A Spring Harrow

This is a highlight of a message I preached May 23, 2009 at Mission Fellowship Church in Middletown, DE.

Isaiah 41:8-16
Context: Is. 41:1-20

In this section of the chapter, Isaiah reminds Israel that Yahweh was the decisive actor in their life. At the begining and end of the chapter, Isaiah uses a speech of disputation, presenting the arguments of Yahweh over and against the ideological claims of Babylon. To do this, Isaiah invites the reader to imagine a courtroom scene, a law court, where different witnesses bring evidence about the identity of the one true God. Evidence is presented for Yahweh. There is no compelling evidence offered for the Babylonian gods leading to the verdict that Yahweh is the real God.

Between the two disputation speeches, Isaiah presents a series of salvation oracles that offer an assurance of Yahweh’s caring, attentive presence in the midst of Israel. The mode of speech completely focuses on on Israel’s needs.

While these two different type of speeches seem to move in opposite directions, together they all the community of God’s people to see and experience Yahweh as the one who makes the decisive difference in their lives. The massive, powerful Yahweh moves history, manipulates nations, and empowers His people. This is where we intersect our text.

God will not let go of his chosen people. He empowers them to risk (8-10)

“But you, Israel, are my servant.
You’re Jacob, my first choice,
descendants of my good friend Abraham.
I pulled you in from all over the world,
called you in from every dark corner of the earth,
Telling you, ‘You’re my servant, serving on my side.
I’ve picked you. I haven’t dropped you.’
Don’t panic. I’m with you.
There’s no need to fear for I’m your God.
I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you.
I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you. The Message translation

We are held in the firm grip of God’s almighty hand. He is our rock, strength, support, and stability. Knowing that, not intellectually but experientially, empowers us to live a dynamic, audacious faith. In knowing through our relationship with God that support structure, we now have a launching pad with which we can take God-sized risks. We know that there is a net below us that will catch us were we to struggle so we can risk it all in obedience to God.

What also helps is knowing we are called. Called people know they are called. Called people live out their calling empowered by the all-powerful God. A strong, secure foundation and a true sense of calling not only empower us to live a risky faith, they drive us to live a risky, audacious faith. It is not something we might do, it is something we have to do.

These are the people that God will use to re-shape the world (14-16)
“Do you feel like a lowly worm, Jacob?
Don’t be afraid.
Feel like a fragile insect, Israel?
I’ll help you.
I, God, want to reassure you.
The God who buys you back, The Holy of Israel.
I’m transforming you from worm to harrow,
from insect to iron.
As a sharp-toothed harrow you’ll smooth out the mountains,
turn those tough old hills into loamy soil.
You’ll open the rough ground to the weather,
to the blasts of sun and wind and rain.
But you’ll be confident and exuberant,
expansive in The Holy of Israel!

The insignificant will become a strong force. The lowly worm and fragile insects are transformed into a sharp-toothed harrow. A harrow is an implement for cultivating the surface of the soil. This distinguishes it from the plough, which is used for deeper cultivation. Harrowing is often carried out on fields to follow the rough finish left by ploughing operations. The purpose of this harrowing is generally to break up clods and lumps of soil and to provide a finer finish, a good soil structure that is suitable for seeding and planting operations. Coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing.

God wants to transform the insignificant into a instrument that can break apart the rough ground and prepare it for the seed of the Gospel. We don’t often enjoy the hard work of breaking up hard soil, but it must be done for the seed to be productive. It is the same in our culture. God transforms empowered, called people into dirt-busters, powerful instruments of His redemptive plan.

Ironically, God has only one verb in the Hebrew – “to make”. All the other verbs are associated with Israel. Therefore, Yahweh energizes, authorizes and empowers; Israel appropriates the “making” of God, taking initiative and responsibility as it carries out a re-shaping and re-making of culture.

As the church, if we can truly know in our hearts the empowerment and calling God has given to us and live our lives out of that calling and empowerment, we could see culture re-shaped into the Kingdom of God. It would not be perfect, as we are imperfect people. But it would have a God-like quality about it where people strive for justice, live out kindness and walk humbly with God.

We need to note, however, that Isaiah is not talking about a Christian political power taking over. We should not be fighting for a “Christian” government. There are two reasons (at least) for this. One is that you cannot legislate morality. You can attempt to legislate behavior, but a kingdom lifestyle is not formed by a legislative act. It is formed by an encounter with God. In addition, a “Christian” government does not result the transformation of people. People are only transformed by the power of the Triune God working in their life.

What Isaiah is talking about, and what we need to be striving for, is this: the gospel of Christ, proclaimed in human weakness triumphs over opposition and our timid faith. And it overcome the powers of this world. The growth of the early church was not a result of any kind of power structure. It was a result of humble people living out an authentic love for God and others. They were grounded in God’s love and calling and were freed and empowered to live a radical, audacious faith that was evident among the peoples of the world. In doing so, they transformed the world in which they lived. In that, we can also see the world transformed.

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Jonathan Sacks, a British Rabbi, notes:

To integrate, there must be something to integrate into. To become socializd, there must be such a thing as society, a proposition some politicians have famously denied. Nations are constituted by, among other things, a shared moral code. But liberalism in its modern guises, and still more in its postmodern ones, denies that there is such a thing as a shared moral code. It argues, instead, that we should be maximally free to do our own thing, live our own lifestyle, refuse to conform. What then becomes of the idea of belonging? The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, pg 5

John F. Kenneday

The individuation of society, the plea of liberal, social politics, has led to the fracturing of society. John F Kennedy’s famous speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” has been transformed into “My country needs to take care of me, my family, and my job.” What once was about country is now about me or my unique indivuated group. And it is destroying the sense of belonging.

In 1995, Robert Putnam wrote a journal article entitled Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital (Journal of Democracy, January 1995, Volume 6, Number 1). He later expanded this into a book entitled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

In the book, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they’re more likely to bowl alone:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values—these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

This was confirmed by a 2006 study for American Sociological Review. According to a report in USAToday:

Americans have a third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago — a sign that people may be living lonelier, more isolated lives than in the past.

In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them, says a study in today’s American Sociological Review. In 2004, that number dropped to two, and one in four had no close confidants at all.

All of this started around the late 1950’s, early 1960’s in the United States, around the time liberalism began to take root in USAmerican society. However, it is not limited to the US. It’s impact has now been shown in Britain.

Research commissioned for the BBC found that UK society is a far lonelier one over the last 30 years (1971-2001), noting that “neighbourhoods in every part of the UK have become more socially fragmented.”

Daniel Dorling (at Sheffield Univ.) headed the research team which created a formula based on “the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year….The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community, according to social scientists. They refer to it as the level of ‘anomie’ or the ‘feeling of not belonging’.”

Using these measures they found that the weakest communities in 1971 were stronger than the strongest communities in 2001.  An astonishing 97% of neighborhoods had experienced this increased isolation over these 30 years.

“The researchers conclude that the increase in anomie weakens the “social glue” of communities. The result, they suggest, is that neighbourhoods are likely to be less trusting and more fearful.” (See the BBC report here and the whole study here as a pdf)

The conclusions of Sacks must not be ignored. Liberalism is destroying the sense of community, society, and belonging. One can only note how hard it is to get people to visit your home, or to visit in other people’s homes (with the possible exception of the South).

The church has a role. Unfortunately, however, the church is following culture. Attractional churches are large but often lack community. People may choose to get involved in a small group, but the reality the emphasis of attractional, and dare I say mega, churches is the weekend event. Community has a limited ability to occur in a large gathering, especially when a large part of the gathering is passive.

When the emphasis is on missional activity, doing ministry together in the community rather than seeing church as the weekly gathering, belonging takes place. Strong relationships are developed and people have a large network of relationships to support them, encourage them, and a group where “everybody knows your name.” It develops that network because of a shared sense of responsibility and purpose.

What are ways that the church can build community and overcome the impact of liberalism in the West?

Multiculturalism

“Multiculturalism has led not to integration but segregation. It has allowed groups to live separately, with no incentive to integrate and ever incentive not to. It was intended to promote tolerance. Instead the result has been, in countries where it has been tried, societies more abrasive, fractured and intolerant than they once were.”

- The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society, pg. 3

The Church has Worn Me Out

The church has worn me out. I look around at a number of churches in my own area and across the country and I see something so different than what the New Testament describes and it just wears me out. So I want to share with you just a few reasons I’m tired of the way we do church in our culture:

1. I’m tired of the weekly production
That is exactly what so much of church is – it’s a show and a production. It’s not a community of faith participating in the worship gathering, it’s a group of people enjoying themselves. We use sex, tanks, supermen, and giveaways to sell the gospel and market the church. We have rock concert-like environments with celebrity endorsers who vouch for the Gospel. The question by Matt Casper still rings in my ear: Is that really what Jesus told you guys to do? Of course, all this leads to…

2. I’m tired of the consumerism that saturates our church culture.
The show better be good and the show better be good for our kids as well, otherwise we are going to a church that will give us what we want. Oh, and can you throw in a couple of restaurants, some donuts, a pool and a movie theater? The consumerism in our church is a reflection of the consumerism in our culture. I get that. But aren’t we supposed to be cross-cultural, not consumer-cultural?

3. I’m tired of the shallow theology of our music.
Some of it has gotten better. Todd Agnew has some really good songs. But I struggle to even listen to Christian music anymore because it swims at the shallow end of the pool. When I was in seminary, there was a theology student getting his PhD and his dissertation was the theology in the music of John Newton. I wonder what we would find if we did that with some of the music you hear on Christian radio today? My guess is that it would all center on God’s love, and his greatness. But there is so much more that can be said in our music, but isn’t.

4. I’m tired of hearing about how great a church is just because it is large.
As if large is a sign of success. Oh wait, it is in our CEO-oriented, consumer minded culture, thus it shall be in our churches. I’m not against large churches. But I am tired of success being determined by how much and how many.

5. I’m tired of the shallow teaching from the pulpit.
We had family come to our church for a year from a very large (top 5 in size) church in the South. They were only here for a year because the man was on a temporary assignment with his company. During this year, I preached a series on the Trinity called Tri-God, and it was a practical understanding of Trinitarian theology. He told me that at their other church where they had attended, they never have heard a series like that. Theology wasn’t stressed from the pulpit. It’s all one-line theology. Everything is centered on the practical, not the deep issues and complexities and grey areas surrounding a relationship with God. Why not? Well, it is generally not conducive to building large churches.

Sorry for the rant. Maybe some time this week I will give some thoughts on what to do to change this mindset.