Oasis Madrid

“A Christ-centered community that helps people follow Jesus.”

If you’ve been around for at least a few weeks, looked at our website, or asked someone what Oasis Madrid is all about, chances are that you’ve heard this phrase. Or at least I hope you’ve heard it. In case you haven’t, here it is again: Oasis Madrid is a Christ-centered community that helps people follow Jesus. These words weren’t thrown together casually or just because they sounded good—this is what we believe that we are called to be as a Church. This is why we are here. To be a Christ-centered community that helps people follow Jesus.

We’ve been talking about this for the last few services and breaking it down—unpacking the statement a little bit. One way we’ve looked at it is like this: Christ-centered means we exist for God. Troy talked to us a few services ago about how we are here for God. We exist for Him. We are Christ-centered. Community means we exist for each other. We’re not just here for ourselves or by ourselves. Amy spoke at the beginning of October about how we exist for each other. “Helps people follow Jesus,” means that we exist for others—for the world around us. In the last service, Troy talked about one of the ways that we exist for others, in evangelism and discipleship.

So this week, I’m here to talk about another part of this last section of the statement—we exist for others through incarnational ministry. Now “incarnational ministry” sounds all well and good, and it’s a phrase that churches sometimes throw around, but I have a feeling that most of us aren’t really sure what we’re talking about when we say it. Well, simply put, it has to do with the incarnation. We have to start there.

So I’m going to do just that—start with the incarnation. What is it? Now those of us who have been following Jesus for a while or who even have been acquainted with Christianity to some extent could explain what I mean by the incarnation. “Oh yeah, that means when God became human. You’re talking about Jesus, right?” Well, yeah. I’m talking about Jesus. But sometimes I think we hear it so much and say it so much that we don’t even stop to think about it anymore. Think about it. What I’m saying is that God—GOD, creator of the universe, creator of time, beginning and end of all things—became human. Flesh and blood. Constrained by time. With hands and feet and skin and hair and germs and an appetite. This is a big deal. The creator becomes the created.

T.S. Eliot describes the incarnation this way—I love the way he says it: “The still turning point, the intersection of time and timelessness.” God became human. He was born, lived, died, and then raised from the dead as a human. And as God. 100% both. The intersection of time and timelessness. No matter how hard I try, I can’t wrap my head around how it. God speaking with a human mouth, God healing with human hands, God serving and washing his disciples feet, God’s feet walking on roads from town to town.

At the beginning of John’s gospel, he talks about the Word that was in the beginning, and that was with God and was God. And then I love the way it’s put in the message. John says that this Word—“Became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” God moved in.

I want us to take one minute and stop to think about that before we move on. God became human. God moved in. Jesus IS the incarnation.

Now the incarnation would be a big deal for us as a church if we stopped right here. We could spend several services, much less half an hour, talking about the humility and grace and love and creativity of God that He would do such a thing. But it doesn’t stop here. From there we can look at the church in relation to Jesus, the incarnation.

1 Cor 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Eph. 1: 23 “…for the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way.”

Col. 1:18 Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body

Over and over in Paul’s letters, he refers to the Church as Christ’s body. I want to look at the Ephesians passage again–“…for the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. ”Paul is saying here that Jesus—God incarnate, is present in the world through the church. Some of us may have heard a million cliché phrases about being Jesus’ hands or his feet, so much so that we don’t even really think about it any more. But stop and think about that…this is real! This isn’t something cute that the church made up to feel good about themselves—the church is here because God acts in the world through the church. We put flesh and bones and feet and bodies to God’s presence. In the words of T.S. Eliot again, “…the intersection of time and timelessness.” We are the body of Christ in the world.

So we’ve talked some about what the incarnation is, and probably just enough to get us started thinking, but I want to shift now to some implications for us as a church. Last March, a group of people got together to discuss some of these implications, and our convictions concerning the incarnation and what it means for us, and these are the four words that we looked at: sending, solidifying, space, and service. We’re going to look at each of these in more depth in the spring, but for now I just want to touch on these briefly just to give you an idea of all the different ways that the incarnation affects who we are as a church.

Ok, first we’ll look at SENDING. The incarnation involves leaving one place and going to another. Jesus was SENT. 1 John 4:9 says that “This is how God showed his love among us: He SENT his one and only Son into the world…” So because of this we are a people who are sent. Going to where people are rather than expecting them to come to us. This may be far off, like the group that’s going to Morocco, or maybe one day planting another church somewhere else in Spain, or it may be closer, like going to Retiro to have a picnic, or taking the time to explore what it means to follow Jesus with a friend. Sometimes we think of church as something we need to make cooler, more sleek and shiny so that people will come to us. And don’t get me wrong, I think if you’re going to do something then you should do it well. But the incarnation involves being sent out—going to people rather than waiting for them to come to us.

Second, we have solidifying. God became an actual human. Not just a representation of one, but actually a physical human that you could see and feel and touch. To incarnate is to give physical, tangible form to something that is spiritual or intangible. You probably have noticed that we’re big on the arts here at Oasis Madrid. Well, yet again, that has its roots here, in the incarnation. When we sing, or draw, or paint, or sculpt, or write, or dance, or act, we are expressing something intangible in tangible form.

Third, we have SPACE. Jesus actually lived here on earth. Not just in the Holy of Holies—the super holy section of the temple where only priests could go, but in a normal neighborhood. Because of the incarnation, the sacred was no longer untouchable. One thing this means for us as a church is that “church” is not some holy untouchable place—we are church. We carry God’s presence with us, and the spaces that we are in are spaces where the world around us can encounter Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just stay in some holy room (in our case it would be a university snack bar—yeah, a really “holy” room!). He goes with us when we’re in the pub, when we’re at the park, when we’re doing a scavenger hunt all over the city. The incarnation involves taking the space we have around us and letting God use it.

And finally, we have SERVING. In Matthew 20:28, Jesus said “..the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve…” A big part of incarnating Christ—of being Jesus in the world, is to serve others in real, physical ways. Jesus healed sick people, he fed hungry people. He calmed a storm. He didn’t trivialize or spiritualize physical problems—he dealt with them. An implication of the incarnation is that we deal with physical needs, within the church and all around us.

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It’s easy to get carried away here. I don’t know about you but I get excited about all this and then start thinking about all we need to be doing as a church and all the things we can be and all the ministries we need to start or encourage. And then I start thinking I have to do all this stuff by myself, and pretty soon I get so carried away that I start thinking that all the things we’re doing are the point, so we can be a cool church, and I throw around the word “incarnational” because it sounds cool, and I’ve forgotten the beginning. I get so caught up in the phrase “we exist for others” that I forget the larger context it is in.

That’s my confession. Sometimes I forget.

I want tore mind us of the larger context again. I know I need to be reminded, and I don’t think I’m the only one.

The incarnation is Jesus. Incarnational ministry is about incarnating Christ—being Jesus. Everything I say, everything we do after this is rooted in and centered on Jesus. He is the incarnation. We are incarnational because of the incarnation. It is all about Jesus and not about us. We can never ever forget that this is where we start.

So in a very tangible, physical way, I want us to participate in a sacrament that has centered the church on the incarnation since it’s beginning. Jesus had a real body. He had real blood. We’re going to pass around communion now, and I’m going to read what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth a couple thousand years ago:

” For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

TAKE BREAD TOGETHER

“In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

TAKE WINE TOGETHER

So this is Jesus who we are centered on. This is God who became human. This is who is active in the world through the church. This is why the incarnation matters.

The four things I talked about, (sending, solidifying, space, and serving), can definitely be unpacked more and each one looked at in depth, and they will be in the spring when we look at each one individually.

But the incarnation is a big topic, and I think that to understand a big topic well we need to look at it from as many angles as possible—we need to see the same thing in different ways in order to understand it. So for the rest of my time tonight I’m going to switch gears and take a different approach.

We’ve already established that Jesus is the incarnation, and that the church is now his presence in the world. We are incarnating Christ. This means that at our center, in our true selves, when we’re really being the church the way that God intends for us to be, we are about what God is about. If we really are the body of Christ in the world, then we need to look at what He is about and join in with Him.

Since before the beginning, God has always been about new creation. Here is a quick overview of this theme starting at the beginning and going all through history.

—Genesis—God created the whole world. Over and over, as He created, He said that it was good. And then He created humans, and said it was good. But things did not stay good—sin came into the world and something was broken.

—Then there’s Abraham—God promises to redeem the world through this one man, or through the nation that would come from Him. God was making something new in the middle of what was broken.

–The time of the prophets—Israel was a mess. Things had gotten broken again, and the prophets made sure that Israel knew that. But along with punishment, they talked of the hope of a new creation—that things would be restored and made new in the middle of all that was broken.

–Enter Jesus—God becomes man, and says the kingdom of God (the new creation that the people of God had been hoping for) is at hand. It’s right here. It’s something that we can be citizens of right now. This was not the new creation that people expected. This was something totally different.

–Jesus’ death and resurrection—God takes something broken and ugly like death and turns it around. There is now forgiveness for our sin and healing for our brokenness so we can take part in this new creation.

–All the way to Revelation—at the very end, there is a promise of all things new–new heavens, new earth, a New Jerusalem.

Suffice to say that God is about new creation. This is what we are about. Paul says that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation, but even beyond that, if we are Christ in the world, then we are the incarnation of He who is a creator. Who makes things new in the middle of what is broken.

The image in my mind is like a mosaic. The thing I love about mosaic is the new creation. The taking of broken things that are seemingly worthless because they’re broken, and putting them together to make something new–right in the middle of what was broken. That’s just such a cool image of new creation to me.

Troy talked at the last service about how following Jesus really does change things. We become something different than what we were before. Like Paul says, we are a new creation. What if this new creation that God is about is something different than what we expect? Not just a cleaner model of our old self, but a different kind of creation all together? What if we’re like a mosaic—broken pieces that have become something totally different. We’re just regular people, but somehow in the middle of that we become “the body of Christ.” Something beautiful right in the middle of what was broken.

So we are a new creation, which make sense because God is all about new creation. But since we are the church, Christ in the world, not only are we a new creation ourselves, but we are called to make new creation in the world around us.

Usually, when we talk about being about new creation, we talk about the arts—and all of you know that I think that’s extremely important. When we create by writing, drawing, sculpting, sewing, dancing, acting, etc., we are participating with God in making new creation. But I spend a lot of time talking about that kind of creation, so I’m not going to dwell on it tonight.

Being a new creation and being about new creation also calls us to service—making things new by serving the world around us. We’ll admit that we are broken pieces made into something new, but we are still living in a world full of broken pieces. Let’s be honest—there are lots of things that are broken in the world. There is poverty, sickness, homelessness, violence, injustice, greed, racism, addiction; the list goes on and on. Things are broken all around us.

This is where the incarnation comes in—because of the incarnation we are about what God is about. We are about Jesus, who didn’t choose to stay distant from all our problems, but who moved right into the middle of them. We don’t isolate ourselves from the brokenness in the world. We don’t shut the door and wish things would come in so they could get fixed. We get right in the middle of all the crap that goes on in the world and we work to make things better.

So how do we do this? It seems huge, doesn’t it? Too big for us individually, or for our little congregation here in Madrid. Well, it is huge. But what if God is making a really big mosaic? What I want to challenge us to do is think about where we fit into this. What are the broken pieces around us that we can work to make better?

Maybe it’s a matter of helping out with something that’s already going on, like helping pass out sandwiches on Friday, or donating clothes or money to provide some necessities for the people we meet. –By the way, talk to Victoria if you’re interested in this!–Or maybe like going to Morocco or getting involved in that ministry somehow—by the way, you’ll hear more from Nicole on this in a few minutes. Or maybe there’s some need in your neighborhood or on the metro that you can do something about.

In just a minute Heather will be leading you through some questions to think about and to talk and pray about with the people around your table—a chance to think practically about what actually is broken around us, and what can we do about it?

I don’t want us to be a church that serves the world around us out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but because we are the body of Christ. My dream, my hope and my prayer, is that we would be about new creation in Madrid. That because we are centered on Christ and about what he is about, we would be Jesus to Madrid. That, in one really big nutshell, is the incarnation.

I’m going to read a prayer I wrote a couple months ago for our church and for all the broken pieces of Madrid. But while I’m praying, rather than close your eyes, I want you to look at this mosaic. Dragged out of dumpsters, smashed, dusty, broken, and made into something beautiful. Let’s pray.

Make us a church, Jesus.
Build your church.
Your dream.
Your mission.
A church that loves You
passionately, ridiculously, fearlessly

a church that loves Madrid
passionately, ridiculously, fearlessly
a church that loves Madrid’s people

the raging, noisy, young walking botellones
the ears above aching for quiet
the pushers, shovers, pickpockets
at the rastro
on the metro

the old ladies with fans
the moms pushing designer strollers
the moms carrying one, holding the hand of a string of 2 more

the tattooed, the pierced, the dyed
the stoned
the prostitutes and the men who pay
convinced they’re worth only what they charge, no more
the rest of us who choose not to see

the homeless in tunnels, on benches, on curbs
on stoops, under cardboard, under the free metro newspaper

the too young girls with too short skirts
the boys and men who follow behind
enjoying the view

the students
the parents
the kids

the sleepy club-goers
crawling home at 7 a.m.
the goth community
the gay community
the church community
catholic and protestant
the Muslims
the gypsies

the ones who throw trash down
the ones who pick it up

the often dirty, always hilly, winding streets
the graffiti artists
panaderias and perfumerias
plazas upon plazas
sangria
tortilla
olives
all on a terraza at 2 a.m.

friends
families
cien pesetas

The Madrid I see, I love
You love more
passionately, ridiculously, fearlessly.

Make us a church
Make us love Madrid.