity, are they supposed to be like deep thinkers? Like are you gonna judge me by this, right? Just give me, like, and my go to is like look, I think Pharrell is endlessly fascinating. So start there, right? And so people would kind of like, okay, okay, I got this, I got this. And what was amazing is, hey, thank you. I didn't reply back to those 20 people, but thank you for doing that. And once I get a little bit of time, I'm gonna go look up half of the people you sent me. But there were some cool patterns. In fact, there were three names that came up more than any other name. And when I stepped back and looked at that, I thought exactly, like that's totally, that's our community. And so if you want just as a way of introduction, here's the three most cited people that our community is super into, okay? So Pope Francis, Elon Musk, and Brene Brown, right? So I think the whole world's fascinated with Pope Francis right now, but I'm grateful that we are too. And just the influence and impact in the counter story that he's living out about the Christian faith, that's making the world stop and wonder, who is this guy? I think the entrepreneurial spirit of Elon Musk is alive and well in our community. These are the kinds of people we think about a lot. The sky's the limit, what could we do? What might be created? How do we, for us, we really wanna think about how we do church outside of the box, even though if you pay attention architecturally, our whole building is just boxes. But how do we, it's everywhere, don't get me started. I mean, we love it, we geek out on it, but it's, yeah. So, but there's this kind of like, there's this upside down faithfulness of Pope Francis that just seems like, of course, of course, that's what we want. And this entrepreneurial spirit of Elon Musk, and then if you don't know Brene Brown, just this woman who is leading the world in helping us have more honest relationships and name the junk in our own lives and figure out how to walk through shame and guilt and the things that so many of us run from, but we recognize, gosh, if we could just do that, if we could just stop running from every broken relationship in town and stay put and find some people and build deep community and really be seen, we might actually change, right? And so those are, I think that's such a beautiful representation of the kind of appetite of this room. I think it makes sense. It's not better or worse than any other community in town, but this is ours. And just because I'm sure you're curious who else came up on the list here were some of the other kind of honorable mentions, right? Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, great book, check it out. Bernie Sanders, how fascinating, right? I mean, you just sort of pay attention, you're like, this is really happening. Patrick Snowden, Taylor Swift, absolutely, in parentheses, Ryan Adams, can we agree? Malala, Chip and Joanna Gaines, as you were at HGTV, people who still have cable, there's like four of you left, but these are really compelling folks who do the show Fixer Upper. Pharrell, like I said, Jay-Z, absolutely, Neil deGrasse Tyson, such an interesting guy, brilliant. Adele, that new single, like 300 times at least this week. And then I love these last two, Dora, right? We got some people with kids and are like, I don't know, the email literally said, all I really think about these days is like Dora, the explorer, that'll do. And then JT, man, I had to give you some love. JT put Gracie Vaughn, that's a guy in our community, that's his wife, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna give you a little love on Sunday and make things go well. So Gracie made the list too. But I think what's important for you to know about us is we just sort of get going, is that these are people that sort of texture kind of our cultural appetite. It's what I think you'll discover if you hang out with us, these are the concerts we wanna go to. Here's the shows we wanna listen to and the rest, but more fascinating, more interesting to us than all of these people is Jesus. And we are a community of folks who are endlessly interested in the life of Christ. Now not all of us believe everything he said, not all of us believe that he was dead and buried and raised from the dead, that he was born of a virgin, that all of the things, the miracles that happened in the scripture, not all of us would call ourselves Christians, right? But we gather together regularly in homes and in this building, because whether you would identify as a Christian and believe the sort of historic doctrines of the church, or whether you don't, we're a community that is endlessly interested in Jesus. And so we talk about Jesus all the time. And we read about Jesus all the time. We're always up for new books. We sing about Jesus like we did this morning and those of us who can't feel like we can sing, we listen as others sing about Jesus. And even this week, how amazing and grateful I am that we even got to celebrate someone who paints about Jesus. And the life that is so incredibly fascinating and interesting and intriguing, that 36 years into this journey for me, I grew up in a Christian home. I was one of those kids who got dragged to church. Some of you don't even know this world exists, but like Sunday morning for two or three hours, go home, come back for another two hours Sunday night, then there's like Tuesday night meetings and the kids play in the kid area, and then there's Wednesday night Bible studies, and then there's Thursday night men's basketball, and like I've lived at the church. I went to every conference and retreat and camp. Afterwards, if you want, I can show you my office. There's like a whole wall that's about to give in because there's so many books on it. I can't stop reading and thinking and talking and arguing and engaging people about this man who lived 2,000 years ago. And so that's who we are. And I want you to know that joining us, sometimes people feel like if I come and I hang out with you, does that mean that I'm quietly endorsing everything that you guys say? And I want to remind you, it doesn't. It doesn't. What it says and what it means is that you're interested in this guy too, okay? So this is a big house. It's a safe place. No matter where you find yourself on the journey and that's super important to us. And one of the things I've learned about vision and I don't want to be sort of a punk or extra hard on folks, but like I mean it, right? And over the next year, there will be people who will decide for one reason or another this is not the space for them and that is so okay. We've lost as many people as we've gained in the last year. But I am so passionate about this being a safe place for anybody who has questions about Jesus or is interested at all, that we're gonna do everything we can to make sure that you never feel like you got a sign on the dotted line to show up here. So we're just a community who's interested in Jesus. You show up, we'll talk about them. We'll paint about them, we'll sing about them, but you don't have to agree with everything. In fact, we would love to have a conversation with you about that. So that's at the heart of who we are. One of the guys who came up on the list again and again was a guy named Simon Sinek. We got any Simon Sinek fans in the room. Wow, you guys need to get on the internet. So Simon Sinek is like one of the most popular TED speakers on the planet and he gave this talk called "Start with the Why" and it's brilliant insight and he actually ended up writing a book about it. But what he says is all the great companies and organizations in the world, they start with the why. And what he meant by that was they don't start with the what. They don't, like for instance, he talked about in his book that he would compare like say Apple and Dell, right? Like Dell's gonna tell you what. They're gonna tell you how many gigabytes or megabytes and the processor speed and how big the screen is and all the rest, the what. Apple's gonna tell you why. Think different, think different, right? There's this power in our story when we start, not with kind of the what or the how, but why. Why does this company exist? Why do we exist? And so more than just us being a community of people who are interested in Jesus, I wanna give you our why. This morning we're gonna start with the why. And then if you come back the next two weeks, we're gonna tell you a little bit more about our how, right? So this is why we exist and the next two Sundays we'll talk about how we're gonna accomplish this thing that has sort of gathered us together. So I was trying to think about the best way and the shortest way to get us into the meat of why we exist. And I was reminded of this stand-up clip that I can't show you, but I've edited the text and I'm gonna read to you of Louis C.K. I don't think you find a single clip of Louis C.K. But here's this bit that Louis C.K. did. He was talking about how he loves flying first class and how much better that experience is than sort of coach, like infinitely better. And how grateful he is that he's not a common person anymore and he gets to actually do the first class of life and how good that is. And then he says in this bit, he says every time, he says, but when I'm sitting in first class, every time I see a soldier on a plane, I think that I should give him my seat. I think it would be the right thing to do. It would be easy to do. And I know it would mean a lot to him. Because I'm in first class for being a professional jerk and this guy is sitting in coach because he's on his way to give his life for the country. And I know I should trade with him. And then he says, and I never have. I've never done it even once. And I've had so many opportunities. I've never even seriously come close. And here's the worst part. I still just enjoy the fantasy of it for myself. In fact, I'm actually proud of myself for having thought of it, thinking, I'm such a sweet man. That is so nice of me to think of doing that. And then to totally never do it. So I think like most great comics, they're telling a story that's bigger than you think. He's naming sort of a human condition. And it's at the core of why we over the last year have gathered and it's our reason for existence. And it's because when I hear Louis C.K. say that. And if you listen to the clip, it's much funnier in his delivery. But I recognize myself in it. And for many of us in this room, we recognize ourselves in that bit as well. We sort of, some of us more specifically have grown up in the church and we know that this Jesus is endlessly fascinating. We see the life that he lived. We have witnesses like Pope Francis who sort of grab our attention and we go, oh my goodness, you know what? And then we gather every week and we enjoy the fantasy of just knowing about it. For ourselves of just thinking about it. We've spent years kind of hearing all of the ways, the beautiful ways that we could possibly live of giving up our seat, of serving up someone else, of being more compassionate, of pouring ourselves out for others, of loving our neighbor as ourself. And we pat ourselves on the back just for having the thought. And we sort of created these cultures, especially in the church where we will get, spend a lot of time getting together to talk about what it would look like if we lived a life like that. And to study books that talk about what it would look like if we lived a life like that. And yet none of us, we just, we've been stuck. We haven't been able to do it. We haven't been able to cross over that line. And so, a little while ago it was actually a year ago to this date. There's about eight of us who gathered in a beach house. And I said, what if that was like our grand experiment, right? Like, what if we just became ruthlessly strategic about finding a way to close the gap in our life between who we know we're called to be and who we actually are? What if we were the community that just tried to outsmart, out pray, out discipline, out something this gap together? What if we actually didn't just sort of talk about Jesus and think about Jesus wherever we tried to live like him? And we held each other accountable to that so that when it wasn't working we would say, hey, we've had 57 Bible studies, we've all memorized a whole lot of stuff but you're still a pretty miserable person. So let's try something else, right? I mean, that's some of the meanest people you'll ever meet are sitting in churches right now. And they've been there for 50 years. And so the proof is in the pudding and we just sort of said we get to be the R&D department. Let's just try something different. Let's see what it would look like. If we actually were crazy enough to not just say, you know what, we're all broken, we're all jacked up, nobody's, you know, no people don't change but we were crazy enough to think, no people really can change and you really can live a different sort of life and we are going to figure out how by the grace of God and with each other. And in this passage that we'll come back to, I think again and again, here's the version from the, sorry, I messed with you there, oh man, I'm gonna let you do it. Okay, so here's the passage that Ashley read but from another paraphrase and I love this. It says, Jesus quotes this proverb and he says to these people, can a blind man guide a blind man? Wouldn't they both end up in the ditch? An apprentice doesn't lecture the master. Listen, the point is to be careful who you follow is your teacher, right? And I think for as much as we're interested in Jesus, a lot of us, he's never been kind of our teacher. And so one of the kind of presumptions, one of the statements we make is we just believe everybody follows somebody in this life. We're all following somebody. The question is who are you following and are they worth imitating? That's our hashtag, our worth imitating. We look at the life of Jesus and we say, that is somebody worth following and worth imitating. We're gonna put sort of our everything into figuring out how to do that. There's a lot of other people we follow and there's a lot of other people we imitate. But together, the reason we exist is to figure out a way to imitate him. And then Jesus goes on to say in the next little bit, he says, and he's talking to church people here. He says, why are you so polite with me? Always saying, yes, sir, that's right, sir, but never doing a thing I tell you. These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements, to your standard of living. They are a foundation words, words to build a life on. And if you work these words into your life, you're like a smart carpenter who dug deep and who laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. And when the river burst and its banks crashed against the house, nothing could shake it. It was built to last. This is a kind of life. If you actually put into practice what I'm telling you, you'll have a life that can withstand all of the pain and the trouble and the stress of this world. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and you don't work them into your life, you're like a dumb carpenter who built his house and skipped the foundation. And when the river came crashing in, it collapsed like a house of cards and it was a total loss. So Jesus was really clear about this. It's one of the things that we just, I think in the church oftentimes we just don't, we get caught up, we don't want to think about it, we don't want to talk about it. But this is abundantly clear. In fact, he would talk to the religious leaders regularly and say, listen friends, what they're saying is right, but how they are living is so, so wrong. So go ahead and listen to what they say, but do not follow them. And then, but there were other examples, examples like Paul who would say things so challenging and profound is when he would write letters to his community and say, would you imitate me as I imitate Christ? And we just began to ask this question amongst ourselves, would any of us feel comfortable saying that? Is there any of us in the room who could say to somebody else, would you just go ahead and imitate me, follow me as I follow Jesus? And we were like, no way, right? And, but that's our vision, that's our why. We hope somehow, because of what God's gonna do through this community in the next 20 to 30 years, that someday we with integrity could honestly look at our children and our grandchildren and our neighbors and say, you know, everybody follows somebody and I'm following Jesus. Everybody imitates somebody, I'm imitating him. I think his life is worth imitating. Would you follow me as I follow him? That's the mission of the church. That's what discipleship means, it's this word we kick around, but discipleship just means living like Jesus, right? And so that's our why, that's why we exist. And just for the last couple of seconds, I just wanna tell you that, like I said about a year ago, we began to kind of brainstorm through some of this and pretty quickly God began to add, like we went from like 30 people to then 60 and then 90 and now there's so many of us in the room and this grand experiment and that's what it is. Is it possible to close the gap, to stop living the Louis C.K. life of people who Draydream about how amazing they could be if they followed, you know, a worthy example but actually became those sorts of people. Over the last year as we have kind of been experimenting with that, trying different sorts of things, I just wanna tell you that like I think it's working, I think it's working, as I've sat here and reflected back on the last 12 months, I'm amazed and overwhelmed, grateful for the change, the life change, the transformation that I'm seeing in so many of you and even in my own life. The truth is I started this community because I needed this community. I was sick of being a hypocrite and I was just like either I'm gonna get out of the game or I'm gonna help be a part of the solution, right? And I can see it in my own life but I also, I see it in you, I see it when people in our community who were sort of famously Christmas and Easter worshipers are now leaders in our faith community who are here every single Sunday that a third of you were not a part of any faith community a year ago before you showed up here. I see it as our community groups, that number over 100 people pour themselves out and serve our city every month. Many of us not engage that kind of service at all a short year ago. I see our lives changing in the example that's being lived out in small things like last week. There's this beautiful Instagram photo of one of our sixth grade students leading toddlers, right? And I thought that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world where sixth grade boys lovingly care for two year olds and pour into them and show them that they matter and we look at that and we go that's worth imitating. That's the kind of life we want. That's the kind of kids we want to have. That's the kind of community we need. But there's so much I could say that I decided to limit myself to just the last seven days. The last seven days has been more than enough to prove that this concept at least has some merit. Last Sunday we did this crazy thing. We prayed to an audio track. If you weren't here, you just got to trust us. It was, but in that time of 10 minutes if you were here, there was a shift in the room. I felt a significant shift in so many people and I heard so many stories of folks who had felt disconnected from God, but who were regaining connection as we tried something new to figure out how to close the gap in our life. On Thursday night, we had a prayer service in here and I joked that every prayer service I've ever been to is got about five women who are over 60 in it and that's it. We had over a hundred people show up. Lots of young people and we experienced this beautiful moment and maybe most powerful to me was listening to people pray in our circle and the things they prayed for that their appetites had changed. That a year ago they wouldn't have even known to say that phrase or to want that or ask that and yet they were asking it publicly in front of each other that these sorts of things would happen in our community and in our life. And then Friday night, unbelievable as we opened up our doors for the first time for first Friday and hundreds of people came into this place, a church to see art and not drink wine, right? And I've sort of told our folks, look like we're a church and right now we can't serve wine in here. So our art has to be like five times better than everybody else's art and our food has to be like five times better than everybody else's food. And it was and as I watched so many people from our neighborhood who have been hurt by the church, who've been sort of labeled by the church, who have been protested by the church, not only show up but stick around like for an hour or two hours and meet people, I thought it's happening, it's working, there's something about this project we've given ourselves to saying we're not gonna give up until our lives look different and it's we're a community that's worth imitating, it's happening. I personally this week, it's like ridiculous. The amount of encouraging emails I've received and Ashley posted this thing on Facebook that is just absurd and some of y'all saw it, it's like oh my gosh, what am I supposed to say to that? But the most unbelievably radically encouraging thing that probably anyone's ever said about me publicly, right? I went to my house a couple days this week and presidents were waiting for me, right? One day I show up and there's some, I'm into candy, sorry, deal with it. There's like a whole bag of candy they're waiting for me. First Friday I walk into my office, somebody had left me a bottle of Woodford Reserve, right? And what's amazing about this, is this doesn't just happen for me. This has been happening for like all of us. I've watched you do it for each other, time and again. And over the last year, what's so profound is that as I've watched you rally around each other and celebrate each other to put sort of competition and comparison away, to stop being critics and to start becoming cheerleaders, there's something that's like so powerful in that. People have begun to gather spontaneously, to listen to one another, to pray with each other, to work through the stuff, to realize, yeah, you are kind of jacked up, but I'm gonna tell you about it and then we're gonna still be friends, right? Like those moments have happened. We have been so patient with each other. I've watched us celebrate the way that we rally and celebrate when somebody gets engaged or married or when a child is born, it's like one of the most like breathtaking things about this gift, this community that God's given us. We've got a couple of families in our church right now who just went to that three kid world, right? That's a game changer. That's the man to man to zone moment. And we all sort of look at that and go, I'm sorry and God has blessed you, you know? (audience laughs) But those families, I watch as our community just sort of shows up and the food shows up and the babysitters pour themselves out and it just happens and I go, this is not like any other community I've ever been a part of. It's an incredible thing that's been happening here and I think it's worth us pursuing for at least another year, maybe 20. One of my favorite things, people were so generous on Facebook last week sharing things about our community, but probably my favorite quote was someone in our community who put on Facebook, listen folks, my best friends are people I didn't even know last year. My best friend, and this is not a socially awkward person. Like you'd wanna hang out with them. My best friends are people I didn't even know last year. I think as we follow Jesus and we take seriously living the life that he lived, it changes us, but it changes the environment, it changes our vision, it changes the sort of community that we can be and people get curious and they come hang out and they experience this beautiful life that we've all got to taste. And so that's who we are, that's why we exist. We're trying to close that gap. We wanna live lives that are worth imitating to be able to say that honestly someday. We recognize that many of us can't yet, but that's the hope, that's the vision. And I just last, I wanna say thank you. First of all, thanks be to God for this experience that so many of us have been on together. Thanks for the reminder that Jesus really is better. He's a better example and a better life to follow than any other that I know of. And somehow, mysteriously by God's grace, he works in us to make it possible to close the gap and in our life on our own sort of effort we never could. And besides being kind of a husband to my wife, Nicole and a dad to Levi and Stella, this truly has been sort of the greatest privilege in my life to serve you all and to be your pastor for the last year on this unbelievable journey that we've been on. And because my buddy told me not to cry, I'm gonna read you, somebody else's words, that I think not only capture sort of my heart in this moment, but many of us in the room. And once again, if you're new to this and you're like, "Man, it sounds like a real love fest." I don't know what these people are kind of weird. It kind of is, but we would love to include you in the group hub, right? So, Anne Lamont says that there are three prayers. Wow, thank you and help, right? That's, there are three prayers. I think she's probably right. This week has been a thank you kind of prayer week. And she's got this beautiful thing that she says in her book about the three prayers in the section under thank you. She says, "When you are aware of all that has been given "to you in your lifetime and in the past few days, "it's hard not to be humbled and pleased to give back. "Most humbling of all is to comprehend the life saving gift "that your pit crew of people has been for you. "And all the experiences you have shared, "the journeys together, the collaborations, "the births and the deaths, the voices, rehab, vacations, "the solidarity you have shown one another. "Every so often you realize without all of them, "your life would be barren and pathetic. "The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them "into your web 20 years ago, maybe six months ago, "and they totally stuck with you. "The more astonishing thing is that the greatest "of all possible people feel the same way about you, "horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. "They say that a good marriage is one in which each spouse "secretly thinks he or she got the better deal. "And this is true also of our bosom friendships. "I don't know what bosom's about, but friendships. (audience laughing) "You could almost flush with appreciation. "What a great scam to have gotten people "of such extreme quality and loyalty "to think you are stuck with them. "Oh my God, thank you. "And I think for so many of us, "that is the great gift that God has given us "is we've pursued the life that he's laid out for us. "This is broken and jacked up and messed up "and dysfunctional as we are. "We have found a community of people "that just seem so far out of our league, "and we all feel that way about each other. "And we would love for you to join us "as we continue to pursue this life "that we believe God has laid out for us, "where we close the gap between who we are "and who we know God's called us to be, "and try to outsmart that and live lives worth imitating." So let me offer a prayer and then we're gonna move on. God, I thank you for this day that you have made and the people that you've used to bring it together. We're so grateful for this life. Our hearts are so full, so overflowing with goodness that not only have you given us such great friends on this journey, but we can see that you're actually changing us, that we're not stuck, that we don't always have to be the people that we've been. God, we love you for your grace and for the gentle ways that you're moving us along and making something more beautiful out of us. What a beautiful vision that you've given us, and we're so thankful this day for it. It's in your name we pray. Amen.