Authenticity Challenge

I met you this morning to pray with me.

Gracious God, we pray that we might hear your words to us this morning through the scripture that we've already read and through the words that you have come to bring to us today, that we might be transformed to be whole and honest with ourselves and with our neighbors that we might experience this thing, this beautiful thing called grace.

That's in your son's name.

We pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, so I, um, I invite you to take a, just a brief look at your, uh, bulletin this morning.

And for some of you you might like journey back to your high school days.

Some of you might journey back to your kids' his high school days.

But, um, either way, I just remember this moment, you know, in the 90s was the time when I was in high school and I remember, uh, all the things that you aspired to be when you were in high school.

And Stephanie and I was, we were preparing this, we came to this like artwork at the back, uh, towards the end of the week.

So we didn't have an opportunity to do probably what we could have done, which is to pull you to give us your high school images and you know, put them in.

So if you really want to see them, you're welcome to send them on Stephanie's way.

She'll find a fun way to use them, either on social media or on the bulletin itself.

But imagine a picture of yourself and what you would have looked like had we put you on this cover.

And it's kind of funny to put yourself back in there because if you're anything like me, you remember that time when you just, you knew, you knew everything, right?

In high school, you're invincible.

Nothing was going to stop you.

You knew all the things that you're going to happen to you 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road.

And by golly, your outfit and haircut were the coolest they have ever been in your life.

So, I'm sorry if you are a high school student in the room right now and you're gonna think to yourself 20 years maybe.

I looked kind of funny, but you may know ice from our high school students and eye contact, but that's okay.

But either way, it was just kind of a fun reminder cause I remember in me and my journey, um, and learning about the church and about God and, and I remember I began my journey and one of the ways I began it was, uh, with this incredible kind of feeling of not being enough.

And I, I remember when I was in high school, I grew up in kind of the hockey crowd, which was the cool crowd and we were always competing for attention and out-tro trying to outdo each other.

Whether it was the trick that we could do on the ice or whether it was the new bike that we got or whatever it was that we were doing.

We're always trying to outdo one another so that one of us could be kind of the proclaimed leader of the pack, right?

Leader of the pack.

Then that you could have this sort of sense of self fulfillment because you were the best at what you were doing, or you were in the cool club, or you just, you know, you fit in.

And I tell you what, even as a high school student, I found it exhausting, but I didn't realize it was exhausting until I stumbled into this thing called a Christian community and I stumbled into a Christian community kind of by happenstance.

I you a little bit about that in the past.

But then I realized all of a sudden I was part of a group that I didn't feel like I had to perform.

And it was this opportunity of freedom, opportunity of freedom.

But the thing is, I think that all too often we find ourselves back in that place of performing, right?

We find ourselves looking to one another, looking to the people that got a better career.

We find ourselves looking to the people that have more respectful children, find our people that had more money in their 401k is fine.

The people that have something else, the grass is always greener, right?

And usually new year's as a time when we kind of go after that greener grass because we think that if we can change something about ourselves, then we're going to have the better life that that other person had that we've either seen through their Christmas cards or on their Facebook posts or whatever it is that we, we go after the ideal that we have in our mind of who we want to become.

Well, we're going to do a 21 week challenge and you're welcome to join in on the challenge.

Welcome to say, well, these aren't for me and that's fine, but hopefully you can catch the spirit.

But we're gonna do a 21 day challenge on something a little bit different.

And this is something called the authenticity challenge because rather than trying to be better about ourselves, I think that if we're more real and honest with ourselves, we're gonna find a better life and we're going to find a sense of God's grace that we didn't have before.

Because our gospel reading this morning comes from the beginning of Matthew and comes from the beginning of Jesus, his ministry.

And, and if you think about it, uh, there's kind of lots of theological questions we could ask about why Jesus was baptized, what he was doing, you know, why did he have to, what did he mean by righteousness, all these things.

But the idea was, is that what, from what I found particularly unique in this was what I mentioned to the KCI, that Jesus comes to be baptized and that when he comes up from the water, having done absolutely nothing in his ministry, other than disobeying his parents and getting lost in Jerusalem, right in the temple, which isn't necessarily a positive, although he spun it that way, cause he was Jesus, he had done nothing.

And God proclaims, this is my beloved son, this is my beloved son, is he, is he, cause I, I mentioned, uh, this time in high school, I mean, high school and adolescent development is all about identity formation, right?

Figuring out who we are and who we want to be.

And, and that's why, um, you'll hear me say on a number of occasions, we need as many adults in the lives of our high school students.

Just to support them and to tell them that we believe in them.

And it doesn't necessarily have to an in a formal way, but just to help them know that they are good and they are love because they feel pressure from all around.

And one of the advice I give to high school students as they go off to college happened to me.

And when I went off to college, I went off to Azusa Pacific university.

It was on the other side of the world and a part I was exciting right on the other side of the world being the other side of United States, right?

I went from Minnesota, this landlock place, you know, all the way over the Rockies to the Southern California area.

And it was a different culture, different people.

I knew one person going in there that happened to be my best friend, but he was a, an art major and spent all of his time in the studio.

And so I was kind of working it out on my own.

And I remember, like I said before, I had experienced in high school this feeling of competition for who I was of competing over and over again for the sense of coolness and belonging.

And then all of a sudden I started to find the sense of belonging with in this Christian community that didn't seem to require me to do all these things that other people had said.

I didn't have to break the rules, I didn't have to do drugs, I didn't have to do all of these things to be part of that crowd.

I just was who I was.

And they celebrated that and they found a place for me and I went off to college thinking that college is going to be just like that cause it was all Christian school.

Right.

And I go off to college and I find myself hanging out with this group of friends and I was probably like three weeks into college and I started to remember that feeling, you know, I started to feel like I was competing for my voice in the conversation.

I started to feel like I had to name drop or had to do to different things and I, I, I'm glad I had the fortitude, but I made this decision.

I said, you know what?

I know no one here.

I'm going to ditch these guys.

I'm a go find some people that I feel better around, right?

That I feel better around then I can be myself with.

And that's what happened.

By the grace of God, I found some friends and they're the best friends I could have had in college.

And so when I tell anyone as they go off to college, if you don't like who you are, the first two weeks, go find new friends.

It's that easy.

All of you are starting from scratch.

You can do that.

You can kind of reset.

But most of us in the, in the room don't have that opportunity because we're stuck in the rhythm, right?

We're stuck in the rhythm.

And we found ourselves in there so long that sometimes we don't even remember who we are, let alone what it's going to be like to be real with who we are.

Right?

That we spend so much time trying to perform so that people think that we're a better parent than we are.

We're trying to spend so much time trying to do the right things in the right situations.

We are just busy with life and with other people's life and with the news and it ran and all these different things and craziness going on that we don't even know what it's like for something to be life giving for us because we've lost sense of who we are.

We've lost a sense of who we are.

So the next 21 days, I want us to go on this journey of remembering who we are and of living out of that.

But here's the, the biggest piece of this, I don't think that anyone in here is perfect, do you?

Right.

But I tell you what, most of you seem pretty perfect on Sunday mornings.

We're pretty good.

We've become professionals, in fact, at making sure our flaws aren't revealed to each other.

And I'm not saying this is the time when we're going to, you know, let everything go until everyone, all the dirty little secrets of our life.

This is a time when hopefully we can learn to be more real with each other.

And the deeper you go, the deeper you're going to find that your center will, your center finds its place very similar to that of Jesus this morning back in the ancient world.

One of the things I find particularly fascinating about the baptisms is the image that not just they would go out into the water and you know, fully submerse themselves facing the West and then rise to see Jesus in the East.

But they would also go on this, and I'm not inviting us to do the same, but they would also do it naked usually as well, that they would go out into the water unclothed as if they were going into the maternal womb waters.

That's the imagery that they were going with and they would be submersed into that water and then rise out of that water and then receive their clothes of white.

I don't know about you, but there's a certain sense of vulnerability in that, right?

It wasn't an individual baptism.

This was the community of believers that would gather out there.

And so I know we don't like to think of Jesus within this image, but Jesus had a sense of vulnerability and this moment vulnerability of going out into those maternal waters and rising as a newborn baby would with you know, as beautiful as they are achieving nothing in their lives so far.

Right?

But it's in that moment in the midst of his vulnerability that God proclaims to him, you are my beloved and whom I'm well pleased as we acknowledge our weaknesses.

Those were real with who we are and what brings us joy and brings us life.

We might start to hear God say you are my beloved, but you'll see this week and some of the challenges and I don't know the first challenge dates some of us cause it's a social media one week checkout, which is going to be hard for some of us in the room.

Okay?

Others of us are going to be like, ah, that's easy.

I don't even have an account, but the spirit of it comes out of this sense when Elijah goes up to the mountain top, and I kind of happened right here when we were with the KCI and it was so loud with the rain and the cars and all those things, and all of a sudden it was like completely quiet, right?

I was at a spot to pray and even they were quiet.

I was like, miracle, right?

How might you find that stillness this week?

So if the social media doesn't help you with it, you don't want to take that piece of the challenge.

Maybe it's the newspaper or reading the obituaries or whatever.

Is that right?

You do.

Just to find that sense of silence and peace, to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, who am I to reflect on some of the influential peoples in my life?

But the thing is, is this project of being authentic isn't just gonna be about us.

It's also going to be about the other two.

How do we acknowledge that someone else is good just as they are as well?

And so you'll see that one of the tasks this week is just to send someone adjust because present right reminds you that sometimes the people that have done that for you but also reminds them just because you are, that's a gift.

Many leadership books and other people will talk about being vulnerable and being honest or ways to true leadership.

And it's not surprising that Jesus does the same

[inaudible].

So we invite you to take off that mask and to acknowledge

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But as you do that, you'll remember that you are beloved.

The end of college, uh, one, I assume he was seeing if I'm doing work day or whatever, I have shorts, I have a tattoo on my calf right here and it says beloved and Hebrew.

And I did it for two reasons.

One, I want, it was a book by Henry Nowan called beloved.

But the other was, it speaks to me two ways.

There are times when I feel like I am just rocking it, right?

I have accomplished things, you know, I would, you know, I've gotten to do grudge[inaudible] all these things, right?

And you fill up your head with all those things that you've done.

And those are the times when you need to remember that, you know, son, what you've really done has been called God's beloved, right?

It's not get too high on that horse.

But then there's the other times when you, you know, your check bounced or you know, you find yourself at the AA meeting or your relationship is breaking apart or whatever it is.

And also you remember that you are God's beloved.

You are God's beloved in whom God is well-pleased and that friends is grace.

And that's what's offered to us.