No worship service today because there is a Children’s Church event and a guest speaker. However, here’s a Sunday morning QT that covers what we were talking about the last few weeks in regards to “Sacred Cows” here in our church. Today we’ll be discussing the sacred-secular divide and how it should really impact our lives. There are three ways to be religious in the 21st century. I don’t mean that there are only three religions, I mean there are only three degrees of religiousness that can be embodied by our personal sensibilities of religion. I am going to talk about all three embodiments and then discuss what Christ embodied in terms of religiousness. The first type of religiousness, is an embodiment of rejection. When we embody this, we are rejecting something or somebody. We say something is wrong and stay away from it and/or the person. More than likely, if the way I get rejected by girls I ask out on dates is any indication of reality, people and things are rejected because of personal preferences that cannot be met by those animate or inanimate objects. Yeah, emotions and love don’t make a lot of sense, how some people can reject awesome is beyond me. We reject him/her or it as being a defilement that we cannot get involved with or something we don’t want to get involved with. Therefore, we place all non-Christians in a “beware of veneral disease” category and stay away. We, in this category are violently agitated by people and things that don’t meet our expectations so we place curses on them and never give them a chance. So the person who rejects becomes insular to the status quo– that is, they stick to their narrow, non realistic, never land, rejecting people and things in an ungodly pace. What you will notice in this group of people is the essence of hateful or prideful arrogance that paints the world green with envy. Another type of religiousness is that of reception. When we receive something, we essentially say that nothing is wrong and close our eyes to the problem. We dont think it is something that needs to be addressed, so we dont pay any attention to it or care about the implications of it. Most practical example: you accept things and people knowing full well that it is a burden and a stupid move for you to do so– you can’t relate? Just look at your self destructive ex-boyfriend. Maybe that chick who was in the cult that you dated thinking you would convert her. Better yet, cheating and thinking you won’t get caught. You know it’s a bad idea and a bad person, but that attracts you to them and it and you accept it, you receive it with gladness, like it was a gift from God for you to go to jail and spend a night in a cell with a guy named Brutus. You can’t say bad things and bad people are okay and dandy because it’s not okay and unacceptable. But most of you won’t listen and receive things and people like there are no consequences and then ask God “why?” As Christians, we are called to redeem religiously. To change the wrong by inserting yourself, myself, into the picture to cover the wrong and evil. This is precisely what Jesus did. Therefore we serve, not because we reject society or receive society, but because our savior served to fix society by providing a safe cover to redeem it. How does this work? Well you have to judge between right and wrong. Then you have to invite yourself into peoples’ lives and help them see wrong and right, then help them leverage their world views to effectually find redemption in Christ. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. -1 Corinthians 7:29-31 If we break down this passage in it’s context, Paul is trying to unhinder Christians from the burdens of either rejecting the outside, secular world and at the same time, he is working to debunk the receiving of the secular world in it’s current state. His middle ground is simple: do what you have to do to “please the Lord.” He doesn’t say this to a bunch of monks, but he says this to a bunch of people living in a large metropolis; who have jobs in the real world and have to engage with the real world for survival. These people are like you and me, they have to do business with non-believers and at the same time, some of them are probably friends with non-believers. So it becomes difficult and confusing to understand what it means to redeem culture if it means to “stop mourning as though they were not mourning, rejoicing as they were not rejoicing, and buying as they had no goods…” These are polar opposites, complete oxymorons and therein lies the clue– redemption means to take the sacred and influence the good found in the secular. Conversely, we take the good in the secular and find ways to make it sacred– to make it for the purposes of worshipping God and to bring Him glory. The world and culture as it is cannot be rejected because we live in the world, we unfortunately need it. Likewise, we cannot receive the world as it is because it is mostly going to mess us up because a lot of it sucks. However, if we realize that the world is fleeting, that it won’t last, then we have an opportunity to change the world, to influence it, to bring good news into it, to allow Jesus Christ to redeem it. This is where we need to go with everything that this church does. Yeah, there is line at divides secular and sacred at this church and we go far, very far, to walk along the edges so that we may be available to present Jesus Christ. We have been called to be witnesses, how do we witness anything if we are not struggling in the world to redeem it from itself? You have the opportunity, you have the faith, you just need to do it.
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