Finding Ourselves

Finding Ourselves
Sermon - Joshua Broward, June 18,2006

Matthew 8:14-20, Exodus 12:31-42, Ephesians 2:11-21

One of my favorite TV shows is The Cosby Show, a show about a loving American family. I want to show you a clip when Cliff Huxtable is meeting his daughter’s new boyfriend.
Show clip: {Boyfriend wants to take a trip to Europe to “find himself.” Cliff says, “I don’t know [if I like him or not]. He hasn’t found himself yet.”}

KNU International English Church, I am proud to announce that we have found ourselves. We’ve been searching and praying and collecting information for over a year. About two months ago, our church formed the Vision Team. The task of the Vision Team is to bring together everything we’ve learned into some simple answers to some basic questions: Who are we? Who is our neighbor? What is God calling us to become or to do?

We know have a clear answer to the first question: Who are we? We have found ourselves. We have tried to put into words the complex range of emotions, thoughts, and experiences that make us up as a church. It’s not perfect, but we have narrowed our answer down to one sentence:
We are all “outsiders,” but we are discovering God together as a growing, international Nazarene church. I’ll say that again because it’s really important. We are all “outsiders,” but we are discovering God together as a growing, international Nazarene church.
That’s who we are. But we need to “unpack” this dense sentence to understand what we’re really talking about.

Let’s start with the last phrase: We are “a growing, international Nazarene church.” We’ll work backwards, starting with the last word.

We are a church – As our vision team thought about who we are, we were absolutely united on this. We are definitely a church, not a worship service, not a Bible study, not just a group of people who meet together, not a club, not even a Christian club. We are a church.

But I’ve realized something this week. We aren’t a church in the ordinary sense of the word. We aren’t like most well-established churches. We are more like a church plant. In many ways, we are like a brand new, start-up church. It has just taken us 10 years to build our core group and to decide that we actually want to be a church. It has taken us 10 years to “find ourselves”, so to speak. Even though, we’ve been here for 10 years, in many ways it’s like we’re starting from scratch as we begin to organize more and more. That means we can do a lot of new things, but it also means that almost everything we do is new. We are a church, but we are a lot like a new church plant.

Next, we are a Nazarene church. We are glad to be connected with the international Church of the Nazarene. This gives us opportunities to impact the world and to belong to something bigger than ourselves.

We are also Christian. The Church of the Nazarene is decidedly, definitively Christian. We are followers of Jesus Christ. We believe the Bible and the Christian creeds. Everything we do as a church will be focused on Jesus Christ.

We are international. On any given Sunday we have people from about 10 countries here worshiping with us. Our core group of most committed, most involved people includes people from 7 different countries. We are definitely international.

We are growing. We are growing in size and spirit. Our attendance is up about 40% from last year, but what is even more exciting is that we are growing in spirit. We are experiencing God in our worship services more and more. More and more of you are stepping up to take on roles of service. Our fellowship is up. Our passion is up. Our hope is up. We are growing!

One of the tasks of our Vision Team in defining who we are was to define our core group. Core members of our church meet five basic tests:
1) They attend regularly unless out of town.
2) They are involved in service here in the church.
3) They are Christians who show the fruit of the Spirit.
4) They are committed to this church as their primary church, and they are passionate about seeing God work here.
5) They have been here for a minimum of 3-6 months.

We found 25 people who passed these tests, and several others who were really close. That is a huge step for our church. A year ago, there were times when we only had 25 people in church. Now we have 25 people from Korea and nations around the world who are committed and involved in the life of the church. We are definitely growing.

Next, let’s look at that first phrase: We are all “outsiders.” We are all foreigners. We are all weigookin. We are all “homeless” – physically or culturally, or both. We have all left our homes and come to this church in a state of homelessness. The foreigners among us have left our homes to follow the call of God or to look for work. When foreigners walk into this church, we come from an entire week of homelessness – living in a foreign culture away from friends and family. Most Koreans who attend this church have left Korean churches because they no longer feel at home there.

And all of us, when we come into this place, are outsiders. When Koreans walk into this church, they usually feel like they are walking into a foreign country. And for foreigners this church, just by its location and diverse make up, is also foreign to us. Yes, it’s in our home language for many of us, but it’s so different from anything else we’ve known that we also feel foreign here. In a way, we are all homeless. We are homeless people looking for home.

To top off our homelessness, we are also culturally divided within ourselves. We tend to divide our friendships along cultural lines. Westerners befriend westerners. Koreans befriend Koreans. But even within our cultures we are divided. Koreans with better English are envied by those who struggle with English. Canadians, Americans, and English do not always get along.

And we’re afraid. We are afraid to take the risks of relationship. We are afraid of each other. We are afraid of what being in relationship with each other will demand from us. We are afraid to become friends because friendship brings obligations. Foreigners are afraid we’ll lose our refuge from Korea. (Look around you it’s gone! It’s time to move on.) Koreans are afraid someone will ask a question they won’t understand.

We are homeless, divided, and afraid. We are outsiders. Even when we come together, we are still all outsiders.

But this is not all bad. In fact, we may find that this pain of being homeless outsiders could become one of our greatest strengths as a church. We may find that our pain will unite us, mobilize us, and open us to others. We may become what Henri Nouwen calls “Wounded Healers.”

When we see our “outside-ness” in the light of Ephesians 2, a new picture begins to emerge. Like the Jews and Gentiles of Paul’s time, we are separate from each other, excluded from our host culture, and foreigners to each other. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility … His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in his body to reconcile both of them to God by the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (2:12-16).

As Nouwen says: “A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength.”[1]

I learned a lot about this from the mission statement of Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. Let me read it for you: “The diversity which we feared has empowered us to confront God’s truth in the world. In Jesus Christ the dividing walls of hostility have been broken down. Though we are born into diverse earthly families, our life together at Oakhurst has led us to affirm that we are called to be one family through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”[2] What we fear can become the material God uses to transform us and the world around us.

Finally, let’s look at that middle phrase: We are discovering God together. Yes, we are outsiders. Yes, we are homeless in many ways, but that is not the end of our story. That is only the beginning. We have come together to discover God.

In several ways we are like the people of the Exodus. God has done a work in our lives, and he has called us to follow him.

Exodus 12:38 says when the Israelites left Egypt they were a “mixed multitude.” The Israelites weren’t the only slaves in Egypt. When God set the Israelites free, many other slaves joined them. So here is a mixed group of people venturing into the wilderness to follow the call of God to freedom. They were from different ethnic backgrounds and different religious backgrounds, but they had two things in common. They wanted freedom, and they were going together.
We are also a “mixed multitude” of people. We have left our known, relatively safe worlds and ventured into a new world and a new church. We are following the call of God into the wilderness. We have at least two things in common. We want to live free lives through Jesus Christ, and we are going on this journey together. We are engaging in an adventure to discover God together.

This word together is a very important word for our church. We are all outsiders, but we are together. We are outsiders together. We have to deal with the baggage of culture shock and language barriers, but we are on this path together. Listen to Paul: “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22).
We, who were outsiders, are being brought inside through Jesus Christ. We are now citizens in a new kingdom that surpasses nationality. We are members in a new family that surpasses culture. God is building this mixed group of people into one holy building, and he will live in us in all of our diversity and togetherness. We may be “homeless,” but God is making his home in us as we come together.

OK. It’s time for you to get involved. Everybody, please, stand up. Move to the outside of the room and form a circle. Hold hands with the person next to you.

Look around. We are all outsiders, but we are discovering God together as a growing, international Nazarene church. Look at each other. We are all outsiders, but we are discovering God together as a growing, international Nazarene church.

We are all outsiders. We are all homeless. Yet, somehow, in this place, in this community, we find a place of belonging. We find a home-on-the-way. Look at us. We are diverse. We are afraid. We are hopeful. We are together. Look at us.

Church, we have found ourselves. Now, what are we going to do with ourselves? More importantly what does God want to do with us?

Think with us. Pray with us. Talk to us. Commit to this togetherness. Commit to walking this journey together. God is bringing us on a good trip. We aren’t quite sure where he is taking us yet, but we are sure we want to go together.

[1] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, (Garden City, NY: Image, 1979), 94.
[2] Quoted by Charles Foster, Embracing Diversity: Leadership in Multicultural Congregations, (Alban, 1998), 4.

Eilat: Messianic Jewish Fellowship in Eilat, Israel

“On a recent trip to Israel I rented a car with one of my daughters and drove south through the desert to the port city of Eilat. … On our first evening I contacted a messianic Jewish fellowship that I knew had a large, successful ministry in Eilat. Following dinner (at our first kosher Burger King restaurant), we drove to a nearby neighborhood and found a large home whose living room had been designed as a worship center.
“Following the usual greetings and introductions we sat transfixed in a room packed with Russians, Chinese, Rumanians and Americans (all with a Jewish heritage – except the Chinese). Following a time of worship, a gifted teacher gave an evangelistic message based on the thieves on the cross: one who asked for mercy, another who refused. As the teacher spoke in English, translators around the room converted his words into Russian, Chinese, and Rumanian. When the translators came to an impasse, they lapsed into Hebrew with the teacher in order to straighten out his meaning. The international flavor of the scene was fascinating.
“I wondered where these people had come from. The Rumanians and Russians had come to Israel as Jewish refugees, leaving lands with historic records of persecution. They could tell stories of the collapse of the Russian economy and the rise of corruption, as well as the frightening threat of renewed racism and anti-Semitism. Few of them were piously orthodox, and Judaism was chiefly their ticket to get out of Russia, a chance to discover a new start. The Chinese were laborers building the many high-rise hotels found throughout the city. Over the years hundreds of them had become Christians (thanks to these messianic congregations) and had taken their faith back to China. And the word had spread. Laborers were coming and discovering Christ every week. The irony of God’s plan stunned me. Who would guess that the desert streets of Eilat would be at the forefront of Chinese evangelism?
“My attention was drawn to a particularly upset young woman of eighteen or nineteen, who had just left Russia to join her young fiancé in Eilat. She still wore the traditional clothes of the Russian countryside while he now sported jeans and a T-shirt. She had left everything behind: family, home, tradition, language, security, and job. Her world had been overturned. For the first time, in the confusion of her personal storm, she was hearing the gospel. Her fiancé had become a Christian weeks earlier, and now he wanted this young woman to discover the same. She wept through the entire Bible study.
“Nicodemus was challenged to think about the frontier between what is above and what is below, between the darkness and the light. This Russian woman was learning the same. Her new world in Israel came with something unexpected: It now was offering her a new birth.”

Gary M. Burge. John. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000. p. 129-130.

Story was submitted by Pastor Josh Broward