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TRANSCRIPT: John Ortberg
Global Summit on AIDS and the Church: Nov. 30, 2006 | Watch video of John Ortberg's speech >>
This is from 1 John: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
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“There is a kind of love that looks for people to be around because they are rich or healthy or they lend status to you. There is a kind of love that seeks value in what is loved. There is this kind of love that creates value in what is loved.”
John Ortberg, teaching pastor, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church |
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Anybody here feeling overwhelmed at this point in the day and your mind is just full? And so, all I want to do is talk for a few minutes about our hearts, and about Jesus and his heart, and tell a few stories and this day will pretty much come to a close, and give you a chance to respond.
First story is about Pandy. Pandy had lost a lot of her hair, and one of her eyes and one of her arms. She was my sister Barbie’s favorite doll. And for reasons that no one could quite ever understand – because Pandy was not really an attractive doll; she was kinda ugly, and she was not very valuable – I don’t think we could have given her away. But my sister, in the way that kids sometimes do, loved that doll, loved her so much that they were never separated. Whatever Barbie was doing, if she was eating or taking a bath or something, Pandy was right there with her. They were inseparable. If you loved Barbie, you loved her rag doll. It was a package deal.
One of the measures of how much my sister loved that doll was one time we were on vacation (I grew up in Rockford, Ill., and we went up to Canada one time) and we had returned, almost all they way home to the Wisconsin/Illinois border and we realized that Pandy was not with us. Pandy had stayed behind in Canada. No other alternative was thinkable, my father turned the car around and we drove all the way back to Canada to get Pandy, because we were a devoted family. (Laughter) Not a bright family, really, but devoted. (Laughter)
And then the years passed, and as little girls do, my sister, Barbie, grew up and she outgrew Pandy. And she traded her in for a boyfriend named Andy. Who, oddly enough, was even less attractive than the doll Pandy. (Laughter) Pandy was pretty ragged by now. The only logical thing for my mom to do was to trash her, get rid of her. But my mom couldn’t bring herself to do this. So she wrapped Pandy up very carefully, put her in a box, and stored her in the attic for a long, long time.
Now, I had a lot of stuffed animals and toys when I was growing up, and my mom didn’t save any of mine, but she saved my sister’s little doll Pandy. Do you know why? Because my mother loved my bratty little sister more than she loved me. (Laughter) No, not really. It’s because my sister loved that doll with the kind of love that made Pandy precious, sacred, prized to anybody who loved Barbie. Love Barbie, love her rag doll. It’s a package deal. Can’t get one without the other.
My sister got married to, not Andy, another guy and had three children. The youngest is a daughter named Courtney. And one day Barbie decided it would be nice for Courtney to have Pandy. So they went to the attic of that old house and got the box down, and by this time, Pandy was more rag than doll. So my sister sent her to a doll hospital. My sister lives now in Southern California, and they have such places in Southern California. Pandy got a facelift and liposuction (Laughter). I don’t know what they do to dolls. And now she looks as beautiful on the outside as she always has in the eyes of the one who loved her.
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"The Gospel of the kingdom of Jesus is good news for everybody. And I think it must make God sick to his stomach when little church groups say, 'Our side versus their side, our agenda versus their agenda, our values versus their agenda.'"
John Ortberg |
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“There is,” my friend Ian used to say, “a kind of love that seeks value in what is loved.”
There is a kind of love that looks for people to be around because they are rich or healthy or they lend status to you. There is a kind of love that seeks value in what is loved. There is this kind of love that creates value in what is loved. There is a kind of love that seeks value – we see that in our world every day. There is this kind of love that creates value.
“Dear children,” John says, “this is love, not that we loved God. …”
No surprise that human beings should love God; he has everything we want.
“Not that we loved God, but that God loved us.”
Not this kind of love, not a love that seeks value, but a love that creates value. That God loved us and sent his son to be an atoning sacrifice of our sins so that we could look as lovely on one day on the outside as we already do in his eyes. And since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
“Love me, love my rag dolls,” Jesus says. “Love me, love my rag dolls.”
It’s a package deal. You can’t love one without loving the other.
So all I want to talk to us about, to me first, and then maybe to you, is just how is your heart really? What kind of love is there?
One of the guys at our church – I’m at a church where there’s just lots of real creative people, and a group of folks that I’m so glad to just get to hang around with who are here at this conference – and one of them decided he wanted to try to communicate to people: What does it mean, the millions of lives? How do you get your arms around that?
So he decided that he would start collecting pennies. He started a non-profit called “Got Cents?” And the idea was to get enough pennies so there would be one penny for each person who has died of AIDS in Africa. And we’re doing an AIDS kit build this weekend. So he brought them all out. He has now enough pennies, that if they’re lined up, one after another, it would take three acres to contain them all. 2.75 million, I think. And that’s not even enough to keep up with the number of people who have died from AIDS since they started collecting pennies.
So what would Jesus do? It’s just about our hearts.
Another story – it’s one of my favorite stories about Jesus. Early in his ministry, he’s been teaching in Galilee for awhile, in his home territory, because he wants his followers to understand about love, this love of God and how good God is. Jesus’ heart is just wrecked. So he’s been teaching in Galilee, in his home territory. It’s going pretty well, and his disciples are with him and they are having a lot of success in ministry. And then this in Mark 4: We are told that the crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got in a boat, sat on the lake, while the people listened. And then that day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”
Now, when he says this, he kind of drops a bomb. A guy by the name of Ray Vanderlaan has written about this. The “other side” of the lake was actually a technical term in Jesus’ days. He’s not just talking about geography. “The other side” referred to this region outside of where the Israelites lived called the Decapolis, a Greek word for “10 cities,” and these were pagan people. There was a tradition in Jesus’ day, a rabbinic tradition. You know in Joshua the third chapter, when Israel’s going to take over the Promised Land, it says that God will certainly drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites, and these became known as the seven nations of Canaan.
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“How is your heart really? What kind of love is there?"
John Ortberg |
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It says in Acts 13 that God overthrew seven nations in Canaan and gave their land to his people as their inheritance. And the rabbinic tradition in Jesus’ day said that the Decapolis was where the seven nations of Canaan settled down. It was filled with pagan temples, featured cults that exalted sexuality and violence and wealth. It was everything that Israel was not. The other side is where the pig was regarded as a sacred animal. The other side was a center for Roman power. There was a legion of Roman soldiers that were over there. The Jews regarded the other side as the place where Satan lived, arch evil, demonic, the place where God is not; nobody goes over there, especially not a rabbi.
And then their rabbi just casually says one day, “Let’s go over to the other side.”
What is he doing? Doesn’t he know that the Kingdom is supposed to come for Israel? For our side? It’s almost like he didn’t know it was the other side. It’s almost like he thinks it’s his side. It’s almost like he thinks every side belongs to him. It’s almost like he thinks all of the nations of the earth will be blessed through him – even the seven nations of Canaan. So he takes them over to the other side, to this place where they think God is not.
And there’s nobody there to meet them, no big surprise. Just one man comes, a man possessed by an evil spirit. (Laughter) Yeah, it’s not like what you’re really looking for when you are going over to do ministry some place. Not a real fertile church growth opportunity kind of an area. And this guy, we are told, is so desperate, no one could subdue him. He lived among the tombs. He cut himself with rocks; he cried out in torment. He is a ragged guy. He’s a rag doll.
He comes to Jesus, and you know the story. Jesus looked at this guy who nobody else would have anything to do with, and Jesus is filled with compassion, and Jesus touches him, and Jesus delivers him. And there’s a really interesting response on the part of the people. It says when the people from the Decapolis, from the other side, went out to see what had happened, and when they saw the man dressed and in his right mind, they were afraid, and the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. They don’t respond by saying, “This is great. I have a sick mom or a tormented child he could help.”
They beg him to go away because he’s got power, but he’s from the other side. He’s not one of them. What if he uses that power to hurt them? So they beg him, “Please go away.”
Because they don’t understand Jesus’ heart yet. They think that he belongs to the other side.
Now a little background here. In Mark 6, there is a miracle; most of you know this story, where Jesus feeds a crowd of 5,000. That happens on Israel’s side; he feeds the Israelites. In Mark 6, it’s the disciples who come to Jesus on the first day, and they initiate concern: These people need something to eat. In Mark 6, it says that the people ate and were satisfied after this miraculous feeding, and the disciples picked up 12 basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. Now when an Israelite heard the number twelve, they would inevitably think of one thing: 12 tribes of Israel. There were 12 disciples, Jesus is sending a signal, God’s dream for greatness of his people is being fulfilled in this little community – 12 disciples. Now there’s 12 baskets. God is providing for his people. God cares about his people.
Mark 8, Jesus is teaching on the other side. He waits three days. The disciples don’t say anything about wanting to feed this crowd. Why not? Because they are on the other side. You have to understand this about the disciples. When I was a kid, in like first grade, they would put us in different groups based on our reading ability. And they would never tell you, you know, directly, what your reading ability group was; they would name them after birds. But you could tell by what bird your group got named after. Because there would be the eagle group, and the robin group, and the pigeon group. (Laugher) OK? And the disciples, like us, are kind of in the pigeon group.
And so he miraculously feeds these people on the other side, just like Israel, and he sends the disciples around, and the text says, “The people ate and were satisfied. Afterwards, the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.”
This time, not 12 basketfuls, only seven. How come? Remember how many nations of Canaan there were that the Jews believed lived in the Decapolis on the other side? Seven. Jesus is saying, “There’s good news coming for the 12 tribes; I haven’t forgotten about them. They’re mine. I’ll feed them. And by the way, guys, there’s good news coming for the seven nations, too. I haven’t forgotten them either. They’re mine, too. I will feed them, too. Twelve tribes, seven nations, it doesn’t matter to me. I love them all.” (Applause)
The Gospel of the kingdom of Jesus is good news for everybody. And I think it must make God sick to his stomach when little church groups say, “Our side versus their side, our agenda versus their agenda, our values versus their agenda.”
And here’s Jesus, and Jesus just says, “It’s all my side. They’re just all my people. Love me, love my rag dolls. That’s the deal.” (Applause)
Then Jesus has this strategy. He shows his heart; he goes over to the other side. His heart is broken. He hangs out with lepers, with sick people that nobody else will hang out with. It’s his heart. And then he has this strategy for what’s going to happen when he leaves. And this is where it comes down to you and me and to this conference and our heart.
I was playing with my dad in a tennis tournament a couple of years ago. He had turned 70. We went to a “super seniors father and son tournament” in New York. We used to play in tennis tournaments all the time when I was a kid growing up, but then I was a kid and he was big and strong and fast. And now we went to this deal and he was 70 years old and I was in my late 40s.
In the first round, we were playing a team that was the number one seed. Ranked tops in the country. And they were a great team. And they were just crunching us. And my dad pulled me over, deep into the first set, and my dad said, “I want to tell you I’ve got a new strategy for us.”
And I thought, well this will be good, because my dad has a really good mind for that kind of thing. He thinks about sports and athletics and loves strategy. And my dad said, “This is our new strategy – we’re going to turn you loose.” (Laughter) “I want you to just run all over the court and hit everything you can and smash it. Be brilliant. I’ll be over in the corner cheering you on, but we’re going to turn you loose.” (Laughter)
I was very disappointed in this strategy. (Laughter) Because I was, like, as loose as I could get. I was already, you know, “turned loose.”
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"The last thing he does before he leaves, Jesus gathers his friends together and he says: 'OK, here’s the strategy, I’m going to turn you loose. That’s it. That’s the strategy. ... I’ve been teaching you and you’ve been watching me doing these things. You’ve been watching me going to the other side. You’ve seen my heart. The Holy Spirit is going to come on you. You’ll be my witnesses to Jerusalem, and then Judea, and to Samaria; you’re going to be scattered all over the earth. Don’t be discouraged about it. Here’s the strategy – I’m going to turn you loose.'”
John Ortberg |
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The last thing he does before he leaves, Jesus gathers his friends together and he says: “OK, here’s the strategy, I’m going to turn you loose. That’s it. That’s the strategy. I’m leaving you now. I’ve been teaching you and you’ve been watching me doing these things. You’ve been watching me going to the other side. You’ve seen my heart. The Holy Spirit is going to come on you. You’ll be my witnesses to Jerusalem, and then Judea, and to Samaria; you’re going to be scattered all over the earth. Don’t be discouraged about it. Here’s the strategy – I’m going to turn you loose.”
That’s almost laughable. We think about the challenges with something like AIDS and the people that are dying. And it’s like, “What can I do? What can we do?”
Well, you go back to that moment in the first century. If you were a Martian looking down on the world in the first century, who would you think was more likely to survive –Christianity or the Roman Empire? Who would bet on a rag-tag group of a few hundred people claiming some obscure carpenter had risen from the grave? And yet that movement was so successful that today we name our children names like Peter, Paul, and Mary and we name our dogs Caesar and Nero. (Laughter and applause)
Now, how did it happen? Did it happen because they got better at religious arguing than anybody else? Did it happen because they said, “We’re going to win the culture wars, that’s for sure!” Did it happen because they had more resources and more money than anybody else? No. It happened because, as a matter of reality, the presence and the way of Jesus was so strongly in their midst that they became good news even for the other side.
A guy named Rodney Stark – it’s very interesting – a guy named Rodney Stark is a sociologist, and he’s written a book about this. The subtitle of it is, “How the obscure, marginal Jesus movement became the dominant religion in the Western world in a few centuries.” And I’ll just give you one example. It’s a fascinating study.
There were two times in the early centuries of the Church when the growth was exponential – once in 165 A.D., once in about 251 A.D., that there were epidemics. They may have been small pox, but they killed up to a fourth or a third of the Roman Empire.
“The population in general” – this is from a Roman historian named Dionysius, this is what he says – “The population in general pushed sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt, hoping to avert disease.”
But there was this one little community, there was no community like this, who remembered that they followed a man who cared for the sick and would touch lepers when nobody else would and would heal when they got in trouble. And they said, “Now we are his Body.”
And they did what Jesus did. And they took in people who were sick and dying, even at the cost of their own lives. And these epidemics and the response of the Church played a huge role in the spread of Jesus’ way.
See, this little community became good news for the sick, because they understood Jesus’ gospel was not what it’s largely deteriorated into in America, which is: “Here is the minimal entrance requirements for getting into heaven when you die.”
Jesus’ gospel – Go back and look at Mark 1:14-15 – the Kingdom of God is available now, here through me. “Up there” is coming down here. It includes the forgiveness of sins by grace and life forever in heaven, but it starts right now. It’s Good News, and it’s Good News even for people who don’t believe it. The idea of it is that you have somebody in a neighborhood who gets converted and becomes a follower of Jesus, and she begins to do what he says, and becomes more generous, and more compassionate, and more friendly, and then it’s Good News for everybody in the neighborhood.
My wife, Nance, and I got “T.P.-ed” awhile ago by somebody; we don’t know who. And our neighbor came over on Saturday morning. He’s 88 years old, he’s a follower of Jesus – came over and started cleaning up our yard. I was so moved, I went outside and said: “Art, I feel kinda bad you are doing this. Do you want Nance to come out and help you with this?” (Laughter)
You see, the weapons of Jesus’ kingdom are rakes and brooms and AIDS kits and blankets and research and medicine and education and listening ears and helping hands and visits and friendships and broken hearts and generous wallets. And Jesus’ idea is that when somebody gets saved, it’s Good News for everybody. It’s Good News for Hindus and Muslims and atheists and Buddhists and New Agers and even Republicans and Democrats. (Laugher and applause)
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"If the Gospel isn’t Good News for everybody, it isn’t Good News for anybody.”
John Ortberg |
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If the Gospel isn’t Good News for everybody, it isn’t Good News for anybody. And I know that Saddleback is a Baptist church, but could somebody say, “Amen”?
And so the question becomes, “Are you and I the kind of people that Jesus can just turn loose?”
My favorite weekend at my church, probably at any church I’ve ever been to, was last year. We took a weekend, we just cancelled all the services and said, “We’re going to worship this weekend by just going out all around the Bay and helping Habitat with housing and with education for under-resourced folks and help with AIDS.”
And we built about 7,000 kits for World Vision and had folks go up to San Francisco. Went to one facility and were just with folks that had AIDS, and these are people that are involved in this, so they understand, but one of the things they did was say, “If anybody wants it, would it be OK if we just offered prayer?”
And the folks at that facility said nobody had ever just offered to pray if people wanted prayer before.
And my good news for somebody who has been diagnosed HIV+ and my good news for somebody that’s dying in a hospital bed of AIDS, and what I just want to give you a moment for is, “Does God need to do anything in your heart?”
I was thinking about this this week. I was in high school, I was growing up in Rockford, Ill., one time and I had a few friends and we were Christians. I grew up in the Church. There was a bar in downtown Rockford that was supposed to be a “gay” bar. I don’t know, it was just one of those things where the word just spread. And so on a Friday night one time, the four of us went there and we opened up the door, and we yelled into that bar about as ugly words as you can yell. And then we ran off. And we were laughing about it. I didn’t feel guilty. We all thought that was funny. And part of what I didn’t know was somebody, who I love a whole lot, was struggling with issues, and that, well, I might as well have stuck a knife in his heart.
And that’s just one wrong thing that my heart did, and then there are all the times when I could have done something right and I did nothing. And so I’d like to ask you, if you would, that you just bow your heads right now for a moment.
We follow this magnificent leader who was always getting trouble because he just kept going off to what they thought was the other side, but it wasn’t the other side to him. And right now, just set aside all of the plans and programs and statistics and everything else. Maybe God needs to do something in your heart.
And I just want to give you a moment, if you need to ask God for help. Maybe there is something that you did or said somewhere along the line or something you didn’t do or say and you want to confess it. Wrong words or an attitude or a kind of smugness or complacency or a lack of love. And I want to invite you for just a moment, if it would help you, just privately, keep your eyes closed if you want, to just stand up as a way of saying, “God I want you to do a work in my heart. I don’t have the kind of heart I want to have.” Or, “I want to confess this. …” Just do that right now. Ask him for his help.
God loves that when people just come before him and they are just honest and open up their hearts.
“Heavenly Father, thank you for Jesus. And he is the only hope. He’s the only hope for every one of us, because we’re all rag dolls. We’re all the same, we’re all the same. And only you can change us and change the world. And so we are here before you to ask for your help in doing that. And we pray this together in Jesus’ name. Amen”
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