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Get your own, Free HomepageChurch...my brothers and sisters...beware of the polar bear paradox!
Some years ago the Denver Zoo had a difficult decision to make. They were offered the gift of a beautiful, large polar bear, but the problem was that there was no existing room for the bear. At the time of the gift, the Board of Directors was in the middle of a fund-raising campaign to renovate the zoo. They changed the strategy to include a magnificent habitat for the polar bear in their renovation plans.
In the meantime, the bear was put in a small, temporary cage. The space was so small that the animal could only take three steps, turn around and walk three steps back.
Because of unforeseen delays the construction took three years, but the new habitat was truly incredible: pools and waterfalls, spacious grounds, caves to explore. The bear entered its new home, looked around, took three steps, turned around, and took three steps, turned around....
This "polar bear paradox" is a parable of human life. The promise to all of us is that life has infinite possibilities, a vast environment to explore. Yet most of us settle for a routine way of thinking that narrows our life to the dimensions of a prison. Jesus was painfully familiar with the 1st century religious version of the "polar bear paradox." He came with Good News of a spacious, inviting and wonderful dominion of God...but most people who heard his message...especially the religious authorities of the day... wanted to keep their faith in a small cage with very specific boundaries and limitations. They wanted their familiar, safe ways; Jesus came to "explode" those traditional, confining beliefs.
In our Scripture reading this morning, we heard what might sound to us like a very dated example of the conflict between Jesus' message and the beliefs of those who heard him speak. Something about not pouring new wine into old wineskins. You see, there was no such thing at that time as a bottle in our sense of the term. Wineskins were sort of like bags made from tanned animal hides. When these skins were new they had a certain elasticity to them; as they grew old they became hard and unyielding. Newly made, fresh wine is still in the fermenting process; it gives off gases; those gases cause pressure; if the skin they're poured into is new it will yield to the pressure and expand, but ifit's old and hard and dry, it will explode and ruin both the skin and the wine.
Jesus warns against placing new wine in old wineskins. The new wine will burst the dried-out old skins. He was speaking of the new wine of the gospel - the Good News of God's accepting love for all people - which could not be contained by any rigid religious structures with tight traditions and burdening requirements. Jesus proposed a radical new way that people could relate to God. The gospel of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, is constantly bursting the old containers into which people have poured it.
In the stories of the Bible, the burst container was Judaism with its legalism, restrictions and exclusions. But over the course of these 2000 years since Christianity emerged, Jesus has been exploding people's rigid religious and mental containers in all kinds of ways. The Christian church, worldwide, has had to find new wineskins for the gospel's new wine over and over again. We in this church have and will continue to have to find new ways to contain Christ's ever-new message. And the Holy Spirit, alive in that message and fermenting constantly in each of our hearts, will push us as individuals to let some old wineskins be exploded and replaced with new ones! Why should we settle for small, narrow prisons when there's so much more God wants us to have?!
It's so funny to look back at the history of the Christian church. When the message of Jesus first grabbed the lives of a handful of folks, they broke out of their religious confinement and, by sharing His message and their lives with one another...going from place to place, with more and more people believing in Jesus, they created what we have come to call the Christian church and, like Jesus, their ideas were revolutionary. And yet it only took a few hundred years for this exciting new wineskin to become hard and unyielding.
Pretty quickly, as the church became established and "organized," new thoughts...new revelations were seen as a threat. When Copernicus and Galileo tried to share what they had learned about the rotations of the planets around the sun, the "Church" totally freaked! Why everyone knew that the sun circled around the earth! It was natural! It was scriptural! It was traditional!
And of course, across the years, new wineskins for the ever-new wine of the gospel have been creating controversies for the Church in all kinds of ways. In the 1500's, a guy named Martin Luther added the strongest voice yet to a chorus of people seeking reform in the church and, yada, yada, yada, there were now Catholics and Protestants! A new wineskin.
Even within the last century or so we have seen all kinds of wineskin explosions for the Christian church. The issue of slavery. Once understood without question as natural...Scriptural ...traditional. Now we can look back and see what a hard, dry, useless wineskin that was! But that's because the Holy Spirit, fermenting in the hearts of people, exploded that container. Many hearts, though, are still hard and dry when it comes to issues of race.
And the place of women in society and in the church. What of that? What was once accepted as natural...Scriptural...traditional has begun to change as new ideas, new understanding, new revelations have exploded an old way of thinking. Of course, there are some whose wineskins are covered with religious duct tape as they struggle to hold the wine inside the container of their choosing....but its sweetness and truth leaks out just the same!
Everyone in this room knows that there are many similar issues with which we as Christians still struggle today. There are still many questions around what is considered natural and Scriptural and traditional. I only pray that we all will understand that the fresh wine of Jesus Christ simply cannot be contained or denied as people choose. God is the wine steward of heaven and earth alike!
Here in our own church, lest we become too self-satisfied, hear me clearly that we, too, must stay ever vigilant that we don't become an old, hard, dried-up container for what is meant to be fresh and new and exciting and intoxicating to the hearts and spirits of people who come here. As we proceed this year with some strategic planning, I want to make something very clear. There are lots of ideas and desires among us as to what we should "be," what we should "do," how we should look, what "kind" of church we should be labeled as. Many people have asked me what my vision is. Well, after struggling with that concept for quite some time, I think I can finally articulate it. How big will we grow? I don't know. Exactly what style of worship will we settle into? I hope we never settle into anything. Who will we focus on? Who will our members and attenders be? I think they should be anyone who feels as excited as many of us do about the opportunity to manifest, communicate and celebrate God's surpassing love! My vision? Here it is...and I don't think you'll have to write it down. My vision for this church...what I want to see from this church from today until we all get to heaven is one thing, two words. My vision for this church is CHANGED LIVES. Nothing more...and nothing less. And changing people's lives with the new wine of the Good News of Jesus Christ will mean a constant willingness to see wineskins exploded and replaced over and over and over. Because the bubbling, fermenting, expanding work of the Spirit is never going to stop!
That's what's so exciting about seeing people find Christ in their lives and live out that relationship through this church. It changes them!
Now we know change is something most of us resist, especially the older we get. It's easy to lose our adventurous spirits. Two caterpillars were crawling across the grass when a butterfly flew over them. They looked up, and one nudged the other and said, "You couldn't get me up in one of those things for a million dollars!"
Our resistance to new ideas can actually have physical effects on us. The research of a Canadian neurosurgeon discovered some dramatic truths about the human mind's reaction to change. He conducted various experiments which proved that when a person is forced to change a fundamental belief or opinion, the brain undergoes a series of nervous sensations equivalent to distressing torture. No wonder social change comes so slowly. The most well-meaning folks find new revelations to be, in a sense, tortuous!
Yet change is not something that God wants us to fear. Rather it's something we should welcome - for without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they want to be...or that God wants them to be.
Jesus Christ is all about change. Changes ofthe heart. Changes of the soul. Jesus' Good News is about stepping out of the confinement of "how it used to be" and into the fresh perspective of a new day. It's about letting go of the familiar routine of three steps and turn, three steps and turn, and going off to explore a wonderful place of opportunities and surprises where there is room for everyone to be themselves and be better for the experience of having that wonderful new wine within them.
Beware of the polar bear paradox. Trade in your old, rigid wineskins for an open heart that can overflow with the sweet, intoxicating love of God...that comes to us, like no other way, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
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