Ironman Again ...

Game on! I have been thinking lately of returning to the sport I used to love and compete regularly in - triathlon.

Ironman Triathlon has been my favored distance over the shorter races. Some, like my wife, believe it to be madness and not good for health, yet she is a biased medical officer! Still others believe it to a stupid, crazy thing to do - why put yourself through such torture, just watch it on TV!

I on the other hand believe it to be neither madness nor stupid - I look at it as a great challenge!

So bring in the 3.8km swim, followed by the 180km cycle and then while you're at it run around the block for 42.2km!!!

The training program is written and printed, Weetbix spill out of the pantry and my tyres are pumped to 120 psi!! Best get out of here ... zoom zoom!

I will keep you posted on my progress.

Church: for you? for God?

‘You only go around once in this lifetime, so go for gusto!’

The slogan above is a call to people to focus on themselves and focus on the now, a winning combination for advertisers is it not!

'You deserve a break today’
‘Quench your thirst’
‘Have it your way, right away’
'Just do it’.

These slogans capture the dominant ideas of our culture today - individualism and self-indulgence. Yet the corollary of this is the lowest personal savings rates in history, record high credit card debts, meanwhile our health system reels as an affluent and litigious society believes this life is all we have. Don’t we all deserve the longest physical life medical technology can grant us?

Big ideas often define our era - liberty in the eighteenth century, or the progress of the nineteenth century, or, I would argue - individualism today. Such ideas are the mental background noise in our culture, something so pervasive it is almost unnoticeable to those in our midst. The ideas are grids that we interpret all things through: our experience of life, the world, relationships, work, even religion. They can help us to see, they can also blind us. How much of the way we view who we are is shaped by the culture in which we exist?

Has the church today dissolved in the acids of the reigning individualism of today’s culture? Church has become only the expressions of passing interests of the congregants. Programs are determined by internal polls. Services shaped by what outsiders want. Budgets reflecting only what the members desire. What has happened?

Church is not the place for your personal quiet time. We do not gather to pray, sing, read Scripture like we do the other days of the week at home. We come to church, to celebrate the corporate element - to participate in the life of the church. And, we do not come as mere individual consumers doing our spiritual shopping for the week - cruising along aisle prayer, stopping at the sermon specials! We gather as a living body of Christ. I wonder why you come to church.

Church, according to the NT is not all about you, it’s primarily about God. When we understand this, we turn the corner from a self-centered involvement to a full-blown, God-centered life together in Christ. The church becomes a living manifestation of the Living God in this world! Get this and the Christian life begins to change.

Why? Because the character of the church should reflect and glorify the character of God Himself. We are to be holy, one and loving because God is holy, one and loving. Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘Follow my example, as I follow Christ’ (11:1).

God intends to display his own reflection in the church. We see this generally in 1 Cor 1-2. The gospel, possessed by the church is the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of this world (1:17-2:16). Paul writes, ‘We have not received the spirit of this world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may may understand what God has freely given us’ (2:12). And later, ‘we have the mind of Christ’ (2:16b).

The transforming work of the gospel therefore, in the life of the church will give it the mind of Christ and make the church look more like God, not the world. Therefore, the chief end of the church is not improve moral health in society, though a great by-product it would be; their chief end is to reflect and glorify the Living God.

Battle plans of germ warfare

These scum of the earth hate us. They despise our way of life, care nothing for our cherished beliefs, and won't be happy until they take us all down. You, me, everyone. You know who I mean: household germs. The more alert I am to this problem, the more alarmed I get.

You gargle with explosive mouthwash to kill the bacteria in your cheeks and find your tongue is a steaming cesspit of infection. Not to worry. There's a toothbrush for that, with a special rasping device to scrape off the bacterial barnacles. How do you clean the toothbrush? You can't.

You can blast your toilet with a cleaner which will render the porcelain so white that you stumble into things on your way out of the bathroom. But did you know that the simple act of flushing the toilet, even with the lid down, creates a toxic aerosol that coats everything? And that the germs circulate for up to two hours? The door handle doesn't bear thinking about.

The kitchen is even worse. Sponges and cloths make a nice moist environment for germs to breed, but you can always use disposable paper towels. What about the drains? Dark, moist and fed by a steady stream of delicious food scraps: raw meat, bits of fat, vegetable matter, mould. This is nothing more than a stomach bug all-you-can eat buffet. And chopping boards are the Pakistan tribal highlands of the kitchen - terrorist training camps for e coli.

Somebody's invented a ''cootie cover'' for children's birthday cakes. Apparently the post-candle cake is home to more germs than the change table in the parent-friendly bathroom at a Wiggles concert. You'd be better off licking a pedestrian crossing button in Kings Cross than eating a slice of little Jacinta's cake.

You have no doubt heard that the remote control is the dirtiest part of the hotel room. So don't bother washing your hands after using the toilet if you're going to contaminate your hands by watching the footy.

If TV can teach us anything, it's that germs can be and are lurking everywhere. The ''nuclear option'' is antibacterial disinfectant. It kills 99.9 per cent of germs, claims the ad. This doesn't reassure me at all. What about the other 0.1 per cent? Why won't it kill them? These bugs are clearly pumping iron, taking tiny germ steroids, and otherwise using any means, legal and illegal, to become super fit. Superbugs that will live to fight another day and, worse, breed.

I've learnt to stop worrying. I've just found out you can live inside a bubble with only a few minor complications.

Who sanitized the Saviour?

I heard a story the other day of sibling familiarity that really outdoes any of my own shameful antics when I was growing up. An elder sister put her brother into the washing machine! An outraged mother found and rescued the little guy a while later.

We can do the same thing with Jesus. We can shove him into the washing machine. That is, we become too familiar with him and the gospel. We hear it regularly, we believe it and have been recipients of its power – but we take it for granted. We have ceased to be amazed by it, and it simply seems to wash over us these days.

It’s a great danger. It wasn’t like that for the apostle Paul. Reading Romans 1 again, I was struck by the urgency and passion, which seemed to grip him. Not only was he obsessed with the gospel [v16], but also he was consumed by a desire to share it with the Roman church. Verse 15 is striking: “ . . . . I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.” [see also v11-12]

It is interesting that Paul feels so strongly about preaching the gospel – but it seems absurd, at first thought, that he wants to preach the gospel to this particular church. This church that he describes in verse 7 as ‘loved by God’. this church whose faith is being reported ‘all over the world’ in verse 8. This church who Paul would derive encouragement from because of their faith [verse 12].

This passage begs the question, ‘Why is it that Paul wants to tell the gospel to the church at Rome if they are a gospel church?' One would expect Paul’s great Opus Magnus to be to a church that didn’t know the gospel. A church void of gospel teaching. It comes as a surprise that this church is a solidly grounded, gospel preaching church and yet it needs to hear the gospel from Paul. An offensive thought for some!

The answer to this conundrum is chapter 16 verse 25: “Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ . . .” The great reason that the church at Rome – and the church at home – needs to hear the gospel is that it is the gospel that establishes us. Not only does it save us [1v16], it also establishes us. There is not one message for Christians and another for non-Christians. The same message grows one group and saves another. People are still offended when we tell them that they need to hear the gospel. Especially if they’ve been Christians for a long time.

Preachers still give in to the temptation to go on to ‘deeper things’ and subtly move away from the message of Romans 1:16-17. The challenge that I face as a young minister is to not get tired of the gospel. To keep preaching the gospel. To not think that the gospel can be outgrown by anyone. To remember that regardless of what problems people have in their homes and lives – it is the gospel they need to hear most, for it is the gospel that will grow them.

It is the gospel that will remind them. It is the gospel they need to turn back to when life’s storms come their way, when a loved-one dies, when they fail and feel guilty, when they feel jaded and cannot go on.

What else can bring hope, joy, security, peace and freedom?

What else do we have to say to people?

I pray that I won’t put Jesus into the washing machine. How are you doing?