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Living Inside Out

10/14/2007 - Ridiculous Love, Galatians 5:22

This morning we continue our series called Living Inside Out. It's a series that's based on the fruit of the Spirit spoken of in Galatians 5:22-23,But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

The goal of this series is to better equip us to live out the life of Christ that pulsates inside each and every one of his followers. That's what we call living inside out. He is the vine, we are the branches and his life flows through us like sap through a vine or blood through our bodies. And this morning we want to talk about "Radical Love" because, as we discussed last week,the only thing that counts, Paul says in Galatians 5:6, is faith expressing itself through love.

Do you remember the W.W.J D. bracelets that were popular a few years ago? For a time it seemed like everybody was wearing one, kids at school, people at work, athletes on television. W.W.J.D. What would Jesus do? But not only were there W.W.J.D. bracelets, but there were bookmarks and key chains and mugs and t-shirts and bumper stickers. It was a marketing phenomenon. And it all came from a story written over a hundred years ago by a pastor from Topeka, Kansas, named Charles Sheldon.

The story is called In His Steps and was written in 1896. And in the story Henry Maxwell is a pastor of a very prominent church. And it's Friday morning and he's trying to finish up his Sunday sermon. He's getting nervous because he's been interrupted a few times and he sees his morning study time slipping away.

Finally, he settles down at his desk with a sigh of relief and begins to write. His text is from 1 Peter 2:21, To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. Hence, the title of the book In His Steps.

And just then the door bell rings. He hears it, but he doesn't move. Then it rings again and this time he gets up and walks over to the window and looks down at the front door. And there he sees a man standing on the steps. He's a young man, very shabbily dressed. And this how the story reads...

"Looks like a tramp," said the minister. "I suppose I'll have to go down, and …" He didn't finish his sentence, but he went downstairs and opened the front door. There was a moment's pause as the two men stood facing each other.

Then the shabby-looking man said, "I am out of job, sir, and thought maybe you might help me find something."

"I don't know of anything. Jobs are scarce," replied the minister, beginning to shut the door slowly.

"I didn't know but I thought maybe you could get me to the city railway or the superintendent of the shops or something," continued the young man, shifting his faded hat from one hand to the other nervously.

"It would be of no use. You will have to excuse me. I am very busy this morning. I hope you will find something. Sorry I can't give you something to do here. But I keep only a horse and a cow, and do the work myself."

The reverend closed the door and heard the man walk down the steps. As he went up into his study he saw from his hall window that the man was going slowly down the street, still holding his hat between his hands. There was something in the figure so dejected, homeless, and forsaken, that the minister hesitated a moment as he stood looking at it. Then he turned to his desk, and with a sigh began writing where he had left off.

Sunday morning came and the church was full and Pastor Maxwell preached his well prepared sermon and it went well. He felt good about it. And after he finished, as the quartet was coming up to sing the closing song, "All for Jesus," a loud voice came booming out of the rear of the church. And before anyone knew what was happening, a man started walking down the middle aisle all the way to the front of the church and when he got to the pulpit he turned around and faced the crowd.

"I have been wondering since I came in here if it would be just the thing to say a word at the close of this service. I'm not drunk and I'm not crazy, and I'm perfectly harmless, but if I die, as there is every likelihood I shall in a few days, I want the satisfaction of thinking that I said my say in a place like this, and before this sort of a crowd."

Pastor Maxwell was stunned. He hadn't taken his seat yet, and so remained standing, leaning on his pulpit, looking down at the stranger. It was the same man who had come to his house the Friday before - the same dusty, worn, shabby-looking young man. He held his faded hat in his two hands. It seemed to be a favorite gesture. He had not shaved, and his hair was rough and tangled.

There was nothing offensive in the man's manner or tone. He was not excited, and he spoke in a low but distinct voice. No one in the house made any motion to stop the stranger or in anyway interrupt him.

"I lost my job ten months ago. I'm a printer by trade. I've tramped all over the country trying to find something. There are a good many others like me. I'm not complaining. Just stating the facts. But I was wondering as I listened to the sermon if what you call following Jesus is the same thing as what he taught. What did he mean when he said, 'Follow me?'"

"My wife died four months ago. I'm glad she is out of trouble. My little girl is staying with a printer's family until I find a job. Somehow I get puzzled when I see so many Christians living in luxury and singing, 'Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow thee,' and remember how my wife died in a tenement in New York City gasping for air, and asking God to take the little girl, too."

"I understand that Christian people own a good many of those tenements. A member of a church was the owner of the one where my wife died, and I wondered if following Jesus all the way was true in his case. I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night, 'All for Jesus, all for Jesus, all my being's ransomed powers, all my thoughts, and all my doings, all my days, and all my hours,' and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it."

"It seems to me there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do? What would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin."

The man gave a queer lurch in the direction of the communion table and laid one grimy hand on it. His hat fell on the carpet at his feet. A stir went through the congregation. The man passed his other hand across his eyes, and then, without any warning, fell heavily forward on his face, full length, up the aisle.

Rev. Maxwell filled the awkward silence by saying, "We will consider this service now closed." Then he went down the pulpit steps and knelt over the man who was still breathing. He took him into his own home and cared for him for three days until he passed away. But before the man died he whispered to the pastor, "You have been good to me. Somehow I feel as if it was what Jesus would do."

The whole experience made such a profound impact on Pastor Maxwell that when next Sunday came he stood before a packed out church and said, "I'm looking for volunteers who will pledge themselves earnestly and honestly for an entire year not to do anything without first asking the question, 'What would Jesus do?' And after asking that question, each one will follow Jesus exactly as he knows how, no matter what the results may be."

And the rest of the book tells the story of how that church and then that city was transformed by ordinary people who were living inside out asking the question, "What would Jesus do?" The book became one of the world's all time best sellers. Over 30 million copies have been sold because it strikes a nerve in all of us.

What would Jesus do is always going to lead us in the direction of love and humility and service and sacrifice and sometimes suffering. Following Jesus will lead us right up against the darkness and evil of this world and will cause us to confront it with love. Love is the greatest thing we have to offer to this world, but it will cost us something to love the way Jesus loved. Unfortunately, we've taken W.W.J.D. and reduced it down to a piece of jewelry or a testimony or a moral reminder of What Jesus Wouldn't Do.

In this series we're going to look at these other characteristics that the Spirit produces like joy and peace, patience and kindness, goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, but they're really all expressions of what the love of Jesus looks like.

Paul puts it that way in 1 Corinthians 13. Let me read it to you out of The Message version. If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, takes pleasures in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best. Never looks back, but keeps going to the end. Love never dies.

Love. That's the fruit of the Spirit that is pulsating inside us and is longing to be expressed in radical ways. And if asking "What Would Jesus Do?" helps us to pause long enough to give the Holy Spirit time to work in the midst of a heated confrontation or an enticing temptation, then ask the question. But "What Would Jesus Do?" is the kind of question that can frame our whole lives.

The love that Jesus introduced to this world is revolutionary love. It was the love of Jesus that turned the whole world upside down. It was the love of Jesus that threatened the most powerful empire on earth. It was Christ's love that moved ordinary people to do extraordinary things. It was radical love that convinced a skeptical, jaded world that Jesus had really come back from the dead.

In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell shares this insight about the first century church,

"The impact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the dream of his kingdom made a huge difference in how these people lived and how they related to one another and how they viewed their possessions and their world. The resurrection was not just some abstract spiritual concept to be discussed on Sundays. It had real concrete social, political, and economic ramifications."

"In the first century it was not uncommon to hear about a resurrection. Everybody's god claimed to have risen from the dead. Julius Caesar supposedly ascended to the right hand of the gods after he died. It was not enough simply to say Jesus is alive. The message of Jesus needed to be put on display and that's what love does. For the first church that meant sharing meals and meeting needs and being generous and inviting people to experience this new kind of community centered on Jesus."

"And so these first Christ followers passed on their faith to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation who passed it on to the next generation until it finally got down to us." And now it's our turn Valley View as a church community to put the message of Jesus on display by living inside out and loving radically.

Radical love thinks of creative ways, courageous ways, simple ways to release the love of Christ. In his book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Shane Claiborne whose work called the "Simple Way" is right here in North Philadelphia writes,

"We've been very careful at the Simple Way never to claim that we have the corner on the market for 'radical Christianity.' Nor have we even tried to spread a brand or model. And the incredible thing is that the stories of ordinary radicals are all over the place, stories of everyday people doing small things with great love, with their lives, gifts, and careers. I heard about a group of massage therapists who spend their days washing and massaging the tired feet of homeless folks. Some manicurists told me they go to the old folks homes and ask which ladies have no visitors or family, and then they sit with them, laugh, tell stories, and do their nails. On some of our marches for peace and justice, chiropractors join us in the evenings to take care of people's tired bodies so that we will be ready for another day of marching. Around the corner form us, our close friends at the House of Grace Catholic Worker run a free clinic where nurses, doctors, chiropractors, and dentists care for folks who do not have health care. There are lawyers who bail us out of the jail, advocate for human rights, and go with us before zoning boards that have no categories for understanding how we live. The examples are as numerous as the number of vocations. But the calling is the same to love God and our neighbors with our whole lives, careers, and gifts …. What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now."

Valley View let me say it again, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. And that is exactly what the Spirit wants to produce in and through each and every one of us. And let me also add that God's love is the kind of love that asks nothing in return. It's agape love, unconditional love. That's why it's so radical. There is no angle to it. No hidden agenda behind it. And there are times when radical love will be taken advantage of.

This summer I read the book Death by Suburb by David Goetz. It's the book that Greg Porter referred to in his teaching about a month ago. It's a very provocative book so I need to warn you that if don't want to be disturbed, don't read it. And in one of the chapters the author talks about making a difference in this world which is something we talk about all the time around here.

And in that chapter he gives three or four personal examples of situations where he poured himself into people, sometimes for months, only to see his efforts fail. One was an inmate that he met with weekly. Every Saturday morning he would get up at 6:30 a.m. and drive a hundred miles to a correctional facility and not return home until about four o'clock in the afternoon. He did that for eight months to listen to the man and talk and pray and encourage him. After that the man was released to a halfway house and Goetz helped him to get settled and found him a welding job and everything was looking up. Until one day he got a phone call saying, "I'm in trouble, man! Do you know any lawyers?"

And in his book Goetz writes, "I was furious. His behavior had jeopardized all my neatly laid suburban plans. I had imagined him marrying his girlfriend, moving into an apartment near me, and before long, pushing his lawnmower across his front lawn and walking hand in hand with his son to the local elementary school. But instead I was walking him up the steps to Jefferson County Courthouse where he was sentenced for another crime and taken right back to prison." What difference in the world did that make?

Another time Goetz says he reached out to a thirty-year old Colombian immigrant to help teach him English at the church he attended. They met for a couple of months and then the man stopped coming. Goetz couldn't find him so he tracked down the phone number of his apartment and found out from his wife that he had a mental disorder. In fact, she was afraid he was going to kill her. And when the man learned that Goetz had called his wife he was furious and threatened to kill him too.

About that he writes, "The man had been to our townhouse several times and I worried that my young wife might pull into our garage some afternoon to find me hanging with a Columbian necktie from the garage door braces. I abandoned my good intentions and quickly found another place of service on the church's contemporary worship team where, during most services, I didn't feel as threatened."

He concludes that chapter by saying we don't serve because we always get the results we want. We serve because we want to love people the way Jesus loved people.

"What we enjoy, after being released from the need for significance and success is the sweetness of the obedience. Finding our purpose doesn't come from the results of service but from the act of obedience. No matter what the call - resettling refugees, championing affordable housing for the poor or cheap drugs to combat AIDS, fighting for human rights, or the simple act of buying a cup of coffee for an older woman who sits alone on the bench outside Starbucks - inner liberty comes as I pursue truth, justice, and righteousness without needing to be seen as right or needing to see results …. Obedience is more of a journey than it is a destination."

Jesus took love to new levels and he is asking us to do the same. By this everyone will know you are my followers, he said, if you love one another.

I don't know where all this is going, but I've come to see that I have a long way to go to love like Jesus loved. I know that often I love on my terms and on my turf and on my time and I want the Spirit of God to change that. I want to be more in tune with What Would Jesus Do? And I want that for us as a church too because that's what will push back the darkness and make a difference in this world even when we don't always see the results we expect.

And now remain these three: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Valley View Community Church, feel free to contact us at info@valleyviewseek.org or call 610.631.2707.