There Are Two Kinds of People

Yawn. A bunch of churches getting together in a local park to worship together. Who cares! It sure doesn't look like anything is really happening. And yet...

On Sunday five neighborhood churches worshipped together in Hamilton Park for the first time. It could become an annual event. We prayed together, we sang, we took communion together, we shared ways of increased collaboration together, and we feasted together. It was good. It was fun. And it was strategic. 

We had Roger Reece, Executive Director of Associated Churches preach  - and it was good to introduce him to our congregations. Most of us are members of the organization, and in one way or another are involved in serving our neighborhood. But it's important that we think about how we can care for our neighbors together. And it's the togetherness aspect that I think was strengthened on Sunday. 

Churches have become very irrelevant and obsolete in their neighborhoods. Sure, they still find a way to contribute to the needs of the community, but ask a neighbor how they've benefited from the local church. The answer will reveal the disconnect. 

Anchor has worked hard to be relevant to our neighbors - but we don't want to continue to do that work alone. We want to learn from our other neighborhood churches from the ways they've become helpful. From the collaboration comes more helpful churches, a unity of spirit that adds strength to our good work, and new opportunities for the Spirit to accomplish the impossible in us and through us.

There were about 165 of us gathered together in front of the brown cinder-block pavilion at Hamilton Park. It was inspiring to hear the voices singing together, to see heads bowed in prayer, to join the long line for Communion. We were planting seeds. Now our vision is to grow our churches and invite our neighbors so that we fill the park, we want people sitting on the far back hill! Wouldn't that be a great testimony to the help we have given in the name of Jesus to our neighbors? 

More than anything, our churches want the Gospel of Jesus to be good news for our neighbors. We want our churches to be harbingers of that announcement. We want the kingdom to come where we live. This means, though, that we have to get involved in the lives and issues of our neighborhood. All the divorced families. All the kids without a father at home. Homes where the man is in prison. Families that are caught up in the court-system. Families that are dependent on the welfare system. Parents that don't know how to make it work together. People on disability, who are depressed, who are angry. People struggling to start over again, to get an education, to get a better job, to be a better parent. 

There are also great families in our neighborhood, homes that are good and stable and shine a lot of light. And our neighborhood needs our churches to do their best in making disciples who are the hands and feet of Jesus where they live. Disciples who use their resources, their connections at work, their influence, their skills, their wallets, their prayers, their kitchen tables, their community assets, their political involvement, their local schools, to help make our neighborhood a better place to live. Disciples who jump into a project that will outlive them, a task that is bigger then all of us, a work that requires more than we can ask or imagine. Disciples who work together, in the wisdom and grace and diligence and creativity and truth and perseverance of Jesus.

For me, the quotes below capture these ideas. They inspire me. May they provoke you as well. 

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.  

~Saint Augustine

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.  

~Albert Schweitzer

The only way you can serve God is by serving other people.  

~Rick Warren

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. 

~Blaise Pascal

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:  "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"  But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:  "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"  

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."  

~C.S. Lewis

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.  

~Margaret Meade

Click here for more information about the neighborhood churches involved.

More Advent Quotes from C.S. Lewis

During Advent 2010, Anchor Community Church reflected upon Scripture and the writings of C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation. A free booklet by Dr. Joel Heck was available in the Foyer, and you could follow the Anchor Blog for daily postings.

If you like the thoughtfulness of C.S. Lewis, if you want to think more deeply about the Incarnation, if you want to keep Christ in Christmas, read on.


Here is Week One of Advent 




Week Two
Quest for Peace: Second Sunday of Advent

When the year dies in preparation for the birth
Of other seasons, not the same, on the same earth,
Then saving and calamity go together make
The Advent gospel, telling how the heart will break.
Therefore it was in Advent that the Quest began...
~ C.S. Lewis, "Launcelot", Narrative Poems, p95

The Gift of Judgement: Second Monday of Advent

Judgment is at hand, promise of judgment and threat of judgment.... It is the same sort of ambivalence which Christians have been taught to recognize in the season of Advent.
~ C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, The Arthurian Torso, p157

God Shatters: Second Tuesday of Advent

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are "offended" by the iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers.
~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, p78

What We Can Understand: Second Wednesday of Advent

We cannot conceive how the Divine Spirit dwelled within the created and human spirit of Jesus.... What we can understand...is that our own...existence is...but a faint image of the Divine Incarnation itself - the same theme in a very minor key.
~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p147

Just Like Your Father: Second Thursday of Advent

The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the Sons of God. We do not know...how things would have worked if the human race had never rebelled against God and joined the enemy.... You and I are concerned with the way things work now.
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p178

Test of Greatness: Second Friday of Advent

[The great French writer] Montaigne became kittenish with his kitten but [it] never talked philosophy to him. Everywhere the great enters the little - its power to do so is almost the test of its greatness.
~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p147

Excitement Of A Child: Second Saturday of Advent

I have read [your book] Treasure on Earth and I don't believe you have any notion how good it is.... I've never seen the hushed internal excitement of a child on Christmas Eve better done. That is something we can all recognize.
~ C.S. Lewis, from "Letter to Mrs. Phyllis Sandeman", Dec. 10, 1952, Lewis' Collected Letters, III, pp261ff

Week Three
His Name In This World: Third Sunday of Advent

Dear Hida (is that right?) Newman,
Thank you so much for your lovely letter and pictures.... As to Aslan's other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in the world who (1.) arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else's fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb.... Don't you really know His name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer.
~ C.S. Lewis, from "Letter to Hila Newman," June 3, 1953, Lewis' Collected Letters, III, p.334

To Tell His Story: Third Monday of Advent

My brother and I took a day off last week, put sandwiches in our pockets, and tramped sixteen miles..from Dorchester Abbey to Oxford.... You would be surprised if you could see the unspoilt beauty and charm which can still be found.... I hope to send you the autographed children's book by Christmas, but will probably know more about its progress this afternoon, as I am going out to lunch with my publisher.
~ C.S. Lewis, "Letter to Miss Vera Mathews," September 20, 1950, Lewis' Collected Letters, III, p54

Greatness Comes In Smallness: Third Tuesday of Advent

"It seems, then", said Tirian..."that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places."
"Yes," said the Lord Digory. "Its inside is bigger than its outside."
"Yes," said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world."
~ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, p141

To Glorify And Enjoy: Third Wednesday of Advent

The Scotch catechism says that man's end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever'. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.
~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p97

A Gift To You For Others: Third Thursday of Advent

"Hadn't we better take what we want and get out again?" said Edmund.
"We must take the Gifts," said Peter.
For long ago at a Christmas in Narnia he and Susan and Lucy had been given certain presents which they valued more than their whole kingdom.... They all agreed...and there, sure enough, the gifts were still hanging. Lucy's was the smallest for it was only a little bottle.
~ C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, p23

Christmas Shopping: Third Friday of Advent

From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat's.... One of his hands...held an umbrella: in the other arm he carried several brown paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels.
~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, p8

Any Point In Going On?: Third Saturday of Advent

[The Queen of Narnia] "isn't a real queen at all," answered Lucy. "She is a horrible White Witch.... She has made an enchantment over the whole country so that it is always winter here and never Christmas."
"I wonder if there's any point in going on," said Susan.... "What about just going home?"
~ C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, p56

Week Four
Jesus Saves: Fourth Sunday of Advent

Most of my books are evangelistic, addressed to [those outside the faith].
~ C.S. Lewis, from "Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger," God in the Dock, p181

Peace On Earth: Fourth Monday of Advent

There! They're at it again. "'Ark, the errol hygel sings".... Boxing Day [December 26] is only two and a half weeks [away]; then perhaps we shall have a little quiet in which to remember the birth of Christ.
~ C.S. Lewis, "Delinquints in the Snow," God in the Dock, p310

Very Many Thanks: Fourth Tuesday of Advent

Once more, very many thanks to all your great goodness to me and mine: and with all best wishes for a happy Christmas.
~ C.S. Lewis, from Letter to Dr. Warfield Firor, Nov. 6, 1948, Lewis' Collected Letters, II, p889

Campaign of Sabotage: Fourth Wednesday of Advent

Enemy-occupied territory - that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed...and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p46

Bring Religion Into Everything: Fourth Thursday of Advent

Just a hurried line...to tell a story which puts the contrast between our feast of the Nativity and all this ghastly "Xmas" racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a bus say, as the bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, "Oh Lor'! They bring religion into everything. Look - they're dragging it even into Christmas now!"
~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, Dec. 29, 1958, p80

Give More Than We Can Spare: Fourth Friday of Advent

Charity - giving to the poor - is an essential part of Christian morality.... I do not believe on can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p86

Quotes from C.S. Lewis - First Week of Advent

During Advent, Anchor Community Church is reflecting on Scripture and writings from C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation. A free booklet by Dr. Joel Heck is available in the Foyer, or you can follow the Anchor Blog for daily postings. If you like the thoughtfulness of C.S. Lewis, if you want to think more deeply about the Incarnation, if you want to keep Christ in Christmas, join us.

First Sunday of Advent

The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, come into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.

~ C.S. Lewis, "The Grand Miracle," God in the Dock, pg80.


First Monday of Advent

The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a Woman's body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p179


First Tuesday of Advent

He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p148


First Wednesday of Advent

Just as every natural event is the manifestation at a particular place and moment of Nature's total character, so every particular Christian miracle manifests at a particular place and moment the character and significance of the Incarnation.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p143


First Thursday of Advent

In this descent and reascent everyone will recognize a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into some thing hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life reascends. It is the pattern of all animal generation too.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p148


First Friday of Advent

The Incarnation was God's 'weak moment': when Omnipotence becomes a baby in a manger has 'weakened' itself.... The temptation...is precisely a temptation to evade the self-imposed weaknesses, to be strong, omnipotent, again - to make stones into bread, to be emperor of the world, to do 'levitations'. The weakness was the strength.

~ C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters III, p 409ff


First Saturday of Advent

No woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, without Him. But once, and for a special purpose, He dispensed with that long line which is His instrument: once His life-giving finger touched a woman without passing through the ages of interlocked events.

~ C.S. Lewis, Miracles, p182

The Problem of Pain

The Easter Sermon title runs something like this: Why do bad things happen to good people? In reading to prepare for this message, I read through C.S. Lewis' treatise on pain: good stuff. Here is a selection of quotes that provided immense illumination and conviction.

"If God were good, He would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness or power, or both." This is the problem of pain in its simplest form.
...it must be admitted from the outset that if the popular meanings attached to these words are the best, or the only possible, meanings, then the argument is unanswerable.
pg 26

If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees that world to be either redeemed or not further redeemable.
pg 114

...a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" to be had. It is hardly complimentary to God that we should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts.
pg. 97

We imply, and often believe, that habitual vices are exceptional single acts, and make the opposite mistake about our virtues...
pg. 60

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that his "heart is in the right place" and "he wouldn't hurt a fly," though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.
pg 56

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.
pg 67

According to that doctrine [of the Fall of Man], man is now a horror to God and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because God made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will.

Christianity asserts that God is good; that He made all things good and for the sake of their goodness; that one of the good things He made, namely, the free will of rational creatures, by its very nature included the possibility of evil; and that creatures, availing themselves of this possibility, have become evil.
pg 69

Indignnation at others' sufferings, though a generous passion, needs to be well managed lest it steal away patience and humility from those who suffer and plant anger and cynicism in their stead.
pg 108

There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by (social justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible. But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.
pg 110

The demand that God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.
pg 122

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
pg 128

We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void...
pg 33

We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves," and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all."
I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction.
pg 40

C.S. Lewis - A Slip of the Tongue

The Weight of Glory is the title to a famous sermon Lewis wrote, it is also the title of a book including that sermon along with a collection of others. A Slip of the Tongue is the last one included in the book; below are some quotes from that sermon. It was a Spirit-prompting by which I read this sermon, and I'm glad I followed Him to this sermon - the words were both refreshing and reprimanding. They were like a blast of cold air which awakens and startles. Good stuff I needed to ponder.

********

When a layman has to preach a sermon, I think he is most likely to be useful, or even interesting if he starts exactly from where he is himself, not so much presuming to instruct as comparing notes. (pg 184)

Have we ever risen from our knees in haste for fear God's will should become too unmistakable if we prayed longer? (186)

Our temptation is too look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. (188)

For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. (189)

For he claims all, because he is love, and must bless, he cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all. There's no bargaining with him. (190)

What God does for us, God does in us. (191-2)

Failures will be forgiven, it is acquiescence that is fatal. (192)

Sunday Sermon Notes - 3.25.07

Pride & the Seven Deadly Sins

This has been the most personal of the deadly sins. Preparation for it has been unnerving. Pride has tenacious tentacles in my will and eyes. So much so that I went to a counseling appointment this Monday with Dan Boen (see link in sidebar - CCCOI). We talked about my irritation with people who bug me. We ended up talking about my pride. Ouch.

In preparation for this sermon I read C.S. Lewis' famous chapter on Pride in his potent book: Mere Christianity. I probably underlined half the chapter - he has great insight into this deadly sin, and it resonated with me...he was speaking about me. Ouch.

Here's some of his stuff on this stuffy sin:
"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.
There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconcious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others."

"Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."

"Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competetitive by its very nature - while the other vices are competetive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest."

"If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed."

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs - it describes the opposite of pride in a man:
"Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do not dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all."

If you think you are conceited, come on Sunday and join a bunch of other conceited followers of Jesus. Maybe together we'll learn to be humble, like Jesus.