Hebrews 11:29-12:2 The faith of the Hebrew people

It is time, my friends, to share with you my love of K-dramas. One day, a couple of years ago, I got tired of American television. Everything felt the same. The morals seemed a bit loose and jumbled, the story lines weak and unengaging. I felt like I was being sold a culture that I no longer wanted any part of. Sex, drugs, excessive individualism, domination, capitalism, materialism, a whole bunch of isms that amount to a life that Christ does not walk in.

Having adapted to a life that required closed captioning to understand what was being said, I was bored with American television, and Netflix continuously insisted that there were K-dramas I needed to watch. I ceded to the social pressure and watched my first K-Drama, a show called Doom at Your Service. The overarching theme was about a Grim Reaper who falls in love with a human being. However, within the folds of the overarching story, there was so much going on that captivated me.

The Korean perceptions about what God might be like. The Korean perspective about death and reincarnation which is a blend of Buddhism and Christianity. I was learning so much about a part of the world I knew so little about, and at the same time, the story was good, not much violence, no sex, no foul language, and a whole lot about faith and how it is incorporated into daily life and living. Faith wasn’t something you did on Sunday but was deeply embedded into how you lived your life and interpreted the world around you. I wrote a sermon based on a line from Doom at Your Service that, to this day, people will stop me to tell me how much it meant to them.

I was hooked. Now, it’s practically all I watch, and I watch way too much of it. So much so that I got rid of my Netflix account and now I watch shows on an Asian Television App. The more I watch, the more detached I become from American culture, and probably not coincidentally, the stronger my faith gets and the more integrated into my daily life and activities it becomes. It’s amazing how the more you work your faith into every aspect of your life, the more you see God in everything. I highly recommend it, as I also recommend K-Dramas.

We are born into a certain culture. We experience it for most of our lives, and then as adults, we either accept it as true and correct or we question it and possibly retaliate against it. Right now, we are in a period of cultural and faith retaliation. The current and past several generations are not willing to just accept what they are told to be true without question or discussion. They are obstinate, willful, and… despite what older generations believe, they are seeking faith. They want something to believe in that is not cliché, not a gimmick, and not the religion of their ancestors, or at least not their immediate ones.

They are… the new Christians. And they are likely to be, if history has taught us anything, more like the new followers of Christ in our Bible than most care to admit. Just like those earlier Christ followers, they are seeking answers that will both better and give meaning to their lives while giving them hope for a brighter future. They are looking at their family history and calling it into question. They are pointing out its flaws and shortcomings. They are telling you a truth you don’t want to hear. Asking the questions you didn’t dare ask.

Their ancestors created the world we are living in today, where culture and religion are not one in the same but instead are often pitted against one another. They see that what we say and what we do are not the same, but somehow created one another. They want a new faith that is more closely related to the old faith. They are traditionalists who believe that traditions didn’t start in the 1950’s. They are traditionalists, in a more realistic sense of the word. They are traditionalists who want to go back to the 50s… but like 50 AD or BCE.

They want faith that can part the Red Sea as if it were dry land for them, but drowns the evils of the world. Faith that takes them somewhere away from the forces that constantly tell them they are wrong and need to do things the “old way,” which isn’t the “old way” anyway and has only been the way for the last 100 years or less.

They want faith that can tear down the walls of Jericho. They want faith that when someone stands up to an unjust system, they will survive in peace… or occasionally die as a martyr. They want the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets who, through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained the promise of God, shut the mouth of lions, quenched the power of fiery furnaces, escaped the edge of the sword and put their enemies to flight. They want real faith that goes beyond the world of reality. A faith that permeates their souls, providing order, structure and purpose to their lives.

That’s the faith they want. The faith you promised them in vacation Bible School and children’s stories, but didn’t deliver. They want the fairy tale of faith. But what they got is the faith of a world that believes in themselves more than God. They got the faith of a people who adhere to the laws of man more than they adhere to the laws of God. The faith of a people who say they believe in loving their neighbor but don’t act like it. They want the promise, not the reality.

So what does this have to do with K-dramas? One of the more recent ones I watched was called “Study Group.” It’s about a high schooler named Yoon Ga-min who is attending a school filled with violence. All the students care about is becoming thugs and living in a world of gang-related crime because it’s the only option they think they have. It’s the world they live in. Ga-min, though? He just wants to go to school and study. His only dream is to go to college. To choose his own future. Not to take the easy route or to live in the world that other people tell him he has to, but to forge a path into a world he is being told he cannot enter. He’s willing to go against society around him to do it and all he needs is a small group of students to help him study. A small group of people who are willing to defy the odds and do something even if it doesn’t work.

He’s not trying to change the world, just his own little environment. He’s not trying to convert everyone; he just needs 5 for the school to make his group official so they can have a place to meet. A room to study in. But the gang around him is threatened by him. And rightfully so. He’s a powerful fighter; he would make an amazing thug one day, but that’s not what he wants his life to be. So, instead of conforming, he starts peddling hope into a hopeless world, which unwittingly threatens the foundation of the violence they have established.

That’s us. At least it’s supposed to be. That’s the church. A Study Group that does not what the world says it should do but what God wants of them and for them. At least what it’s supposed to be. Most of us are not called to take on the world directly. We are called to take it on indirectly. We are called to change ourselves, recruit a few friends, and to create and maintain an open space that welcomes more. We are called to sell faith that moves mountains and tears down the oppression of the world through just existing.

Our problem is, though, we stopped doing the most important thing. We stopped selling what we have. We stopped fighting for what we want. At some point in the last few generations, we stopped peddling hope and dreams and went into hiding, trying to hold on to what little is left rather than risking it all for more. Our faith stopped not just moving mountains but stopped moving at all. Faith lost its power in the world but God hasn’t. The church forgot why it exists.

In “Study Group, ” before the final fight scene, Ga-min, our hero, is confronted by the gang-leader, Pi Han-wool.  Pi Han-wool says “I can give them what they want. Whether that’s money or connections. But what can you give them? Dreams? Hope?” The world is selling power and greed, and then here we are passively trying to peddle hope and dreams to a world of violence and turmoil that thinks that’s the only way to live, and the church has bought into it more than we want to admit.

 The world believes that the only way to get ahead is to take down the person who is in front of you.  The church started to think its job was to combat evil. To point its finger at the sinner. It forgot that its job isn’t to attack but to passively peddle hope through its life and community. To peddle hope through its determination to love without deserving or expecting anything in return. The church’s job is to create an oasis of hope in a desert of power. The church’s job is to exist in such a way that it threatens the belief system of the rest of a power-hungry world.

We are here within these walls peddling dreams and hope to those who already have it, while the outside world is selling greed and power at a significantly discounted rate. The world is offering immediate gratification. Immediately tangible results and, all it will cost you is your soul, which you’re not using anyway.

If the church is selling anything, it’s trying to sell them the hope of a life eternal after death. This sales method worked just fine for people whose life expectancy was 35, but in a world where life expectancy is nearly 80? Not so effective.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not waiting until I’m dead to believe. And I do not believe that God is waiting until I’m dead for me to receive some of the benefits from my faith. So why are so many still pushing the outcome instead of the awesomeness of the journey in faith to get there? God doesn’t just walk with us after death; God is here today and all along the way to our death, too.

Like Yoon Ga-min, I have chosen, in a world of violence and greed, to lead a study group instead of pursuing money and connections. I have chosen to pursue faith and relationships. I have chosen to peddle hope and dreams through my existence. I have chosen to live knowing that my faith can part the Red Sea, tear down walls, defeat enemies, and leave me to pursue a different future than what the world tries to push upon me; a present and a future peace.

I have chosen to live my life telling people about it so they can experience that too, because this is not a journey I want to make alone. Isolation and solitude might allow me to live in a lonely desolate peace like being lost in the desert, but it won’t allow me to experience the peace and love of community that is offered to us through Christ. I need a study group and I need to build it. Not everyone is going to get on board but I don’t expect them too either. It starts with me and it grows from there.

I’m not trying to sell you something that you may not have even noticed you need. I am selling a living water that will sustain you in both this life and the next.

We claim to be Christians. Those of faith in the Old Testament never got to live to see the promise that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, but us? We are living in the day and age where that promise was fulfilled, and instead of selling the hope that Jesus life and death created, we are sitting here idle in the promised land and seem flabbergasted that God is angry about it.

The reason people don’t come to church, the reason our children don’t believe in our faith, is because we are not telling the stories of hope and dreams fulfilled in our lives to them. We’re not demonstrating our faith clearly enough in our everyday lives for other to see that we believe. We’re living like we’re stuck in the old stories where the promise wasn’t fulfilled. We’re not building relationships, we’re acting like historians. We’re not recruiting the 5 we need to keep a building for our study group to meet in.

If we don’t, who will? You cannot build a future by restoring the past.

The world is making promises of money and connections through violence and oppression. There are immediate rewards and long-term consequences for that, but the world only cares about getting through the next day, week or month. They are selling instant gratification and worry about the consequences later. And it’s appealing. Ask any addict, whatever their vice. It’s so appealing that your body will think and may even start acting like it’s dying without it.

We have something much more valuable to sell, but no one knows about it. We’re hiding the truth so well that I’m not even sure everyone in this building knows what the truth is. We have got to stop burying our faith in these walls and instead start selling it to the world or these walls will cease to exist. If we do not have enough members, our study group will be disbanded. No, that is not a threat from the conference; that is the reality of the world we live in. Faith in isolation isn’t faith at all. Faith is something that is spread, not buried. It is communal, not individual.

You can have the greatest product in the world, but if nobody knows about it and all they hear is false propaganda that it isn’t real or it isn’t possible, do you think anyone is going to buy it? We are the church. We are supposed to be selling dreams. We are selling hope. Our product is faith that sustains us even when the entire world is against us. Our numbers aren’t dropping because our product is bad; they’re dropping because we’re trying to keep it to ourselves. That’s not discipleship.

Worship is practiced in groups, not alone. “Where two or more are gathered in my name.” Not individual. We need study groups. We need friends. We need those who want to practice faith with us to grow powerful and become a threat to the way the world operates just by our very existence. We need to be a threat because people need to know there is a different way of life available than what the world is telling them they want or have to have. The world is selling them what they want. We need to sell them what they need, and we need to demonstrate through our own lives that it is obtainable. It is not a false promise.

We do that through our passion, our stories, our faith, and our proof that that faith can change your life, starting right here, right now, in this moment, on this day, and every day that follows. We show people that the faith Old Testament, the god of the Old Testament, is still our God. Mountains can still be moved, waters can still be parted, and oppressed people can be freed against all odds. And, thanks to Jesus Christ, we will receive what was promised in this life and the next. In a world selling materialism and power, we sell hope of a world that most people don’t think can exist. We need to prove them wrong. We need to live like they are wrong.

Faith is action. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. This is the faith of our ancestors from long ago. This is the church that the current generation seeks. This is the better than God planned for us, that we would make each other perfect. A task that cannot be done alone or in isolation.

Hebrews 12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

And all God’s people will say Amen.

Study Group | Watch with English Subtitles, Reviews & Cast Info | Viki

https://www.viki.com/tv/40913c-study-group