title: Responsibility

themes: radical-welcome love-of-neighbor scripture-interpretation almost-christian holy-spirit humility

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 14:1; Luke 14:7-14; Genesis 4:1-9
**Series:** 2022

> Continuing the 'In the World' series, this sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14 asks how wide we draw our 'circle of responsibility' toward our neighbors. Using everyday examples (screen-time parenting, grocery carts, kitchen cabinets) and Cain's evasive question, Wilson argues that humans always seek the minimum needed to count as good, but Jesus inconveniently draws the circle uncomfortably wide—commanding us to host the poor and strangers we'd never invite. Rejecting an 'à-la-carte faith' that softens hard teachings into mere metaphor, he insists that if Jesus truly is the risen Son of God, we cannot pick and choose. The call is not perfection but, knowing our insufficiency, to draw the circle wide together as the church, dependent on the Holy Spirit—receiving responsibility to neighbor not as burden but as the freedom and grace of the kingdom of God.

**Illustrations:** ephraim-grownup-screen-time, grocery-cart-return, open-kitchen-cabinets, making-the-bed, cain-and-abel-keeper, serial-killer-dinner-guest

---

# August 28
## Responsibility

“One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely. “When Jesus noticed how the guests sought out the best seats at the table, he told them a parable. “When someone invites you to a wedding celebration, don’t take your seat in the place of honor. Someone more highly regarded than you could have been invited by your host. The host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give your seat to this other person.’ Embarrassed, you will take your seat in the least important place. Instead, when you receive an invitation, go and sit in the least important place. When your host approaches you, he will say, ‘Friend, move up here to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.” Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.”” Luke 14:1, 7-14 CEB

One of the biggest differences between my childhood and my children’s childhood is the internet and screens. Screens are everywhere. I had screens when I was a kid, I. I spoke a few weeks ago about the video games I played as a child, but there weren't many screens in my house. And if you were watching TV, you were stuck with whatever was on. You had no choice in the matter you couldn't pick and choose what you wanted.
But with kids today, there's a lot of screens. There's phones, tablets, computers, TVs, and every parent has to make their own choice on this matter and how they're going to parent their children. I don't think there's a right answer, honestly, to any of it.
But one of the things we do as a family is we try to have a balanced screen time. And so during the school week, the kids can't be on the screen. And then on the weekends, they can. Sometimes, Ephraim our youngest, will be like, “gosh, I wish I could be a grownup. And then I could watch whatever I want all the time.”
My response is usually, “well you could, but once you're a grownup, you also have a certain level of responsibility.” As an adult, there are things that you do that you don't want to do. Growing up is not about being able to do all the things you want. Depending on where we're from, how we were raised, how we see the world, how we see our faith, we all have different levels of understanding of our responsibility.
For instance, at the grocery store, there are some people who don't return the grocery carts to the rack. This astonishes me. This is something that was ingrained to me as a child. But it's true. As well, there are also some people who, when they open a cabinet, never close it. True confessions, one of those people would be me. I am a person who, if I'm in a kitchen, you know it because every single cabinet is open and none of them are closed. Some people have the urge to make their bed every day of their life. Others couldn't conceive of taking the time to make it. There are different levels of responsibility in all aspects of life. But being in this world that was created by God, what is our responsibility to each other?

My friends, we are continuing our series on In the world, looking at how to live in the world, but not the world. Last week, we talked about the privileges of being a child of God. This week, it is responsibility. Responsibility is a wonderful English word made up of two other English words, response and ability, the ability to respond. Do you have the ability to respond to these situations?
What we are responsible for matters because if we draw that circle of responsibility narrowly, then we don't have to think about many things other than ourselves and our own desires. When we draw that circle narrowly, it's like the child's dream of being a grownup. You get to do whatever you want whenever you want. There are no consequences or limitations. There is no one to tell you to make your bed or brush your teeth or close the kitchen cabinets. You are gleefully ignorant to any consequences for your actions. We may also think that if you draw the circle too broadly, you never have a chance to rest. You never have a chance of peace.

This question deeply matters. It matters from the very beginning of the Bible. We see it after creation with Cain and Abel, the children of Adam and Eve. Cain becomes jealous of his brother, Abel, tricking him into the pasture and killing him. Then, Cain lies about it to God. When God asks him where his brother is, Cain’s response is: “am I my brother's keeper?”
What is the size of our circle? This is a question that people have been wrestling with for all of human history. As long as there has been any concept of the good or doing good to others, there has been a further concept of who should I do to good to? Who are the people I need to care about? Humans are very good about trying to figure out what is the minimum I need to do?
What is the least I can do to be a good person? This is usually the question. We don't come out and say it, but I think all of us confront it in different ways. Some of us begin with the proposition that we're already good people. Others look at it from a perspective that we're trying to be good people, but it is important.
What is the least I must do for my neighbor? Another way this comes out is just defining who my neighbor is, who is my neighbor? Who am I responsible for?
This is what it means, as a Christian, to live in the world. This question has to be confronted.
Inconveniently, Jesus draws the circle wide. Jesus draws the circle very wide, uncomfortably wide. Jesus draws the circle so wide many think it's impossible to actually follow him. We make it out that no one could actually follow the ideals of Jesus. They are beyond the scope of human possibility, but that's how Jesus presents them.

It's an ugly sort of à-la-carte faith that tries to say that the things in the Bible that are achievable should be take seriously, literally, but the things that are unachievable should be taken figuratively. It's a metaphor. We should be nice to people.
This passage from Luke 14 is a great example of how it is easy to take the hard teachings of Jesus less seriously. Jesus is telling us to have dinner parties and to not invite our friends, but to invite the poorest people around us. Jesus is telling us to have dinner parties at our home, in our house with homeless camps, from downtown Austin, or with anybody. What could happen? It could be dangerous. What if you let a serial killer in the house? Jesus draws the circle uncomfortably wide, and we need to face this. If we're going to actually read the Bible and take it seriously, Jesus doesn't offer a simple path for a stable faith life. It's really not there. Christians have tried to  create the stability which assumes one kind of family life, which assumes communal responsibilities, community engagement and involvement. The only stability Jesus offers is leaning entirely upon him.
We cannot lean on ourselves, our own structures or assumptions. We cannot lean on even assumptions of safety if we are actually going to follow Jesus.

Now, when we read a passage like this and Jesus literally says to us, don't invite your friends. Go invite the closest people you see, go invite random people. I think there are a number of ways we should read it. I think one way is we should read it is literally and we do what he says. I must confess, I haven't tried it honestly. I'm convicted to do it, but I am not there yet. I think we should also read it is that Jesus is redefining who our neighbor is here, who we are responsible for.
And our responsibility is not just to our friends and our family. It is to the people around us that we would not invite to our parties, we would not invite into our house, we would not welcome in our house, we would be offended if they entered our house. Our responsibilities as a Christian go beyond the level of our comfort.

Now, if Jesus is just a good teacher and faith is just a nice story that brings some order to the world and gives us some nice morals, that's one thing. It's a lot easier to have an à-la-carte faith, to pick and choose what we want to follow, to pick and choose what we want to do. To say, “oh, you know, I think Jesus is speaking really metaphorically here. He doesn't want us to feel uncomfortable. And so I'm not going to ever do this. I'm only going to invite my friends. I'm only going to love people who look like me and act like me and think like me and live in a similar status as me. Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I love the neighbors in my house. I love the neighbors I already know. They're great. I have enough friends.” This is a way that we can respond if Jesus is just a human good teacher, but if we respond this way, his death ultimately has no meeting.
If, on the other hand, Jesus is the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, out of whom all things were made, the Word made Flesh that dwelt among us. If Jesus actually rose again, defeating death, offering us mercy and new life offering us the kingdom of heaven here, not just in the future here, then we should respond in a different way.
Then we should be a lot less willing to pick and choose the scriptures we are going to follow. These are hard words from Jesus: what are we going to do about them? That is really the question. The question is not: are we already perfect? Are we already flawless? Are we fine with inviting anybody to our house all the time. The question is knowing our insufficiency, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to draw the circle narrow so that we think we're doing good? Or are we going to draw the circle as Jesus does, realizing our responsibility to our neighbors and to the world and work together as the body of Christ, with the Holy Spirit, to fulfill it.
When Jesus is preaching, when Jesus is speaking, he's not always speaking to people as individuals, but to the church, teaching us how to be the church.
And so we should act as the church as we draw this circle wide,.
And that my brothers is our call. As Christians, we should draw the circle wide together. We should work with each other in the different gifts we all have to live in the world. That takes time. It takes a willingness to listen. It takes a willingness to admit when you're wrong. It takes a willingness to admit when you have fallen short, it takes a willingness that goes beyond the expectations of the world which calls us to draw a circle super narrow, the call of the world which calls us to have the circle be just what we want to consume and support and nothing beyond that.

My brothers and sisters, the only way we can follow Jesus is by faith. And by the Holy Spirit: we cannot do it on our own. You cannot will yourself to it. I am not enough. You are not enough, but together, with God, we are more than enough. God has done amazing things in this world. God is doing amazing things and we can do amazing things, if we're willing and humble to see as God sees, to read the words of Jesus and take them seriously and be convicted about how to love, about who to love, and then to actually go and do it.

My brothers and sisters, I hope you can hold me accountable to this, to draw the circle wide, to draw others into the body of Christ, to call and live out the gospel here. And now may you realize your own responsibility to your neighbors is not a burden. It's not a way to feel guilty, but a freedom that Christ gives you that you don't have to be the one to draw that circle. You can live into the kingdom of God and receive grace to love your neighbor, whoever they are, wherever they are, to love them through the Spirit together.

Let us pray.
Heavenly father, your call is daunting, but your yoke is easy and your burden is light. Help us to be your church, help us to be your body. Help us to be your hands and feet and live into your kingdom now. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


site: sermons

title: Revelation Notes

author: Wilson Pruitt

church: bee-creek-umc

themes: interpreting-revelation repentance congregational-decline antichrist scripture-interpretation second-coming judgment

scripture: Revelation 2:5

text:
**Scripture:** Revelation 2:5
**Series:** 2022

> Sparse sermon-prep research notes (Jan 2022) drawing heavily on Craig Koester's Revelation commentary, anchored by Revelation 2:5's call to remember, repent, and do the first works lest the lampstand be removed. The notes survey the history of interpretation, contrasting Augustine and Tyconius (Revelation as the church's ongoing struggle between sin and grace through the present age) with Bede's sevenfold outline of church history. A central concern is what Revelation means by what must take place soon, arguing Christ's coming soon is not the end of the age but discipline of unrepentant congregations, and that Revelation looks for the final defeat of evil without being a set of predictions.'

**Illustrations:** augustine-millennial-conflict, sack-of-rome, tyconius-augustine-church-struggle, bede-sevenfold-history

---

# Revelation Notes

Augustine pictured a situation in which the powers of sin and
grace were engaged in ongoing conflict. On one level the millennial age was the
indefi nite period in which the church had to contend with internal confl icts
and external threats—such as the sack of Rome in  CE. On another level the
scenario characterized the situation of individuals. People entered the millennial age when raised to new life in baptism, yet they continued to deal with sin,
since Satan was now bound in the abyss of human hearts everywhere, and the
power of the Antichrist could be seen wherever people denied Christ by their
words or loveless actions[^1]

As noted above, Tyconius and Augustine established the practice of reading
Revelation as a vision of the church’s struggle throughout the present age, which
would end only with the resurrection and last judgment. Th at approach was
modifi ed by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Bede (d. ), who thought the visions
outlined the general fl ow of church history within the present age. He outlined
Revelation in seven parts. Th e fi rst focuses on the seven ancient churches in
Asia, which include traits of the church generally. Th e middle parts deal with
the church’s many confl icts and triumphs, and the fi nal part envisions the future
defeat of the Antichrist and glory of the church as New Jerusalem. Bede could
also see the general shape of history in particular series of visions.[^2]

The book conveys what is to take place “soon.”. Th is approach diff ers
from apocalyptic writings that were said to have been written for future generations
(Dan :; :, ; T. Mos. :–;  En. :; Note on Rev :), and it means that
the book was intended to be relevant for its original hearers. But a major question is
what “soon” means, and Revelation’s history of interpretation has often focused on this
question (Intro I). John does not say that “the end” must soon take place. The idea is more complex. Th e messages in :–: warn that without repentance, Christ will
come “soon,” not to end the present age but to discipline each congregation (:).
Later visions continue to complicate the sense of what “soon” means, since the scenes [^3]

“Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
Revelation 2:5 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/rev.2.5.ESV

Revelation looks for tte final defeat of evil, but those aren’t predictions

[^1]: Koester, 37.
[^2]: Koester, 41.
[^3]: Koester, 222.

method: authored, not translated

license_apparatus: CC BY-NC 4.0


title: Shelter

themes: church-as-refuge honesty-with-god justice-and-righteousness stewardship exile congregational-vision

text:
**Scripture:** Isaiah 32:1-5; Psalm 137:1
**Series:** 2022

> Second sermon in the 'Survival' series, preaching Isaiah 32:1-5's image of just rulers as a shelter from wind and storm. Using his Appalachian Trail experience of learning to rely on public backcountry shelters, Wilson argues the church is meant to be shelter for the soul. He applies a wilderness 'four W's' checklist (wood, water, wind, widowmakers) to congregational self-examination: Do we have resources/fuel (stewardship)? Are we drawing people into new life and baptism? Do we protect rather than expose the vulnerable, refusing to act like Pharisees and vultures toward our own? And are we honest about looming dangers (widowmakers) rather than lying about the church's condition? Set against Isaiah's exile context, the sermon insists a true church promotes justice, righteousness, and holiness or should shut its doors, and points toward upcoming congregational vision-team meetings.

**Illustrations:** appalachian-trail-shelters, mountain-climbing-exposure, grandfather-left-church-money, four-ws-of-shelter, vultures-in-the-church, three-three-three-survival-rule

---

# June 26
## Shelter

See here: A king rules to promote righteousness;
    rulers govern to promote justice,
    each like a shelter from the wind
    and a refuge from a storm,
    like streams of water in a wasteland,
    like the shade of a massive cliff in a worn-out land.
Then the eyes of those who can see will no longer be blind,
    the ears of those who can hear will listen,
    the minds of the rash will know and comprehend,
    and the tongues of those who stammer will speak fluently and plainly.
Then a fool will no longer be called honorable,
    nor a villain considered respectable.
- Isaiah 32:1-5

After college, I started hiking the Appalachian trail from Maine down to Georgia. I brought a tent with me because I grew up as a Boy Scout. I grew up with family camping trips with tents for a shelter. I grew up camping often in the fall or the spring, when mosquitoes and bugs were out like crazy in Texas.
And the tents were mostly used as a large mosquito net, but still, that's what I was used to.
When I made it up to Maine and started hiking south, I carried my tent with me. People have been camping and hiking along the Appalachian trail for many years. And they built these series of shelters. Almost every three to five miles, from Maine to Georgia, there is a shelter in the back country. Usually, with three walls, a roof, a floor, a fire pit, and near some kind of water source within a half mile.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn't need to take my own shelter with me.
But if I was going to stay in the shelter, that meant I had to be willing to be in public. That meant I had to be willing to sleep in a space with strangers, with other people. Sometimes this would mean three people to a shelter, and most of the shelters were designed for eight max. Sometimes it would mean 12 people in a shelter designed for eight. When you are hiking 25 miles a day, you learn to pick and choose what you want to care about. And what I chose was that I would rather carry two pounds less weight than to be particular about the space next to my sleeping bag when I was sleeping. I mean, the the shelter companions, I was most annoyed about weren't the fellow humans. It was the chipmunks in Virginia. But I learned to adapt around them.

My friends, we're continuing our series on Survival, looking at how to survive in the wild, but also the wilds of this broken world. How to survive with our soul and what God offers us and how God gives us grace and peace in this time. Last week, we talked about the first rule of survival, which is don't panic. You can't do anything else if you are panicking. After that, after we realize we need not panic, we go to the next step.
The standard rule of thumb in survival situations is that you can survive three hours without shelter, three days without water and three weeks without food. And so over the next three weeks, we're going to look at shelter, water, and food, in that order. Now, some of us may invert that list and think that we could only survive three hours without food, and possibly we could go a long time without shelter, but shelter really is a priority. Food is useless if you are stuck in a monsoon.
Now we don't have to worry about rain as much this time of year in Texas. It'd be great. It'd be so much better if we could worry about some rain. We need shelter here, where we are, from the heat. We need shelter from exposure.
Now this is a word I didn't really come across until I started climbing mountains. Exposure is how close you are to falling to your doom. You would ask, how exposed is that position? If it's not very exposed, then if you trip and fall, you won’t be going very far. If it's very exposed, then you're going to go a long way down.
For us today, this gets to how we think about the stakes of our own existence. Now, many of us are blessed with comfortable lives and we may not feel very exposed. Some of us, on the other hand, feel like we have been walking on the edge of a cliff for some time and it is hard to know when it is going to stop.
In either situation, we still need shelter. We need shelter for our souls.
When you think about your soul, when you think about who you are at your core, there's a lot of exposure in this world and not just for our children.

The prophet Isaiah lived in the period of Jewish history called the exile. It was a time after the Judges and the Kings after David and Solomon and then a bunch of bad Kings.
And then king Josiah, who was a good king, who sought the Torah of God, sought to follow the ways of God.
But soon after Josiah the Northern kingdom was absorbed by Assyria and the Southern kingdom absorbed by Babylon. Many Jews were taken to Babylon.
The exile challenged the self-understanding of the people of Israel: if things are really bad, what does that mean about the God we worship? I thought God was going to protect us. And now we are, as it says in Psalm 137: By the rivers, rivers of Babylon, there we sat and we wept when we remembered Zion.
What do should we do during those times? What should we think of God?

Now in this early part of Isaiah, there's this passage that I read earlier about what a ruler and the king does a king rules to promote righteousness, rulers governed, to promote justice.
Each like a shelter from the wind, a refuge from a storm, like the shade of a massive cliff and a worn out land, justice and righteousness offer us shelter in this world.

The church can offer shelter in this world. It can offer shelter for our soul. The church, at its best, offers us a space where Jesus is present, where the Holy Spirit is moving and active where God, the Father is worshipped where people care for each other, lift each other up. But the church has not always been at its best. We have to admit that we have to be honest with that. Our God is a God of truth. We do not need to lie about the state of the history of the church.
The father of lies, the devil wants us to lie about it. The devil wants us to put a pretty spin on everything and pretend that things are okay. But when we are lying to ourselves, we're keeping God away. When we think everything is peachy keen. We are keeping God out of our hearts.

Thinking about Isaiah and the church makes think about how looking for shelter in a survival situation could inform how we are honest with the church.

When you are looking for shelter in the wild, there are four things you should look for.

- Wood
- Water
- Wind
- Widowmakers”

The first W stands for wood. Be sure to ask yourself the following questions each time you stop to camp:

Do I have a close source for the wood I need to accomplish any tasks I plan for this camp setting?
Is there firewood to last the time I will be here?
Is there enough deadfall, or will I need to cut wood? (Depending on what tools you have with you, this can be significant.)
Are there construction materials close by that I can use to build shelter framing, cooking gear, or any other crafting I have planned?

“The second W stands for water. As with wood, there are important questions to answer before you set up camp:

Is there a water source within short distance of camp that will be convenient for easy collection?
Is the water source a flowing source or standing source? A standing source will evaporate in summer and poses the threat of stagnation as well. Any ground-source water will need to be boiled at a minimum, but both filtering and boiling is preferred when possible.
Is the water source large enough to hold food fish?
Is the water attractive to other animals that will use it, such as frogs, crayfish, turtles, and the like? Is the source large enough to attract mammals to use it as a daily source of water?

These questions can help when you’re making decisions about where to set up a base camp.”

The third W is wind. Wherever you choose to camp, wind is a concern both for the threat of fires running out of control and for the ability to combat or take advantage of convective breezes.

The fourth W stands for widowmakers. These are standing dead trees that may easily fall or break if subjected to wind. They could cause serious safety issues if they are close enough to fall into your camp area or the area into which you will frequently travel to get wood or water.”

Let's think about this with the church. The first W is wood. Wood for fuel and wood for building supplies. Is there enough fuel for what we'd need for what God is doing? Is there enough wood to build more?
Is there enough wood to keep the fire going? Do we have the resources we need here to do what God is calling us to do? Do we need to find more resources for doing it? Are we giving enough as a church for what God is doing here? Are we responding to God's call? That is a deep and important question we need to ask. I don't ask for money a ton from the pulpit, but it matters.
My grandfather left a Methodist church because the preacher asked for money. So I have an aversion for that. And yet, but God has a vision for us here that's exciting to be a part of. It is exciting to find the place where God’s call and our heart come together for the mission of the kingdom of God.
That is where we will find the fuel for what God is doing here. I see that in sharing Jesus with our children. I see that with sharing our food from the garden, with our neighbors. I see that with bringing people back to church who haven't been in a long time, or who've never been. I see that with pub theology, with questions about God in surprising places.

The next “W” is water. The water of life. Does our shelter have water? Are we drawing people into new life with Jesus? Are we baptizing children? Are we baptizing adults? Are we offering new professions of faith? Are people changing their lives here?
The third is wind. Are we giving protection? To people here? Can people come to church and Bee Creek and find protection? Are they less exposed? Are they protected in their? Or do they feel more exposed? Do they feel like the vultures are inside or outside the church. And that's really when the church has not been at its best. When the church has been at its worst, Christians have been acting like vultures to their own inside. Instead of protecting all who walk through the door, loving all who walked through the door, Christians have turned on our each other. Christians have become Pharisees and holier than thou and forgotten the rock hard reality of how all of us need mercy. How we should show mercy and grace to whoever walks through our door, whatever they're wearing. And even that, that gets to the last one: widowmakers. Is there anything hanging over our head that could fall at a low moment? Are we lying about it or pointing it out? This means looking to our future as a congregation. Now at the end of the summer, we're going to have a series of vision meetings about that.
Six vision teams will be gathering together around different themes. These are open to the whole congregation. They are open to members and visitors alike. If you want to be a part of that, of that future. So we do not let the widowmakers hang you there. So we look to what are the concerns of our community, of our congregation? How can we face them and meet them? What are the possibilities? How can we face them and meet them?
That is the shelter that we can be. But as Isaiah says, a king, a ruler promotes justice and promotes righteousness. Yes, the church that is true to who God is promotes justice and promotes righteousness, promotes holiness. If we are the church, if we are not making people holy, if we are not offering new life, we need to shut down the walls, shut down the doors. If we are not offering people a new experience with Jesus, if we're not offering new life in this space, we need to shut down the doors. If we are not building a more just society, that looks like the kingdom of heaven here and now, we need to shut down the doors. We are not a shelter. We're lying to ourselves. Thanks be to God.
I feel like that is not the case. That God is present here. That new life is happening here. That we are offering shelter, not just from the wind. We are offering fuel for the fire. We are offering the water of new life and we are not blind to the dangers in front of us.
My brothers and sisters, survival in the wild and survival in the world are not so different.
We need shelter before anything else, we need a safe place to be and to grow. We need a place of transformation. We can only be that together. And it takes commitment. It takes a commitment from the people who are here, but it takes also a commitment to receive new life, new vision, new blood, into what God is doing here.

Let us pray.
 Heavenly father, thank you for offering us new life. Thank you for giving us hope. Please remind us that we are safe in your arms and under your wings. And especially when we receive your justice, your righteousness, your holiness, your grace, to be the people we were created to be. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen


title: The Chassis

themes: sermon-on-the-mount doers-not-hearers purpose-of-the-church confirmation resisting-fads-and-trends easter-works-of-love congregational-future

scripture: Matthew 7:24-27; Matthew 5:3-4

text:
**Scripture:** Matthew 7:24-27; Matthew 5:3-4
**Series:** 2022

> Launching the 'How to Build a Car' series (really about building a church), Pastor Wilson uses Formula 1 and Adrian Newey's account of designing a race-car chassis to ask what the church's true foundation is. Drawing on Matthew 7:24-27, he argues the church cannot be built on tastes, history, controversy, worship styles, or consultant fads (all 'sand'), but only on hearing Christ's words and putting them into practice. On Confirmation Sunday, he calls Bee Creek UMC to a foundation that lets the church move and grow, to live faith together, invite others, and live as Easter people as it begins conversations about its future.

**Illustrations:** formula-1-drive-to-survive, astros-dead-sports-heart, adrian-newey-how-to-build-a-car, charles-weymann-chassis, model-t-ford, church-consultant-fads, sunday-school-1745, churchs-one-foundation-hymn, confirmation-sunday-confirmands

---

# May 1
## The Chassis

““Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.””
Matthew 7:24-27 CEB

I am not a car guy. I know car guys. I am not one of them. The time that car guys were in garages or looking through magazines, I was playing my bass. I wasn't very interested in driving when I was a kid. I had to be convinced by my mom to drive. I mostly begrudgingly drove places only when it was more convenient than walking.

Last year, I became a Formula 1 fan out of the blue. Part of it was watching the Drive to Survive show on Netflix. Now, if you were here the Sunday after Christmas, I preached about how the void left in my heart after the Astros blew another world series. This was the other reason why I got into formula 1. I wanted a sport that I didn’t care about and that didn’t have any emotional baggage connected to it.

When Duke was in the Final Four, a church member asked me how I was feeling. If I was excited. I think I surprised her by saying, “oh, my sports heart is dead inside.” A lot of the joy I used to feel around sports had been replaced by stress. This is why I can easily make fun of UT and the Aggies and Cowboys (well, I’ve always been able to make fun of the cowboys).
I have memories of those experiences, but, but my heart is just not there. I still love sports and competition in many ways. And so Formula 1 offered me something radically new. It is a whole world to see. It is like a passport across the world, with exotic locations and different strategies and drivers from different cultures and countries and engineers and challenging ideas of what it takes to build the best car.
I started readings books on formula 1, because that is what I do when I am interested in something, so I found the book, How to Build a Car, by Adrian Newy, the lead designer for the red bull racing team that just won the formula one title on spurious circumstances. That's a separate sermon. He’s a brilliant engineer and the book is the story of the cars he has built and of his life.

What Newey shows is that the engineering part of the racing team always comes back to this question: what is a car? They always have to start with what it is, what they are trying to do, and everything is up for grabs. Automotive companies across the world have a principle objective of profit maximization which limits what they can do. And the manufacturers are always focused on making everything constantly scalable. In Formula 1,  there's a scale of one or two, because there are two racers on a team.
With that understanding, how do you build the best car to run 50 or so laps at these specific tracks like Monaco, Silverstone, and COTA when you don't have to think about cost? When you don't have to think about marketing, if you just have to build the best.
Now this made me think about the church. What is the church? What is the church at its best? You can't erase history. You can't erase experiences that people have had, but you don't begin there.

My friends, we are starting a new sermon series called How to Build a Car, which is really about how to build a church, looking at the church as what the church can be, not just as a building or activity center or membership roll.

When starting a new design for a car, Formula 1 engineers have to always start with the Chassis. Car guys or car girls out there know what a chassis is. I didn’t know what it was a year ago. It's a funny word. It's not an English word. Chassis. It's a very, very French word. The first automobile comes from Germany, and then we have Oldsmobile and the Ford motor company and other developers around the world. We don’t always think about France in the development of cars.
The word chassis in French is used to describe a kind of wooden cage used in a wagon and it describes the basic structure in a car. That is the base of the car. The reason why the word we use is French has to do with a man named Charles Weymann.
The first cars were basically a gasoline engine that you put on a wagon. And these were mostly wooden structures that were solid all the way through. They were loud and noisy. The Model T Ford from 1906 is still one of the best selling cars or all time, but it was really loud and noisy and structurally limited.

Charles Weymann was born in 1889 to an American father and a Haitian mother, but he was raised in France. He was a airplane test pilot before World War I and flew for France during the war, earning the Legion d’honneur. He brought his aeronautics background to the car and in 1921, developed and sold the Weymann system, which transformed the old wagon coach frame into a unified base with hinges and joints we now call a chassis. It allowed for a more comfortable ride. It was safer and allowed an increase in speeds. By the 1930s, cars were getting heavier and another innovation passed Weymann by with metal panels, but it was still called a chassis.
If your car’s chassis breaks, your car breaks. There is no car without a chassis. What is the chassis of the church? What is the sine qua non, the without which we are nothing? What is the foundation?

I love the great old Hymn, The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord. This is good. And this is true, but Jesus gives us another way to look at our foundation in this parable I read earlier at the end of the Sermon on the Mount,

Everybody who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise builder who built a house on bedrock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It didn’t fall because it was firmly set on bedrock. But everybody who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice will be like a fool who built a house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the wind blew and beat against that house. It fell and was completely destroyed.

What is important to understand is that both the house on sand and the house on rock hear the word of God. They both hear it. Jesus is present in both places.
One side hears the word of God and does it, the other side hears the word of God and does not.
The word of God causes activity or it lands on sand that will not stand.
So when we think about the church, we cannot begin with what we like or what makes us confortable. We cannot begin with history. We cannot begin with ideas about controversial subjects in the news. We cannot begin by what we think a Christian is or isn't. We cannot begin with anything you find at a Christian bookstore,
We cannot begin within any of these foundations because each of these, in their own way, is like building a house on sand. To build a house on what we like or what we don't like is like building on sand because our tastes change. Fashion's change. Churches grow and churches shrink. There's a season for everything under heaven. If we build the church on worship style or on programs, it is like building on sand. Sunday school classes in 1745 taught kids to read before anything else. They did so both so the kids could read the Bible but also because they valued children not as an instrument but an opportunity.
Twenty years ago, church consultants would say that having plenty of parking spaces was the biggest change a church should make. Sand. 15 years ago it would have been contemporary worship. Organs out. Guitars in. It doesn’t matter if you can play. I love our worship, but it is still sand if that is what we base our church on. Worship styles change. It is like building a car on a cabin frame and then the Weynann chassis comes along.

Other church consultants would say that if your church worship space ever gets to 80% capacity, you need to build a new building and double it. But that House is a squeaky chassis.

So what does the best chassis look like in a car?

When building a car, Adrian Newey says that there are four main goals with the chassis.

“One: ensure that the tyres are presented to the ground in an even and consistent manner through the braking, cornering and acceleration phases. Two: ensure the car is as light as possible. Three: ensure that the car generates as little drag as possible. Four: ensure that the car is generating as much downforce as possible in a balanced manner throughout the phases of the corner.”

If your foundation is not stable, light, and balanced, you are not going to be at your best. Churches build buildings but the church is not a building. It is the people Christ has gathered here. The chassis helps the car move. The church is designed to move, but some people don’t like motion. The motion of the church is that our population is never stagnant.
Today is confirmation Sunday. It is not conformation Sunday.

We have three wonderful young people who are going to confirm their faith in Jesus Christ, not be more like us and the things we like, but to be more like Jesus and to show us more of Jesus. If our confirmands don’t change us as a church by what they offer, we are not giving them space.

We are called to invite others on and offer them a life that makes them want to join the body of Christ. Hearing the word of God and doing it means both living the faith and sharing the faith, with our children and our neighbors.

Matthew 7, where this verse is, occurs near the end of the sermon on the mount, that great passage that tells us what the kingdom of heaven is like. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the word of God that needs to be put into practice. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
This is the word of God. Let us put it into practice and build our house on the rock. Let us hear God and then actually love our neighbors. Let’s build a strong chassis that is going to be able to handle a lot.
We're starting conversations this summer about the future of Bee Creek UMC. About where we're going, who we are and who we want to be.  There are a lot of people here and watching online, who have encountered God in his place at different periods of the church's life. The church will be officially 20 years old next year. I am only the third pastor, and yet, there have been many seasons in this church. People have come to the church and joined the church for different reasons. There are people who see the church at its best in a different way. For us to really be at our best, we cannot build on sand.
We must put our faith into practice. We must live our faith together and inspire others. We are saved by grace but we are not left alone.
We are still in the season of Easter and we must live as if Jesus did rise from the dead. We must live in a way that only makes sense because of who Jesus is. If we can do that, our Foundation is strong. Our chassis Is going to handle a big load. Let us do that together,
my brothers and sisters, our future, our foundation doesn't begin with what other people do, but what we do.

Start right where you are: are you living your best now? Are you living your fullest life now? If so, praise God, invite others into that life. If not there's mercy and grace, but take a step towards that best this day. How can you put your faith into practice this week? How can you take a new step?

Let us pray,
We thank you for your love in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the firm foundation that is both your son and a life lived following him, help us to continue to build that firm foundation here. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.


title: The Cost

themes: cost-of-discipleship cheap-grace take-up-your-cross letting-go-of-control identity-in-christ in-the-world-not-of-it

scripture: Luke 14:25-33; Matthew 5

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 14:25-33; Matthew 5
**Series:** 2022

> Concluding the 'In the World' series, this sermon preaches Luke 14:25-33 on the cost of discipleship: Jesus calls would-be followers to count the cost, carry their cross, and let go of all they cling to. Using the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it contrasts cheap grace (forgiveness without repentance or the cross) with costly grace, which costs everything precisely because it cost God the life of his Son. The things we cannot let go of are lies; releasing them is the death of the old self that begins true communion with Christ. The hearer is assured they are worth that cost to God, a child of God called into new life.

**Illustrations:** pros-and-cons-list, dietrich-bonhoeffer, niemoller-first-they-came, barmen-declaration, bonhoeffer-letter-to-niebuhr

---

# September 4
## The Cost

“Large crowds were traveling with Jesus. Turning to them, he said, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, even one’s own life—cannot be my disciple. Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. “If one of you wanted to build a tower, wouldn’t you first sit down and calculate the cost, to determine whether you have enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when you have laid the foundation but couldn’t finish the tower, all who see it will begin to belittle you. They will say, ‘Here’s the person who began construction and couldn’t complete it!’ Or what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down to consider whether his ten thousand soldiers could go up against the twenty thousand coming against him? And if he didn’t think he could win, he would send a representative to discuss terms of peace while his enemy was still a long way off. In the same way, none of you who are unwilling to give up all of your possessions can be my disciple.” Luke 14:25-33 CEB

I don't know many people who really enjoy a pros and cons list. I know a lot of people who do them, and they may enjoy helping other people list pros and cons for their own life. I mean, it is a lot easier to give advice than it is to take advice. But pros and cons are not the most enjoyable things in the world. The easiest decisions to make are the obvious ones or the unanimous ones. Listing out pros and cons sometimes seems cheap or redundant, speaking for myself, but it's important in times we are stuck: what are the arguments for something?
What are the arguments against something? Do they match up? Is one stronger?
Cost is an aspect of any pros and cons list for almost any decision you're going to make. What is it going to cost? And is this worth the cost? Is it worth the cost of doing this thing? Or is it worth the opportunity cost of not doing it?
This was not a foreign concept and the time of Jesus. What is the cost of following Jesus? And what is the cost of not?
Friends, we are finishing our series on In the World, looking at how to live in the world but not of the world. We began by looking at the privileges of being a follower of Jesus and how that differs from how the world sees privilege.
Then we looked at the responsibilities of being a Christ follower and the responsibility of how wide our circle should be. But today we're really talking about the cost. What is the cost of being in the world? In this chapter in Luke, Jesus lays it out plainly.

>“If one of you wanted to build a tower, wouldn’t you first sit down and calculate the cost, to determine whether you have enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when you have laid the foundation but couldn’t finish the tower, all who see it will begin to belittle you. They will say, ‘Here’s the person who began construction and couldn’t complete it!’

What is the cost?
The words of Jesus here are strong and easier to skip over.
>Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, even one’s own life—cannot be my disciple. Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

These are the words of Jesus in the Bible for us this day. These are not easy words,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Germany in the first part of the 20th century. His father was a famous psychiatrist in Berlin, a contemporary of Freud’s.
Bonhoeffer grew up with a comfortable background and lifestyle. His family was not very religious, but he connected with the church, decided to go to seminary and then to graduate school. He finished his doctorate in theology writing a dissertation on the Holy Community, where he wrote that “a Christian who stays away from worship is a contradiction in terms.”[^1] Bonhoeffer moved to Spain and was a youth director for a few years to the German church in Spain, this is in the early 1930s. Around the time of the rise of the Nazis, he was connected to other pastors around Germany in what would become known as the confessing movement. Soon after Paul Hindenburg made Hitler Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer took a job at German speaking church in London. But again, he never forgot his people or his connections.
A major current of thought that Bonhoeffer and colleagues like Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller,
Who wrote this famous poem,

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

These thinkers had been termed neo-orthodoxy. It came out of a response to the humanistic understandings of faith, focusing on anthropology, sociology, historical critical enquiry, that had been propounded in German universities for the last 50 years. They also came out of a response to World War I and the reality of the trench warfare in which many of them fought.
After the Nazis took power, Hitler saw the German church as an important supporter of Naziism. They were for the most part anti-communist and anti-semitic, which were Hitlers two most important beliefs. He wanted that support to continue and he did not want to allow any dissent within the country. So the Nazis pushed through his own Bishop of the Lutheran church and then changed the constitution of the German church with an Aryan Clause that said that all preachers had to be of Aryan descent. Anyone with Jewish blood was immediately kicked out of the church.
 They tried to go further by removing any pastors who were sympathetic with socialism. They tried to remove the Old Testament from the Bible. They tried to add more heroic or positive views of Jesus, less meek and mild views of Jesus. So in 1934, Karl Barth wrote and others signed the Barmen Declaration.
It included six theses.
1. The source of revelation is only the Word of God — Jesus Christ. Any other possible sources (earthly powers, for example) will not be accepted.
2. Jesus Christ is the only Lord of all aspects of personal life. There should be no other authority.
3. The message and order of the church should not be influenced by the current political convictions.
4. The church should not be ruled by a leader ("Führer"). There is no hierarchy in the church (Mt 20, 25f).
5. The state should not fulfill the task of the church and vice versa. State and church are both limited to their own business.
6. Therefore, the Barmen Declaration rejects (i) the subordination of the Church to the state (8.22–3) and (ii) the subordination of the Word and Spirit to the Church.

Bonhoeffer was in England during the writing of the barmen declaration, but he supported it. And when he came back in 1935, he started an underground seminary in Eastern Prussia in a town that was then called Finkenwalde, but which is now a part of Poland called Zdroje. They broke the law by studying God and training for ministry. In 1937, the seminary was shut down. But before that, Bonhoeffer wrote his greatest work, translated into English as The Cost of Discipleship.

The book is in a sense, a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5 focussing on this dichotomy between what Bonhoeffer terms cheap grace and costly grace. He wrote in hiding with people who were willing to give up their life to preach the word of God in the face of evil.
We truly see the difference between costly grace and cheap grace. Here is how he describes it.

>Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs…Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. The world remains the world and we remain sinners…Thus the Christian should live the same way the world does…Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

>Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have…It is the call of Jesus Christ which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock…It is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it cost God the life of God’s Son…and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God’s Son was not too costly for God to give in order to make us live.

Soon after the seminary closed, Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, told him about a plan within the Abwehr, the german intelligence organization, to take down Hitler. It was at this time that Bonhoeffer traveled to the United States one last time. He came to New York City in 1939 to give a series of lectures at Union Theological seminary. He had lived in New York in 1930 and had friends there. Many of them already aware of the horror going on in Germany, the friends tried to convince Bonhoeffer to stay in the United States. He wrote to his friend, Reinhold Niehbuhr, that he could not.

>I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people ... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security[^2]

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of Jesus. There is no discipleship with cheap grace. There is no conversion or new life.
Jesus said, “Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

This is how Bonhoeffer explains that passage.

>The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

>When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.

We cannot follow if we cannot let go. That is the cost of being in the world. You have to let go of the world.

The reality is that the things we must let go of are the lies we tell ourselves. The things we can’t let go of are lies, themselves, as well.

Bonhoeffer’s story ends in the Flossenburg concentration camp. He was arrested in April of 1943 and then eventually transferred to Flossenburg.

He died April 9, 1945, two weeks before Flossenbürg was liberated.

You are a child of God. You are called to new life. You are called with a costly grace, because it was costly to God, because it cost God the life of God’s Son…and because nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God.

You are worth it to God. You are not your mistakes. You are not the lies of the world. You are a child of God worthy of love and capable of loving, giving, serving, worshipping, praying. You are capable of transformation. Your new life can start this day.

Let us pray,
Heavenly father, thank you for paying the cost for us and for our salvation. Help us not to see away from your call. Help us not to seek comfort in lies but only in your truth and hope and love. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[^1]: Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 227.
[^2]: Letter to Reinhold Niehbuhr


title: The Driver

themes: road-to-emmaus resurrection-appearances congregational-decline discipleship evangelism passing-faith-to-next-generation

text:
**Scripture:** Luke 24:13-18
**Series:** 2022

> The final sermon in the 'How to Build a Car' Formula One series, preached on Luke 24:13-18 (the Emmaus road). The 'part without which there is no car' is the driver. Using illustrations from self-driving-car liability, the invented crime of jaywalking, MADD, and F1 driver development, Wilson argues the world's arrangements are chosen rather than inevitable, and the Christian faith is not a self-driving car. Like the Emmaus disciples who failed to recognize the risen Jesus walking beside them, the church must pay attention to where and who Jesus is. People leave the faith through accumulated apathy, not deep doubt. The church no longer holds its old place of cultural privilege; it is in winter, not spring, and must drive differently, neither resenting the next generation nor coasting on past expectations. The call is to active discipleship: volunteering for children's, youth, nursery, and VBS ministries and inviting others to Christ, so the congregation can train the next generation of drivers rather than be driven by the culture.

**Illustrations:** self-driving-car-liability, midgard-serpent-tail-risk, invention-of-jaywalking, madd-drunk-driving-laws, mitch-hedberg-escalator-joke, f1-driver-development, mercedes-constructors-championship, driving-on-ice-vs-spring, last-years-model, eighty-twenty-principle, worship-not-ted-talk

---

# May 22
## The Driver

On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about everything that had happened. While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey. They were prevented from recognizing him.
He said to them, “What are you talking about as you walk along?” They stopped, their faces downcast.

The one named Cleopas replied, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?”
Luke 24:13-18

Self-Driving cars have been the next big thing for a long time. The technology has improved a lot over the years, and some of you probably have cars that have self-driving modes where you can take your hands off the wheel for a little bit. It's amazing what cars can sense nowadays, how they can stay in a lane or know what other things are around or follow directions. It's really phenomenal.
But the next step that will have to be taken in order to actually allow us to be chauffeured by artificial intelligence is not a technological step.
It is a legal question of liability: who is responsible when accidents happen? Who's responsible for the unplanned contingency? Is it the person who owns the car? That doesn't seem fair. They didn't design the software. The manufacturer did. Manufacturers probably should be liable, but they don't want that enormous tail risk. It is the Midgard Serpent of Tail Risks. No company is excited about excessive liability, especially when the question of wrongful death comes in. It's to the point that there's probably going to be a longterm truce on this issue: the technology will advance, but there's always going to be the possibility of accidents and errors that will keep drivers in the front of the car.

Now, a hundred years ago, there were some cars on the streets, but automobiles were still more of an upper-class phenomenon. Once the automobile moved beyond simply replacing wagons and started to bring new people to the market, a problem quickly arose that we have been dealing with ever since: traffic. Traffic started getting in the way. Cities were crowded with buildings. There was no need for parking because people didn’t have cars. Cities were designed around rivers and railroads. There were no traffic laws because people didn’t have cars. Streets were public space used for pedestrians and tented carts and all sorts of lively things.  As cars became more popular, people wanted to go through cities because that’s where the people were, but there were too many people in the way, and you couldn’t just run them over to get where you were going. You had to wait for the crowds to move.
A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as jaywalking. If you wanted to cross the street, you crossed the street. Sure, horses and carriages were super dangerous, but they were rare and didn’t travel all the time. The actual crime of jaywalking was created through a concerted lobbying effort of automobile companies in the 1920s. It wasn't designed for safety. It was designed to shift liability from the driver to the person in the street. They created crosswalks to make it illegal to be in the streets so that the automobile could rule supreme.

This helps me remember that the way the world is isn't the way it has to be. Specific choices have been made to make the world as it is, even the way we drive. We don’t just drive because that is how people should drive. Fifty years ago, drinking and driving was a very common occurrence. There were a lot more crashes because of alcohol. Many people were killed, but there wasn't a law about it. Who wants to take away the fun of a scotch and soda behind the wheel?
But then one of the most influential and powerful political campaigns started in the seventies, MADD (mothers against drunk driving) that really impacted the laws across the country, and then made it's way across the world. It was now illegal to drink and drive. Cars need to be driven and you have to be in the right frame of mind to safely drive.

My friends, we're finishing our series on How to Build a Car, following this book by the same name, on Formula One and its development, as well as by looking at the church, not as it is or should be or what it could be, but the church at its best. Formula One cars are designed to be the best. We talked about the chassis as the foundation of the church, and that this is found in hearing the word of God and putting it into practice: doing it. We talked about how Formula One cars and the church are designed to be aerodynamic, to limit the drag of the Holy Spirit, and to receive the downforce of the Holy Spirit, to handle the twists and turns of life. Last week, we talked about the Power unit and how our power unit is Scripture, especially studying the scriptures together.
Today we're talking about a part that isn't in the car, but without which there is no car: the driver, You can build the greatest car in the history of the world, but if there's no one there to drive it, it can’t go in anywhere. It’s like an old Mitch Hedburg joke: what do you call a broken escalator? … Stairs. As well, to drive you have to pay attention to where you are, to what is around you, and to where you are going.

In this passage, from the gospel of Luke, after the resurrection, we have these two followers of Jesus who were having a conversation. Another man walks up to them and they don't recognize this stranger. They're talking about Jesus, but when Jesus comes to them, they don't know what to say. They make assumptions about who this new person is and what he's doing. They include him in their story, but they don't realize that he is the heart of the story and he is right there, in front of them, walking with them.

To drive, we’ve got to pay attention to what is going on. We have to pay attention to where Jesus is. We have to pay attention to who Jesus is. We cannot just sit back and press the button and let something else drive us.
We can make the choice that we don't want to be part of it anymore, where we can step back. I think that when most people stop going to church, stop practicing the faith, it’s not because of a profound or deep moment of doubt. It is rather a number of moments of apathy. Maybe they hear one thing that sounds off and think they don’t need it anymore. Maybe they miss a few Sundays and think, ‘gosh, it is nice to have my Sundays to myself. I mean, do we really need to get up early on Sunday? Do we really need to talk to that person? Have that same conversation again, Listen to the same songs.
To be the church, we can't just assume people are going to come to us or want to stick around forever. We can't even assume that we're always going to know where Jesus is. Even still, we know what we should do. We should do the things of God, we should respond to the Holy Spirit. We should return to our source of power in Scripture. We need to remember that Jesus is with us and still, we have to drive the car.
For the Formula One racing teams, they all have fairly sophisticated driver development programs. They have drivers they use and different levels of racing around the world. There are different divisions (formula two, formula three, formula E). There are also reserve drivers and test drivers. As well, each driver goes through hours of sophisticated simulation in million dollar simulators that reveal all the details of the tracks that they are going to race.
So the drivers will know the tracks well. They will know when the apex of a turn is, that is the optimul moment of a turn which has the shortest radius or speed and from which acceleration can begin again. The drivers are going to know when to start breaking, when to stop breaking. The feel of the car is a consistent process of learning. As well, your car is not always going to be good. Some years, the cars are good. Some years, the cars are not good. For the last eight years, Mercedes has won the constructors championship, which meant that they had the most points at the end of the season. They are not going to win it this year. When you're used to driving the best, it takes a different skill to drive a sub-optimal vehicle.
For a long time, in this country, the church has had a place of privilege in society. There has been an assumption about the goodness of the things we do as a church. Preachers have been held up as model citizens at different points in society. But the church doesn’t occupy the same cultural space as it once did. This doesn't mean what Jesus says is untrue. It just means that we're in a different season. We may not be in spring. We may be in winter, and you have to drive differently on ice than you would on a nice spring day. And in this season, we need to drive as the church In a different way.
We shouldn't drive from a position of assumptions about our authority, or a position of resentment. If we resent people because they don't go to church as much, or because our kids don't go to church as much, that's not offering them Jesus.
We're trying to drive last year's model. We're trying to drive something that's not equipped for these roads. Jesus is not dated. The radical truth of resurrection is timeless. We humans are dated.
So as the church, as we're seeking to both drive and be driven by Christ, we're stuck between this rock of a Self-driving future, where people think they don't need God, and the hard place of an outdated past, where the church has more to do with social conventions than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nothing we do as a church should make sense without the resurrection. Being a Christian is not just adding the label “Christian” to things we would have done anyway. Being Christian is not about wearing a cross or a t-shirt but following Jesus and driving the car of faith, the car of the church we have been given.

May we not yearn for the past, but may we seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus is still here. He has always been here. Church may not look the exact same. You may not recognize the presence of Jesus as quickly as you once did. Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, he is here with us even when we don’t recognize him.
So for us to be at the church, we've got to drive the car. We've got to do the things of the church. We have to be the church. We have to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We have to live into what God has called us to do.

I try to be edifying and entertaining in my sermons, but worship is not a weekly TED talk surrounded by music. I can’t drive the church. The Christian faith is not a self-driving car. God meets us where we are, even on the Emmaus road, but God does not leave us there. As a church, we either move with the spirit, or we are left behind. A lot of churches function with the 80/20 principle. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And we cannot be the church at its best if we follow suit. If we think someone else will take care of it. If we think someone else should volunteer. If we think someone else should invite people to worship.

God meets us and forgives us but God hopes for us to share this. When we are happy with the minimum, when worship is about convenience and evangelism, that is inviting others to share in Christ’s love, when that is always for other people, we will never be the church at its best. We will be like a formula one car with a bad driver who crashes it again and again.

Whatever our past decisions and past expectations, God is offering us something new this day. A new encounter with Jesus. A new encounter with mercy.

 Today, God is offering us himself so that we can offer Jesus to the world, so that we can offer life to the world, so that we can offer truth to the world, so that we can offer it to our children, to our friends, so we can train the next generation of drivers.
And if we want to do that, we need to commit to it. We need to want to have a new generation. We need to be willing to sacrifice for it, to come and offer ourselves for it, to volunteer. It is not about how you like to spend your time, but what kind of world do you want to share?
This means volunteering is not just about other people. volunteer for our children's and youth ministry, volunteer for VBS, volunteering for the nursery is not about other people but about you. Do we want a church where we pass the faith on or do we want a church that lives in past expectations? Do we want to a church that engages the next generation, or do we want to church that resents it? Do we want to drive what God has offered for us or do we want to just be driven by the culture and by what other people say we should do?

Let us, my brothers and sisters, respond boldly to God. Let us be a church. Let us be a people that offers hope and joy in this broken place. Let us be a location where transformation takes place. Let us be a people that offers Christ to this world.

Let us pray.
Heavenly father. We thank you for the gift of calling us together to be one body, Help us to earnestly strive for your kingdom here and now and call others to be a part of it. As the church, may we be willing to go the extra step To teach the faith, to share the faith, to live the faith in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.


title: The Power Unit

themes: scripture-reading interpreting-revelation love-of-neighbor scripture-interpretation paul-at-the-areopagus church-vitality

text:
**Scripture:** Acts 17:22-28; John 3:16
**Series:** 2022

> Third in the 'How to Build a Car' series, this sermon treats Scripture as the church's 'power unit' fuel that must be returned to again and again. Using Paul's Areopagus speech (Acts 17), Wilson argues that God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being, and that this source, once unknown, has been revealed in Jesus Christ to all people openly, not as secret knowledge for a select few. The Bible is the fuel because Christ is most fully revealed there, but it must be read together rather than à la carte. He offers two interpretive keys: reading through the love commandments (love of God and neighbor) and using clear passages to interpret obscure ones. Unlike fossil fuel, Scripture never runs dry.

**Illustrations:** formula-one-power-unit, f1-ethanol-fuel-ratio, f1-trade-secrets, church-roofs-like-ark, greek-pantheon-monotheism, secret-society-handshake, bible-app-plans, jefferson-bible, fossil-fuel-versus-scripture

---

# May 15
## The Power Unit

Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you. God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn’t live in temples made with human hands. Nor is God served by human hands, as though he needed something, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and everything else. From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17:22-28

In Formula One, the engine is called the power unit. They kind of put everything together: engine, battery, transmission and it is all custom. Dodge doesn’t want to make one Dodge charger. You want to make a million. You don’t want to make one Porsche Carrera. You want to make a million, But with formula one, they try to make at least two, sometimes a replacement, but at least two. Unlike the chassis and the aerodynamics of the car, the power unit of any car continually needs fuel and to be refueled. Nowadays in Formula One, they don't have to refuel a car during a race anymore. The fuel is set at the very beginning of the race. And so the car is going to get lighter as the race continues. Between races, though, the cars have to be refueled. Technology has changed, but modes of transportation always need some sort of fuel. Horses need to eat and drink.
Sailboats are propelled by the wind and if there is no wind, you’re not going to go anywhere. Wind is not really fuel, though. You don't need to refuel a sailboat, but you have to refuel the sailors to keep the boat afloat.
From its early days, the church was often compared to the arc (like Noah’s arc) in which the word of God is floating. This is why the top of many churches look like the bottom of boats. This is intentional. In this age of the world, more than the boat, the car is the way people move through the world. And even if you have a hybrid or an all electric car, you need fuel for your power unit.

My friends, we are continuing our series on How to Build a Car, looking at the church at its best, what it can be in this time, not what we want it to be, but what God can do with us in the world.
We started looking at the chassis of the car and the the foundation of the church. How the foundation of the church is not just Jesus but hearing the word of God and doing it, putting it into practice. The foundation is both Jesus and Following Jesus. Then we talked about aerodynamics and how we can either cause drag to the movement of the Holy Spirit or cause some downforce that helps the church navigate in this world.
Today, we're going to talk about the power unit. The development of the power unit usually takes place separately from the development of every other aspect of the car. There were only a few engine manufacturers: there are 10 teams (Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Alpine, Alpha Tauri, Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Haas, and Williams), and really only four engine manufacturers. There's Mercedes, that won a lot of championships over the last decade. There is Ferrari, which is in the lead this year, there is Renaud, the French car company that powers the Alpine team. And Red Bull/Honda. It's a Honda power unit, but it's not branded as Honda. So this means that six of the teams hire out, or contract out the manufacturing of the power unit because developing and building the power units takes a lot of expertise.
And it's not something that you can alter and tinker with as much during the year as you can do with other aspects of the car. Each team can receive one full upgrade of a power unit, but otherwise you are kind of stuck with it. It is a massive penalty for a third upgrade. Other aspects of the car can be tinkered with throughout the year like, the aerodynamics, and keep improving it. The big aspect of the power unit though, that the team can tinker with is the fuel ratio. There were a number of changes in Formula Onethis season, including a new fuel ratio.
They moved from an E5 to an E10 concerning the amount of ethanol. If you are a car guy or car girl, you probably have some thoughts on that, that is, about the propensity of ethanol to degrade into water and cause rust and damage inside the engine. Getting the right mix matters tremendously because you want the lightest fuel that will also give you the most power. You want to keep the weight of the car down and keep power up throughout the race.

What is the fuel of the church? What is the source in which we return to, again and again, to which we have to keep coming back? In Acts chapter 17, Paul is in Athens, the great city, in what we now call Greece.
The citizens of Athens had a pantheon of gods, but I think modern retellings of the Greek gods, like Zeus and Poseidon and Aphrodite, made them much more systematic than they really were in practice. We synthesize a system that was much more haphazard in the ancient world. The gods plural weren't truly an everyday part of normal people's lives. They were more like reference points for different activities that you did. As well, by the time of Socrates and Plato, monotheism had held a strong position in Athenian philosophy and theology. Plato posits the existence of one God; Aristotle even more so. And this God isn't named Uranus or Zeus.
The Greeks weren't willy-nilly polytheists believing credulously anything that people tell them. They were sophisticated thinkers of the world, trying to understand what, where they come from, what it means to be a good person, what a good society would look like.

And so Paul comes to preach On the Mars Hill, on the Areapagitica. This is where Paul presents the Christian faith in full to the pagan world. He's trying to articulate that the source of the pagan world of the Greeks is the same source as the one of the Jews and the Christians.
Which is itself, a radical claim. The gods of ancient Greece did not claim universality. They claimed to be the God of the Greeks. The other people around the world had other gods, and that was fine for the Greeks. But what Paul does here is connect the Greek religion with Christian faith. The Godhead is the same for groups and Christians. God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. God is the source. Paul says that he found an inscription to an unknown God. And so what he's doing now is that he is claiming that the unknown has been made known in Jesus Christ. We call this revelation. It has been revealed. The reality of the world has been revealed. The reality of creation has been revealed. We now know the truth and this truth isn't secret. The truth isn't private. It is offered to all. The truth is offered freely to all. The source from which we come, the source in which we live and flourish has been revealed to all. And that source is Jesus Christ.
Getting back to auto racing, one of the aspects that leads to competition in Formula One is secrecy around the development of different aspects of the car. It's all a bunch of trade secrets between the different teams. Other teams can see what's on the outside. They can see what's going on with the external design of the car. They can't see inside. They are not going to share their own mixture of fuel, as well as the connection between the power unit, breaks, tires, gearbox, etc.. There's a trade secret.
Some people claiming to follow Christ throughout the years have claimed access to a secret, access to secret knowledge about God only for the select. There is a secret knowledge. And it was for the special few, kind of like a secret society or secret club with a secret handshake. Are you one of the in-group or the out-group? Are you on my side or the other side? As Paul says on the Mount of the Mars hill, what has been unknown is now known and revealed to all. This is it. This is the source. It is not Paul. It is not Apollos. It is not Peter or Wilson or Matt or Jim. This is the power. That you were loved by God. You are created for a purpose. You were forgiven of your mistakes and you're strengthened by the spirit. And you've got to come back for this fuel. You gotta refuel. You have return again to the source.
What has been revealed around about God is revealed most fully in the scriptures, in the Bible. For the Bible really is our fuel in the church. God is the source in whom we live and move and have our being. The Bible is the source of our knowledge of God. We experience God outside the Bible. We experience God in the morning and the evening: when we awake, when we walk, when we see the flowers and the sunrise and the sun glistening off the lake, when we cry, when we sing, when we laugh, when we experience God.
But when we return to Scripture and understand are connection to God, our source and resource with God, we are refueled by God’s love and truth. The Bible has been abused and can be abused. Not because it is ineffective, but because we are humans and we can abuse anything that is good. There is no gift that cannot be turned away from its original purpose. When we read it apart from the self-giving love of Christ, the Bible can serve to justify our own sin and desire for domination.  Reading Scripture together keeps us from this temptation.

Some people are very familiar with the Bible. They have been reading it all their life. They are involved in numerous Bible studies. For others, the Bible can be intimidating. “I believe Jesus is Lord, but scripture or the Bible isn’t easy. I mean, I don't even know if he should call it scripture or the Bible. And then it's written in these other languages. It's written in Hebrew, Ancient Hebrew and common Greek. And there's a little Aramaic in the Old Testament, as well. Do I need to know all of these things?
The Bible is the fuel of our power unit, because that is where Christ is most fully revealed, but we must read it together. We must live it together. We must offer it publicly and openly. There is no trade secrets from scripture. There's no trade secret for preachers. We don’t have all the answers to the Bible.
The Bible is always the most powerful when read together. When the child, the elder, the preacher together look at scripture, seeking to understand what God is doing.

The experience of Scripture gives rise to wonder and to questions, and such questions bring readers into contact with the diverse worlds of meaning behind, of, and in front of the texts of Christian Scripture. But all such worlds, for Christian readers, are centered on and find their right place relative to Jesus Christ who is the fullness of the self-revelation of the Triune God…The Christian reader thus takes all thoughts captive unto Christ.[^1]

We have Bible studies at the church. We have our Sunday school. We have Sunday school class at 10 or the Bible B's on Wednesday night. I'm looking to start a new Bible study soon. We have opportunities to enter more into scripture. If you want to take a step, the easiest way is to download the Bible app on your phone. And there's a bunch of plans and you can just start with a plan. You can listen to an audio version of almost of the whole Bible in almost any version. You can listen to scripture while you're doing the dishes or while you're driving to work. Even when we study it alone, if something comes up and you have a question, you can come and talk to me and I may have an answer. I may not have an answer, but we will look at it together.

If we are going to truly be the church at its best, Scripture has to be our source. How we read the Bible matters. There's some things in the Bible that are jarring to modern sensibilities. There's some things in the Bible that I don't understand. And the simple way is to read the Bible à la carte, that is to pick and choose the things I like and the things I don't. The problem is that if I do that, then it centers the Bible on me and not on God. An example of this is the Jefferson Bible.

Instead of reading the Bible à la carte, we can look at scripture through the lens of the love commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. Do I see the love of God and love of neighbor in this verse? If I do Thanks be to God. It will enlighten me. If I do not, I need to pray about that. Not strip the Bible of the uncomfortable parts, but seek for it to be revealed in another season.
Another way to read hard passages is to use the clear passages to interpret the more obscure ones. There are some clear passages: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” God loves the world. This is clear. When I come across a confusing passage, like those found in the book of Joshua and the invasion of Canaan, I'm going to use the clear passages to interpret the obscure one.
The Bible is our source because it never runs dry. We need to keep refueling, but we're never going to get to the point where it's empty. It's not like fossil fuel. There will come a day, who knows when, when there is no more petroleum to be found in any part of the earth. On that day, whether it's in 50 years or 500 years, the Bible will still be as fresh and full as it is today.
The source and whom we live and move have our being is here. Our power unit is here. Let us be propelled forward as a body to love and serve and give together through the word.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for revealing yourself to us through the scriptures. Help us to be a people of the book who are open to your movements here and now, in reading and listening and learning together, how to be your people in this world. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[^1]: Gordon, 268.