Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host of The Daily Challenges and today is Tuesday, so it’s the day we take the topic we’ve explored this week and we try to see what the Bible has to say about. Yesterday I talked about how following Jesus means a reset to everything in life, including our attitudes around our work. That can be hard because work is such an overwhelming aspect of our lives. It can drive so much of what we do and say in life. We spend most of our waking time working. Even if it’s unpaid work, it’s still work that we find ourselves engaged in day to day. We need a sense of how do followers of Jesus see work a little differently than others. It’s going to come from an unlikely source. It comes from a letter than Paul wrote to Christians in a city called Colosse. It’s called the letter to the Colossians and as part of that letter, directly addressed what he called bond servants.

Here’s what he had to say. Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, hearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. Well, bond servants isn’t really a term we use very much today. For us, it’s probably analogous to employees, but back then, bond servants were sort of a blend of what we would know as employees and what we would call slaves today. It’s hard because slavery has changed over the centuries.

When we think of slavery in our culture, we generally think of North American slavery and the horrors and oppression of that mode of slavery. No kind of slavery is all right, but we just want to understand a little bit of the culture that Paul was writing to. It was a culture where slavery was very much a reality. It may have been an unquestioned reality for people. It was just the way of the world worked. What Paul does is he undermines a little bit. He subverts it. You can hear him speaking directly to the bond servants, the slaves. Those who, for one reason or another, found themselves wholly owned by someone else. What he does is he tells them they are not wholly owned, even though that’s what it may say on paper, even though that’s what people may assume in their culture.

Those who happen to be followers of Jesus are being told directly by one of Jesus’ first followers, one of his apostles, that they are not wholly owned by their earthly masters. He distinguishes between the earthly masters and their Heavenly Master. They are actually wholly owned by their Creator, by God. Although in this world, the kingdom of this world, there maybe people who think they wholly own other human beings, they are not. Can you imagine the freedom that comes from knowing you are not wholly owned when everybody you know thinks you are and when the legal system thinks you are wholly owned by someone else. Imagine the freedom that that gives to someone in a system that oppresses them, knowing that they are free.

Now, unfortunately, this passage and others like it, have been used to condone horrific abusive forms of slavery like those we’ve seen in North America in the last few centuries. Those need to be condemned and they have been condemned by Christians. Unfortunately, there are those who have found in the Bible words that they could twist and use to justify terrible crimes. That’s happened. It continues to happen and Christians need to continue to read the Bible as a whole to wrestle with God’s words in the whole of the Bible about the dignity of human beings and speak out when that kind of oppression happens at all and especially when it’s justified using the words of the Bible twisted for people’s selfish gain. One of the biggest hints that this passage can’t really be used to condone slavery where people are wholly owned and abused and oppressed is that Paul addresses his passage to the bond servants and to the slave owners. What he wants the slave owners to know is that they need to remember the dignity in every human being. That those who work for them are not wholly owned by them. Those slave owners will have to answer to God some day because He is the one who created us all and who owns everything on this earth including the atoms that we were put together with. They are all His and although we have care of it for a time, what we could call stewardship, like an investment advisor takes care of somebody’s money, we take care of God’s creation.

We need to remember that we are not our own and we are especially not in any position to own and control and abuse another human being. He wants both slave owners and the bond servants to have the same attitude of seeking out first the kingdom of God where all humans have equal dignity, where all humans are equal in the sight of God, where all humans have a responsibility to care for one another, to be generous with one another. There is a lot of great material in this passage, obviously, and it’s culturally hard for us to catch because it does speak about bond servants and slave owners and that’s hard for us to understand today. Tomorrow we’re going to try to enlighten what this has to do with our modern working life. In the meantime, I want you to try to think about that. Your question for today, which I hope you’ll share with others, maybe start a little discussion group, is this, what might this say to employees today? Is there any way that we, today, can be owned by our work?

Well, I hope you have a great discussion. This one is certainly a topic that can get people going, so I really hope you do share this with somebody. Remember, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. If you’ve been following us for a little while, make sure you’re reading our daily Bible passage as well. It’s just another way that our community tries to stay in sync even though we’re not meeting together in person very often. We can continue learning to follow Jesus as one community in scattered mode so our gathered mode is all the more exciting when it happens. Have a great day. I will see you tomorrow.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - April 30, 2014

Wednesday - 2014 Status Update - God in Worship

Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I'm Ryan, your host of the Daily Challenges. Normally, we follow a weekly rhythm that helps us explore different topic and how following Jesus impacts to that topic. This week is going to be a little different. We're going to be taking an opportunity to just kind of see where we're as a community. Now, you probably know this is a mobile app and website for busy commuters. We're also trying to become a Church community. As we explore what it means to follow Jesus as individual people engaged and in a busy lifestyle. I want to make sure that we're completely disconnected from one another. Even though we're usually quite scattered as a community, we want to take time to gather as well. As a gathered community, we want to make sure that we're committed to some of the same things in common. That's why through this week, this week alone it's going to be kind of a special week. We're going to be looking at each of the things our community is committed to, one-by-one and seeing how we're doing as a community, by hearing the stories of individuals, who are part of our growing online community or in-person courses, who are seeing their lives changed. We hope they'll inspire you to see some transformation on your own life as well. Five things that we're committed to as a community; I'll start with being committed to growth in discipleship. We have some common content to learn together. We also want to be committed to God in worship, committed to generosity in our resources, committed to grace in our lifestyles and witness, and finally, committed to groups in community. Well, today is Wednesday. As part of our commitment this week to looking at the five things that the Redeem the Commute community is meant to be committed to as it becomes Redeemer Church, today we're looking at how we want to be committed to God in worship. When we had a baptism service, about a month ago, we had a number of people come out and experienced the Redeem the Commute community for the first time in-person. One of those people came to the service, heard some inspiring music, heard me speaking on grace and baptism, and afterwards, came right up to me and said, "Wow, why don't we do this all the time?" That was really encouraging to hear. I'm quite ready for it, but the fact that somebody wants that is a really good sign that we're on the right track as a community. We're learning what it means to follow Jesus, those who are ready to actually worship Him as Lord and Savior. That's really where we've headed as a community. It's the fullness of Church. Church includes the opportunity to meet regularly to worship God, sing songs, pray together and learn together as one large group community, not just small groups. When you hear the word "Church," what do you think about it? You probably think of a building, right? Or maybe an institution or denomination or weekly event that people go to. I can't really blame you. That's one way the word can be interpreted in the English language. There is much more to the word "Church" than that. Church community is actually a word from … The word "Church" actually comes from the Greek, "Ekklesia," which means gathering of people called out for a specific purpose. See, there is a gathered mode. They're gathered community of people. They're also called out for a purpose. They have a job to do out in the world. I think this describes a community of people who are gathered, so they can be scattered. Both modes are important for the Church. I know our mind usually goes to the gathered mode first, but we need to make sure Church communities are effective in the scattered mode as well. That's what we're going to try to be as a Church community. As Redeem the Commute becomes Redeemer Church, we want to make sure that we're effective in scattered mode first, that we're learning to follow Jesus on our own through our website and mobile app that we're praying, that we're gathering together in small group communities. Then, we're going to start gather together for large public worship occasions, starting this fall. At least every month, we're going to start meeting regularly, just to worship God, learn together, pray together, sing songs together. That's going to be the gathered mode of worship for us as a community. We can be effective both in gathered and scattered mode. Now, to be ready for that kind of ambitious goal of meeting regularly for worship starting this fall, it's going to take an army of volunteers and people who are gifted in various things like music, children's ministry, who are good welcomers, who are good in technology, things like that. It's going to take a number of volunteers. To be honest, we haven't met enough yet. If you're one of those quiet people watching Redeem the Commute's content, you haven't reached out yet to let me know that you're part of our community that you'd want to come in-person to worship with us, and you have those kinds of gifts that I'd love to hear from you. Like I said, we need those who are gifted in music, those who are gifted with technology, those who are gifted in welcoming and serving others, making a good cup of coffee, maybe, and those who can simply let us know they're going to be part of this community as it starts to meet together regularly for worship. We need to know that you're committed to being a part of this before we take the huge risk of actually going ahead and launching a regular worship services. This is a very strange way to start a Church. Normally Churches start gathered, start just having services and then eventually you try to get people to be followers of Jesus for the rest of the week. We've gone about the opposite way. We started by paying attention to Monday to Friday and Saturday, and now, we're going to add Sunday to our routine. We need your help to do that. I'd love to hear from you. That's why your challenge today is to fill in our worship survey. You'll find a link to it right at the bottom of today's content. Let us know. Leave your email address, please, so we can get in touch if you'd like to be involved, or just let us know what kind of worship experience is going to best help you worship God as part of this community. That's your challenge for today to complete that survey, maybe talk with your group first if you're meeting regularly with a group, talk over what kind of worship experience would be best for you. It makes sense for you to how children in worship with adults or to have children's ministry as a separate occasion from adult worship. How long would the speaking be? Where it would be held, in a Church building with a steeple or in public space? Those are the kinds of questions we have on our worship survey.

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