conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

sermon

Here is my sermon. Just follow the extended gazing link.

The World Is Flat: A Sermon for North Shore Baptist Church
April 23, 2006
Acts 4:32-35
1 John 1:1-2:2

China and President Hu coming to the US.
His first stop was Seattle…why?
• $5.2 billion in Boeing airplanes
• $1.2 billion for putting Microsoft software on Chinese computers
• $20 billion in trade last year in Washington state…California and Texas actually do more.

The subject of global trade and increasing globalization has always intrigued me.

Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World Is Flat.

What economic and political stresses/technological innovations are flattening the world?

“Flattening” in Friedman’s use of the term is the combination of historical events, technological innovations, and shifts in social and political occurring since 1492 when Columbus sailed west from Europe for the Indies.

History of a flattening world (This is from a very Western perspective)
1.0 1492 – 1800: Columbus to the Industrial Revolution
2.0 1800 – 2000: the advent of the Industrial Revolution through the “computer age”
3.0 2000 – ongoing: an individual can compete in the global market; an individual can compete with Microsoft, can collaborate with Microsoft…from anywhere in the world

Contemporary examples –
• The Berlin Wall comes down on November 9, 1989
• The Twin Towers come down on September 11, 2001.
• China has an economic boom – ongoing…
• Open-Sourcing (Linux, IBM, Netscape)
• Outsourcing
• Offshoring
• Supply-Chaining
• Insourcing
• In-forming

Virtues – collaboration, shared wealth, shared opportunity
Troubles – endless rapid change, many will be unable to keep up

According to Friedman, though the US is the great innovator now, as it has been since WWII, competition is ramping up. China, India, and the European Union are economic powerhouses. China and India in particular are worrisome if you are concerned about the success and preeminence of the American market. Their influences are only just beginning to be perceived. India alone has 355 million people in its middle class. The entire US population is not that large. As these economies continue to get their bearings, we will see our lives change.

What is most interesting to me in Friedman’s work is this understanding that a flattening world will demand responses from places like churches…places where people are cared for. He calls it the “fat” of life. Sure, we can all be more “lean,” more able to compete, but without the fat of the world, the meaning-making communities and relationships, the so-called nonsense that actually builds up, then the system will be unhealthy.

Some friction in the seemingly frictionless world of expanding globalization is necessary.

We need communities to make meaning of what is at work. We need agencies to slow things down in helpful and healthy ways. And, finally, if we are honest with the realities of Friedman’s theory, we will need to help the people who will not be able to keep up, those who will not be able to adapt. There are always growing pains to such a shift as Friedman suggests. Who will be around to help?

Friedman suggests that churches (and others) need to be prepared for what is happening.

And this is where my mind has been focused of late. I know I tend to obsess about these things, but if Friedman is at all correct, then it may be helpful for churches in America to begin to think about what they will do in response to such broad shifts. Members of congregations will be affected. People living in the surrounding community will be affected.

I think we do not need to look far for inspiration in how to respond…

…for we have a flattened world in the wake of Easter.

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. [For] there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.(Acts 4:32-35)

As we continue into the Easter season, we are presented with this astounding vision of community. Can this have ever been a reality? Can we even begin to imagine such a promise being fulfilled in our own lives?

Perhaps it can be. In some ways, the specifics of this story are unimportant. Certainly it may guide us in understanding current economic realities, but in this case it is the spirt of the passage that may matter most to us. How can we give so generously to one another? What can we share? Do we have the courage to receive so completely from one another? In another word; how might we be reconciled to one another through the grace of Easter?

So often the Acts passage is brought to the fore as if it were a memory of a lost utopian ideal. I think this is a limiting way of engaging this passage. The early church was hardly utopian. And the virtues of the Acts community have not been relegated solely to the pages of the Bible.

As Friedman demonstrated symptoms of flattening in his book, we do not have to look very hard for symptoms of flattening in Christian history…
• The Acts community
• Christian monasticism
 In the east and the west, this tradition still continues
In the west, many emerging Christian traditions attempted to break down the walls of the monastery and allow those virtues to roam freely.
• Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups
• Shakers
• Amish
• The Catholic Worker Movement
• Lutheran Volunteer Corps
• REBA Place

As admirable as these institutions, traditions and movements are, there may still be a tendency for many of us to think of them as impractical or simply too difficult. Indeed, there is wisdom in thinking of such a call as a specific vocation for certain hardy individuals. The rest of us simply may not be cut out for such difficult work. We simply may not be called to it.

But then there is Easter.
But then there is the cross.
It stands on the horizon…
…empty.

Somehow we are to proclaim an empty cross
…and an empty tomb.

Can we see that the community in Acts was responding to an empty cross, an empty tomb? They witnessed the risen Lord. By the grace of God, they found within themselves release from sins. That grace, the release from the bonds of sin, is what compelled them to live together in such a unique and inspirational way.

If there is a way to engage in Friedman’s vision at all, it is through the increased collaboration he suggests is happening. The Acts community was certainly collaborative. “Sharing all things in common” is collaborative. But the collaboration we witness in this passage has a different motivator and a different goal.

Its motivation is the Risen Lord.
Its goal is proclaiming the Risen Lord.

The wisdom of the lessons learned by the community in Acts has not dried up. No, it is still a guide to us.

We need to look around. We need to look within. How are we to respond to the Empty Cross, the Empty Tomb, the Risen Lord? How will this guide how we respond to shifting economic realities?

Give comfort to the displaced…
…manage a shifting economy…
…give wisdom to the successful…
…witness to the existence of sin…
…and to forgiveness…

Let me give you an example of what it might look like.

Some of you know this, but many of you don’t. This may very well be my last sermon at North Shore…at least for a long time. On the first weekend of May I am being presented before a congregation as the candidate for their Senior Pastor position.

I cannot divulge the name of the congregation yet. But as soon as I know something, I will tell you all. And if God does call me to serve that church, there will most certainly be a party. Clear your calendars now.

North Shore Baptist Church has raised me. Through your proclamation of the Risen Lord, and your generosity, I have been nurtured and encouraged to enter into the Christian ministry. We have worked together, collaborated, shared what we have with one another, gained strength together…we have, in our small way, been the Acts community.

But such an example, as wondrous as I have experienced it, is only the beginning of what is possible and what is needed in this world.

We Christians know that in many ways the world was created flat. We know that we lost that collaborative relationship with the Fall.

As Christians we claim at every Easter that the world is indeed flat.
Walls have been torn down.
Borders have been eliminated.
There is no slave or free.
There is no Jew or Greek.
God does not abandon those whom the world may cast aside.
God lifts up the lowly.
God forgives sin.
God grants wisdom to those who seek it.
God calls us to be one Body, to be the Church…
…to proclaim the Empty Tomb and the Risen Lord.

Friedman is quite possibly describing a new economic reality, but we Christians have been witnessing to a flattened world for a couple of millennia.

Alleluia! The Lord is risen!

The world is flat.
Thanks be to God.

Friedman, Thomas L. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2005

Harden, Blaine In Seattle, Hu Focuses on Trade and Cooperation Washington Post, Wednesday April 19, 2006; A 13

Posted by tripp at April 23, 2006 08:14 AM