Transcription
Let's commit to love well, but never assume that community with others is equivalent to communion with Christ. Let's commit to hug hard, but never confuse human contact with holy intimacy. Not the same thing. There is a divine hole in our soul created by God himself. We are a mo day, and the only thing that fills that relational hole for us is Jesus.
I was going to Tal, New Mexico for an event, and a friend of mine in Nashville said, "Oh, Lisa, when you go to Tal, there's a spa there, and at that spa, they have these natural hot springs that are unbelievable." She said, "They actually are reputed to have, um, restorative powers that increase your metabolism." And I was like, "I'm there."
And so, so I had an afternoon off in Talis. I go to this ritzy spa, and as soon as I get to the spa, I realized, "Oh, shoot, I left my bathing suit back at the hotel, which way on the other side of town." So, I explained this predicament to this cute little girl, obviously gluten-free 'cause she was tiny, at the receptionist desk, and I said, "I don't have a bathing suit." And she was undeterred. She just real perkily responded and said, "Oh, no worries, because you're free to go nude here." And I said, "Well, if I exercise that freedom, um, some of your other patrons could be scarred, so that's probably not a good idea."
And she was completely undeterred, y'all. She was just so perky. And she said, "Oh, still no worries." She said, "We have loaner suits." And she pulled this bin out from behind the desk, and it was filled with loaner bathing suits. I've never heard of anything in my life. And and I didn't know how to respond at first. I thought, "This makes me want to throw up a little bit in my mouth." And then I thought, you know, this is kind of one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. I mean, I bet I'll never get back to this part of the country, to this particular spa, you know, so why should I let some stranger's germs get in the way, you know, of of a miracle?
And so I kind of gingerly reached over and I picked out, you know, the least damp option. And it was this very, very large black one-piece with, um, real strong, um, upper, like, like, like just almost like body armor up here, and and a lot of room. And so I thought, "This is cool. I've always wanted kind of an Amish design bathing suit." And so a few minutes later, I've changed. I'm sitting in this hot springs that this friend in Nashville told me about. And y'all, it was unbelievable. It's hewn out of stone. It's maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 feet in diameter. And the water's coming up from an underground spring. It's full of minerals. I mean, it's pure. It's It's really amazing.
Then this hot spring, this natural hot spring. I'm there by myself. I'm all alone with my myself. Um, there's a a teak privacy fence that's just glorious. Then right on the other side of that privacy fence, you can see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the sun was just starting to set because it was fall, and it's casting kind of this purpley, peachy hue over the valley I'm in, and they're topped with snow. And I thought, "Okay, this was so worth putting on somebody else's bathing suit because this is unbelievable. I thought this is unstinkingbelievable. I have never in my whole life been that perfectly relaxed."
And I was in that place for probably four and a half minutes when I heard high-pitched giggling and Portuguese coming from the adjacent locker room. And moments later, these four Brazilian beauties who hadn't used the loaner bathing suits came bounding into the to the spa area. And you know what had seemed like a a plenty big enough pool for just me, all of a sudden was filled with just lots of butts and breasts and and nobody was wearing anything. And I mean, it was it was shocking. And so I pressed myself into the corner, just as far into the corner of the tub as I could, because I was afraid I was going to get rubbed by a wobbly bit. And I was like, "You just pressed," and and they couldn't speak English. They're just cavorting in Portuguese. And and then they turned toward me and they began to point and laugh, and they were literally pointing at me, howling. And I thought, "No, that's just hateful. That's just hateful. I don't care where you're from. We don't do that in America."
And I was kind of, you know, starting to feel like a little bit of like anger rising up in me, like I might just punch him in the throat if I could find it around the wobbly bits. And right about that time, this this one of the quartet, she she kind of waved her hand in front of my face 'cause I think she could see the anger. She kind of waved her hands like trying to get my attention in a friendly way, and she went, "No, no, no, no." And then in broken English, she gestured to my my chest and she said, "You poke so good." And I looked down, and evidently there was a some type of a composite plastic in those in those cups, and it had reacted with the steam and it had hardened into points. And I had, I mean, y'all, it was like unicorn horns on steroids. It was like, I mean, it is a wonder I didn't poke one of their eyes out. I mean, it was.
And I thought of that the other night. I was sitting at my desk in Nashville, and I was studying a passage in scripture that talked about, I know, I know, just hang with me for a minute. It'll maybe get biblical, but there's there's a passage that I was studying, and it's real similar to what Chris just taught on. It is about the necessary, hear me, the necessary peculiarity of one who is devoted to Christ, that we are supposed to poke out much. Um, we are not supposed to fit in this culture where we've been plopped. We are not. I've lost all of you, haven't I? Every single one of you. We are not supposed to fit, y'all. We are aliens and strangers and sojourners. As Chris just said, one of the older translations of the passages Chris quoted says, "We are a peculiar people. We are not supposed to look like everybody else, nude or clothed. We are supposed to jut out of the culture that we have been plopped into."
A book that I've been reading lately talks about this. It's called uh, "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Would you just listen to that title for a minute? We could just we could just preach that title. "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Just that title doesn't fit with our immediate gratification kind of culture. Eugene Peterson, in "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction," he says this: "The world is no friend to grace. A person who makes a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior does not find a crowd immediately forming to applaud the decision, nor old friends spontaneously gathering around to offer congratulations and counsel."
Peterson goes on to write, "There's a sense, a feeling that things aren't right, that the environment is not whole, but just what that is eludes analysis. We know that the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes faith, dissipates hope, and corrupts love. But it is hard to put our finger on just what is wrong." Another one of my favorite writers, he's actually dead. I have platonic crushes on all the dead theologians. Um, his name is G.K. Chesterton, and in a profound classic, it's not a beach read. It's hard to read, but I would encourage all of you to read his book, "Orthodoxy." And in "Orthodoxy," he says this: "We have come to the wrong star. That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. The true happiness is that we don't fit." We have come from somewhere else. We have lost our way.
Now, there's so much emphasis in our world today and postmodernity on belonging, on fitting, on community. And I think sometimes as Christians, we have lost the truth that we are not supposed to fit. That we are called to a different way of life. That we are to love the world, but we're not supposed to look like the world. We see that all throughout biblical history and human history. We've forgotten it in this crazy postmodern culture. But if we were Christians 300, 400 years ago, we would not think it all that odd that St. Francis of Assisi did what he did. Now, most of you have heard his name. Even if you are not a practicing Catholic, you know he is the patron saint of animals and the environment. So he was probably cheering when I was in the national hot spring, not looking at the jutting, but still cheering nonetheless that I was communing with nature.
Anyway, St. Francis of Assisi did not grow up that way. He actually grew up, um, just smack dab in the middle of Italian luxury. And he was quite the Italian stallion before he had these transformational encounters with Jesus Christ. And his biographer tells us that after these transformational encounters with Jesus Christ, he heard the voice of God, as says he heard an audible voice. And what God said to him is, "I want you to repair my church because it's in ruins." So the first thing he did was he ran back to his father's shop. His father was a very, very wealthy merchant. And he took several bolts of his father's most expensive cloth. And he rode to the largest nearby village. And he sold both the cloth and his horse. And then he took the proceeds and he went to the priest in that village and begged him to take this money to repair the church. And the priest was like, "This seems a little weird." And the priest was reluctant. And so Assisi got so mad, he took all that money and he pitched it out the window.
Now, when his father found out, his father dragged young Assisi before their bishop to basically explain himself why he had committed this reckless embezzlement. And it says that the bishop was just about to speak. And you may have heard this part of the story. It's not legend. It's true. Just before the bishop begins to basically lecture young Francis of Assisi, Francis of Assisi just starts stripping off his clothes. And when he is stark naked, he takes his very expensive outfit and he puts it in his father's lap and he says, "Until this point, I have called you my father, but now He is my heavenly Father." He turned on his heel, marched out of town, and he spent the rest of his life living in the mountains above his hometown, devoting himself to this solitary pursuit of Jesus Christ. He understood, "I'm not supposed to fit. And this culture doesn't fit me anymore. This coat doesn't fit anymore. It just doesn't work for me anymore. I love community. I love people, but I love Jesus more."
Lesser known, much lesser known than St. Francis, were a sect that began in the 400s called the pillar saints or the stylites. And stylite comes from the Greek word stulos, which Chris can tell you means pillar. Now, these guys, it began in 1423 by a guy named Simeon. They would literally have their friends and themselves, they would drag marble pillars out into the wilderness. I mean, marble pillars like you see at the Parthenon. I mean, great big pillars. They drag them out the wilderness. They would hoist themselves up or be carried to the top of those pillars, and they would live there. They would make their home on top of a pillar in the wilderness because that was their way of saying, "Anything or anyone who distracts me from my devotion to Jesus Christ, I'm going to actively ignore them."
So they went to extremes to practice this asceticism. One saint, his name was Alipius. He spent 53, y'all. 53 years on top of a marble pillar in the wilderness that was less than 4 feet in diameter. After 53 years of standing on that pillar to say, "I just want to block out anything that obscures my view of God. I just want to devote myself completely to Jesus. I don't want any noise, any distractions, anything else." After 53 years, his ankles collapsed. Says some of his friends assumed that he'd come down from the pillar, maybe go to a podiatrist, but he didn't. Alipius instead turned himself sideways, laid down on the pillar, and he lived another 14 years, prone, but still solitary at the top of that pillar because his heart, I believe his his mannerism was a little wacko, but his heart was, "I just want to be as close to God as I possibly can without any distractions."
Y'all, I don't agree with their methodology. I mean, I think living on top of a pillar is, as Chris said, absolutely cray cray. And if I tried to protest culture by stomping off into the woods naked, people in Nashville would probably call that cause for arrest. And so, I'm I'm not saying we need to do what they did, but I'm thinking maybe we need to think more the way they thought. "Go, what is it in my life that is distracting me from being completely devoted to Jesus?" And I think as a total extrovert, I'm a three on the Enneagram. I love people. I love hugging total strangers to my chest. And believe me, there's enough room under here for a village. I mean, I am a people person. But what God has been whispering to me over and over and over again is, "Lisa, I have to matter more. I have to matter more. What are you willing to give up in order to focus more on me? What are you willing to give up?"
When I brought Missy home, I realized, you know what? I spend all day, every day talking to people. I spend every spare minute I have at Starbucks with somebody else. I'm just constantly with people. And I thought, "This is not the way I'm supposed to order my steps as a follower of Christ or a mom." And so, we moved way out to the boonies. We bought a little acreage, little farmette about 10 miles outside of town. Chris has been there. It's in the middle of nowhere, isn't it? And and I I got it because I thought, "I'm on a hill in the middle of nowhere, and for those few rare days I'm home and not on the road or not about the Father's business, I need to be alone with the Father." No, the house is kind of janky. The view is fabulous. And it came with a really pretty pool.
And, um, I grew up as as a lifeguard in Florida. College and high school summers I spent as a lifeguard, ski instructor. And so as soon as I saw that pool, even though it was winter time, I thought, "I've got to get Missy where she can swim because even though I'd put her in swimming lessons when I first brought her home from Haiti, she just hadn't really mastered that that that ability." And so I thought, "I need to get her to where she's a little more comfortable in the pool." And so as soon as it was above freezing, I had us in the pool every afternoon. I'm just getting, I just wanted to get her to make sure if she fell in, she could get to the side if somebody didn't see her. And y'all know, especially in California and some of what's happened recently, how critical that is for us to be careful with kids around pools, bodies of water.
Well, one afternoon she was on our "shamu shelf." I really offended this woman recently when I said, "You can sit on the shamu shelf." And I said, "It's not about you. It's the little..." Do y'all call them that? Well, in in Tennessee, if you got one of those shelves in your pool that the water's real shallow and kids can play on it, we call it a shamu shelf because that's what, you know, Shamu would float up on that at SeaWorld. Anyway, glad y'all didn't come to my house. I would have offended you, too. Anyway, this woman was horrified. I said, "Oh, I'll be there in a minute. Just sit on the shamu shelf." And, um, she hasn't been over since.
But anyway, Missy, Missy was standing on the shamu shelf. And I remembered, "Oh, shoot. I forgot, um, the sunscreen because even beautiful brown people need sunscreen." So, I thought, "I've got to run back up and get the sunscreen," which is up on this basket on the porch. I've got a a flight of steps, stone steps that go down to the pool deck. So, I thought, "It'll just take me a second." I mean, I just turned around. I'm running up those steps. And as I'm running up those steps to grab some sunscreen, y'all, I can't even explain how small this noise was. It was like somebody stuck their finger in a cup of water 10 feet away. I mean, it was the tiniest, tiniest of blips. It was like, "Horton, here's a Who." There was no scream. There was no gasp. It was just this just this just this tiny shift in the atmosphere that sounded watery. And I turned, and I turned to see my baby's head going under because we have one of those pools with an infinity edge. So, there's a strong current, almost like a river. And Missy had reached out for something that floated away from the edge. And when she did, the current just took her. And I watched from 15 feet up, in a flight of steps removed, I watched her head go underwater.
And it is such a good thing I was wearing my old lady's skirty bathing suit because I flew. I mean, I just I mean, I just I flew over the rail, over the steps, across the water, and before she had gone down again, I had snatched her back up. Now, the reason I heard that tiny blip is because I have spent so much time alone with my kid that the faintest cry for Missy might as well be a car horn in my heart. I knew that had to do with my kid. Y'all, that's about how it's supposed to be with us in Jesus. We are supposed to spend so much time away from the cacophony of culture. That doesn't mean you have to move out of your neighborhood. Doesn't mean you have to live on a pillar. Sure doesn't mean you have to be nude in a hot tub. What it means is you have to prefer Him above everybody else. You have to go, "Today, it's just me and You. I'm not running for office. I'm running toward You. I don't care how many followers I have. I'm following You. It's about You."
And y'all, we've got to remember that our Jesus was not exactly a social butterfly. If you study the life of Christ, especially the three years of his earthly ministry, he spent much more time as an outsider than he does as an insider. He loved people. Obviously, he loved people perfectly, but he did not court public favor. Turn to Luke chapter 4. Incredible passage. One of my favorite stories in Luke's gospel. And Luke's gospel itself is a unique kind of an outsider, jutting out kind of book because Luke is the only author of Holy Writ who was gentile. He was other. He wasn't Jewish. We've got a couple of books who are formerly classified as anonymous, but the only known gentile author of scripture is Dr. Luke. So he gives you this kind of jutting out perspective. I love his gospel, his euangelion, his good news.
Luke 4:16. And he, Dr. Luke's talking about Jesus here. And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. As was his custom, he went to synagogue on Sabbath day, or Shabbat, if y'all come from a Jewish background. And he stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. And he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and set at liberty those who are oppressed and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, "Today, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, "Is this not Joseph's son? Is this not Mary and Joseph's boy?" I mean, my kid played tee-ball with him. I mean, I remember Jesus. He was in the school play. He was a good kid. You know, my daughter-in-law told me that he's been on some kind of a mission trip, and she said he did a miracle or two. And I'm not sure about it, but obviously while he's been on the road, he has been to like some Zig Ziglar course on teaching because he is such an interesting communicator. I mean, usually when a rabbi gets to talking, I just start playing Angry Birds, but this Jesus, he is just really turned into quite the communicator. I mean, they're just they're all like, "We're so proud. Local boy does good. He's come home." Y'all know that it was a huge deal. He read from the prophet Isaiah, too, right? You know that in Jewish culture, first century, they had what was called a Torah closet at the back of the church. And what would happen is somebody, not Jesus, but one of the juniors, would go back to the closet, grab a scroll, and bring it forward. And in synagogues like Jesus' synagogue, because Nazareth is a two-bit dinky little town, about 300 people. So this isn't a big church. They don't have a paid rabbi. Guys would take turns every week reading from whatever was pulled out of the Torah closet and then they would share. And some of them, as you can imagine, were boring as watching paint dry. And some of them were a little better. But they they didn't have professional rabbis. They just have men in the community who would read from one of the scrolls brought from the Torah closet and then they would share their thoughts on it. Kind of a devotional, if you will.
So it's an honor when Jesus comes back in town. This local kid who'd left, he sits up front in what was called Moses' seat. That's a seat of honor where you'd sit when you're reading from Torah. And some junior kid, almost like an acolyte in the Catholic church, goes grabs scroll, brings it to Jesus. Just so happens to be the scroll of Isaiah. Just so happens. And people tell me the Bible's boring. I'm like, "No, you're boring, you stupid person." This is the most incredible book. I mean, it's a love story. It's amazing. It's filled with me. It's unbelievable, y'all. Jesus is in his hometown synagogue, and the scroll they bring him by chance on that day when he just so happened to be home is the servant songs from Isaiah saying the savior has come. And when the savior comes, blind people will see and paralyzed people will do cartwheels. He reads that, and this yahoo little local audience goes, "Isn't he a nice boy?"
And y'all, he could have sat there and let me tell you, did I tell you I'm a three on the Enneagram? Oh, I love when people like me. When I get hateful things on Instagram, it hurts my feelings. You know, "Your daughter's hair is trashy." I'm like, "Well, your daughter's fat." I mean, it's just makes me. And I don't I don't say it. I don't say it. I promise you. But, you know, you just it kind of hurts your feelings. And so if I'm in my hometown synagogue and everybody went, "Hasn't Lisa become such a good teacher?" I'd be like, "Amen." Like, I'd be like, "Let's all hug and leave 'cause I'm I'm going out on top here." You know, everybody's leaning in. Everybody's liking me. Not Jesus.
Because Jesus came to do His Father's will, not to court public favor. Even at home. Even at home. Y'all, it's one thing to be willing to stand out when you're with people you don't know. To. But to be at home when you're at Bethel and you're leading and some people keep their arms crossed during the song kills you a little bit, doesn't it? I mean, 'cause those are your people. Those are your people. So, it makes perfect sense if Jesus stopped right there because it says, "And all the people thought well of him." But not Jesus. Because everything he was doing was to please the Father, not to please us. So, even though he's right at the point of being endeared forever to this home crowd, he does the Father's business. He pokes out. He says, "I know that's like the least holy image ever. I need y'all to get past get past the cones. He is set apart." He says, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, physician, heal yourself. We have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well." And he said, "Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land. And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha. And none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
Do you know what he's saying to them? Y'all have missed the boat. You have missed the boat. You're all kiki. "Do you love me?" And you've missed the whole point. Kiki doesn't care about you. You've missed the whole point. The whole point is God the Father in glory who sent me to reconcile you to Him. And you think I'm a good boy. I'm not talking about THE LORD here. I AM THE LORD. I AM HE. I am He. And you know what the crowd does? You know what the crowd does when the local boy says, "I'm it. I'm the one we've been praying for for centuries." Can you imagine how that went over? That was like being a hot dog vendor to a vegan festival. And it was rough. After he makes that proclamation, here's what happened. "When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath, and they rose up, and they drove him out of town, and they brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, because it wasn't his time yet, Jesus escaped."
You know, it's one thing when strangers on Instagram conspire to say cruel or less than kind things about you. It's a whole another thing when your friends are doing the cutting. Say that. It's a whole another thing when Jesus' first cousins conspired to kill him because what he said didn't fit and what he did was unpopular. It made them feel awkward. Y'all, we are supposed to emulate Jesus. We are supposed to love the people around us. Well, I'm Please hear me. I'm not for a moment saying that relationships aren't a gift from God. I'm not for a moment saying community isn't sacred. One of my favorite quotes comes from a guy named Leslie Newbigin, and he says, "Community is the most effective hermeneutic of the gospel." In other words, it's through each other we see Jesus clearly. I love relationship. I love community. I love people. But y'all, people have got to yield to our relationship to God. Jesus has to come first.
We're going to spend the rest of this day talking about what it looks like to be women who are so in love with Jesus that we actually transform culture. Amen. Martin Luther King said, "Church used to be a thermostat. Gatherings of Christ followers used to be a thermostat. We used to literally change the temperature of culture." Jen would use the word atmosphere. Atmospheres change when Christ followers walk into that room, to that area. But Dr. King said, "Now church has become a thermometer. We simply take the temperature of culture and then usually align our lives according to that." Y'all, that's not how it's supposed to be. We are aliens. We are strangers. We are peculiar people. We're supposed to poke out much. We're supposed to be different. There are parties I want people to not invite me to. There are people that I want to quit using the language they're using when I come walking up. And I'm fine with it being uncomfortable. I'm 55 years old. I could care less if it's a little awkward. It's like, you know what? I'm just going to do Jesus. And if that steps on a few toes, that's fine. As long as I've hugged Him to my bosom and been authentic, that's fine. If it steps on a few toes, we're going to spend the rest of our time together really talking about what it looks like to be women who affect culture and women who lead well because of our love of Christ.
I want to make a pact with y'all. There's three things I want us to focus on, if I can be so bossy. The first is, let's commit to love well, but never assume that community with others is equivalent to communion with Christ. Let's commit to hug hard, but never confuse human contact with holy intimacy. Not the same thing. Let's commit to share our hearts as freely and as authentically as we can with the people God has sovereignly aligned us to walk through life with. Let's love people really well, and let's do it genuinely. But y'all, let's never forget there is a divine hole in our soul created by God himself. We are a mo day, and the only thing that fills that relational hole for us is Jesus. It's only Jesus.
I want to leave you with just one question, but it's a question I've been sitting in for the last couple of months, and so I felt led to share it with y'all. Don't want you to answer it right now. I just want you to sit in this for a minute. What or who is God calling you to leave in order to lead? What or who is God calling you to leave? Maybe just loosen your grip on in order to.