How to (begin to) Save the World

In the film, The Neverending Story, a young boy, Bastian, reads a book.  But it's no ordinary book.  It's a book in which the reader becomes a part of the story.  For most of the movie Bastian sits up in the attic of his school reading this book from cover to cover.  It's a fantastic story of the Nothing, a warrior, a princess, a Rock Eater and a Luck Dragon that very quickly draws Bastian in.  In the midst of his reading, however, Bastian realizes that the characters in the book seem to hear what he's saying.  In the scene below Bastian reads of the young warrior, Atreyu, and his quest to save Fantasia.  It is in this scene that Bastian comes to the full realization that he is a part of the story.

What I love about that scene is Bastian's response once he realizes that he is part of the story he's reading.  He throws the book across the floor!  The mere idea that he and the story are one frightens him.

The same might be true of our relationship to our Story, the Bible, as well.  If we read it, we might discover that we are a part of it, and that might frighten us a bit.  In one sense, there is something frightening about finding our story in God's Story.  Suddenly, we may discover that our plans are not big enough, our worldview is too small and our courage is insufficient for the task.  The Story asks too much of us!  In another sense, however, nothing could be more refreshing, encouraging, comforting and worth the investment.  For as you and I find our stories in God's we find ourselves recruited into God's great redemptive passion and plan to restore and save the world from all that corrupts and degrades it.

This weekend, during worship, we will launch our 31-week journey through The Story.  If you haven't done so already, please pick up one free copy of The Story per household from our lobby and join in the journey with us.  Also, please check out other resources for our journey at the West Counter after worship.

How do we save the world?  Well, that's a much bigger question than we have time to engage in here.  But I do know this: the answer begins as we get to know God's Story.  I hope you'll join us.

- Pastor Stacey Littlefield

Jesus, the Two-Kegger Cul de Sac and Us

I've shared this story before but it bears repeating.  Several years ago, back when I pastored in Cleveland, I was at a meeting in a Covenant Church in Columbus, Ohio.  The pastor of that church, John, told me that when his church made plans to build their new building he and his wife, Jen, wanted to move into the neighborhood where the church was located.  They found a house and moved in.  Only after they moved in did they discover that their cul de sac was known as the “two-kegger cul de sac” (so named because of the amount of beer they consumed at block parties).  John discovered that the two other streets in the area had begun to hold their own block parties separate from the street on which he and Jen now lived.  Why?  Because there were some Christians on the other two streets who disapproved of some of the goings on at previous block parties (“unmentionable” behavior is what John called it).  John said to Jen, “This is exactly where we want to be!”  Within a year or so of moving to the neighborhood, John and Jen began to host a weekly investigative Bible Study in their home, made up of people from the “two-kegger cul de sac.”  John also shared with me that he sometimes referred to that Bible Study as “the cussing Bible Study” because all of those who came had no faith and were simply free to be who they were.  John and Jen saw themselves as “sent” among the people of their neighborhood.

In the John 20.21, the Resurrected Jesus says to his disciples,“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  I don't know about you, but it is so easy for me to forget my own “sent-ness.”  The Father sent the Son; the Son and the Father sent the Holy Spirit; the Father, Son and Spirit have sent us, me, you – the Church.  The word “apostle” means “sent one” or “messenger.” In that sense, we are all apostles; we are all sent into the world in which we live.

What does it mean to understand ourselves as sent (apostles)?  How ought I to be living my life if I understand that God has sent me to where I am?  What about you as you read this post?  What does it mean to be an apostle in your 97%?  Among whom are you and I sent?  What is your two-kegger cul de sac?  Or, to put it the way the teacher of the law put it in Luke 10, “And just who are your neighbors?”

- Pastor Stacey Littlefield

The "Great Secret" to Loving Your Neighbor

The quote below came to me from C.S. Lewis' classic work, Mere Christianity. It's been years
since I read the book, but, thankfully, an ECCer emailed me the quote in response to our worship on Sunday.  To the question of how we are to love our neighbors, Lewis writes:

The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. There is, indeed, one exception. If you do him a good turn, not to please God and obey the law of charity, but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, and to put him in your debt, and then sit down to wait for his ‘gratitude’, you will probably be disappointed. (People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.) But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less. (Mere Christianity, p.131)

I've said for years that loving our neighbors (or our enemies, for that matter)  is not about how we feel.  It's about how we act.  Biblically speaking, to love our neighbors is to do the loving thing for them, whether even like them, or not.  When we act lovingly, we begin to feel what we could not have imagined feeling before.  That is "one of the great secrets" Lewis writes about.  

On Sunday I quoted a line from the film 42.  It was a line where Branch Rickey stated that the command to love your neighbor as yourself is one of the most repeated commands in the Bible.  I'd like to finish with one more quote from the film.  In this scene Herb Pennock, General Manager for the Philadelphia Phillies calls Branch Rickey about an upcoming game with Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers.  After you watch the scene, consider this: If you were to meet God one day, what neighbor have you failed to love enough? And if God asked you why, would your reply be sufficient? I'll let you know that there is a bit of brief, mild language in the clip.

Peace,

Pastor Stacey