World Cup Soccer and Games

June 22, 5pm – meet at the Wesley Cottage

Bring your favorite baked potato toppings and we will supply the baked potatoes. This Sunday, Portugal plays the United States and we will have the opportunity to watch the match and have some sport and discussion of our own.

We will be discussing conflict that grows out of fear and how we are to form a proper response to such conflict. 

How often do we feel scared? Perhaps more than we would like to admit. It’s an uneasy feeling that makes one uncomfortable and has many negative consequences. It can be the underlying source of many ‘bad attitudes’. For instance, is it not a foundational biblical teaching to trust in God and not worry about things beyond one’s control? Yet, the incredible amount of mass marketing in our society seems to be driven by a not so thinly veiled appeal to fear and anxiety about such things as personal security, finances, and happiness. Perhaps this is so, but what does this have to do with conflict? In terms of international relations, I just heard news suggesting that the recent conflicts in Iraq may motivate US intervention in part, at least, because fear that these events could lead to a safety threat to the US. It is not so hard to see the connection between fear and conflict in the sense of international actors.

However, how do we understand conflict in our own lives?

In Mark 9:30-37, the disciples are confused about what Jesus means when he says that “the Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise” (9:31). They seem to have a conflict after this, as they tried to decide “who was the greatest” (9:34). Are the disciples concerned about who will become a leader after Jesus, their teacher, dies? Are they afraid that they don’t have the authority to teach and no one feels like the greatest? Whatever, their anxieties are that lead to this conflict, Jesus supplies the leadership formula that he lives by: “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (9:35).  

Philippians further defines this self-emptying leadership ethic. In chapter two, Paul describes Christ’s self-emptying to both comfort and call to account those he writes to. For the greatest to become the least and the least the greatest, involves a specific type of attitude. It is a self-sacrificial attitude.

Conflict that arises out of fear can lead to an attempt to become the greatest because of a feeling of insecurity about one's individual identity. However, a self-sacrificial response to conflict is not based in fear but strong conviction and courage. It takes courage for those who are greatest to become the least.  By practicing this leadership ethic, we can share in the same attitude of Christ and experience an identity far greater than our individual fears would allow. Our gifts, whatever they may be, can overflow as gifts for others.