Message: MY TOWN

Series: Google Earth

How many of you have Google Earth on your computer? So you understand how cool it is. With a click of the mouse you can surf the world’s geography with real satellite images. You can be looking at pictures of the Great Pyramids at Giza, then have the camera pan way back and zip around the world and zoom in on a high quality image of your house… with your car sitting out front, if it was taken recently.

That’s your house and your car as seen from SPACE! The picture might even have you with your morning coffee and newspaper and bed-head. Ok, so it’s a little Big Brother-ish, but you gotta admit, it’s cool!

Well, I think Google Earth serves as a kind of a metaphor for a new way of life called: glocalization. It’s a combination of globalization and localization. It refers to any group or individual that is committed to thinking GLOBALLY and acting LOCALLY.

These days:
- We care about Boeing AND AIDS in Africa.
- We care about Olympia AND Washington DC.
- We care about local schools AND international terrorism.
- We care about the macro and the micro.
- With the information age, our lives are becoming like a Google Earth map that zooms in to the micro and then zoom out to the macro with ease.

Now, if you think “glocal” is completely new because of modern technology you’re wrong. In fact, you might be surprised to learn that Judaism was the first religion to have a global conscience. God says to Abraham, the father of all who walk by faith:

You see, God blesses Abraham locally so that he will be a blessing globally. At a time when all a man could think about was his family and his tribe (Abraham’s main care in the world was producing a single male heir to pass his estate on to) …into that kind of provincial, tribal world, God revealed to this one nomad
…that His heart is for the world.

The world.

Think about that. One man, God blesses to bless… the world. Wow!

Indulge me for a second and close your eyes and lets do a thought experiment. Take your mind’s eye, like an internal Google earth camera and now pan out, way out. Past the clouds and stratosphere until the earth is a small bluish green marble. And now, as you view that globe in your minds eye, say to yourself,
God loves the world.

It brings to mind the words of the Godman himself, Jesus Christ who said in John 3:16, The means of Abrahamic blessing!

That love spans centuries not just continents! It’s awesome to think: God loves our globe.

OK, now, take your mind’s eye, your Google Earth camera, and zoom in. From space, see America and veer to the upper left side of the continental United States and see the Pacific Ocean and the Puget sound inlet. Now zoom in further and see the upper west side of the Sound, find the Seattle sprawl and drift north. See the Snohomish river delta and just north of that, streets and homes and a city called Marysville.

And inside the city, at the heart of it, is a little green warehouse with a bunch of cars parked outside. And if you had an X-ray on your Google earth camera, your eye would bore through the roof and see yourself sitting here in church today. You saw the whole world, now see yourself. See to top of your own head and hear the God of Abraham say, I love you.

He loves globally and he loves locally. God loves you like he loved Abraham. And like Abraham, God has a plan to bless the world through you. God loves YOU. God would bless the world through you!

Yes, friends, God is the originator of the glocalization project. When Jesus was finished with his work upon a cross… after he authenticated his Unique Divinity after rising from the dead and appearing to many witnesses he said to them:
Did you catch that? Concentric circles of blessing. Beginning locally and spreading globally.
- Beginning with their local city, Jerusalem.
- Moving to their extended country, Judea and Samaria
- Ending globally, at the Ends of the Earth.

This series will follow Jesus concentric circles of blessing and ask the questions:
- How am I to think globally and act locally?
- How can I be a blessing globally and locally?
- What is my responsibility to my city, my country and my world?

Good questions to answer. And we begin today with our city.

MY CITY

What is our responsibility to our city? In short, God wants us to love our city. Ironically, I’ve talked to some of you and you don’t want to love your city. You think that your city is dumb 3 (*slide show). You think Marysville is Podunk! There’s nothing to do here. It’s not exciting. We’re just one step up from Darrington for heavens sake!

Others of you have a picture in your head that a Christian ought to be a person who doesn’t care about things like their city. They’re supposed to be more heavenly minded than that.

Well, friends, either from disgust or spiritual elitism, a certain spirit is alive in our town and I don’t think it’s a good thing. We polled local Marysville police officers last year and asked them one question: “How would you define the soul of this community?” See if you find the same stream running through their responses that we did:
- No sense of purpose. Just getting by
- No really caring about others
- Hurting
- Apathetic
- Clueless, not responsible for their own actions or lack of actions.
- This community has no respect for the community they live in. The juvenile community is in major conflict.
- Marysville is a community full of people who want to give generously, but who won’t take the initiative to do something on their own.
- Work hard for what they have, keep to themselves.
- Searching for answers and something to make them whole, to feel loved and accepted.

Friends, it was just powerful that these were independent responses and yet we kept hearing the same story… we’re apathetic about our community. I don’t know where you might fall on the apathy scale, but if for whatever reason you find yourself apathetic or indifferent about your community, your city, that’s not a Christian response.

The God who loves locally in order to bless globally would call each one of us to start to emulate God’s GLOCAL concerns by loving locally. Yes, even if you think this community isn’t “the bomb”. Even if you think Marysville is Podunk. Even if you’re feeling apathetic because the schools had problems a while back, and jobs are scarce and it’s not hip, and there’s nothing to do and you just want to keep to yourself…

I believe God would call each of us to love this city.

You know that’s what God’ called his children to do when they were in exile. One time, after a period of discipline around 586 BC, the Jews found themselves exiled out of the promised land. They had been kicked out, sent to Babylon with nothing, forced to leave their homeland, and settle in a place unfamiliar to them, strange customs, strange language, pagan gods all around them.

And the Prophet Jeremiah writes those Exiles a letter of encouragement because if ever their was a people apathetic about their city, it was those Jews living in 586 BC. It was those Jews who wrote Psalm 137, a lament about their community which said: Ps 137:1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. 4 To counter this attitude of indifference and apathy Jeremiah writes to people in exile and says: 29:5-7 "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease (*engage!). Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." Oh that’s a powerful command for us today! To seek the peace and prosperity of Marysville. Why? For what reason, does God say? Because if it prospers, you too will prosper. Friends, in a lot of ways we have the city and the county we deserve. Because we have not sought the peace and prosperity of our city. Oh, sure we’ve sought our OWN peace and prosperity. But it’s not the same thing! The “just leave me alone” thing, that doesn’t cut it for followers of the One who said, “you will be my witnesses starting in Jerusalem.” So I want to discuss what we can do to seek the peace and prosperity of our city as God wants us to do (more in 5 year plan coming).

1. RELATIONSHIPS. The first is simple. It’s about the relationships. And friends we have to get this right to reverse the curse of apathy about our community. It’s starts with just knowing people and being known. - How many of us know the neighbors on all four sides of our home? - How many of us know their names? The names of their kids? - How many of us have had more than a one paragraph of conversation with them in the last year? The people who do relationships well stand out starkly in our town, because frankly, we’re not that great at something that simple. We could learn a thing or two from them. - We’ve got a couple at our church that has opened up their home to about 60 or so young adults every Tuesday. They just provide a meal and conversation and love. And it’s not Rocket Science. - Another couple opens up their home every Sunday for friends and family members to hang out and share a meal. And they’re heroes of relationship and all they do is open up their door and their hearts. - We have another couple here at church and I’ve gotten to know their neighbors names quite well. I went to a hospital room of one of their neighbors the week before she died. I officiated at her funeral when she finally succumbed to cancer. Now, she wasn’t MY neighbor, so how did I get to know her and the others? I’ll tell you how. Because this couple makes a habit of relationship. They get to know their neighbors. While the rest of us are running around too busy to stop for a chat, or to deliver come cookies, or ask a question, they’re prepared to push the pause button and they do. 5 o And because they did, they made friends. o And because they made friends, they saw needs. o And because they saw needs, they could meet needs. o And because they met needs, neighbors were intrigued about the source of their love and compassion. o And because they were so intrigued, they readily responded to invitations to church. o And because they responded to invitations to church, I got to know them when they were introduced (life change). The bible says, Rom 12:10-11 “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Friend, there’s opportunity in our down economy to learn these skills. It doesn’t take a brilliant sociologist to predict that a prosperous nation will become increasingly isolationist because we don’t need each other. But the opportunity in a hurting country, is that we might be motivated to reach out one another again.

2. WITNESS A second thing we need to bless our city is a clear and compelling witness. A reason for our seasoning. I believe Hillary Clinton put it well when she said, I believe that faith without deeds is dead, but deeds without faith will not live long. You know, we all want friends and relationship. We all want our community to be warmer. I want my community to be vibrant. Who doesn’t want the atmosphere of our community to be like we see on shows like Friends or Cheers to mark our life… “a place where everyone knows your name!” Everyone wants that! We hunger for it, but we don’t do it OR we just can’t do it, OR we can’t sustain it. Why not? Because we’re broken. We’re trying to get something from each other that we were meant to get from God. We’re like two ticks and no dog. So we go after more community, to fill the relational void (usually a sexual relationship) and it’s initially satisfying, but we can’t keep it going. Infighting, jealousy, selfishness breaks relationship. I believe only through the power of a vibrant relationship with our Maker, will the sustaining power be available for us to do relationship over the long haul. The church holds the key, friends. And that’s why we love our city by giving a clear and compelling witness to how to be in relationship with the Creator. Jesus came to reconcile us to God. With crazy, perfect love, he loves us. He brings us fallen, broken people into the embrace of God by grace. Yes, the Great I Am, the First Cause, our Maker, loves us… us tiny humans, us undeserving, us morally devious, selfish, emotionally immature, us proud… the God who made everything loves US. For God so loved the WORLD, Jesus said, that he GAVE… his one and only Son. That who believes in him would not perish but have ever lasting life. “BELIEVES” means more than just believe a few things about Jesus. BELIEF is a radical trust. It’s a radical throwing of yourself onto the mercy of God. It doesn’t spring from a 6 consumeristic spirituality that goes shopping at the religion mall and thinks that buying a bit of Jesus would be cool because he’s the ticket to success or enlightenment. NO! True faith springs from desperation. From a sense of helplessness. And when, in the middle of despair over sin and sadness and separation from God, you turn to Christ and he saves you, you know it. - You become be at peace with a God who is crazy nuts in love with you. - You’ll feel his presence and power come over you, - His acceptance will fall on you and your spirit will cry out to God: o Abba, Daddy! My own dear father! I appeal to you, if you have never taken this step, be reconciled to God! Don’t wait another day. It’s the only hope for you, and for our city. I appeal to you, if you have taken this step, then love our city by being witnesses to this message of reconciliation in relationship. Relationship with God sustains relationship with each other. And it will motivate us to love through a third thing: - Relationship - Witness - And…

3. COMPASSION People in Marysville want to love others, but do they want to love others as much as they love themselves? I don’t think so. But Jesus said to all his followers: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: love your neighbor as you love yourself. People who take him seriously love others without a focus on what they do for you in return. I confess, I’m still so far from taking hold of all God’s power for this kind of crazy, extravagant loving kind of life. Once I’ve loved my friends, family and others I know, I have so little left in my tank for those who can’t love me back. But this is how you change a city. This is how you love a city and seek it’s peace and prosperity. To love not only those who can’t pay you back, but those who won’t – who don’t even like you. Like, your enemies. You were loved while you were an enemy of God, my friend. While you were spiritually dead and going nowhere. We have to imitate God’s love. APPLICATION How? The Bible says, - Gal 6:10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, - Rom 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good What opportunities do you have do good in your town? The possibilities are endless. Just in this last week, I’m looking at AC3 people who are getting on board the love train to seek the 7 peace and prosperity of their city. As Christians they are kind of in exile, awaiting heaven, strangers on earth… but - they are not so heavenly minded that they refuse to do good. And - they are not so earthly minded that they have no time, no margins and no resources to bless others. They are obeying the command of Christ to love a lost and broken world – the world God wanted to bless through Abraham, the world God loved through Christ… and they’re going to start at home, with their own city. - One is part of a city project to grow a community garden. The garden is used to teach valuable skills to kids who often don’t learn the basic and to channel fruit and vegetables to needy people in our community - Two is people sitting on a local healthy communities initiative that seeks to target Marysville’s level of unhealthy. We are the fattest city in Snohomish county. Our KK fitastic program is designed to address part of this need. How could you extend God’s concentric circles of blessing to your town, your country, your world? Start local. What opportunities do you have? When the first church starting to do this, they did the same thing, relationship, witness and compassion. And the description of that church went like this: “They enjoyed the favor of all the people and the lord added daily to those being saved.”
May that be us.