Inspired by Curiosity: A Missional Value of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Luke 8:16-18; James 1:19-20

 

Inspired by curiosity, we approach Christian practice with open questions, authenticity, and grace (Luke 8:16-18; James 1:19-20). This value remains notable because it’s not something that appear in many church mission statements. And yet, I believe that curiosity was baked into the very ministry of Jesus - who told curious stories, asked inquisitive questions, and authentically and attentively engaged people with a sense of delight, good humor, and wonder. Jesus was curious, it turns out, and as his disciples, we are called to be nothing less.

Jesus inspires curiosity.

 

We wish to be a curious people because Jesus was a curious person who spoke in a curious way. One of the more unique features of Jesus’ own ministry is the way he most often chose to talk about God, spirituality, or himself. I’m, of course, speaking about his use of parables. Mark 4:34 says that Jesus did not speak to the crowds without a parable. And in Luke 8 we are introduced to Jesus’ parable on parables (the parable of the sower, the seed, and the soils) which gives the reason Jesus spoke in parables and offers an interpretation of the parable. The word literally means, “that which is tossed alongside,” implying a comparison, an analogy, an elaboration, or an illustration. At its simplest, a parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness in order to tease them into active thought about its actual point. Parables are dig deeper stories, cliff-hanger tales, curious sketches which surprise and jostle, beg for questions, invite curiosity, and demand personal investment. It’s interesting to consider how parables are not the type of speech used by bullies or those who wish to control people by telling them exactly what to think and what to do with clipped commands. In fact, by using parables Jesus relinquishes a kind of control because parables invite investigation and interpretation. Because they require curiosity, they resist authoritarian control that doesn’t want to be questioned or authentically vulnerable.

In the TV show Ted Lasso, we meet an American college football coach who is unexpectedly recruited to coach a professional English soccer team, despite having no experience with soccer. The team's owner, it turns out, hired Lasso hoping he would fail as a means of exacting revenge on the team's previous owner, her unfaithful ex-husband. In the following scene, the ex-husband, who has brutally been bullying Ted, is challenged by Ted to game of darts to determine who would control the team. Let’s take a look Click HERE for Ted Lasso clip

“Be curious, not judgmental.” The bullies, Ted tells us, “thought they had everything all figured out. So they judged everything, and they judged everyone . . . If they were curious, they would’ve asked questions.” After telling the parable of the sower, Luke tells us that Jesus cries out: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” And then in response, he writes, “His disciples asked him what this parable meant.” Parables are curious, non-bullying stories. They are artistic renderings of the truth that demand only one thing – listening curiously, attentively, actively. And disciples are curious, question-askers. This is what Jesus means when he says: “Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them.” The “whoever has,” when placed in context doesn’t refer to money, or education, or status, or piety, but attentive listening. The “whoever does not have” very well may be someone with money, or education, or status, or morals, but who has not approached Jesus with an attentive engagement of curiosity and questions. By saying this Jesus is trying to inspire us to curiosity and tell us that some truths are not available to the casual passer-by. But curiosity is more than questions, curiosity is also caring.

Curiosity is caring.

Now it is helpful to introduce the origin of the word - curious. The etymology of the word comes from Latin curiosus and originally mean “careful, diligent;” and a little later involved “inquiring eagerly, asking questions, investigating” and its root cur means “careful” or “artful” (e.g. the word cure, in English).

To perhaps gain a better appreciation of the layers of meaning signaled by curiosity, consider the following words with the same Latin root cur. What is revealed when we use its root in the definition?

• accurate:      done with care
• inaccurate:   not done with care
• secure:         free from care of dread or danger
• manicure:     caring for one’s hands;
• pedicure:      caring for one’s feet

The point is that all these words carry the sense of ‘care’ in them. The curious, in other words, are those who care – care to listen well, care to ask questions, care to be authentic, care because they value truth, care because they love God and others, and remember that Jesus asked questions all the time. So we want to be curious about Scripture because we care. We want to ask questions about people’s stories because we care. We want to be inquisitive about theological concepts because to treat such thinking inaccurately would mean that we don’t care. It’s hard to be angry when you’re curious and listening well. We don’t ask questions to win, or manipulate, or harm but because we wish to love others. It’s because we care.

What’s curious is that the word has been trending downward since the 19^th c.  - take a look. 

 

It’s starting to make a slight rebound but maybe one of the ways that we as Christians can help live out God’s kingdom in the world is to carefully, artfully, lovingly be curious. And not with prefab questions that try and solicit premade answers but questions which aim to help us better care for others. I’m in a Bible study that meets at the Governor’s Cup every Thursday morning and on one occasion we were surprised by one of the employees who approached us wanting to share a story. She told us that she had been stopped by four teenagers on Liberty who gave her a pamphlet with the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” She told us they had pressed her for an answer and understood that they were trying to convert her but that she escaped by telling them that she had to get to work. She showed us the tract and asked us what we thought but I was mostly struck by what she said next. Rather than being angry, she grew a little sad and said, “I’m not mad. They were just kids and they weren’t unkind. But the sad thing is that I think it’s a good question. I just wished they had cared enough to actually listen to my answer.” She sensed that they didn’t actually care because they weren’t curious. The capacity to give our attention – fully – to another human being is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle (modifed quote of Simone Weil).

Grace is curious.

We will never be able to be curious, however, if we cannot be authentic in our relationships, acknowledging our frailties, our fragilities as well as our strengths and gifts. In Christian thinking, such an authenticity can only occur through the work of God’s grace. My wife is a “light” person. She demands good, natural light and hates harsh, fluorescent ones. The light – she says – shapes how and what you see. Grace is truly a curious light that shines so that we can see ourselves, others, and God honestly and lovingly. It’s a gift from God that reminds us that we are loved whether we do right or wrong, loved whether we succeed or fail, loved whether we know or not. There is a fluorescent spirituality that will illuminate everything around but casts deep shadows of pain, shame, and embarrassment. Such light kills curiosity. Jesus, however, speaks of a light that fills the house and beckons others to warmly come. It reveals but doesn’t expose. It will disclose but openly and warmly knowing that healing means taking what has lain destructively in the dark and bringing it to the light. It affords us the ability to not have to hide, to ask questions, to be ourselves. Isn’t it curious that the first act committed by Adam and Eve after they sinned was to hide? Grace as a light doesn’t aim like a spotlight to put you back into the prison of shame, hiddenness and loneliness. It doesn’t set out to expose you but to express love. Grace warmly calls to us with those child-like invitations from games of hide-and-seek, “Olly olly oxen free.” Have you ever wondered why we said that? Amazingly, it derives from Old English and means all ye, all ye outs in free, all the outs in free. That’s the curious light of grace, my friends. It calls out to us, “Come in, come in, all outs in free!”

Formed as Family: A Missional Value of Trinity Covenant Church ~ Romans 12:9-13; 1 John 2:10

 

Formed as family, we welcome all people, share our gifts, and offer our whole selves to put love into action (1 John 2:10; Romans 12:9-13)

We are a (hypocritical) family.

We will never be able to live fully into what we are called and formed to be if we cannot reckon with who we truly are. And the honest fact is that we are a broken community, a bruised bunch, a bewildered family, saved by grace who struggle with hypocrisy. And perhaps the most lovingly genuine thing we can say this morning is that we believe in and struggle with a God who is forming us as family. And we can say that without shame, without guilt, but with confession, forgiveness, and acceptance because we understand this to be God’s work and that God loves us as we are. The most devastating reality in any family is not so much conflict but when family members have to pretend and cannot be themselves.

Greek of the week: Paul says “Let love be without hypocrisy!” (hē agape anypokritos, Romans 12:9). The adjective is a negation of hypokritos, which is related to the noun often used for actors, ones who wear masks: hypokritēs. There are connotations of “play-acting” or “charade.” In our age full of easily kindled social media personas and techno-masks, it’s so easy to present versions of ourselves that are fake. And friends, I’ve told you that for our particular community the sickness that seeks to kill us is not secular culture or political divisiveness but our own pretending, our refusal to be vulnerable, our hidden woundedness that we conceal from one another and God – in this place. Let love be without a mask! Do you know what two of the worst curse words are? I’m talking about bad words like the “F-word” and the G-word” that I hear a lot of you say in church. In fact, we should have swear jar at the coffee station any time someone says them. I didn’t want to say them myself but you leave me no choice. I’m talking about the words "fine" and "good." How many times do we hear, “I’m fine.” Or, even worse, “I’m good” to signal that we don’t need anything. What is currently killing the church is not so much acting bad but bad acting. We present ourselves at Trinity as an army of doctors without any patients while we shiver and cough in corners and behind screens. We have so many who are willing to jump into the fray of being helpers but no one willing to say, “I need help.” And that’s our hypocrisy. For "love to be genuine," another translation of Romans 12:9, we must be able to speak openly of our need for love, our wounds, our anxieties, and our failures. Paul says, “Love allows us to be honest.”

So this value is less of a moral exhortation and more of a honest confession and prayer. We are a broken people who pray for God to form us. Our constant pretending is why we tend to hide and excuse bad behavior rather than confront it and deal with it. What you can’t admit, often can’t be healed. So I think it helpful to think of this value with the opening phrase “Let us be formed as family” because this value, perhaps more than any of the others, is more prayer than reality, more hope than actuality. It truly is something that must be done to us by God and something that we must acknowledge and surrender to. We state that we desire to “offer our whole selves” and that must include even our broken parts. And we cannot share with one another, if we hypocritically pretend that each of us has everything that we need. To be formed as family means that we can confess our hypocrisy and in doing so be less of a hypocrite. But is also means that . . .

We are a (bigger) family (than we think).

The church desires to be marked by such practices as “brotherly love” and “familial devotion” (philostorgoi, 12:10), service, celebration, endurance (12:11–12), caring for the needs of others and pursuing hospitality, which literally in the Greek means “love of strangers,” philoxenia, 12:13). 

Sometimes, this section is outlined as Paul’s exhortation for how followers of Jesus are to live oriented toward their own community (12:9–13) and then how to respond to those outside who persecute (12:14–21). However, things are not so clear cut. And it would be naïve to assume that persecution, mistreatment, and causes for vengeance occur only outside of Christian fellowship. In fact, as recent stories about abuse and misconduct from prominent church leaders indicate, these appeals from the apostle are as relevant for Christians experiencing trauma from fellow believers as for those suffering attack from outsiders. 

We are an outsider family, a strange family because we love stangers outside and even persecutors within. We are family because we commit, however failingly, to love all who enter our lives, who come through our doors. We are a family because we seek to love like Jesus. Loving like Jesus involves solidarity with those who might even be antagonistic. Paul has already stated in Romans that Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). God’s love was expressed like this: while “we were yet sinners; Christ died for us” (5:8). God’s reconciling love came to us even while we were enemies (5:10)! It is from God’s very example that Paul can urge his audience to “bless those who persecute” (12:14), to “not repay evil in return for evil” (12:17), and to not be “avenging yourselves” (12:19). So when read all together what makes us family is not so much something that fences us in but that which destroys all fences to begin with. I love the African-American practice of referring to everyone as “brother and sister." Those are fence destroying words.

In this light, the kingdom of God, we learn, is best pronounced “kindom.” A commitment to welcome all people as God’s own IS what makes us family. The need for redemption must never be used to define people as something other than brother and sister. God is the one who forms us family and God is the one who creates everyone and everything. What defines this family is not something - not blood,  not country, not a building, not language  - it's the love action of God, grounded in Jesus, that we try and emulate. 

Formed as family means eating stone soup.

You know the story. A hungry traveler comes to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon his arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food with the stranger. So he goes to a stream and fills the pot with water, drops a large stone in it, and places it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what he his doing. The stranger answers that he is making "stone soup”, which tastes wonderful and which he would be delighted to share, although it still needs a little bit of garnish which is missing, to improve the flavor.

The villager, who himself is hungry, brings a few carrots which are added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the stranger again mentions the stone soup which has not yet reached its full potential. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient, like potatoes, onions, cabbage, peas, celery, tomatoes, corn, chicken, and pork, even a hand full of salt and pepper. Finally, the stone (being inedible) is removed from the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by everyone. Friends, that’s the story of us. What do you have to bring? When we are a family we all have something to share and we all get something to eat. A formed-as-family love recognizes that we need each other to eat well, to bring about, and cling to, the good.

Paul gives examples of how to cling to the good (verses 10-13). He uses the word agape for love in v. 9, but becomes more specific by using phileo in verse 10 and then powerful images like: let your love be heartfelt; be eager to show each other honor; be set on fire by the Spirit; be devoted to prayer; contribute to the needs of the saints, which literally means “participate in.” To “participate in” others’ needs isn’t simply to give your own resources for their material needs, like food, clothing, and shelter. To participate means to give of yourself. True love always participates. If you don’t have an onion, set the table. If you can’t set the table, wash some dishes. If you can’t wash the dishes, play games with children. If you’re too sick or tired or sad to do any of that, then come and participate and let us take care of you. You can be a Saint-in-need.

In the end, to be family means it’s not about what you bring – it’s the incredible, one-of-a-kind, always loved, worthy-of-honor, saint and gift that you were made to be.  We don’t need you to join us so that we can squeeze every bit of life blood, or money, or service, from you. To be formed as family means that everyone is a guest of honor at God’s banquet and that everyone eats.