The last couple of weeks I've been trying to figure something out and I've been feeling kind of aggravated. I've been just a little bump. Has anybody else just been in a funk? There's just this thing going on right now.
And I finally realized that for me, what a lot of it was, is there was some, a lot of things that I've normally looked forward to in the summer. There are also just things I've been looking forward to for several years. I'm just not that enthusiastic about it. I told Meredith other day, I was like, you know, I feel like a jerk right now.
But I just want to leave the house and go somewhere. I didn't realize until normal summer plans kind of got canceled with my family and what that looks like for us. And a couple of weeks ago, we talked about lament and we talked about how a lot of times we say lament, we might think that it's just like a Jesus version of having a gripe session. But we realized that biblically, lament carries a lot stronger purpose.
Lament is a way for us to just cross its loss in a way that leads to new health. Because so many of us are feeling disoriented right now. You know, all of the kind of normal little things that kind of keep stuff together are disrupt right now and relationships are weird. I had a, one of the things I'm lamenting is I had a standing Friday lunch group with a bunch of guys that at least two or three times a month.
We're going to have lunch. I've not had lunch with somebody outside of my wife or the church staff in months. There's weird little disruptions right now going on in our lives. But I also, to think about this, I sort of asked myself the question though, that what if the sense of just disorientation that we feel right now in life is actually just a deep call for us to understand ourselves and to orient ourselves back towards a way that we were originally called to be.
Lastly, we talked about our resilient nature and what we're resilient. Faith looks like and this week, what I want to do is we're actually going to take a sidebar. You remember when you were a kid or some of you might still be kids and you know, in a school textbook, you would have that little thing off to the side that provides extra like understanding of things like I want us to have a sidebar conversation. Last week, we talked about the church in Smyrna in the book of Revelation chapter two and about how even though a lot of bad things are going on in their life, they were still managing to kind of keep their head above the water.
And next week, as the church, Pergamum, I had to practice something like that. Pergamum is like stuff is not going good for them. Like it's nasty, it's gnarly, all of that. And I really feel the need is we investigate what the stories of Jesus are with these seven churches, but they're about resiliency.
And I feel like, you know, we need to maybe take a pause, have a sidebar conversation about resiliency and just really investigate what are some ways that we can shore up our own systems and our own understanding of how we're oriented toward Jesus. How can we maybe take a pause and just remind ourselves of who God made us to be as we continue this conversation. And we're going to do it in Genesis chapter two. We're going to go back to the very beginning to see and think of these things.
And so if you have your Bible open, you can turn to Genesis two. You can hear here, but you can read on the screen behind me. If you're home, you can pop your Bible out or just go over to a browser tab and read this but Genesis chapter two verses five through nine and verses 15 through 12. So here are these words.
When no planet at the field was yet in the earth and the earth and the earth had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. And there was no one to tell the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and the water and water the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed a man from dust to the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in the east and he put the man whom he had formed out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant, the sight and good for food.
The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In verse 16, 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tell it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you may eat free of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die. You know, verse two, five, this story begins just speaking of this barren wasteland of the way that Genesis one through eight.
I really, until you get to the Noah story, it's just something different. I think the best word to use is the word fantastical. You have to make up a word to talk about this. It seems so different and so outside what we're used to.
I feel like when I'm reading those first chapters of Genesis, they're just different colors in that picture. It's this different thing altogether. When I think of what I went out to the camp Friday to get out of town, I told Mary's office, I take Fridays off and I told Mary's office, I'm not going to sit around and go to my phone all day long. I've got to get out of the house and do something.
I'm in the middle of nowhere and be into a parish, but I don't think of that as uninhabited. When I think uninhabited, I think of a desert, a scrub idea. Really, this picture that the writer, this picture is painting right now, it's uninhabited, it's desert, it's wasteland. There's nothing there, there's nobody there.
There's one commentator put it. He's telling the story. If life is to happen here, then it will happen through a joint operation. They're both the presence and the reality of God, but also the response of humanity.
Both have to come into play to make life here. We read the story begins to make sense and that purpose that we are made for and from the place that we are planted. What's really interesting, I noticed this last night, I was being intentional about it. I was like, man, it doesn't say Adam's name at all here.
I was literally marking my Bible up to get ready to preach. We don't even hear Adam's name be used until after the fall, until after Cain and Abel. In Hebrew, the word Adam, the word man, and in the word for earth is Adamah. There's an interrelationship between the creation of humanity and towards the place of humanity.
Those words are just one vowel sound off of each other. We're both made for and made from the place that we are created. The first 15, we find there's two things Adam's asked to do. Two things the man is asked to do.
It's not getting the gender roles. It's speaking of humanity in this really interesting way of an unfolding story that's happening. If you read that, it sounds a little weird. There's a different thing going on.
It's not put 2020 Twitter fights in the description language here. There's an unfolding story that carries across and carries across, but humankind is called to do two things. They're called to till and they're called to keep watch. That's what I want to think about today.
There's two things to till and to keep watch. To till. The word in Hebrew here is the word for work. It's too work.
What's so interesting is the exact same word is used to describe worship, work and worship are interchangeable definitions here. It's also the link called to the vading. And to think about that, we really can tell a lot about ourselves and about our work, about what our relationship is to God. We can tell how well we worship, how we respond to God.
How we respond to God tells a story about how we worship God. There's an interrelationship that's going on there. But that relationship, when it's going well, will bear fruit. What's the favorite thing that Jesus said to talk about?
That when you're living in the spirit, you will bear fruit. It also helps us realize that when our relationship to work is broken, our relationship with worship is broken. Our cultivation problem, our cultivation will have a problem. It will be broken.
It will be counterproductive. When our work and our worship is busted, that we're going to see frustrating fruits come out of it. The next thing that God called Adam to do is to keep watch. In the King James Version, it says to steward.
It means to focus on something. It means to bear responsibility for something. When we read these passages, we realize that God needed Adam to make his creation be every single thing that he wanted it to be, that our call can't be detached from our creation. The garden wasn't made for man, but man was made for the garden.
We have, if we want to have a fulfilling, thriving life, what scripture tells us is that we find the entrance to that by understanding our call to worship and to keep watch over things. That's really what I want us to think about today. So now where we are in 2020, and the reality is we are individually as people, but also in the realities that we are as a church here in this space. How are we tilling and how are we keeping watch?
What's our work worship, quotient look like, and where are we willing to take responsibility to put things? What I want us to do is I want us to start to work that out with three places and three questions. The first is this, with our own life. The stories of Jesus that is actually the thing that he taught about more than anything else in the gospels.
He teaches about seven times across Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This idea of lesser and greater. The last will be first, and the first will be last. This next piece, the apostles, James and John, their mom came to Jesus and said, hey listen, when you come into your kingdom, we put my boys on the right side and the left side.
I want them to be important. This is what Jesus answers to her. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.
This is the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give a ransom for many. In the kingdom, less and great has a different story. One commentator said about this passage, what we cannot get to when we read these is that we realize that there is a line in the kingdom and that there is not a premium place in this line for grandstanders. In fact, that place is at the bottom of the line.
When I think to this story in Genesis, and we read a couple of times about that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Think about what you think that looks like. When I was a kid, I thought about that. I imagine that had to get a bad looking tree.
That makes sense. One of the questions I asked was, how did Adam and Eve know in the garden where this tree was? It had to be evil looking. I think I remember the Johnny Depp movie, Sleepy Hollow, the Ichabod Crane, remember that tree and that movie?
Christopher Walken came out of the tree. That is a bad looking tree. That is one of the kids I thought that this whole thing looks like. We realize that instead we read the story, we found the place of this story, we realized that God gave humans tremendous agency.
He gave us the ability to make decisions. For God, us making decisions was a very important thing. He loves us so much. He wants our decisions to be made completely on our own and our decisions to be made completely towards him.
We need to break note from what he says before. If we think Jesus is big enough, we need to realize that sin is big enough. It is a lot bigger than just a do's and don't list. It is a lot bigger than just a moral code.
We have to realize what is war against our soul. All these messages from Revelation are really about saying, what are you going to allow to control you? I think this tree of good and evil, what this really was, was Adam's saying, you know what, I like this idea of making a bunch of decisions. That knowledge, the tree of good and evil is wanting to freedom to make all the decisions you want to without any responsibility in place.
That is going on with that. If we think about this, we think about this whole lesson in greater, I want to ask you this question, what is your own personal tree of that knowledge of good and evil? What are those places in your life where you want to willfully make bad decisions because you just can't cope right now? Meredith and I have a joke and we know this.
If I'm ever eating sonic, it means things aren't going well. I hate sonic. It's nasty. It's just as nasty as Johnny's.
It's right there. Meredith, look at the checking accounts. Keep going. Sonic, you okay?
Because for me, when I go to sonic and get food at sonic, it means I'm too busy to make the right decision. That I didn't control my schedule enough, that I didn't have to just go home and eat something healthy for lunch, that I didn't plan anything. For me, with exception, they have big red now, which I actually really do like big red. But for me, sonic is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
It's me willfully making a bad decision and not caring about the consequences of it. That's kind of a funny idea. But think about it. Where do you go?
Like, where have you made willfully just unhealthy decisions right now is a coping mechanism. You know, if Jesus and I, when our work and our worship is in a healthy relationship with each other, we're going to be bearing good fruit. And when our work and our worship is out of sync and we're not keeping watch, keeping up with that discipline, the intention is then going to be counterproductive fruit. What are the fruits of this tree of knowledge of good evil?
Now we see those fruits played out in our life right now. I think this is what those fruits look like. I try to make a list this week. The fruits of that tree are power, which okay, well I got your power, right?
Individuality, well, you know, knowledge, those are good things. But let's just continue this trace. It's a fruit of importance. Their fruits of superiority, their fruits of winning, their fruits of antagonism and of anger, you know, of mocking their the fruit that convinces you that it's okay to get to the top by climbing on the backs of others.
It's wanting all of the freedom and power without any of the responsibility. That is the actual outcome of allowing this tree to be part of our consumptive habits. Is that saying I want to exercise all the freedom God gave me, but I'm not willing to take any of the responsibility he gave me as well. Second thing is the world around us.
How are we, how are we tilling and how are we stewarding this world around? It's one of the things you've heard me say quite often is that you are the best person to reach the people that you know. Every one of us have a sphere of influence around us. Those spheres are fun.
They end up intersecting and interacting and interlating. But then sometimes they're completely honest to us that you are the person to reach the people you know. You know the single biggest indicator of what will take person to come to faith is not a conversation with me or invitation with me, but it's a conversation with you or an invitation that comes from you. Now, you look at what makes people happy.
We want to talk about going to church as part of that. The most of the least effective way is for me to invite a complete stranger. The most effective way for you to take responsibility for the people that you know and invite them into that. I referenced this earlier on.
It was the very first Sunday we were in COVID. I've been reading a couple of Dallas Willard books and he talked about the kingdom. I talked about this a few times throughout the last couple of months, but I'm still fascinated with this idea is that God gives each of us dominion over things. He gives each of us a kingdom.
You know, we're sitting here, God, why aren't your kingdom not coming yet? Why aren't you fixing these things? He's like, well, I gave you dominion over stuff. Why aren't you fixing it?
That God gives us these places of influence and it's our responsibility to tell it, to work and to worship and to focus and to do these things. God has given those spaces to us for us to be cooperating with him along. You know, we're all right with the idea of we were created for a purpose, right? That's an easy conversation.
People can sell. People have sold a lot of books talking about you're created for a purpose, but you're not just created for a purpose. What if you're created for a purpose? You're created for people or for a person.
And then you also begin to realize that you're created for a place. You're created to be influential in the spaces that you currently inhabit and that is the greatest invitation that Jesus can give us. You know, one of the questions that I've been asking a lot right now trying to figure this out is about people is, you know, I'll just a couple of stats. We've learned that Barna Group is a church demographic and like statistics company and they've been working like 900 hours a week over the last five months to help pastors and church leaders understand just this weird dynamic of church in the time of COVID.
One of the things they say is that most churches, only 20% of people have come back to physical worship. We ran off February numbers and then our registration numbers for the last few weeks here at Foundry we found we're actually above the average, but 33% exactly have come back to church. You know, I'm adding a bunch of work last week on how many people we can average or watching online and engaging online. You know, more of our churches on that camera right now is in this room.
How many of y'all did a Zoom call for the first time in your life in the last four months? How many of you never live streamed anything until four months ago? That's kind of the thing. Yeah, one person being honest.
You know, we've all learned how to do different things. Friends, I don't want to go back to February. You know what? Because February doesn't exist any longer.
That world is no longer here. What I'm concerned about is how is God and Jesus asking us to realize the purpose, the places, and the people that we now have. And I'm excited about that. You know, part of my lamenting process this last couple of weeks has been a lamenting that I never thought we would be where we are a month before our new building opens and having 32 people in church and a bunch of online stuff before I realized, man, you know what?
We have the time to pivot, to change, to continue reaching in amazing and extraordinary ways. Friends, that's what happens when we allow our mind to focus, not on what we feel like we've lost, but we don't have anymore. But instead of say, Jesus, how are you giving me new places and new people? And how does that continue to inform the purpose that I have already understood you?
And how do you give us? The last thing is this. It's just our resources. You know, Jesus talks about the lesser, greater things seven times in Scripture.
And what's so interesting is that the next thing that he talked about the most four other seven times shows up inside of this conversation. And since this, you've heard me talk this parable time and time again, but to much has been given much as expected. And when you look at how are we stewarding our resources, how are we tailing our resources, what Jesus is very fundamentally clear about is that at the level that you accept this responsibility and work in it is the level that you will see your responsibility increase. The book of Deuteronomy in multiple places, it says this.
The God says to people, says, I invite to bring you into a land that is not yours and you will live in houses and in towns that you did not build and you will drink from wells that you did not dig and you will eat the fruit from vineyards that you did not plant. I am bringing you into this place and I am giving you this. And the only thing he asked me to do is to worship well and to be responsible for it. And we're still in a lot of conversations about what this looks like.
But one of the things that we do have going on is like, you know, people say you don't plan on building a project during a pandemic. You also don't plan on merging two churches in a pandemic. And in February, everything we own could fit in that white trailer. We rented a couple of rooms for office space and we for four or five years now, almost we have worshiped and borrowed spaces.
Probably six weeks, two months tops, we will be worshiping in our own building that we bought the land for and that we're paying for the building right now. But we're also then an amazing way assuming an additional three and a half acres of property. The building that we're sitting in right now. The building that's next door.
There's also a house across the street. Most of you know about that as well. Friends, that's a lot more responsibility. You know, all we've had to make sure for the last five years is that there's enough electricity to turn on the sound system and we can make something happen.
Friends are about to be a lot more responsibility. Tell you what, we have praised Jesus that financially COVID has not affected us. Through saving and just making good decisions and that sort of thing, that's not been a problem. Our budget's going to grow almost 25% overnight to be responsible for all of this.
But we also think of the amazing access to ministry that gives us the existing ministry standards. You want to hear a kind of fun, cool story. Around 1910, in both Fairbanks over there and in Stirlington right here, two sweet old ladies were frustrated. Not only was there not a church in their community, there was also not a Sunday school class.
So they started Sunday school classes for kids out of their kitchen, almost simultaneously. Both those Sunday school classes and kitchens grew into what's called a union church. You don't know what a union church is? So unions, when there's not enough people, not enough money, not enough buildings.
And so you build one church building. And both Fairbanks and Stirlington, on opposite Sundays, you had a Methodist preacher, you had a Methodist preacher, then you had a Methodist preacher, then a Baptist preacher, and then a Baptist church. And then on those months there's five Sundays, a Presbyterian preacher from Monroe drove up and they had service for Presbyterians. Now the old Stirlington union church is torn down now.
But if you drive up to Bastropon 165, you'll see, I had it in my head until I started talking about it right now. It's on my nose. I went off paper until I get. I think it's not Shiloh.
No, it's not Nibo. It's in Shiloh. So Shiloh, missionary Baptist church is a pretty little white, quite more building. That's the original Fairbanks union church.
In 1960, by then the Baptist had gotten their own building and moved out and had their own pastor. In 1960, the Fairbanks Methodist church and the Stirlington Methodist church merged and the story goes, the exact midpoint between the two churches was where St. Andrews building stands now. All the bulletins and the minutes for those conversations are in the office.
You can look at them anytime you want to. This isn't just something new that we are doing. Friends, we are part of an almost 115 year legacy of a Christian witness here in this community. First Baptist across the street and then first West Campus Fairbanks.
St. Andrews and now Foundry Altshire, a common lineage. It's not just a thing that we are now all to steward and be responsible for. There's a story that's generally attributed to JFK in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I thought about this a lot. I turned 40. I'm at the point and I kind of grumble about things. You can ask Madeleine and Jack.
I'm telling stories of going uphill both ways. I'm getting older on that kind of stuff. Jack reminded me of this story. I tried to get the details yesterday.
I didn't have the time, but it's generally attributed to JFK and his cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They're sitting around in the War Room kind of trying to figure all these things out and they're getting nervous and anxious. And they get, who need to call and then they're all in their anxiety, all finally realized that they were at the top of the chain. They were the people everybody else called to put it a little bit more low key that they were now the old men that knew everything.
Your friends with great responsibility part of that means us realizing that in just a few short weeks we are now at the top of that rope. Everyone else has tethered to us that we are the ones who are creating a stability that other people depend on. That we are now the responsible ones. And so when we ask questions about how do we do these things not just in our own lives, but how are we creating stability for those around us?
How are we stewarding? How are we focusing? How are we being responsible for these things? But then also how are we telling?
How do we realize that our own relationship between work and worship that leads to fruit has greater consequences than just us in our own personal life? And I think this is the conversation that we had to have this for. This is the conversation that we needed to think about our own orientation, our own stability. For us to remind ourselves that while things are somewhat getting back to normal, that normal doesn't exist anymore, that things are just while we keep waiting for decisions to be made and for facts to be straight or for stability things to happen, that our call of God's people is just a step and stand in the moment and to realize that every single thing we're looking for is found in Him.
And the only thing He's ever asked us to do for as long as humans have been walking on this earth is to realize that I've called you to a purpose, I've called you to a place, and I've called you to people. And the only thing you need to do is just be aware of that and be responsible for it. I'll take care of everything else. Our own life, the things we are looking for and the things our communities need us for is just simply that our call can't be detached from our creation, that we have been made to do this.
And every single thing we need is already inside of us by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Let's pray. God, we come today just thanking God, stepping back and realizing all the amazing, the beautiful things we've gotten to be part of. We've got the stories of testimony, the stories of faithfulness, the stories of beauty, the whole, all these things.
God, you've done those things for us already. God in moments where we just kind of plead for us just to see something from you. God, we find those things in our past. God, what if instead of prayer was simply to seek new things not to ask you to protect us from, but new things that you were asking us to step into?
God, we realize that it's not just our personal life with you that matters. But God, our understanding of how you've called us to something in that personal life. So this morning, I pray for you to give us an understanding of just those two things. Now, where are we tilling?
And what are we stewarding? God, how are we doing that physically in this space right now? But also how are we doing that for the 65% of our church? This is not here with us yet physically for a variety of reasons.
But God, my prayer is for you to strengthen us. God, it's for us to work into this new future that you've given us. God, to accept the call and the ask and the responsibility. But God, with that acceptance comes this understanding that we know that you have something for us that's bigger than we can realize.
God, that your vision for the world is better than our vision for the world. And so how do we just simply be people's sakes?