Jesus was teaching and a crowd formed and we are told that among those who came to hear him were tax collectors and sinners.  These were the kinds of people who were always drawn to Jesus because he loved them and showed them the grace of God.  Along with them were Pharisees and scribes who, true to form, grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”  This group of people always had a hard time with Jesus for the same reason the first group was drawn to him.  The Pharisees and scribes were offended that Jesus loved the sinners and even went so far as to eat with them.  It is in response to their grumbling that Jesus tells this parable.

 

It’s a familiar story to many of us, even those outside of the church have heard of the Prodigal Son.  As the story goes a man had two sons.  The youngest son decides that he has had it with his family and that he is old enough to strike out on his own to find himself.  So he asks for his share of the inheritance and on his way he goes to find fulfillment in life.  He indulges all his worldly appetites and finds himself living with the pigs, literally.

 

We all know this son, maybe you were him at one point.  He rejects his family and his upbringing and sets out on his own to conquer the world engaging in wild living.  These are the people who end up in places like New York City fleeing the restraints of their family and friends to make it in the world. They are the tax collectors and sinners who have come to hear Jesus.

 

The Pharisees and scribes, the ones who this parable is addressed to, are the older brother.  They have a traditional morality; they study the word of God, faithfully attend worship and pray.  They are the good people.  Jesus writing to them is making a plea for them to change their heart.  Like the younger brother they too have a sin problem.

 

Jesus target is the religious people who do what the Bible says.  They carry a very self-righteous attitude which not only destroys their own soul but the lives of the people around them as well.

 

In the common understanding of the story the problem lies with the younger son.  We even call this in correctly the Parable of the Prodigal Son taking little or no notice of the older brother.  But I would argue this morning that both are lost; the irreligious younger son and the religious older one.  Both paths are dead ends and every human idea about how to reach God is flawed.  The path of the younger son is obviously wrong but religious moralism of the older son is a deadly condition.  The outcast finds a friend in Jesus but the religious seem to stand at arms length from him.

 

Our churches are filled with conservative moralists, while the broken and the marginalized stand outside our doors.  Why is that?  Whey don’t we draw to ourselves the kind of people who are drawn to Jesus?  What are we teaching and how are we acting that we are not drawing the younger brother types?

 

The younger brother in our story makes a great demand upon the father and also upon the whole family.  Wealth at the time of Jesus would have been tied up in land ownership.  The younger son would have been entitled to one third of the estate so in order to meet his request the father would have had to sell off a large portion of his property in order to give the money to his son.  In reducing the size of his property the father would not only have lost money but would have lost his standing in the community.  With this one request of his son for his inheritance early the father loses his son, his wealth and his status.

 

Things don’t work out for the younger son so he devises a plan to get out of the mess he finds himself in.  He will return home and admit that he was wrong; he would repent.  He would then ask if he could be apprenticed to one of his father’s hired workers.  A hired worker was not a slave but a tradesman who lived in a nearby town and worked for the estate owner for a wage.  If the son could be apprenticed to a hired worker he would be able to work off his debt to his father.  The Rabbis taught that repentance was not enough, one needed to also make restitution for the wrong.  The son was saying I have no right to be a part of the family, but let me at least work off my debt.

 

The father will have no part of it.  When he sees the son from afar he runs to him, which is something a dignified, head of a household would not do.  Before the son can even make his case the father silences him and calls for a servant to put on him the best robe and ring on his finger and throw a party for the whole town, and even go so far as to kill the fatted calf.  The father simple takes the son back.  There is no mention of restitution at all.  He doesn’t make the son grovel, nor does he say to him, “I told you so.”  He simply takes him back and restores him to the family.  This is the evidence of grace.  This is what draws the sinner to Jesus.  But this is also the thing that highlights the spiritual condition of the elder brother.

 

Walter Wangerin Jr. in his book Reliving the Passion writes, “To sinners, the mere presence of goodness can feel like an attack.  It triggers quilt.  Guilt hurts. Guilt forces us to notice ourselves, thereby to question and to second-guess ourselves, and such an internal process destroys the joy of an unconscious life.  We are altogether too conscious, suddenly – too self-aware. Doubt destroys the thoughtless satisfactions.”

 

John writes, “And the judgment is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil…but whoever does the truth comes into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.”

 

When the younger brother returns and is brought back into the family unconditionally the older brother is furious and responds by disrespecting his father.  By refusing to attend the party he publicly questions the father’s decision.  The father is forced to leave his guests and attend to his rebellious son.

 

Why is the older son so upset?  It’s not just the cost of the party.  The younger son took his one third of the family wealth and blew it.  If he remained outside of the family that would have been bad enough, but the father restored him and so now he is again entitled to one third of the diminished remaining family money.  The restoration of the younger brother was now costing the older brother a substantial part of his inheritance.   As the older brother understood things he worked hard for all that he had and was deserving of the inheritance, while the younger brother was getting everything for nothing.  He questioned the justice of the matter.  The older brother felt he had rights and should have been consulted before some of his money was given away.

 

When the drug addict, the person infected with aids, the illegal immigrant, the homeless person, the ex-con comes into church and is saved by grace and gets to enjoy all the benefits of being a child of God even pushing some of the long standing members to the side becoming an equal partner in the ministry where is the justice in that.  Shouldn’t they have pay somehow after all they wasted so much of their lives while the good church folks sacrificed all for Jesus?

 

The elder son addresses his father as a peer.  He shows him no respect by using the proper title for his father.  He simply says, “Look.”  He gives him a “Yo, what are you doing taking back my brother?”  The father again invites him to join the party and the story comes to an end leaving the decision of the elder son open ended.

 

We define righteousness as moral conformity.  I am a child of God because of Jesus, but I remain there by obedience to his word.  Morality becomes the key to happiness.  The older brother was secure in his position, he thought, because he stayed and obeyed the father.  The younger brother on the other hand went out to find happiness through life-experiences.  He went out to find himself.  One brother sought happiness through conforming to the community while the other decided to ignore the community and went out on his own to find himself.

 

This is a conflict we see played out before us all the time.  It is a fight between the moral and the immoral.  The moral people blame the immoral for the problems of this world, while the self-discovery people accuse the moral people of being bigoted and self-righteous.  It’s the conservative liberal debt we see taking place in our nation.  Jesus says that both sons are wrong.  The younger son rejects the father’s love while the older son loses the father’s love because of his pride in his own moral goodness.

 

Neither brother is interested in the father for who he is.  Instead both brothers are seeking control of the father’s wealth.  Both are interested in what the father has to offer them.  The only difference between the two is the way they seek control.  They are both rebellious children.  The younger son rebels by being bad, but the older son rebels by being good.  Goodness as an act of rebellion.  You can rebel against God by either breaking his rules or by keeping them.  When you focus on the rules for whatever reason you stand the chance of loosing Jesus.

 

We need a deeper understanding of sin.  Sin is more than breaking God’s laws.  The law was given to point us to Jesus.  We can avoid Jesus the savior by keeping the moral laws.  If your righteousness, like that of the older son is based on your obedience to a moral code you will come to the conclusion that you have rights, that you earned something from God, that he owes you.  Religious people, church people who pride themselves on the fact that they are moral and upright use it as leverage with God.  The underlying belief is that wealth will make you happy.

 

Think about it this morning.  If I serve God faithfully he will take care of me.  I will be blessed and my needs will all be met.  That’s the premise we operate under.

 

When Sharon was out of work for 18 months the struggle was to love God with our whole being no matter what happened.  We were getting to the place that selling our house and moving was becoming a forced option.  Leaving this church to take a position somewhere else was part of our discussion.  The problem was I felt called to this church.  We believed that God wanted us to live in the neighborhood we were in.  We had made many friends and were deep into the community.  God was opening doors for us, but Sharon had no work and the church was struggling financially.  Were we misreading God’s leading to come here?  Were we in sin and being punished somehow by God?  The question was did we love God for who he is or did we love God for what he gave us?  It was the elder brother question.

 

Sin is not breaking a set of rules sin is putting your self in the place of God as savior, lord and judge.  The older son believed that he was saved because he was moral and upright.  He was the lord, ruler of his own life, his decisions mattered.  He felt because of his position and the good son he was in a place to judge his brother.  Where is the father in all of this?

 

The gospel message tells us that we are all, every one of us, both wrong and loved.  We are invited to recognize this truth and change.

 

We concentrate on outward actions.  Elder brother types believe that good people are in and the bad people are the problem with the world.  Younger brother believe that bigoted, narrow-minded people are the real problem with the world.  Jesus on the other hand said the humble are in and the proud are out.  Those who admit that they are not that good, confess their sins, are in while those who think they are just fine are out.

 

Though both positions are wrong the older brother’s sin is more dangerous.  Everybody including the younger brother himself understood his sin.  When I was doing drugs no one needed to tell me that what I was doing was wrong.  The younger son returned to the father broken by his sin.  The older brother was more alienated from the father because he was blind to his own condition.  He was angry with the father because he wasn’t getting what he wanted.  When you put your hope in things and don’t get them or have them taken away by circumstances you become angry with God.  Your system doesn’t work. 

 

The older brother felt superior to his miserable younger brother.  He was living a moral life not because it is right to do but because it was a way to control his environment and secure his inheritance.

 

We are refocusing our church toward mission.  Our target is the arts community.  They are often self-indulgent.  They are the one’s who often times set out on their own and defy community norms.  They are often liberal and open minded, more tolerant of divergent lifestyles.  Many, for sure, are in need of a savior.  The church tends toward conformity, more conservative and older brotherish.  How will we react to those who come among us?  The father comes to us as he came to the older son and invites us to the party.  Do we love God even if inviting the younger brother into the family will cost us?  Or will we remain in our sin casting judgment on those outside our doors.

 

In accepting the vision statement you are opening up the doors to people whose very presence in our midst will shine the light on our own sin.  Are you ready?

Saved by grace, the cry of the Reformation.  As the hymn writer so aptly put it, “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”  John reminds us that love is seen in its clearest presentation on the cross of Jesus Christ.  “No greater love then this, that a man lay down his life for a friend.”  When we were his enemies Jesus went to the cross to pay for our sins.

When we look at the cross we are reminded that we can do nothing on our own to appease the wrath of God or atoine in any way for our sins.  It took the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, to lay down his life on our behalf that we might be adopted into the family of God and be saved.

We take comfort in the words of Jesus from the cross when he said, “Father forgive them, they no not what they do.”  Spoken certainly about those who had driven the nails through his hands and feet and hung him up to die, but in a greater sense, Jesus from the cross, looked over all of humanity and prayed forgiveness upon us all.  Jesus saw your sins and mine and prayed for our forgiveness because we acted in ignorance.

The awareness of the love of God demonstrated for us by Jesus on the cross should drive us to love and good works.  Not to find favor with God in any way, but because in response to the love of God we seek to live lives worthy of our calling as children of the most high God.  If we understand what Jesus has done for us how can we not seek to follow him in all that we do.?

When one comes to the awareness that their sins were forgiven because of what Jesus has done their life must change.  If you can look at the cross and walk away unchanged than faith has not taken root in your heart.  To experience the love of God in the forgiveness of one’s sins causes the recipient of grace to walk differently.  The evidence of a changed life is seen in the fruit the life produces.  There are so many images in the Bible of the changed life.  After each healing or deliverance Jesus would say to the person, “Go and sin no more.”  John tells us that “he who practices righteousness is righteous.  The call to the church is to be righteous as he (Jesus) is righteous.

If we follow Johns argument he tells us that the person who practices righteousness is confident before the Father.  Not because they have earned something from God, but rather because they have responded to the grace of God.  That person is emboldened to pray and John assures such a person that their prayers are answered.

It is a progression.  The sinner is granted forgiveness because of what Jesus did on the cross and because the Holy Spirit has awoken faith in their heart.  In response to the love of God the believer seeks to live a life that brings glory to God; by seeking to love God with their whole being and their neighbor as themselves.  The life dedicated to service to God is a life of prayer.  The prayers offered are those that seek a deeper walk with the Lord and the spreading of the kingdom of God.  These prayers God answers.

Let us spend time meditating on the cross of Christ.  From there let us turn and seek to live lives that reflect our thankfulness for all that God, in Christ Jesus, has done for us, and let us go before the Father and seek the furtherance of his kingdom.

If we do away with the idea of original sin what is our answer to evil in the world?  The presence of evil is a constant reminder that all is not right in the world.  Every human being given the right circumstances has the potential for evil and we each respond to circumstances many times in similar ways.  Incommenting on the behavior of the guards in the Gulag Alexander Solzhenitsyn saw them not as “good people” who “turned evil” but rather as people who already had evil in them that was elicited by the Gulag.  He saw that the same evil in himself would have been manifested in much the same way had he been given their role.  Augustine called this original sin.

The orthodox Christian position is that when our first parents sinned they sinned for the race and we all inherited a sin nature and being cut off from God willfully sin.   I am not saying that everyone is as evil as they could be but all are by nature fallen (evil) and are in need of salvation or transformation.  It is the reason that we have laws.  They are put into place to control behavior so that we can coexist in society.  A good example is the civil rights movement of the last century.  It did not change attitudes or we would not longer have racial issues as a society, but what it did do was lead to just laws that controlled behavior so that people could have an equal chance in society. 

Evil is seen all around us in society and no matter how we have tired we have not been able to do away with it.  The last century saw some of the bloodiest wars and inhuman treatment of one person to another.  Yet is was a time of technical advancement and great improvements.  What didn’t happen was a substantial change in human nature.  I would argue because of the question of sin.

Though there are still many who think that by proper education and controlled environments we as a people can do away with evil there is a growing group of intellectuals who share the Augustinian anthropology the humans are inherently evil yet they cannot beleive in the accompaying theology, the need for a savior who deals with the sin question and makes a way back to God.  These people are in a most unfortunate situation.  Though they see the biblical truth of the fall, and they come to it by observing human nature and interaction, they are not upon to the God of the Bible.  This is a terrible place to be.  The understanding of truth but now hope of change.

This brings us to the only real solution and that is the gospel message.  If we are fallen than we are in need of salvation.  Since we are pron to do the wrong thing we can not lead our way out of the mess we are in.  Fallen people, Luther tells us, out of necessity do evil.  So we are left with the need for outside assistance.  And here is where we part company from those who hold to an Augustinian anthropology with out the accompanying theology.  We see the darkness of the world but have hope in a God who has moved on our behalf by sending he son, Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

This makes complete sense as a system and is the basis of the Lutheran theology of Law and Gospel.  Though we all know through experience that evil exists and exists in me our fallen nature tries to cover it over and justify ourselves and excuse others.  The law (the Ten Commandments) condemns us before God and removes all excuses from the table.  Those who admit that humans are evil by nature and capable of terrible things are correct in their evaluation of human life.  What they and we all need is an answer to evil.  That answer is met in Jesus who takes evil upon himself and dies in payment that we might live.

No matter how hard we try evil is always present.  Read the paper, listen to the evening news, scan the Internet, or just observe life around you.  If you would be real honest examine your own heart.  If you will admit to this truth than the only way out is the one offered by the Scriptures, “God so loved the world that he sent his Son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.

In his book “Unchristian” David Kinnanman identifies the tendency of Christians to shelter themselves from the world as a reason that 20 and 30 somethings are not drawn to the Christian faith.  Though he looks at many different groups the one that struck me was what he identified as the intellectuals.  These are the people who are successful in their chosen fields and have engaged the world as they have furthered their careers.  His findings point out that “those with advanced educational and financial profiles – are more likely than average to express resistance and skepticism toward Christianity.”  These are the people that make up the target group that we at Church for All Nations have been called to reach with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Christianity is described by them as judgmental, old-fashioned, out of touch with reality, and insensitive.  They see the church as unfriendly, untrustworthy and irrelevant to their lives.  This view is held not only by those outside of the church but by many of these people who are already in the church.

The sterotype of the church as being anti-intellectual is something  upscale adults and those striving to be must fight against.  Unless we change the image of the church we are asking these people to bridge a large credibility gap between their work and thier perception of the church.

When the church presents a watered down version of the gospel and simplifies its message to a few catch phrases and trite responses to hard questions its anti-intellectual approach turns this group of people off.  They do not come to the church with physical needs, they are not wrestling with issues of survival.  The needs of this group are far different.  They will embrace a Christianity that takes seriously the issues of the day and seeks to address the question of sin from a thought out position;  one that takes the struggles of life and does not try to simplify everything down to its lowest common demoninator.

If we are to bring about significant change in our society and the gospel message is to have maxium impact on our culture we need to bring the movers and shakers into the kingdom of God and once in we need to give them the tools to use their gifts and talent to bring about lasting change as the gospel works its way through society through their influence.  When we preach and practice a form of Christianity that pulls people from the world we do a disservice to the people around us who most need the gospel and we neglect the very commission the Lord gave to go into all the world and make disciples.

If vocation is an important part of our understand of our calling than we need to rethink that idea and begin to teach it and practice it in our churches.  We are to be in the world but not of it.  Too many of us want to withdraw from the world and we view our faith as a private matter that has little or no bearing on our lives outside of the church building.  The upscale outside our doors looks at this and says why bother.  What good is a Chritianity that has little or no relevance to life outside of the building?

One of the ministries we have started is Music Forum and the Stoop concert series.  We want to bring together competent Christians in music and create for them a place where they can showcase there art.  We don’t want to play to the Christian community by have them preform sacred music, but rather to perform good music and draw the non-Christian into contact, in a non-threatening way, with the church.  If we honestly share a love for good music with those outside the church there is a natural entrance point for the start of a relationship and a conversation about our faith.

Beauty is of God.  Cuture is of God.  Music is of God.  The problem is that creation is fallen.  As a redemptive community we want to redeem music, art, and culture and return it to the church where it traditionally always was.  In that way we might win some for the kingdom.

 

The church, when speaking about, ministry in our urban centers, define it as reaching the poor and the outcasts.  This is certainly a major thrust in scripture.  but is it the only one.

Certainly there are churches that are reaching the middle class, especially those who preach some form of the prosperity gospel.  Many of these congregations are quite large in size.  The question I would raise is are they calling people to discipleship or are they just blessing their class values?  Jesus neither avoids nor condemns the rich because for their wealth or class status.  Neither does he say that they are more blessed because of it.  What Jesus does do is show real compassion by challenging their values and their commitment to him.

Look at the story of the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18ff).  He comes to Jesus asking what he must do to be saved.  A logical and reasonable question.  People want to know what they can do, themselves, to be saved.  Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, to which he replied that he always has even from his youth.  He views himself as good and religious, possibly even blessed by God.

Would we welcome such a man into our midst?  Would we see him as he sees himself as a righteous man?  Would we see him as a way to help maintain the budget?  He seems to be a good man who wants to do the right thing.

Jesus is truly concerned about the mans spiritual condition and so he takes him back to the first commandment and tells him that he is more in love with what he owns than he is with God.  “Sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow me,” Jesus tells him.  The man leaves sad and down cast and the disciples are confused.  “If this man can’t be saved than who can,” they reason.  Jesus takes their focus off the man and puts it back on God where it belongs.  “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

The well to do need to be reached out to.  They need to be seen as people lost and in need of a savior.  Though society might see them as okay the church knows better.  None are okay with out Jesus.  They are not a group of people who need to be wooed because of the resources that they can bring to the church they need to be challenged to trust Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins.  Many, like the rich young man think that they are okay, they are not.  Too often we forget that and we invite them in and welcome them without challenging their values or we ignore them as we go in search of more traditional urban ministries.  The well off are a needed part of the kingdom of God.  They have an important role to play in make our cities places that reflect the glory of God.  They must be seen as more than funders for our projects.

People who are successful are successful for a reason.  They must not be shunned of made to feel guilty for their success, bu must be saved into the kingdom and challenged to use their talents for the the common good.  In Acts when the Holy Spirit moved the well to do shared with the needy because of the relationships they had with each other.  The result was real change.  The class structures of the society at large were dismantled in the church.

Instead of a divide and conquer mentality should we not throw our net wide and bring all people into the kingdom so that God might give each of us the opportunity to share our talents with each other so that their would be no needy among us?

In the recent Engage magazine (A Publication for the Friends of the Atlantic District Mission Society) eleven mission outreaches in the district were highlighted.  Out of the eleven one (Zap) was about a youth outreach to seniors, one (Church for All Nations) was an outreach to musicians in Manhattan, one (SonRise Church) was an outreach in up state New York, one (Resurrection Garden City) was a church planting effort on Long Island and the other seven had to do with reaching ethnic groups with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  There are great strides and many successes as we reach out to the ethnic communities.  The Guyanese, Chinese, Indian, Bangladesh and Liberian ministries are making great strides and seeing praise worthy results, while many of our congregations are stagnating and some are in decline.

A good friend of mine says that an emphasis of the church should be to “save whitie”.  Not very politically correct I will admit but never-the-less I think he has a valid point.  We are quick to reach out to those outside our culture with the gospel, yet we all to often take a maintenance approach when it comes to reaching people like ourselves.  What keeps us from making the same effort to reach white ethnics that we do when it comes to reaching other groups?

Do we see the same need to reach our own that we have toward reaching others?  I wonder if we still view missions through the eyes of colonialism.  Do we see ourselves as senders and take some satisfaction from that and not see ourselves as receivers in need of the gospel?  Do we have the attitude that if we just hold church they will come?  Have we, are we, failing to reach our Jerusalem because we have lost touch with our own culture?  Have we gotten to the place where we the church is speaking a language that now else around us is speaking?  Do we lack the gifts of communicating our faith to our own people?

I know that we are concerned that many of our churches are in decline, certainly not all but I would argue way too many.  We are a slowly shrinking denomination.  Many churches are wrestling with music and liturgy trying to be relevant in the hopes that people might come and worship.  These are important questions that we think about at Church for All Nations, and I would never down play there importance, but they are in house issues not evangelistic ones.

Why is it that there are huge black and Latino churches in our cities?  Why do store front churches line the streets in our poor neighbors?  Why are we not drawing converts from the upwardly mobile communities?  Are we holding on to something that is holding us back?

We are doing a poor job of reaching the cities for Christ.  We are not raising up leaders who can hit the ground running.  There is no mission strategy in place that has a component for training urban missionaries.  To argue that we are putting our efforts in reaching the suburbs is a losing strategy in the long run.  If we don’t reach the cities for Christ the cities will and are reaching out to the rest of the country.

Just take a look at Hip Hop culture.  Hip Hop is a urban phenomena that started in the South Bronx when a DJ named Kool Herc wanted to get the party started.  What started in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx has grown to touch the lives of young people throughout the world.  It has an evangelical zeal that reaches into the smallest communities in our country.  It is inescapable.  The media is effecting the way we think and act as a culture.  You can’t write of the cities and you can’t hide from their influences.  What starts in the city will spread, through the entertainment world, until it reaches us all in our secluded outposts.

We are missing the point when we spend our time only on external issues.  We need to be training and sending our people into the highways and byways compelling the lost to come.  Our people young and old are not sharing our understanding about God.  Many have never darkened the doors of a church but they have all been effected and changed by the messages they are receiving daily into their homes.

Jesus told us to go, not to maintain.  If we focus on maintenance we will become more and more irrelevant an eventually die.  In the 50’s our churches were full.  That is no longer the case.  There was a shared church culture then that made it easy for us to grow.  This is no longer the case.  We can make excuses that we are holding steadfastly to the truth, but the facts remain.  We are speaking, if at all, a language that no one understands.  We are answering questions no one is asking.  We are taking comfort in our doctrinal purity while the multitudes are wondering lost, like sheep without a shepherd.

 

One thing that I have become concerned about as I minister here in New York City is that people in the church at large spend a lot of time talking about prayer and very little engaged in the practice of  praying.  As I contemplate the overwhelming task of living as the community of the faithful in the world but not of the world it is clear to me that we must be a people of prayer.  On so many levels the church as a whole talks about and seeks ways to call people to prayer.  Every effort is not without its results and they should be applauded and encouraged.

Each week from the Atlantic District Office of the LCMS I receive a Stop, Drop and Pray alert.  Three or four mission needs are sent out to pastors and lay members who have committed to stop, drop what they are doing and offer up prayer for the needs that are sent out that week.  It is a good reminder to me to pray for the mission needs of the wider district.  From time to time I also receive request to pray from the district office when special needs arise; someone is sick, a family member has been taken home to meet the Lord, or a church body has a special request.  This too reminds me to pray for the greater church.  I also receive monthly prayer requests from Concerts of Prayer, the YMCA, and Redeemer’s Church Planting network.  These also remind me to pray for the wider body of Christ living and ministering in the Greater New York City area.  All of these are useful and helpful reminders to me to pray.  And I am grateful for them all.

Recently I have been reading some things that call the church back to the ancient idea of the Daily Office.  The word office comes from the Latin opus.  This same root word gives us the word offering.  The Daily Office is our daily offering of prayers to God.  They were set prayers that were to be offered throughout the day.  They were a way of keeping the day holy before God.  After the Reformation the mainline liturgical churches kept up the practice.  The Lutheran Service Book has five Daily Offices; Matins, Vespers, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline—Prayer at the Close of the Day.  Yet this practive of saying the Daily Office is hardly practiced anywhere.

The Daily Office, if practiced, would enhance the life of the one involved in the practice in many ways.  The Daily Office provides a regular reading of the scriptures.  Reading the Bible as part of ones devotional life encourages one to be receptive to the message of God.

The Daily Office also creates an atmosphere of praise and reflection.  It encourages devotional meditation.  In our hectic lives coming aside at different points in the day to meditation purposefully on God would help u s to restore our communion with him.

Prayer is also a sacramental activity.  When we pray we do not pray alone, God is always present, and when we pray are prayers are join with all others who pray.  The whole church remembers God as we pray.

As we pray the Daily Office we see how all of creation shares in the ceaseless praise of our God.  In reality the Daily Office is the work of God.  We join our prayes with the prayers of Jesus that go before the Father and our praise on earth joins the present praise in heaven and we become part of the fullness of the praise of all creation.

The Daily Office consists of the praise of God in psalms, scripture readings and intercessory prayer.  These are things the church understands it should be about; Paul says, “without ceasing.”  How good would it be if the whole church engaged in practicing the Daily Office.  Though the prayers are said alone the fact that we shared the same format would help us to understand that in fact we never pray alone.             

I live around the cornor from a Mosque and a large number of churches.  The bells of the churches are silent.  They no longer ring calling the people of God to worship or to prayer.  But each morning at 6 am and at various times during the day the horn of the mosque is sounded call the Muslim worshipers to prayer.    Do they understand something that we have lost?

I don’t know if the idea of the Daily Office will have a wide appeal.  For the last number of generations the body of Christ, at least in the circles I have moved in, have learned to throw up prayers to God on the go.  It seemed to make sense in our fast paced society.  There is also the idea that if prayer is impromptu it is somehow more real and sincere.   Nothing could be farther from the truth.  We are a people with a history.  We should take the wisdom and the prayers of those who went before us and offer them up to God as we at the same time add our voices and our needs to the cries that go before the throne of God.

I think when it comes to prayer we become overwhelmed by the task.  Some have the gift of prayer and it seems second nature to them.  But most of us, though we want to and we know we should become overwhelmed by the task and the responsibility.  Maybe if we fell in line with the practices of the saints that went before us prayer, worship, devotion and meditation would as some point become second nature to us.                                     

Gov. David Paterson, of New York, this month directed state agencies to recognize same-sex unions legally performed in other jurisdictions, i.e. Massachusetts, California and Canada.  This will provide same-sex couples with the same rights afforded to married heterosexuals such as the ability to collect health and pension benefits, being admitted as “close family” in a hospital room and transferring a business license.   His argument is that he is, “taking the same approach that this state always has with respect to out-of-state or marriages conducted in foreign governments being recognized here in the state of New York.”  He is downplaying the significance of this action by arguing that he is following he law as it already exists.

This leaves the church in an uncomfortable position.  The church is to be the prophetic voice of God that speaks to the moral and ethical issues of the society.  She has a two fold role regarding what takes place in the society that she finds herself in.  In this instance it is American society.  On one level the church is involved intimately in what takes place.  As citizens of this land we, as Christians, are to be active participants.  Jesus tells us that we are to be salt and light preserving and illuminating the society.  We are also to speak the “thus says the Lord” concerning issues that are clearly addressed in the scriptures.

The issue of gay marriage is a hot topic in our society at this point in time and it is even dividing the church.  The Episcopal church is in turmoil over their official stance regarding gay marriage and different synods of the Lutheran church are divided as well.

The confusion comes when we fail to look at what the scripture says.  What disturbs me about all the discussion concerning this issues it that it is steeped in people’s feelings.  What needs to be done is to consider what God has to say no matter what we might feel about the issue.  Everyone has a friend or relative in the life style and they want them to be happy.  All that is well and good but there are some foundational things that must come into play.

We must deal with original sin.  We are all by nature sinful and fall short of the glory of God.  Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  We cannot rely on what we think is right or on how we feel.  That is why the church turns to the only clear revealed will of God that as found in the Bible.  That is where the discussion must take place within the church.  Too often we let the world determine the paramiters of the debate and therefore we can never come to a Biblical conclusion.

The debate in greater society is a different one.  We do not live in a theogracy.  Our decisions as a nation are decided by the will of the people.  We can live law abiding lives and be outside of the will of God.  People have the right to live together as same-sex couples without the blessing of the church.  Issues of rights granted by the government must be decided by the government.  As citizens we should and must express our opinion based on our Christian perspective.  Things might go against us as they are made by the will of the people.

So what are we to do?  We must be clear about what the Bible says about same-sex relationships, as well as what it says about other moral issues being raised by society.  We can never compromise our stance.  Our battle is tied to our mission.  On some level laws can regulate behavior but they can never change a persons heart, that is the work of the Holy spirit.  The church is commissioned to make disciples of all nations.  What we need to be about first and fore most is spreading the kingdom of God.  As people are born again they take on the values of the kingdom.  Jesus made it clear in the Sermon on the Mount that it is the issues of the heart that matter, for out of the heart flow the issues of life.

I think the church is going to experience growing opposition  as time goes on.  Those who support same-sex unions will not be content to win in the courts but want everyone to agree with their position.  Those that do not will be viewed as homophobes.  There will be no room for honest disagreement.  The church will need to be strong.

I don’t think this bodes well for us as a nations but it does not change our mission as the church to reach people for Christ.  In many ways it might shake us from our lethergy.  Wether we like it or not, times they are a change’n.  Let us draw near to God as he draws near to us and let us prepare dillegently for the work ahead.

Recently I have been spending a lot of  time reading books on urban ministry.  Having been an pastor in two communities in New York City for the past twenty-four years it is always good and important to keep abreast of what is being written about that part of the church you are working in.  The first church I pastored was in the Far Rockaway, Queens area of New York City.  At the time I was there it was a struggling community that had fallen on hard times and was trying to recover.  The neighborhood was made up of poor and working class families and the nature of the ministry in many ways centered around issues of survival.  For the last two and a half years I have been ministering on West 57th Street in mid-town Manhattan.  The nature of these two ministries are in direct opposition to one another. 

As I said I have been spending some time reading books on urban ministry.  The thing that keeps striking me as I read is the way urban ministry is defined and the focus that each author took as an approach to ministry in the city.  Urban ministry is most often defined as ministry to poor and ethnic minorities.  This was certainly my experience in Queens.  The focus becomes that of coming along side of the community and helping to lift the people you are ministering too.  There is a call to understand the community you are trying to reach,  but the community is seen as alienated for the main stream of society.

The church I now pastor is not a poor minority ethnic church, but it is by every definition of the word and inner city church.  The neighborhood is very diverse and in need of the declaration of the gospel of grace.  The thing I am wrestling with is what is the role of the church that is not in economic crisis and how does it relate to the community around it?

Too often the language of the church is as divisive as the language used by those outside of the church.  The rich poor dichotomy, the ethnic verses non-ethnic categories, the need verses non-need language seems to divide the church rather than pull it together.  The poor are continually seen as victims and needy and the well off are seen as those who through guilt and manipulation are to be brought to the aid of the rest.  Some how for me this comes up short.

Having spent most of my ministry in a poor neighborhood and having run a ministry house that was an extension of my own family I both understand and sympathize with those who are living near or under the poverty line.  But as a pastor of a group of people that have resources at their disposal and who are willing to open their hands generously to those in need I believe that we need to rethink how we discuss the problems that face our society and the church.

Ministry is all about relationships.  When we use language that divides we separate people into categories that do not lead to the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17.  If Jesus’ intention for the church is that we are to be one as he and the Father are one than we need to be working toward that unity.  There are a number of vignettes in the book of Acts that give us insight into the life of the early church.  If we will spend a little time with them I believe they will inform our own values and fellowship.

The first is found in Acts 2:42-47.  It is the first description of the newly formed church following the events of Pentecost.  We are told they, the entire church, devoted themselves to the apsotles’ teaching, to fellowship, the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  These are all corporate events.  They are the events the unity people around the Lordship of Christ.  They gathered for worship, the teaching of the apostles and the breaking of bread, for fellowship, the coming together for mutual support, and corporate prayer; worship, fellowship and prayer.  They did not divide themselves into groups but all came together united around Jesus putting their differences aside.

What would it mean if each church found common ground around the savior and sought to come together around the things that unify?  Certainly it would be unreasonable to ask people to give up their traditions and their distinctiveness but in the urban context we must learn to work together as the body of Christ against our common enemies; the world and those that set themselves against God.

The city is too big for each church to take it on by itself.  A united front allows the diversity of the body of Christ to express itself.  Each church bringing its gifts to bear on the issues that effect us all.  When each church feels they are a contributing member to the issues at hand there are no victims and saviors, only co-laborers in the body of Christ.

The result of the unity of the believers in this passage is seen in too things that took place.  The first was the movement of God.  Awe came upon all as many signs and wonders were being done by the apostles.  Jesus said that we would do greater things than he did because he ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to indwell in the church.  The power of God is present in the church and as we carry out the mission of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit the world will stop and take notice.

As I look around at Church for All Nations I am taken back by all that God is doing in our midst.  The most striking thing is that he has built a community of believers around word and sacrament that has sprung forth in a deep fellowship of people many of whom would have nothing to do with one another but for the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  Doesn’t this sound like the scene painted for us in Acts 2?

The second thing that we see in this passage that springs from the work of the Holy Spirit on this group of believers is that they had all things in common.  This is not Marxism but rather the family of God acting in a loving manner toward one another.  This was not government inforced equality, but people moved by compassion because they are in relationship with one another.  It is easy to turn one’s back on the stranger, but its another thing to turn your back on someone you share a relationship with.  The early church became so caught up in the Christ event that those who had more than they needed began to sell off their positions and bring the money and lay it at the apostles feet.  Love in action.

So for me I believe that those of us in urban ministry, no all ministry, must seek to bridge the gaps that divide us.  If we can only come together and build relationships, community, with those around us who do not share our lifestyle but share our savior we will begin to move in the right direction.  The church did not come up with a program to deal with relief but they were caught up by the move of the Holy Spirit and could not help but reach out to those in need.

In the days and weeks ahead I want to look at the other passages in Acts that call us to relationship with God and one another.  The church is the one institution that is called out of the world to live the values of the kingdom of God, through the power of God.

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