(The American community in London hosts a service of worship at St. Paul's Cathedral on Thanksgiving Day each year. It was my privilege and honor to give the sermon for the service today.)
First Thessalonians 5:12-22
Happy Thanksgiving!
For many Americans this is the favorite holiday of all: No presents to buy—it’s not a day that suffers from being too commercialized. It has all the best food and most of the best sports (if they would play just one baseball game on Thanksgiving Day it would be the most perfect holiday ever).
Now this is the part of the service where the preacher usually tells some kind of turkey-related joke. I confess that I started looking for a good joke months ago, but never found one that would work for today.
I did, though, discover that there are a lot of sayings or phrases out there that use the word turkey in them. In the States, when you’re having a serious conversation about something we say you’re ‘talking turkey’.
Here in Britain when someone chooses to accept a situation that isn’t going to go well for them we say it’s ‘like turkeys voting for an early Christmas’.
A ‘turkey shoot’ is a way to describe an easy victory, while going ‘cold turkey’ describes the very difficult process of shaking an addiction or habit.
For those of us who grew up watching American crime shows, we can all remember watching police officers chasing suspects through alleys and around corners—the officer would climb fences and jump over walls in pursuit of the suspect—we knew that in TV-speak he was called the ‘perp’—and the chase would end when the officer drew his pistol and aimed it at the perp and said: ‘Freeze, turkey.’
Well, there are a lot of frozen turkeys giving their all for us today, and we’ll all be thankful for that later on today. (I told you there weren’t any good turkey jokes this year.)
Last month an 81-year-old Australian man confirmed one of the classic stereotypes about men. He got up one morning and got into his car to go and buy himself a newspaper. Along the way he got turned around and ended up hopelessly lost, almost 400 miles out of his way. When he finally stopped, a policeman asked him how he’d allowed himself to get so far off course, and the man simply said that he liked driving, and that he had a full tank of gas.
Now we all know the real answer here, right? He didn’t want to stop and ask for directions—I’ll pause as the wives glare at the husbands here today. He didn’t ask for directions and in the end found himself almost 400 miles away from home—a long way from where he was supposed to be.
Our text today comes near the end of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It reads:
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.
This passage is about a lot of things. It’s focused on the life of Christian churches—about how the early communities built around the Christian faith could grow and thrive and hold together. But the teachings in this passage aren’t limited to the house churches of the 1st century.
Our text has a lot to teach us today about learning to live and work together in healthy ways—about being productive and honorable and generous as we press on with the tasks that get us out of bed each morning. There’s a strong message here about what it means to live and work in community—about the ways we interact personally and professionally.
There’s also a lesson here about learning from challenges, or even mistakes—about being disciplined in the way that we work and serve and love. There’s some very practical advice in this passage that fits with what we’re celebrating today—that helps us see thankfulness as an important part of our lives.
Thanksgiving is one of those rare holidays that asks us to reflect on our own lives—to look around and take stock of what we can be thankful for. It’s a holiday that calls each one of us to do something that might not be a normal part of our lives, no matter what our faith tradition might be. Thanksgiving Day is a reminder to each one of us that thankfulness is important—being grateful to each other, and also being grateful to God for his blessings in our lives.
When George Washington declared the first National Day of Thanksgiving on this date in 1789, he said it was ‘the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits.’
That’s why we’re here today. That’s what we gather to remember and celebrate on this special day.
Well, no American holiday is complete without some reference to one of the most important American philosophers of all. Someone who each year manages to articulate our feelings and focus our attention on the true meanings behind most of our special days. Of course you all know that I’m talking about … Charlie Brown. In the States, for most of the last 50 years or so, there has been a Charlie Brown special produced and televised on each major holiday.
Who can forget ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving’, with the classic menu of two slices of buttered toast, some pretzel sticks, a handful of popcorn, and some jelly beans.
There were more of these programs:
A Charlie Brown Christmas
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
Or maybe the classic: It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown
There are others.
You’re in Love, Charlie Brown
You’re Not Elected, Charlie Brown
And finally, for those of us nearing or looking back on middle age:
You Don’t Look 40, Charlie Brown
In 1983, the gang from Peanuts traveled to Europe and visited some of the battle sites from the First and Second World Wars. They saw and talked about the horrors of war and the sacrifices of those who had to fight. That story was told in one of the most reflective specials in the series. The title was: ‘What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?’
As we pause to be thankful and to reflect and celebrate this week—we can ask ourselves the same question that gave the title to that Charlie Brown special:
What have we learned in the past year?
It’s been quite a year. When we last saw each other there were many people in this gathering who were unsure—unsure about their jobs, unsure about their savings and families, even unsure of where they might be living in a few weeks or months. When we met here last year the banking crisis had gathered up so much momentum that all of us—and millions of others around the world—all of us were wondering just how far the collapse would take us.
Many of us saw friends move away too soon as casualties of the financial crisis. People in this room today took demotions or transfers they didn’t want—they had to scramble to live in the same houses or keep their kids in the same schools. Some people had to move back to the States and still haven’t found new jobs.
It’s been quite a year.
And so Charlie Brown’s question is a good one: What have we learned?
Maybe one thing we’ve learned is that every once in a while, it’s a good idea to stop and ask for directions. Otherwise we run the risk of ending up far from where we meant to go—we end up lost, with no clear way back home.
Certainly we’ve learned the hard way that we’re far more connected than we ever imagined, so Paul’s teaching on what it means to live in community can offer us some lessons as well. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians can help us as we look back on the past year.
What can we learn from our passage of Scripture today?
Some of what we learn is personal—it’s about how we think and what we value and how we want to be. Some of what we learn is personal, and some of what we learn is more public—it’s about how we work and make decisions that impact other people.
On the personal side, Paul instructs his readers to keep their eyes fixed on God no matter what happens. Paul’s readers were people who had heard the Christian gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation through the Cross of Jesus and thrown their whole weight on it—given their whole lives to it. Now they were trying to figure out how they could demonstrate that faith as they lived each day.
‘Be joyful always’, Paul says. That doesn’t mean walking around with silly grins on our faces. Being joyful is being willing to trust that God is who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he would do.
Paul continues, saying: ‘Pray continually’. That’s about sharing our deepest thoughts with God—and also about waiting around to listen for an answer.
Then Paul says we should ‘Give thanks in all circumstances.’ Challenging times make it difficult to experience the joy that springs from feeling thankful, but forgetting to be thankful altogether doesn’t really work either. Challenging times, more than any other, remind us that thankfulness is a discipline and not a feeling—it’s something we have to remember to do, even when we don’t feel like it. Especially when we don’t feel like it.
Things over the last few years may or may not have gone differently if we’d practiced joy…or constant prayer…or if we’d disciplined ourselves to be thankful in all circumstances. Maybe we can debate whether or not the world would have been a better place if more of us spent more time being joyful and praying and being thankful. I can live with that.
What isn’t really up for debate is this: The world would be in much better shape—many of the people in this room today would have had a much better year if we’d followed the advice in the second part of our text.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
What do you think about that? Whether you think of yourself as a Christian or a person of faith or not, it’s good advice, isn’t it?
Whether you think Jesus was a crazy man or a wise teacher or the Lord and Savior of the universe, we can agree that learning to be joyful, to acknowledging a power beyond ourselves, and developing the discipline of thankfulness—we can agree that these are good things, right?
Beyond that though, and in light of what we’ve learned about business practices and banking strategies—and also about being borrowers and customers—in light of what we understand now about how we got into this mess—in light of all that, we can agree that there’s something important for all of us to take away from this ancient Christian text as we celebrate Thanksgiving.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
In our personal lives and professional behavior, this is more than just good advice. This is a call to faithful living. This is a challenge to be honorable and decent in every area of our lives. This is a call to integrity and discernment and wisdom, and if we answer that call it will quite simply change the way the world works.
On this Thanksgiving Day, as we consider just how much there is in our lives to make us truly thankful, this is an important lesson for us to remember.
As we celebrate a holiday that has become synonymous with overloaded tables and overstuffed guests, let’s not forget where we were a year ago today.
Maybe the question isn’t: ‘what have we learned?’ Maybe we just need to be reminded that it’s wise to stop sometimes and ask for direction. Maybe the best question for all of us to ask as we celebrate Thanksgiving is this:
‘What can we still learn?’
That’s where we come back to this strange little text, tucked away at the end of a letter in the Christian Bible.
Be joyful always.
Pray continually.
Give thanks in all circumstances.
Test everything.
Hold on to the good.
Avoid every kind of evil.
May God bless you and keep you…and have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
Amen.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
So What?
(This message is the last of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 12:1
As we wrap up our brief journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish by writing to them:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
So what about our passage today?
This is another of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ collection—a passage that we memorize and recite, sometimes without allowing it to speak to us in context. In preaching classes we use this passage as an example of something that should happen in every sermon—the shift from what our message is to what we should do about it—from the indicative to the imperative (for those of you who are taking notes). This is about the ‘So What?’ question.
This is a rich sentence—it’s a text we could have built a series around all on its own. Let’s look at it phrase by phrase.
‘Therefore I urge you’: Right there we have some actual proof that whatever Paul is about to say, it’s connected somehow to what has come before. You can’t start a something new with a ‘therefore’, because there’s nothing there to build on.
When Paul starts this new section, he’s building on some stories and teachings that he’s already shared with his Roman readers.
Creation, a way of forgiveness, keeping of his promises, the sacrifice of his son, and the invitation to life in the Spirit—life the way it was meant to be. It’s a good list.
But Paul doesn’t stop with just a list of things he’s already said. Those events—those acts of God—each one of them is an example of a quality in God’s character—they represent something about God that matters—that should matter to us. Listen to the next line:
‘In view of God’s mercy…’ In view of all these things God has done—in view of God’s overwhelming love, his mercy toward us.
It’s important here for us to explore the word ‘mercy’ for a moment. What is mercy? Maybe the best way to start to respond to that is to think about the counterpart to mercy—what’s the other side of the coin?
It would be easy to think that the opposite of mercy is cruelty, and in some ways that would be true. We talk about cruelty as the absence of mercy—of being merciless. I can see how we would think of cruelty as the opposite of mercy.
But that’s not what Paul means in this letter.
Paul has been working from a particular point of view from the very start of his letter to the Romans. God’s relationship to his Jewish covenant people is always a part of the evidence Paul is gathering to make his case—it’s never far from his mind as he tries to convince the Roman Christians that God can be trusted. In Paul’s understanding of who God is, the opposite of mercy isn’t cruelty.
The opposite of mercy is justice. That’s worth a little explaining.
The legal framework that holds biblical Judaism together is fairly simple. It’s about getting what you deserve. When Paul says: ‘In view of God’s mercy…’, what he’s really saying is this:
Since God loved you so much that he didn’t give you what you deserve—that he loved you so much that he gave you far more than you ever dreamed or imagined you could have…
And that’s when he moves to the next part of the text—when he makes the transition from the indicative to the imperative—the ‘So What?’ part of the text.
‘Present your bodies as living sacrifices.’ Well. That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all. Who in their right mind would choose to offer themselves to be a living sacrifice? Think about that for a moment.
Julie and I have been watching an American TV comedy called ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ The other night one of the characters, who’s a bit of a stickler for language, was trying to argue for the difference between the words ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively.’ This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, as a confirmed language geek—things that are literal should actually happen, and things that a figurative can simply be examples. Another character, who didn’t share our hero’s grammar values, responded, and I quote, saying: ‘I literally want to pull your head off right now.’
Paul isn’t literally saying that churches should start offering human sacrifices. Paul would have argued, as the Protestants did 1500 years later, that Christ’s sacrifice was a once and for all kind of thing. We don’t need to repeat that sacrifice, we just need to remember it and what it means. That’s a brief summary of literally thousands of pages of Reformation theology right there.
So what does it mean then, this business about presenting your bodies as living sacrifices?
To me this is one of the most important ‘So Whats’ in the entire New Testament.
This is a call to each of us to make our lives available to God for the purposes of spreading his Kingdom.
This is about taking all that we have and all that we are and bringing it before God to see what he might do with it and through it.
There’s no mystery here. It’s not a coincidence that we’re talking about this passage as we prepare to commit our pledges to God’s work. But it’s not just about money. This is about how much of our lives we’re willing to offer in response to God’s mercy toward us.
David Landsborough was a 2nd generation medical missionary in Taiwan. His father had started the first medical school in the region—it’s still there—and David went back to serve there when he’d been trained as a doctor. During his service there a young boy came in with an infection on his leg that was resistant to all the medicines they had. A skin graft was the only option, but no one was willing to be the donor. Dr Landsborough’s wife Jean, who was also a doctor, volunteered and gave enough of her own skin to provide several grafts for the boy. It was through her that this little boy’s life was saved. Incidentally, he grew up to be the minister of one of the largest churches in Taiwan, and served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church there.
‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…’
Paul ends this verse with an important description of what it means when we give our lives as an offering to God. He says: ‘This is your spiritual act of service/worship’
I love it that these two words can be interchangeable in the Bible—service and worship. One writer simply said that the person ‘who has been reconciled and renewed carries out the worship of God through the Spirit by presenting his or her whole being’ in service to God’s Kingdom…‘it leads to the surrender of the whole life, which is spiritual worship.’
So what are we supposed to do…really?
The point of Paul’s letter is that God can be trusted to keep his promises because he’s kept the promises he’s already made. Let’s be clear about exactly what Paul is saying here.
Because God never gave us what we deserved—because he loved us so much that he gave us far more than we could ever deserve on our own—because Jesus Christ offered himself as a living sacrifice for us…
In view of God’s mercy, the call is on us to commit our lives—everything about our lives—to God, as a thankful response for what he’s already done for us.
This faith of ours—part of it is a collection of beliefs we pass down from generation to generation. It’s a list of creeds that help us understand what it is we believe and who it is we believe in.
But this faith of ours is more than just what we believe—it’s really about the relationship we have with the one we believe in.
The point here is that we live in relationship to a God who has already held up his end of things. ‘In view of God’s mercy’ is a reminder to us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done something amazing already.
The call on us is to respond. We do that by making our lives available to the work of the Kingdom of God. We do that when we share our time and talent—we do that when we commit to the financial support of a local church.
As we move into a time of prayer and commitment as we receive your pledges, I invite you to reflect on God’s mercy in your own life—where God has shown you love in ways you never imagined—think on God’s mercy, and how you’ll respond to it.
In the very first message of this series on Romans we talked about our lives being based on a promise, and called for a purpose. That title for the series was always pointed at the text we read this morning. Our lives are built on a foundation of the promises of mercy that God has kept—that he’s fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The purpose we’re called to is to share our lives in Christ’s name to glorify God and to share his message with the world. That’s our spiritual act of worship and service.
As we move into Thanksgiving this week and the Advent season next Sunday, I invite you to remember that Jesus Christ is the source of our thankfulness and holiday celebration—that he is the fulfillment of every promise, known and unknown—and that his call on our lives is simple: He simply asks for everything.
Let’s pray together.
Romans 12:1
As we wrap up our brief journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish by writing to them:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
So what about our passage today?
This is another of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ collection—a passage that we memorize and recite, sometimes without allowing it to speak to us in context. In preaching classes we use this passage as an example of something that should happen in every sermon—the shift from what our message is to what we should do about it—from the indicative to the imperative (for those of you who are taking notes). This is about the ‘So What?’ question.
This is a rich sentence—it’s a text we could have built a series around all on its own. Let’s look at it phrase by phrase.
‘Therefore I urge you’: Right there we have some actual proof that whatever Paul is about to say, it’s connected somehow to what has come before. You can’t start a something new with a ‘therefore’, because there’s nothing there to build on.
When Paul starts this new section, he’s building on some stories and teachings that he’s already shared with his Roman readers.
Creation, a way of forgiveness, keeping of his promises, the sacrifice of his son, and the invitation to life in the Spirit—life the way it was meant to be. It’s a good list.
But Paul doesn’t stop with just a list of things he’s already said. Those events—those acts of God—each one of them is an example of a quality in God’s character—they represent something about God that matters—that should matter to us. Listen to the next line:
‘In view of God’s mercy…’ In view of all these things God has done—in view of God’s overwhelming love, his mercy toward us.
It’s important here for us to explore the word ‘mercy’ for a moment. What is mercy? Maybe the best way to start to respond to that is to think about the counterpart to mercy—what’s the other side of the coin?
It would be easy to think that the opposite of mercy is cruelty, and in some ways that would be true. We talk about cruelty as the absence of mercy—of being merciless. I can see how we would think of cruelty as the opposite of mercy.
But that’s not what Paul means in this letter.
Paul has been working from a particular point of view from the very start of his letter to the Romans. God’s relationship to his Jewish covenant people is always a part of the evidence Paul is gathering to make his case—it’s never far from his mind as he tries to convince the Roman Christians that God can be trusted. In Paul’s understanding of who God is, the opposite of mercy isn’t cruelty.
The opposite of mercy is justice. That’s worth a little explaining.
The legal framework that holds biblical Judaism together is fairly simple. It’s about getting what you deserve. When Paul says: ‘In view of God’s mercy…’, what he’s really saying is this:
Since God loved you so much that he didn’t give you what you deserve—that he loved you so much that he gave you far more than you ever dreamed or imagined you could have…
And that’s when he moves to the next part of the text—when he makes the transition from the indicative to the imperative—the ‘So What?’ part of the text.
‘Present your bodies as living sacrifices.’ Well. That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all. Who in their right mind would choose to offer themselves to be a living sacrifice? Think about that for a moment.
Julie and I have been watching an American TV comedy called ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ The other night one of the characters, who’s a bit of a stickler for language, was trying to argue for the difference between the words ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively.’ This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, as a confirmed language geek—things that are literal should actually happen, and things that a figurative can simply be examples. Another character, who didn’t share our hero’s grammar values, responded, and I quote, saying: ‘I literally want to pull your head off right now.’
Paul isn’t literally saying that churches should start offering human sacrifices. Paul would have argued, as the Protestants did 1500 years later, that Christ’s sacrifice was a once and for all kind of thing. We don’t need to repeat that sacrifice, we just need to remember it and what it means. That’s a brief summary of literally thousands of pages of Reformation theology right there.
So what does it mean then, this business about presenting your bodies as living sacrifices?
To me this is one of the most important ‘So Whats’ in the entire New Testament.
This is a call to each of us to make our lives available to God for the purposes of spreading his Kingdom.
This is about taking all that we have and all that we are and bringing it before God to see what he might do with it and through it.
There’s no mystery here. It’s not a coincidence that we’re talking about this passage as we prepare to commit our pledges to God’s work. But it’s not just about money. This is about how much of our lives we’re willing to offer in response to God’s mercy toward us.
David Landsborough was a 2nd generation medical missionary in Taiwan. His father had started the first medical school in the region—it’s still there—and David went back to serve there when he’d been trained as a doctor. During his service there a young boy came in with an infection on his leg that was resistant to all the medicines they had. A skin graft was the only option, but no one was willing to be the donor. Dr Landsborough’s wife Jean, who was also a doctor, volunteered and gave enough of her own skin to provide several grafts for the boy. It was through her that this little boy’s life was saved. Incidentally, he grew up to be the minister of one of the largest churches in Taiwan, and served as the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church there.
‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…’
Paul ends this verse with an important description of what it means when we give our lives as an offering to God. He says: ‘This is your spiritual act of service/worship’
I love it that these two words can be interchangeable in the Bible—service and worship. One writer simply said that the person ‘who has been reconciled and renewed carries out the worship of God through the Spirit by presenting his or her whole being’ in service to God’s Kingdom…‘it leads to the surrender of the whole life, which is spiritual worship.’
So what are we supposed to do…really?
The point of Paul’s letter is that God can be trusted to keep his promises because he’s kept the promises he’s already made. Let’s be clear about exactly what Paul is saying here.
Because God never gave us what we deserved—because he loved us so much that he gave us far more than we could ever deserve on our own—because Jesus Christ offered himself as a living sacrifice for us…
In view of God’s mercy, the call is on us to commit our lives—everything about our lives—to God, as a thankful response for what he’s already done for us.
This faith of ours—part of it is a collection of beliefs we pass down from generation to generation. It’s a list of creeds that help us understand what it is we believe and who it is we believe in.
But this faith of ours is more than just what we believe—it’s really about the relationship we have with the one we believe in.
The point here is that we live in relationship to a God who has already held up his end of things. ‘In view of God’s mercy’ is a reminder to us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has done something amazing already.
The call on us is to respond. We do that by making our lives available to the work of the Kingdom of God. We do that when we share our time and talent—we do that when we commit to the financial support of a local church.
As we move into a time of prayer and commitment as we receive your pledges, I invite you to reflect on God’s mercy in your own life—where God has shown you love in ways you never imagined—think on God’s mercy, and how you’ll respond to it.
In the very first message of this series on Romans we talked about our lives being based on a promise, and called for a purpose. That title for the series was always pointed at the text we read this morning. Our lives are built on a foundation of the promises of mercy that God has kept—that he’s fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The purpose we’re called to is to share our lives in Christ’s name to glorify God and to share his message with the world. That’s our spiritual act of worship and service.
As we move into Thanksgiving this week and the Advent season next Sunday, I invite you to remember that Jesus Christ is the source of our thankfulness and holiday celebration—that he is the fulfillment of every promise, known and unknown—and that his call on our lives is simple: He simply asks for everything.
Let’s pray together.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Better than Conquest
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:31-39
I saw in the news that Ellis Island closed 55 years ago this past week, on Nov 12 1954. Ellis Island was the main gateway for immigrants to the US for more than 60 years, and during that time more than 20 million people entered America through its gates. One of them was my grandmother. She moved here from Italy with two young sons to rejoin my grandfather who was working here. They were just one family in the waves of immigration from Europe and other places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Immigration is controversial both here and in the US, I know, but on balance I think it’s had an enormously positive impact on American culture. If we’re honest we know that few if any of us come from Native American families, and of course now a lot of us are living and working in still another country not our own.
How we enter a new place—how we make a life in a new culture—is important for us not only in relation to our nationality, but also to our identity as Christians.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today?
Paul starts with a list of rhetorical questions—we looked at the first one of these last week. After his radical statement: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” After that, Paul asks some questions:
What do we say in response to all that God has done?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If God didn’t spare his own son, is there any limit to his generosity and love toward us?
If that’s true, then who can accuse God of anything?
If God is God and we’re not, then who is in a position to judge us?
And if that’s true, and Christ died for us and continues to pray for us, then we see this amazing promise:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
This is like those situations where we go in with a lot of questions, but someone has thought of them already and provided us with answers.
We’re called to engage the culture as redeemed people with a message of good news. If you think about that you’ll come up with a ton of questions, but in this passage Paul offers us answers that work about what we’re called to do—about who we’re supposed to be.
Paul asks: “Shall trouble or hardship or nakedness or danger or sword keep us from the love of Christ?”
That’s a pretty comprehensive list, isn’t it? Hardship, trouble, any form of shame (that’s what ‘nakedness’ would have meant to Paul’s readers), or even violence.
Will any of those keep us from experiencing the blessings of being in the presence of God?
Paul answers with a flat “NO.” Why? Because we’re ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.’
When we come to Christ in faith we re-enter our own world, our own culture, but not as an invading army. This time we come more as immigrants, coming in to make new lives for ourselves and influence the lives of our neighbors.
That may seem like we’re being a lot less than conquerors, but in the values of Christ’s kingdom it’s a lot more than that.
Being a Christian in this world is more than just moving into a new territory and settling in. It’s about bringing change to the culture in Christ’s name. It’s more than coming in as an occupying force, like the Germans in France or Holland during WWII.
Acting as conquering invaders is clearly not what Paul is suggesting for us as Christians in the world.
Here’s the point: We aren’t called to conquer or even to win—this isn’t about having power or authority or privilege. This is about the call Christ makes on our lives to live differently because of what he’s done for us.
We’re called to be more than conquerors—we’re called to be agents of transformation.
That’s something entirely different—something sacrificial and life-changing. In the end the call to be more than conquerors is the call to be Christ-like—to live as models of the reconciling renewing restoring work of Christ himself.
How do we reshape ourselves into that kind of church? How do we become people like that, both individually and as a community of faith?
It’s risky, just as it is for immigrants to a new nation and culture—we won’t always be accepted—we might not even be accepted very often at all.
But whether or not people accept the message of the gospel is really God’s business. Most of us wouldn’t dream of taking the credit for the way the gospel spreads and takes root. Why would we take the blame if we’ve been faithful in living it and sharing it?
The real fear is that somehow God won’t be with us as we do his work—that we’ll be abandoned as we face a hostile culture and even friends and family who don’t want to hear us talking about God, or about Jesus, or just try bringing up the Holy Spirit in some places.
The fear is that we’ll be left alone in our work as disciples of Jesus Christ.
That’s where that final, wonderful, amazing, life-changing promise comes in:
Paul says: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”
That promise is one of the great excuse-killers in the entire Bible. It doesn’t just appear there, disconnected from anything else. It comes as a part of the call to all of us to be living models of the gospel—to be agents of reconciliation—to live our lives as forgiven sinners who’ve been adopted into God’s family and given full inheritance rights.
This last promise is Paul’s way of cutting the legs out from all the excuses we use to avoid being the people God calls us to be.
Let’s see, “death nor life”: so even dying is no excuse, and neither is how busy we are in our lives.
Angels and demons can’t stop us—neither can pretending that angels and demons don’t exist.
“Present or future?” All the stuff we’re doing—and this church has some of the busiest people I’ve ever known—all the stuff we’re doing and all the plans we’ve made for next week and next summer and next year. None of that is an excuse.
“Nor any powers”, Paul says. That means that terrorism can’t stop us—neither can Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or evolution or someone who smirks or rolls their eyes at you when they see you reading a Bible.
The rest of the list covers just about everything else we might use as excuses for giving up. “Height nor depth nor anything else in all creation…” None of it can separate us from God’s love as we live out the message he gave to us. Nothing.
OK, now that’s a long string of tough talk, but it’s important for us to remember what it means. God will never leave us, no power can prevent us, nothing can stop us, from being the people God made us to be: more than just conquerors and bullies—but people who live the gospel and share it in meaningful ways with their families and friends and neighbors and strangers.
This is better than conquest. It’s better than looking good or feeling important. It’s better than acting like we’re better than other people or piling up possessions for ourselves.
It’s better than throwing our weight and money around and calling it mission work.
This is about being a part of a relationship that will change everyone and everything and every place in the world. Being more than conquerors means learning new ways to interact with people who haven’t heard or don’t believe the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the new Presbyterian study catechism that we’ll be using in our confirmation class, one of the questions reads:
How should I treat non-Christians and people of other religions?
Listen to this response:
“As much as I can, I should meet friendship with friendship, hostility with kindness, generosity with gratitude, persecution with forbearance, truth with agreement, and error with truth. I should express my faith with humility and devotion as the occasion requires, whether silently or openly, boldly or meekly, by word or by deed. I should avoid compromising the truth on the one hand and being narrow-minded on the other.”
Now catch this part…
“In short, I should always welcome and accept these others in a way that honors and reflects the Lord’s welcome and acceptance of me.”
Friends that’s what it looks like to be "more than conquerors," and that’s my prayer not only for our commitment to missions in this church, but also for the way we live each day as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Romans 8:31-39
I saw in the news that Ellis Island closed 55 years ago this past week, on Nov 12 1954. Ellis Island was the main gateway for immigrants to the US for more than 60 years, and during that time more than 20 million people entered America through its gates. One of them was my grandmother. She moved here from Italy with two young sons to rejoin my grandfather who was working here. They were just one family in the waves of immigration from Europe and other places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Immigration is controversial both here and in the US, I know, but on balance I think it’s had an enormously positive impact on American culture. If we’re honest we know that few if any of us come from Native American families, and of course now a lot of us are living and working in still another country not our own.
How we enter a new place—how we make a life in a new culture—is important for us not only in relation to our nationality, but also to our identity as Christians.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness and intimacy with him. We were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today?
Paul starts with a list of rhetorical questions—we looked at the first one of these last week. After his radical statement: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” After that, Paul asks some questions:
What do we say in response to all that God has done?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If God didn’t spare his own son, is there any limit to his generosity and love toward us?
If that’s true, then who can accuse God of anything?
If God is God and we’re not, then who is in a position to judge us?
And if that’s true, and Christ died for us and continues to pray for us, then we see this amazing promise:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
This is like those situations where we go in with a lot of questions, but someone has thought of them already and provided us with answers.
We’re called to engage the culture as redeemed people with a message of good news. If you think about that you’ll come up with a ton of questions, but in this passage Paul offers us answers that work about what we’re called to do—about who we’re supposed to be.
Paul asks: “Shall trouble or hardship or nakedness or danger or sword keep us from the love of Christ?”
That’s a pretty comprehensive list, isn’t it? Hardship, trouble, any form of shame (that’s what ‘nakedness’ would have meant to Paul’s readers), or even violence.
Will any of those keep us from experiencing the blessings of being in the presence of God?
Paul answers with a flat “NO.” Why? Because we’re ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.’
When we come to Christ in faith we re-enter our own world, our own culture, but not as an invading army. This time we come more as immigrants, coming in to make new lives for ourselves and influence the lives of our neighbors.
That may seem like we’re being a lot less than conquerors, but in the values of Christ’s kingdom it’s a lot more than that.
Being a Christian in this world is more than just moving into a new territory and settling in. It’s about bringing change to the culture in Christ’s name. It’s more than coming in as an occupying force, like the Germans in France or Holland during WWII.
Acting as conquering invaders is clearly not what Paul is suggesting for us as Christians in the world.
Here’s the point: We aren’t called to conquer or even to win—this isn’t about having power or authority or privilege. This is about the call Christ makes on our lives to live differently because of what he’s done for us.
We’re called to be more than conquerors—we’re called to be agents of transformation.
That’s something entirely different—something sacrificial and life-changing. In the end the call to be more than conquerors is the call to be Christ-like—to live as models of the reconciling renewing restoring work of Christ himself.
How do we reshape ourselves into that kind of church? How do we become people like that, both individually and as a community of faith?
It’s risky, just as it is for immigrants to a new nation and culture—we won’t always be accepted—we might not even be accepted very often at all.
But whether or not people accept the message of the gospel is really God’s business. Most of us wouldn’t dream of taking the credit for the way the gospel spreads and takes root. Why would we take the blame if we’ve been faithful in living it and sharing it?
The real fear is that somehow God won’t be with us as we do his work—that we’ll be abandoned as we face a hostile culture and even friends and family who don’t want to hear us talking about God, or about Jesus, or just try bringing up the Holy Spirit in some places.
The fear is that we’ll be left alone in our work as disciples of Jesus Christ.
That’s where that final, wonderful, amazing, life-changing promise comes in:
Paul says: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”
That promise is one of the great excuse-killers in the entire Bible. It doesn’t just appear there, disconnected from anything else. It comes as a part of the call to all of us to be living models of the gospel—to be agents of reconciliation—to live our lives as forgiven sinners who’ve been adopted into God’s family and given full inheritance rights.
This last promise is Paul’s way of cutting the legs out from all the excuses we use to avoid being the people God calls us to be.
Let’s see, “death nor life”: so even dying is no excuse, and neither is how busy we are in our lives.
Angels and demons can’t stop us—neither can pretending that angels and demons don’t exist.
“Present or future?” All the stuff we’re doing—and this church has some of the busiest people I’ve ever known—all the stuff we’re doing and all the plans we’ve made for next week and next summer and next year. None of that is an excuse.
“Nor any powers”, Paul says. That means that terrorism can’t stop us—neither can Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens or evolution or someone who smirks or rolls their eyes at you when they see you reading a Bible.
The rest of the list covers just about everything else we might use as excuses for giving up. “Height nor depth nor anything else in all creation…” None of it can separate us from God’s love as we live out the message he gave to us. Nothing.
OK, now that’s a long string of tough talk, but it’s important for us to remember what it means. God will never leave us, no power can prevent us, nothing can stop us, from being the people God made us to be: more than just conquerors and bullies—but people who live the gospel and share it in meaningful ways with their families and friends and neighbors and strangers.
This is better than conquest. It’s better than looking good or feeling important. It’s better than acting like we’re better than other people or piling up possessions for ourselves.
It’s better than throwing our weight and money around and calling it mission work.
This is about being a part of a relationship that will change everyone and everything and every place in the world. Being more than conquerors means learning new ways to interact with people who haven’t heard or don’t believe the good news of Jesus Christ.
In the new Presbyterian study catechism that we’ll be using in our confirmation class, one of the questions reads:
How should I treat non-Christians and people of other religions?
Listen to this response:
“As much as I can, I should meet friendship with friendship, hostility with kindness, generosity with gratitude, persecution with forbearance, truth with agreement, and error with truth. I should express my faith with humility and devotion as the occasion requires, whether silently or openly, boldly or meekly, by word or by deed. I should avoid compromising the truth on the one hand and being narrow-minded on the other.”
Now catch this part…
“In short, I should always welcome and accept these others in a way that honors and reflects the Lord’s welcome and acceptance of me.”
Friends that’s what it looks like to be "more than conquerors," and that’s my prayer not only for our commitment to missions in this church, but also for the way we live each day as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
A Different Perspective
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:28-32
In a conversation recently someone said to me ‘the exception proves the rule’, and that got me thinking… That saying makes absolutely no sense at all. If it’s a rule there aren’t exceptions, and if there are exceptions there really can’t be a rule. So I looked up the saying and here’s what I found out.
The origin of the phrase is actually from 16th-century English law. It was originally written ‘Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis’, which of course we all know means ‘Exception confirms the rule in cases without exceptions.’ In clear English it means that posting an exception to a rule is a reminder that at other times the rule exists.
There are all kinds of sayings or quotes that have come down to us that either don’t make sense or aren’t exactly faithful to the way they were originally written.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ comes to mind. Has that ever actually happened? Not really, so we can’t take it at face value. Where did that one come from? The most likely origin, according to one source, is that in London in the 17th century, heavy rain used to fill the streets and carry along dead animals—mostly cats and dogs—and so the saying came out of that.
There’s ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, ‘Make no bones about it’, and ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ (I think that people who make up sayings don’t like cats all that much.)
How about this one: ‘That’s the best thing since sliced bread.’ Really? Better than airplanes or computers or iPods or even Pop-Tarts? Better than heart transplants or antibiotics or the cure for polio? Would we really give up all those things if it meant we had to run a knife through a loaf of bread for ourselves? For Pete’s sake. There’s another one—who’s Pete?
It’s also common sometimes to hear misquoted Bible verses, or sayings that people think are Bible verses but really aren’t.
‘God works in mysterious ways’ is one of the most common. People cite it as a Bible verse, but it’s actually from an 18th century English poet named William Cowper.
A more damaging one is this: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Really? What about the rest of us? Does God ignore the needs of those who find themselves powerless sometimes? What does that mean for the millions of people in 12-step programs? The first step is the admission that we’re powerless in the face of our addictions.
You can tell these make me a little cranky.
Our text this morning includes a passage that has been misread and misquoted for centuries.
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness—we were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today? How has it been misunderstood?
I have to say that when we started this series on Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was looking forward to this precise passage, but I’m not now—it’s really one of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ in Scripture—most people who have read this letter will know Romans 8:28 and quote it often.
And maybe that’s where the problem is.
So many people know this passage that it feels pretty daunting to say anything new about it. How do we make this text come alive one more time as we work our way through this important letter?
But the real reason this text is hard is that it’s been twisted and abused over the years—it’s been made to mean something that God or Paul never intended, and so that’s why it’s so important that we look at it again.
How has this passage been abused? Let me ask that a different way: How many of us have had this verse recited to us when we’ve suffered a tragedy or some other kind of loss? How many of us have had someone share this text with us as a way of trying to get us to stop feeling something genuine like grief or anger or sadness.
You know how this happens. Someone suffers a loss and a friend comes up and says: ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
I have to tell you that that drives me crazy.
First, it makes it sound as though we should be glad or happy or free of sadness no matter what happens. If it’s all going to work out for good then why be a killjoy? Why spoil the party by actually having authentic feelings about something? ‘All things work together for good,’ don’t they?
The second problem with that quote is that it makes it sound as though our ability to squelch our feelings is directly related somehow to how much we love God. Do you see that in there? ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’ The logic there means that if things don’t seem to be working out for good in your life, then you must not love the Lord—or love the Lord enough.
That just makes me nauseous.
Most importantly, though, the way this passage too often gets quoted is a corruption of the way it was actually written. Please, tell me you can hear the difference between these two:
‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
And…
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
One of these is a lie—a simpering, shorthand, cheeseball way of reducing Scripture to a lame version of ‘All’s well that ends well.’
One of these is a lie, but the other is a revolutionary expression of hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing the Christian faith as a wimpy, unrealistic escape —the real definition of the ‘opium of the people’.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing Jesus Christ as a nice guy we can model our lives around, and seeing him as the one true transformational source of hope for every person and place in the world.
One of these is a waste of time. The other is a call to a deeper level of discipleship than we ever thought was possible.
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
Romans 8:28 isn’t a call to some Pollyanna refusal to acknowledge problems or evil in the world. It’s an expression of faith that no matter what happens, God is working to find some redemptive purpose in it—in other words, we are not alone. One writer described it as the belief that ‘our confidence is sure precisely because our future is not in our hands and does not depend on our own faithfulness or ability’ to be perfect. As with every argument in this entire letter, the point is found in coming to God in faith, struggles and all, brokenness and all.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there. In the next section he asks a rhetorical question and then answers it with a reminder of what God has done to bring us back to him—he answers the
question by telling us the lengths God has gone—and will go to—to place us back into his family.
What do we say about this?
What do we say to a God who doesn’t promise us a pain-free life, but promises to work for good within everything that happens.
What do we say to a God who doesn’t just say things.
What do we say to a God who goes so far to demonstrate his love for us that he doesn’t even spare his own son?
We say three things:
We say we want to know this God. That’s why we offer opportunities for people at all ages to grow and learn and become mature in their faith.
We say we want to worship this God. That’s why we don’t stop at just knowing about God—we come together to offer our praises and prayers—to sing and listen and challenge ourselves to draw near to God himself.
We say we want to serve in this God’s name. If our faith stays inward then it hasn’t grown into maturity yet. Knowing about God and worshipping faithfully are the starting place for serving each other and strangers and the whole world in the name of Jesus Christ.
Notice that none of this is about putting our faith in a list of doctrines and then forgetting all about them. This is a different perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
This is about building a relationship with God and with each other and with the rest of the world. Remember that through the entire letter to the Romans Paul has been saying that all of this comes to us when we come to God in faith.
John Ortberg describes it this way:
‘Faith is not simply holding beliefs. Many people, when they consider faith, think ‘I believe that God exists,’ or ‘Scripture is accurate,’ or ‘love is the greatest virtue.’ But at its core, faith is not simply the belief in a statement; it puts trust in a person. We think we want certainty, but we don’t. What we really want is trust. Trust is better than certainty because it honors the freedom of persons and makes possible the kind of growth and intimacy that certainty alone could never produce.’
That trust is the key. Believing that God wants the best for us and that he’ll work to bring it about no matter what else happens to us—believing that is the beginning of trust, and the beginning of an amazing, life-changing, world-altering relationship.
And the best part is that there are no exceptions to God’s rule—we’re all included. The good news for us this morning is this: God helps those—he offers himself to those—who come to him in faith.
Let’s pray.
Romans 8:28-32
In a conversation recently someone said to me ‘the exception proves the rule’, and that got me thinking… That saying makes absolutely no sense at all. If it’s a rule there aren’t exceptions, and if there are exceptions there really can’t be a rule. So I looked up the saying and here’s what I found out.
The origin of the phrase is actually from 16th-century English law. It was originally written ‘Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis’, which of course we all know means ‘Exception confirms the rule in cases without exceptions.’ In clear English it means that posting an exception to a rule is a reminder that at other times the rule exists.
There are all kinds of sayings or quotes that have come down to us that either don’t make sense or aren’t exactly faithful to the way they were originally written.
‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ comes to mind. Has that ever actually happened? Not really, so we can’t take it at face value. Where did that one come from? The most likely origin, according to one source, is that in London in the 17th century, heavy rain used to fill the streets and carry along dead animals—mostly cats and dogs—and so the saying came out of that.
There’s ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, ‘Make no bones about it’, and ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’ (I think that people who make up sayings don’t like cats all that much.)
How about this one: ‘That’s the best thing since sliced bread.’ Really? Better than airplanes or computers or iPods or even Pop-Tarts? Better than heart transplants or antibiotics or the cure for polio? Would we really give up all those things if it meant we had to run a knife through a loaf of bread for ourselves? For Pete’s sake. There’s another one—who’s Pete?
It’s also common sometimes to hear misquoted Bible verses, or sayings that people think are Bible verses but really aren’t.
‘God works in mysterious ways’ is one of the most common. People cite it as a Bible verse, but it’s actually from an 18th century English poet named William Cowper.
A more damaging one is this: ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Really? What about the rest of us? Does God ignore the needs of those who find themselves powerless sometimes? What does that mean for the millions of people in 12-step programs? The first step is the admission that we’re powerless in the face of our addictions.
You can tell these make me a little cranky.
Our text this morning includes a passage that has been misread and misquoted for centuries.
28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
As we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans, it’s helpful to be reminded of what he was trying to accomplish:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is that we were made to have a close relationship with God—that we were made for that kind of closeness—we were meant to live that way, but it all got complicated by our sin. For our purposes today and in this series, sin is anything—anything at all—that gets in the way of the relationship we were meant to have with God.
But God doesn’t leave us hanging. If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way—no matter what we do to mess it up—God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law and the prophets and the promise of a Messiah.
God always provides a way back to him, no matter what we’ve said or done or even believed before this moment.
So what about our passage today? How has it been misunderstood?
I have to say that when we started this series on Paul’s letter to the Romans, I was looking forward to this precise passage, but I’m not now—it’s really one of Paul’s ‘greatest hits’ in Scripture—most people who have read this letter will know Romans 8:28 and quote it often.
And maybe that’s where the problem is.
So many people know this passage that it feels pretty daunting to say anything new about it. How do we make this text come alive one more time as we work our way through this important letter?
But the real reason this text is hard is that it’s been twisted and abused over the years—it’s been made to mean something that God or Paul never intended, and so that’s why it’s so important that we look at it again.
How has this passage been abused? Let me ask that a different way: How many of us have had this verse recited to us when we’ve suffered a tragedy or some other kind of loss? How many of us have had someone share this text with us as a way of trying to get us to stop feeling something genuine like grief or anger or sadness.
You know how this happens. Someone suffers a loss and a friend comes up and says: ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
I have to tell you that that drives me crazy.
First, it makes it sound as though we should be glad or happy or free of sadness no matter what happens. If it’s all going to work out for good then why be a killjoy? Why spoil the party by actually having authentic feelings about something? ‘All things work together for good,’ don’t they?
The second problem with that quote is that it makes it sound as though our ability to squelch our feelings is directly related somehow to how much we love God. Do you see that in there? ‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’ The logic there means that if things don’t seem to be working out for good in your life, then you must not love the Lord—or love the Lord enough.
That just makes me nauseous.
Most importantly, though, the way this passage too often gets quoted is a corruption of the way it was actually written. Please, tell me you can hear the difference between these two:
‘All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.’
And…
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
One of these is a lie—a simpering, shorthand, cheeseball way of reducing Scripture to a lame version of ‘All’s well that ends well.’
One of these is a lie, but the other is a revolutionary expression of hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ himself.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing the Christian faith as a wimpy, unrealistic escape —the real definition of the ‘opium of the people’.
Hearing the difference between these two is the difference between seeing Jesus Christ as a nice guy we can model our lives around, and seeing him as the one true transformational source of hope for every person and place in the world.
One of these is a waste of time. The other is a call to a deeper level of discipleship than we ever thought was possible.
‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’
Romans 8:28 isn’t a call to some Pollyanna refusal to acknowledge problems or evil in the world. It’s an expression of faith that no matter what happens, God is working to find some redemptive purpose in it—in other words, we are not alone. One writer described it as the belief that ‘our confidence is sure precisely because our future is not in our hands and does not depend on our own faithfulness or ability’ to be perfect. As with every argument in this entire letter, the point is found in coming to God in faith, struggles and all, brokenness and all.
But Paul doesn’t leave it there. In the next section he asks a rhetorical question and then answers it with a reminder of what God has done to bring us back to him—he answers the
question by telling us the lengths God has gone—and will go to—to place us back into his family.
What do we say about this?
What do we say to a God who doesn’t promise us a pain-free life, but promises to work for good within everything that happens.
What do we say to a God who doesn’t just say things.
What do we say to a God who goes so far to demonstrate his love for us that he doesn’t even spare his own son?
We say three things:
We say we want to know this God. That’s why we offer opportunities for people at all ages to grow and learn and become mature in their faith.
We say we want to worship this God. That’s why we don’t stop at just knowing about God—we come together to offer our praises and prayers—to sing and listen and challenge ourselves to draw near to God himself.
We say we want to serve in this God’s name. If our faith stays inward then it hasn’t grown into maturity yet. Knowing about God and worshipping faithfully are the starting place for serving each other and strangers and the whole world in the name of Jesus Christ.
Notice that none of this is about putting our faith in a list of doctrines and then forgetting all about them. This is a different perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
This is about building a relationship with God and with each other and with the rest of the world. Remember that through the entire letter to the Romans Paul has been saying that all of this comes to us when we come to God in faith.
John Ortberg describes it this way:
‘Faith is not simply holding beliefs. Many people, when they consider faith, think ‘I believe that God exists,’ or ‘Scripture is accurate,’ or ‘love is the greatest virtue.’ But at its core, faith is not simply the belief in a statement; it puts trust in a person. We think we want certainty, but we don’t. What we really want is trust. Trust is better than certainty because it honors the freedom of persons and makes possible the kind of growth and intimacy that certainty alone could never produce.’
That trust is the key. Believing that God wants the best for us and that he’ll work to bring it about no matter what else happens to us—believing that is the beginning of trust, and the beginning of an amazing, life-changing, world-altering relationship.
And the best part is that there are no exceptions to God’s rule—we’re all included. The good news for us this morning is this: God helps those—he offers himself to those—who come to him in faith.
Let’s pray.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Saints and Other Failures
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 8:12-17
In honor of All Saints’ Day…
This holiday dates back to the 7th century as a celebration of all saints, known and unknown, so I thought we’d talk about saints for a moment.
Over the centuries saints have been seen as helpers or assistants in the Christian life of average believers. They were seen as close to God because of any miracles they might have done, but still human and worthy of following as examples.
The requirements for becoming a saint were exemplary lives and the performing of miracles. The Catholic Church takes nominations, then sends a commission out to research the life of the candidate. The commission builds a case for sainthood and presents it to the Vatican. That’s where the fun begins.
The last stage is a trial, where the commission presents its case, and someone called a promotor justitiae argues the other side. We know that person better as the Devil’s Advocate. The Devil’s Advocate (or, the DA) tries to oppose every aspect of the case for sainthood by every lawful tactic. If the candidate survives, then eventually they’re canonized as a saint.
Catholic or not, most of us are aware of the idea of a patron saint. That’s a saint who has some historical connection with a group or type of person.
There are patron saints for actors, animals and archers. For cab drivers, clothworkers and cooks. For fathers, firefighters and fishermen. For lawyers and leatherworkers and lovers.
There are patron saints for headache sufferers, heart patients, and those who suffer from intestinal ailments (Erasmus, a 3rd century Italian bishop, who earned the honor because of the gruesome way he was martyred.).
Gabriel, the angel with the loud horn, is the patron saint of broadcasters.
Benedict is the patron saint of speleologists, which I had to look up. Speleologists are people who study caves—I’m not sure why they need their own saint… You won’t get this kind of information anywhere else.
Joseph of Copertino was said to rise up off the ground and even fly when the Spirit moved him, so now he’s the patron saint of astronauts.
Matthew, who was a tax collector before becoming one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, is the patron saint of bankers and accountants.
Every one of these women and men became saints because they had demonstrated some extreme level of faithfulness. They’d accomplished some great task, or done some great miracle. They came to represent the ideal for what we should do and how we should live.
But at some point each one of these saints had to earn their way into sainthood. They had to meet some standard and be judged by their brothers and sisters to see if they were worthy.
I hope you can see how different that is from what we’ve been learning in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The whole point of this for Paul—the thing that drove the growth of the Christian faith and even inspired the Reformation 1500 years later—the point of the gospel is that we don’t have to earn it at all.
Forgiveness for our sins, and restoration to life in the presence of God—all of that is a free gift that we receive when we come before Christ in faith.
12Therefore, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Just to recap the theme of our journey through Romans:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is the relationship we were made to have with God, and the way that relationship is complicated by sin.
If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law.
Paul talks about the difference between life in the flesh and life led by the Spirit. One writer describes it like this:
“Life pursued according to the flesh is the life influenced by rebellion and idolatry, in which the entire perspective of the person is turned on him- or herself, and the person becomes the center of all values.
Life in the Spirit, on the other hand, is life set free from bondage to self and sin…It is life in bondage to God, which freely acknowledges his lordship through Jesus Christ. The power of Christ’s lordship has broken the enslaving power of self-worship and sin, and set the person free to enjoy a new relationship with God—that new relationship is as a child—a son or daughter—rather than a rebel.”
I love the part of our text that talks about being God’s children—being made heirs—being made to feel part of the family. It’s still more than I can comprehend that God calls us into a relationship with him where we can be close to him—where we can rest in his presence—where we can call out to him, Abba, Father.
The real translation of Abba is ‘Daddy’, a term of closeness and affection and safety.
What does it mean to be welcomed into God’s family?
“To be led by God’s Spirit means to have changed our future from life to death, to have changed our relationship to God from rebellion to obedience, and to have changed our status from enemy to beloved child.”
Another way of looking at this, and in honor of All Saints’ Day, is that we’re all saints now, just by coming to Christ in faith.
We’re all saints now, not by anything we’ve done to earn it, but through the grace of God only.
That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ—that’s the essence of the Christian faith.
That’s what we remember as we come to the Table in Communion.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means that we’re forgiven, that we’re welcomed into God’s family with full inheritance privileges, and that wherever we are or wherever we go, we have a home where we’re loved and where we belong.
Our ‘hymn out of season’ today is a usually sung on Good Friday, as we reflect on the pain and suffering of Christ’s sacrifice for us. We sing it now as a way of preparing our hearts to celebrate Communion today.
Please stand and let’s sing together: ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’
Romans 8:12-17
In honor of All Saints’ Day…
This holiday dates back to the 7th century as a celebration of all saints, known and unknown, so I thought we’d talk about saints for a moment.
Over the centuries saints have been seen as helpers or assistants in the Christian life of average believers. They were seen as close to God because of any miracles they might have done, but still human and worthy of following as examples.
The requirements for becoming a saint were exemplary lives and the performing of miracles. The Catholic Church takes nominations, then sends a commission out to research the life of the candidate. The commission builds a case for sainthood and presents it to the Vatican. That’s where the fun begins.
The last stage is a trial, where the commission presents its case, and someone called a promotor justitiae argues the other side. We know that person better as the Devil’s Advocate. The Devil’s Advocate (or, the DA) tries to oppose every aspect of the case for sainthood by every lawful tactic. If the candidate survives, then eventually they’re canonized as a saint.
Catholic or not, most of us are aware of the idea of a patron saint. That’s a saint who has some historical connection with a group or type of person.
There are patron saints for actors, animals and archers. For cab drivers, clothworkers and cooks. For fathers, firefighters and fishermen. For lawyers and leatherworkers and lovers.
There are patron saints for headache sufferers, heart patients, and those who suffer from intestinal ailments (Erasmus, a 3rd century Italian bishop, who earned the honor because of the gruesome way he was martyred.).
Gabriel, the angel with the loud horn, is the patron saint of broadcasters.
Benedict is the patron saint of speleologists, which I had to look up. Speleologists are people who study caves—I’m not sure why they need their own saint… You won’t get this kind of information anywhere else.
Joseph of Copertino was said to rise up off the ground and even fly when the Spirit moved him, so now he’s the patron saint of astronauts.
Matthew, who was a tax collector before becoming one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, is the patron saint of bankers and accountants.
Every one of these women and men became saints because they had demonstrated some extreme level of faithfulness. They’d accomplished some great task, or done some great miracle. They came to represent the ideal for what we should do and how we should live.
But at some point each one of these saints had to earn their way into sainthood. They had to meet some standard and be judged by their brothers and sisters to see if they were worthy.
I hope you can see how different that is from what we’ve been learning in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The whole point of this for Paul—the thing that drove the growth of the Christian faith and even inspired the Reformation 1500 years later—the point of the gospel is that we don’t have to earn it at all.
Forgiveness for our sins, and restoration to life in the presence of God—all of that is a free gift that we receive when we come before Christ in faith.
12Therefore, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Just to recap the theme of our journey through Romans:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
The substance of Paul’s case is the relationship we were made to have with God, and the way that relationship is complicated by sin.
If you trace the history of the human relationship to God you see that God has always provided a way for us to come back to him—that’s the point of the Old Testament Law.
Paul talks about the difference between life in the flesh and life led by the Spirit. One writer describes it like this:
“Life pursued according to the flesh is the life influenced by rebellion and idolatry, in which the entire perspective of the person is turned on him- or herself, and the person becomes the center of all values.
Life in the Spirit, on the other hand, is life set free from bondage to self and sin…It is life in bondage to God, which freely acknowledges his lordship through Jesus Christ. The power of Christ’s lordship has broken the enslaving power of self-worship and sin, and set the person free to enjoy a new relationship with God—that new relationship is as a child—a son or daughter—rather than a rebel.”
I love the part of our text that talks about being God’s children—being made heirs—being made to feel part of the family. It’s still more than I can comprehend that God calls us into a relationship with him where we can be close to him—where we can rest in his presence—where we can call out to him, Abba, Father.
The real translation of Abba is ‘Daddy’, a term of closeness and affection and safety.
What does it mean to be welcomed into God’s family?
“To be led by God’s Spirit means to have changed our future from life to death, to have changed our relationship to God from rebellion to obedience, and to have changed our status from enemy to beloved child.”
Another way of looking at this, and in honor of All Saints’ Day, is that we’re all saints now, just by coming to Christ in faith.
We’re all saints now, not by anything we’ve done to earn it, but through the grace of God only.
That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ—that’s the essence of the Christian faith.
That’s what we remember as we come to the Table in Communion.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means that we’re forgiven, that we’re welcomed into God’s family with full inheritance privileges, and that wherever we are or wherever we go, we have a home where we’re loved and where we belong.
Our ‘hymn out of season’ today is a usually sung on Good Friday, as we reflect on the pain and suffering of Christ’s sacrifice for us. We sing it now as a way of preparing our hearts to celebrate Communion today.
Please stand and let’s sing together: ‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thankful?
(The piece below was published in the current issue of American in Britain, a magazine for the American expat community. The series on Romans continues next week)
The calendar tells me that this is the season to be thankful. Kids are back in school, the air is a bit crisper, and the leaves are clogging up the drains near our flat. That can only mean one thing: Thanksgiving is coming. ‘Tis the season to be thankful.
Really?
So much has happened in the last year or so. The economy (in a stunning understatement) has struggled, conflicts around the world have dragged on with tragic losses, and we’ve seen the ways that partisanship in both Britain and America can stifle progress across a wide range of issues.
Sometimes it’s hard to feel thankful.
First off, before I write anything else about this, let me be very clear. Being thankful doesn’t mean we close our eyes to the problems around us that need solving. Being thankful doesn’t mean that we fail to hear the cries for help and mercy in our midst and around the world. I say that because too many people equate faith with a lack of awareness or realism. Too many people will assume that to believe in a God with a plan, or a world with a purpose, is to be ignorant somehow of what is really happening around us.
I don’t think that’s true.
Challenging times make it difficult to experience the joy that springs from feeling thankful, but rejecting thankfulness altogether isn’t exactly a helpful response. Challenging times, more than any other, remind us that thankfulness is a discipline and not a feeling. Uh-oh. I know I’ve said a bad word there, so since it’s out of the bag already I’ll say it again.
Thankfulness is a discipline.
Thankfulness is a discipline that takes practice to fully enjoy. It’s not dependent upon a feeling that blows through us whenever it wants to, like some Romantic inspiration, only to go away until it magically reappears. Thankfulness is something that we practice—something we train ourselves to do as a regular part of healthy, hopeful living. In other words, thankfulness is our responsibility to learn and to develop and to share.
John Calvin may be the least popular theologian of the Protestant Reformation, but 2009 is the 500th anniversary of his birth and so I’ve been reading more of his writing. He wrote:
“The contemplation of God’s goodness in his creation will lead us to thankfulness and trust.”
Now that statement has one major leap of faith in it—the belief that God’s goodness is something we can see around us. It’s a leap of faith, I know, but I believe it to be true. Say what you will about the bad news we hear every day—on balance this life still offers far more beauty and wonder than anything on the other side of the ledger. As much as it might pain us to say it, Calvin is 100% right here. When we allow ourselves to think—to contemplate—on the parts of our lives we know to be good, the end result is thankfulness and trust.
Calvin’s point is that thankfulness is the product of knowing—or struggling to believe—that God loves the world and everything in it. Calvin would boldly say that faith like that makes it possible for us to live through our times of struggle:
“Gratitude of mind for the favorable outcome of things, patience in adversity, and also incredible freedom from worry about the future all necessarily follow upon this knowledge.”
What are you thankful for this season?
As we prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, with all the food and fellowship (and sports) that it represents, how can we discipline ourselves to think about God’s goodness in our lives? Believing that takes practice—it requires us to take some big and small steps of faith to connect the blessings in our lives to their source. It takes practice, but it makes all the difference in the way that we approach every single day.
My prayer for you—and for me—this season is that our awareness of God will lead to gratitude of mind, patience in adversity, and as much freedom from worry about the future as we can muster.
From our church to all of you, may God bless you with a tangible sense of gratitude during this holiday season.
Happy Thanksgiving!
The calendar tells me that this is the season to be thankful. Kids are back in school, the air is a bit crisper, and the leaves are clogging up the drains near our flat. That can only mean one thing: Thanksgiving is coming. ‘Tis the season to be thankful.
Really?
So much has happened in the last year or so. The economy (in a stunning understatement) has struggled, conflicts around the world have dragged on with tragic losses, and we’ve seen the ways that partisanship in both Britain and America can stifle progress across a wide range of issues.
Sometimes it’s hard to feel thankful.
First off, before I write anything else about this, let me be very clear. Being thankful doesn’t mean we close our eyes to the problems around us that need solving. Being thankful doesn’t mean that we fail to hear the cries for help and mercy in our midst and around the world. I say that because too many people equate faith with a lack of awareness or realism. Too many people will assume that to believe in a God with a plan, or a world with a purpose, is to be ignorant somehow of what is really happening around us.
I don’t think that’s true.
Challenging times make it difficult to experience the joy that springs from feeling thankful, but rejecting thankfulness altogether isn’t exactly a helpful response. Challenging times, more than any other, remind us that thankfulness is a discipline and not a feeling. Uh-oh. I know I’ve said a bad word there, so since it’s out of the bag already I’ll say it again.
Thankfulness is a discipline.
Thankfulness is a discipline that takes practice to fully enjoy. It’s not dependent upon a feeling that blows through us whenever it wants to, like some Romantic inspiration, only to go away until it magically reappears. Thankfulness is something that we practice—something we train ourselves to do as a regular part of healthy, hopeful living. In other words, thankfulness is our responsibility to learn and to develop and to share.
John Calvin may be the least popular theologian of the Protestant Reformation, but 2009 is the 500th anniversary of his birth and so I’ve been reading more of his writing. He wrote:
“The contemplation of God’s goodness in his creation will lead us to thankfulness and trust.”
Now that statement has one major leap of faith in it—the belief that God’s goodness is something we can see around us. It’s a leap of faith, I know, but I believe it to be true. Say what you will about the bad news we hear every day—on balance this life still offers far more beauty and wonder than anything on the other side of the ledger. As much as it might pain us to say it, Calvin is 100% right here. When we allow ourselves to think—to contemplate—on the parts of our lives we know to be good, the end result is thankfulness and trust.
Calvin’s point is that thankfulness is the product of knowing—or struggling to believe—that God loves the world and everything in it. Calvin would boldly say that faith like that makes it possible for us to live through our times of struggle:
“Gratitude of mind for the favorable outcome of things, patience in adversity, and also incredible freedom from worry about the future all necessarily follow upon this knowledge.”
What are you thankful for this season?
As we prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, with all the food and fellowship (and sports) that it represents, how can we discipline ourselves to think about God’s goodness in our lives? Believing that takes practice—it requires us to take some big and small steps of faith to connect the blessings in our lives to their source. It takes practice, but it makes all the difference in the way that we approach every single day.
My prayer for you—and for me—this season is that our awareness of God will lead to gratitude of mind, patience in adversity, and as much freedom from worry about the future as we can muster.
From our church to all of you, may God bless you with a tangible sense of gratitude during this holiday season.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Just in Time
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 5:1-11
On Monday night Ian and I watched the new BBC series called ‘Life’. It’s the latest from David Attenborough—it took 4 years to shoot all the footage and edit it into 10 episodes. The show was amazing. The focus was on the different ways animals survive in their environments. There were penguins and cheetahs and monkeys—all of the staples of a good nature program.
There was a great sequence where some bottleneck dolphins showed how they catch fish that swim faster than they do. They herd them into shallow water, then one dolphin swims a circle around the fish, kicking up a circle of mud in the water. The fish panic and start to jump out of the circle, only to jump right into the mouths of the hungry dolphins.
We were inspired by the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog of Costa Rica. This tiny little creature, about the size of a thumbnail, produces a litter of 5 or 6 tadpoles. But in their part of the forest, the ponds dry up before the tadpoles grow into frogs, so the mother will put a tadpole on her back and start to climb one of the trees where bromeliad plants store pools of water.
She carries the tadpoles up one at a time—each into their own little pool. It’s the equivalent of a human mother carrying a baby to the top of the Empire State Building. She does it six times, then revisits each tadpole to bring it food until it’s ready to face the world on its own. For each litter, this tiny frog climbs more than a half of a mile—barely an inch at a time.
But the mother of the year award goes to The Giant Octopus. She lays thousands of eggs, then covers them for protection and to pass on nutrition. She never moves during the entire time the eggs are getting ready to hatch. She doesn’t eat or take on anything for herself. By the time the eggs begin to hatch, the Giant Octopus dies—she gives her life to make it possible for her children to live.
It’s a truly amazing example of the lengths a loving parent will go to in order to ensure life—to protect and nurture her children.
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
As we begin it will help to remember the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the meaning of the Christian life. We’ve seen in Paul’s letter to the Romans that our faith is based on a promise, and that in our discipleship we’ve been called for a purpose—to live in close relationship to God, and to share the message of the gospel with the world around us.
The next week we talked about our need for forgiveness, and the way we learn to live the message of the gospel with boldness and passion. We stop being ashamed of the gospel when we accept the fact that the gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
On Communion Sunday we learned that God offers signs of his presence and love all around us—that he’ll never lose sight of us or stop loving us. There is no shortage of ways we can find ourselves lost, but nothing we’ve ever said or done or even believed before this moment can separate us from the one who made us and loves us.
And then last week we were reminded that we are people who’ve been bought with a price, and that learning to live that way changes everything, from our earning and spending to our parenting and the way we live in relationships—from how we value others to how we define what our own lives mean.
Living as people who’ve been redeemed through Christ’s sacrifice changes everything about us.
And so that brings us to our text this morning. I said on our first Sunday in Romans that a lot of people have favorite parts of this letter. Our text is one of the more popular passages—I remember learning it in my youth group about 30 years ago. Paul is still making his argument here that God can be trusted because he’s already proven himself to be faithful to his promises.
What he’s really describing are the lengths God will go to in order to give us life—how far he’ll go to protect and nurture each one of us.
Paul begins with a reminder that our reconciliation to God is based on faith alone, and not on anything we’ve done to earn it. ‘Since we have been justified through faith,’ Paul says, ‘we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’
I’ve said before that I think this is one of the hardest things for us to grasp. We have to earn just about every other thing that matters to us, and when we come to God and he offers us this amazing free gift, it’s as if we don’t speak the language.
In the Reformation this was one of the key sticking points between Martin Luther and the Roman Church. In Luther’s eyes the established church had created a false sense for individual believers—a sense that they had to earn their forgiveness—to earn their salvation. But that didn’t mean he thought that people didn’t need forgiveness. Luther’s views grew out of a pretty clear understanding of human brokenness, something we can see clearly in our passage this morning.
Paul has three words to describe the state of humanity in this part of his letter, and none of them are very pretty. He calls us:
‘Powerless’: Weak, incapacitated by illness, impotent, paralyzed by the inability to act.
‘Ungodly: Guilty of outrage, giving divine honors to the creature instead of the creator, distorting the relationship between God and his people.
‘Sinners’: Sin in this sense is what we do and also who or what we choose to serve. This is Paul’s catch-all term for people who have allowed something to get in the way of their link with God.
But all this ‘bad news’ of our condition is followed by the ‘good news’ of Christ’s work on the cross—what Paul calls a demonstration of God’s own love for us.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The good news comes after Paul’s description of our need for it, but the point if you read it carefully is that God accomplished his redeeming work before we even knew we needed it. God didn’t schedule a meeting to talk about the problem of sin—he did something amazing—something sacrificial—to solve the problem.
In the musical ‘My Fair Lady’, Eliza Doolittle is tired of listening to her young suitor talk about all the things he wants to do. One of the classic songs in the play is called ‘Show Me’, where Eliza sings:
"Don't talk of stars, burning above; If you're in love, Show me! Tell me not dreams, filled with desire. If you're on fire, Show me!"
Maybe the point of all this is that God isn’t just talk. The God we worship is a God of action—the one who has acted decisively to bring all of his creation back to himself.
There’s no need for us to look up at God and demand a sign—to say ‘show me’—because he’s already shown us how far he will go to bring us close again. What Paul’s really describing are the lengths God will go to in order to give us life—how far he’ll go to protect and nurture each one of us.
While we were still sinners Christ died for us.
Before we even knew we had a problem, God was already working to provide a solution through Jesus Messiah.
God demonstrated his own love for us, just in time.
What does that mean for us? How do we respond to this gift of forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration?
We celebrate our forgiveness together in fellowship. That may be the single most important difference between Christian fellowship and any other gathering of people. We come together knowing we’ve been forgiven and restored and reconciled.
We worship as a community. As we sing these songs and offer these prayers—even the ones that might not be as familiar to us—we join with people across boundaries and cultures and even across time, as we praise God for the ways he loves us.
We welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives to shape us into the people God made us to be. This is really the key of discipleship—the ways we grow in our personal knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ, and also the ways we grow together here and in Bible studies and in meaningful conversation.
Finally, we reach out in mission to a world that is desperate for this message, whether it knows it or not. We reach out in service to our neighbors not as people who are superior in any way, but as powerless, ungodly sinners who have been forgiven through God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice.
We reach out because God first reached out to us. What God asks of us is that we let go of anything that holds us back.
John Ortberg, in his book Faith & Doubt (which is on your reading list in the bulletin)—Ortberg describes God’s call to faith like this:
“What are you to let go of? Anything that will keep you from God.
Let go of relationships if they dishonor God.
Let go of your attachment to money.
Let go of your power; be a servant.
Let go of your addiction. Admit it. Get help.
Let go of that habit.
Let go of that grudge.
Let go of your ego, your pride, your possessions, your reputation, your disobedience.
God comes, and he asks us to let go.”
What do you have to let go of today?
What keeps you from experiencing the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness this morning?
What prevents you from getting to know the one who was willing to die to get to know you?
What keeps you from accepting the one who was willing to put you on his back and climb a tree and take you to a place where you can thrive?
The good news is that it’s never too late. The good news is that the one who made us and redeemed us and loves us in spite of ourselves, even Jesus Christ himself, wants to live in you and through you.
He took the first step, before we even knew we needed him, but the next step is up to us.
Let’s pray together.
Romans 5:1-11
On Monday night Ian and I watched the new BBC series called ‘Life’. It’s the latest from David Attenborough—it took 4 years to shoot all the footage and edit it into 10 episodes. The show was amazing. The focus was on the different ways animals survive in their environments. There were penguins and cheetahs and monkeys—all of the staples of a good nature program.
There was a great sequence where some bottleneck dolphins showed how they catch fish that swim faster than they do. They herd them into shallow water, then one dolphin swims a circle around the fish, kicking up a circle of mud in the water. The fish panic and start to jump out of the circle, only to jump right into the mouths of the hungry dolphins.
We were inspired by the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog of Costa Rica. This tiny little creature, about the size of a thumbnail, produces a litter of 5 or 6 tadpoles. But in their part of the forest, the ponds dry up before the tadpoles grow into frogs, so the mother will put a tadpole on her back and start to climb one of the trees where bromeliad plants store pools of water.
She carries the tadpoles up one at a time—each into their own little pool. It’s the equivalent of a human mother carrying a baby to the top of the Empire State Building. She does it six times, then revisits each tadpole to bring it food until it’s ready to face the world on its own. For each litter, this tiny frog climbs more than a half of a mile—barely an inch at a time.
But the mother of the year award goes to The Giant Octopus. She lays thousands of eggs, then covers them for protection and to pass on nutrition. She never moves during the entire time the eggs are getting ready to hatch. She doesn’t eat or take on anything for herself. By the time the eggs begin to hatch, the Giant Octopus dies—she gives her life to make it possible for her children to live.
It’s a truly amazing example of the lengths a loving parent will go to in order to ensure life—to protect and nurture her children.
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
As we begin it will help to remember the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
Over the past few weeks we’ve talked about the meaning of the Christian life. We’ve seen in Paul’s letter to the Romans that our faith is based on a promise, and that in our discipleship we’ve been called for a purpose—to live in close relationship to God, and to share the message of the gospel with the world around us.
The next week we talked about our need for forgiveness, and the way we learn to live the message of the gospel with boldness and passion. We stop being ashamed of the gospel when we accept the fact that the gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
On Communion Sunday we learned that God offers signs of his presence and love all around us—that he’ll never lose sight of us or stop loving us. There is no shortage of ways we can find ourselves lost, but nothing we’ve ever said or done or even believed before this moment can separate us from the one who made us and loves us.
And then last week we were reminded that we are people who’ve been bought with a price, and that learning to live that way changes everything, from our earning and spending to our parenting and the way we live in relationships—from how we value others to how we define what our own lives mean.
Living as people who’ve been redeemed through Christ’s sacrifice changes everything about us.
And so that brings us to our text this morning. I said on our first Sunday in Romans that a lot of people have favorite parts of this letter. Our text is one of the more popular passages—I remember learning it in my youth group about 30 years ago. Paul is still making his argument here that God can be trusted because he’s already proven himself to be faithful to his promises.
What he’s really describing are the lengths God will go to in order to give us life—how far he’ll go to protect and nurture each one of us.
Paul begins with a reminder that our reconciliation to God is based on faith alone, and not on anything we’ve done to earn it. ‘Since we have been justified through faith,’ Paul says, ‘we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’
I’ve said before that I think this is one of the hardest things for us to grasp. We have to earn just about every other thing that matters to us, and when we come to God and he offers us this amazing free gift, it’s as if we don’t speak the language.
In the Reformation this was one of the key sticking points between Martin Luther and the Roman Church. In Luther’s eyes the established church had created a false sense for individual believers—a sense that they had to earn their forgiveness—to earn their salvation. But that didn’t mean he thought that people didn’t need forgiveness. Luther’s views grew out of a pretty clear understanding of human brokenness, something we can see clearly in our passage this morning.
Paul has three words to describe the state of humanity in this part of his letter, and none of them are very pretty. He calls us:
‘Powerless’: Weak, incapacitated by illness, impotent, paralyzed by the inability to act.
‘Ungodly: Guilty of outrage, giving divine honors to the creature instead of the creator, distorting the relationship between God and his people.
‘Sinners’: Sin in this sense is what we do and also who or what we choose to serve. This is Paul’s catch-all term for people who have allowed something to get in the way of their link with God.
But all this ‘bad news’ of our condition is followed by the ‘good news’ of Christ’s work on the cross—what Paul calls a demonstration of God’s own love for us.
Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The good news comes after Paul’s description of our need for it, but the point if you read it carefully is that God accomplished his redeeming work before we even knew we needed it. God didn’t schedule a meeting to talk about the problem of sin—he did something amazing—something sacrificial—to solve the problem.
In the musical ‘My Fair Lady’, Eliza Doolittle is tired of listening to her young suitor talk about all the things he wants to do. One of the classic songs in the play is called ‘Show Me’, where Eliza sings:
"Don't talk of stars, burning above; If you're in love, Show me! Tell me not dreams, filled with desire. If you're on fire, Show me!"
Maybe the point of all this is that God isn’t just talk. The God we worship is a God of action—the one who has acted decisively to bring all of his creation back to himself.
There’s no need for us to look up at God and demand a sign—to say ‘show me’—because he’s already shown us how far he will go to bring us close again. What Paul’s really describing are the lengths God will go to in order to give us life—how far he’ll go to protect and nurture each one of us.
While we were still sinners Christ died for us.
Before we even knew we had a problem, God was already working to provide a solution through Jesus Messiah.
God demonstrated his own love for us, just in time.
What does that mean for us? How do we respond to this gift of forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration?
We celebrate our forgiveness together in fellowship. That may be the single most important difference between Christian fellowship and any other gathering of people. We come together knowing we’ve been forgiven and restored and reconciled.
We worship as a community. As we sing these songs and offer these prayers—even the ones that might not be as familiar to us—we join with people across boundaries and cultures and even across time, as we praise God for the ways he loves us.
We welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives to shape us into the people God made us to be. This is really the key of discipleship—the ways we grow in our personal knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ, and also the ways we grow together here and in Bible studies and in meaningful conversation.
Finally, we reach out in mission to a world that is desperate for this message, whether it knows it or not. We reach out in service to our neighbors not as people who are superior in any way, but as powerless, ungodly sinners who have been forgiven through God’s love and Christ’s sacrifice.
We reach out because God first reached out to us. What God asks of us is that we let go of anything that holds us back.
John Ortberg, in his book Faith & Doubt (which is on your reading list in the bulletin)—Ortberg describes God’s call to faith like this:
“What are you to let go of? Anything that will keep you from God.
Let go of relationships if they dishonor God.
Let go of your attachment to money.
Let go of your power; be a servant.
Let go of your addiction. Admit it. Get help.
Let go of that habit.
Let go of that grudge.
Let go of your ego, your pride, your possessions, your reputation, your disobedience.
God comes, and he asks us to let go.”
What do you have to let go of today?
What keeps you from experiencing the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness this morning?
What prevents you from getting to know the one who was willing to die to get to know you?
What keeps you from accepting the one who was willing to put you on his back and climb a tree and take you to a place where you can thrive?
The good news is that it’s never too late. The good news is that the one who made us and redeemed us and loves us in spite of ourselves, even Jesus Christ himself, wants to live in you and through you.
He took the first step, before we even knew we needed him, but the next step is up to us.
Let’s pray together.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Too Good Not to be True
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 3:21-26
John Bradshaw is a psychologist who wrote some important books about families and relationships back in the 1980s. His lectures were broadcast on PBS for a while, and I remember how he used to talk about troubled families in those programs. He used a large mobile—you know, an oversized version of what might hang over a baby’s crib. He would add a piece for each member of the family, but when he start to add extra pieces representing things like addiction or abuse, you could see the mobile twist and contort as it was thrown out of balance. In the end that was precisely Bradshaw’s point: these problems or dysfunctions could throw families completely out of balance.
Think about that as we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul’s main point is that the world has been infected by sin—that the human family had been thrown out of balance—and that only Jesus Christ could make things right again.
21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
As we begin it will help to remember the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Our text comes right after an extended discussion of God’s faithfulness, and just before a familiar passage about Abraham’s faith. Note the ‘Jewishness’ of the context within Romans—it’s all about the Law and Abraham’s faithfulness.
What should we notice in our text?
“Righteousness by faith alone.”
There is nothing here that is earned by human effort. A lot of times this is the hardest part for people to accept about the Christian faith. We live in a world where we have to earn everything—our pay, our security, even our love sometimes. All of that gets turned on its head here. The greatest gift we can ever imagine—by a long way—comes to us free of charge—free from measuring up—it comes by faith alone.
This is NOT like the end of the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ where Tom Hanks’ character’s dying words to Private Ryan are: ‘Earn this!’ Christ doesn’t ask us to earn anything—he just asks us to believe.
“There is no difference.”
Part of this is about the ancient division between Jew and Gentile—this is Paul consistently making the world-changing case that God has entered the world for the entire world—no one has the inside lane on this. The differences that separate us from each other have been set aside.
Paul’s teaching here points to our shared identity as people who go running after other gods. ‘There is no difference’ becomes ‘we’re all in the same boat,’ or maybe ‘misery loves company.’
What it means is that when we talk about what the gospel means and what it requires, no one is excluded, but no one is exempt, either. This is for everyone.
Proof that God is faithful to his promises.
Remember that the promises God made to the people he chose were simple: Be faithful and I will bless you and make you into a blessing for the whole world. That’s what’s happening in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Through Christ we see not only the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, but also the keeping of the promise to bless the entire world through them.
This is one of those moments when we have to step back and consider just what it meant for God to come, to become human with all its weaknesses and problems, to suffer pain and torment and to die.
How does Christ’s death mean that was God faithful?
All of this is part of a bigger story called the Atonement. We spent some time on that earlier this year: The Atonement is a drama in three acts—the Cross, the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The point of this drama is that we’ve been offered reconciliation to God, to ourselves, to each other and to the earth.
But it all begins with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
What we learn through the Cross is that there is a common plight and a common solution for all of humanity.
Our common plight is what the Scriptures call sin: anything that separates us from living and loving and serving in the presence of God.
The common solution is Christ’s atoning work. Listen to how Scot McKnight describes the meaning of Christ’s death in his book on the Atonement.
McKnight suggests that “we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies ‘with us’—entering our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies ‘instead of us’—he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies ‘for us’—his death forgives our sin, ‘declares us right’, absorbs the wrath of God against us and creates new life where there was once only death…A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others and the world”
The Cross changes everything.
This passage is nothing less than a radical redefinition of what it means to be the people of God. What does this mean for us?
The human family is out of balance—like in that mobile John Bradshaw used to talk about the family. But the atonement puts us back into balance with God—literally, justified by him, through him, and for him.
So what do we do now? Two things:
First, live as people who have been bought with a price. Live as people who are trying to understand the gift we’ve been given in Jesus Christ.
Living that way changes everything—from the way we earn and spend, to the way we love and serve. From our parenting to our business practices—from what we look for in relationships to our treatment of the poor.
Living as people who’ve been purchased with a price becomes the way we define our lives. It replaces our education and careers, the achievements of our kids and the coolness of our cars.
Living as people who’ve been bought with a price transforms the way we fellowship with each other, the way we worship together—it changes the way we focus on growing into mature disciples and eventually the way we reach out to others.
Second, the call is on us to share that good news with the people in our lives. That looks different for each of us, but the principle is the same for everyone:
Experiencing God’s forgiveness in our lives in a real way leads naturally—inevitably—to sharing that forgiveness with the people around us. We do that individually, but we also do it as a community of faith—as this church family.
In ‘Deep Church, the book I mentioned last week, the author talks about the central role the gospel of Jesus Christ has in their church. He writes:
“The gospel is at the center of all we do. The 'gospel' is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God's kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus' work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness this radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. This good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship.”
Just to close: If the story ended with the pronouncement that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ then we would live lives of hopelessness and despair.
But that’s not the end of the story. The promise God makes to all of us is that no matter who we are or what we’ve done—no matter what we’ve said or even what we’ve believed before this moment.
No matter who we think we are, God sees us as the people he made and loves and gave himself up to save.
Whatever else you think about yourself, the good news is that when you come to him in faith, God sees you as perfect and spotless and shiny and new.
That’s the good news—that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ offered to each one of us, every day.
What’s left for us is to accept it—to live it—and to share it with the world Christ came to save.
Amen.
Romans 3:21-26
John Bradshaw is a psychologist who wrote some important books about families and relationships back in the 1980s. His lectures were broadcast on PBS for a while, and I remember how he used to talk about troubled families in those programs. He used a large mobile—you know, an oversized version of what might hang over a baby’s crib. He would add a piece for each member of the family, but when he start to add extra pieces representing things like addiction or abuse, you could see the mobile twist and contort as it was thrown out of balance. In the end that was precisely Bradshaw’s point: these problems or dysfunctions could throw families completely out of balance.
Think about that as we continue our journey through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul’s main point is that the world has been infected by sin—that the human family had been thrown out of balance—and that only Jesus Christ could make things right again.
21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
As we begin it will help to remember the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Our text comes right after an extended discussion of God’s faithfulness, and just before a familiar passage about Abraham’s faith. Note the ‘Jewishness’ of the context within Romans—it’s all about the Law and Abraham’s faithfulness.
What should we notice in our text?
“Righteousness by faith alone.”
There is nothing here that is earned by human effort. A lot of times this is the hardest part for people to accept about the Christian faith. We live in a world where we have to earn everything—our pay, our security, even our love sometimes. All of that gets turned on its head here. The greatest gift we can ever imagine—by a long way—comes to us free of charge—free from measuring up—it comes by faith alone.
This is NOT like the end of the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ where Tom Hanks’ character’s dying words to Private Ryan are: ‘Earn this!’ Christ doesn’t ask us to earn anything—he just asks us to believe.
“There is no difference.”
Part of this is about the ancient division between Jew and Gentile—this is Paul consistently making the world-changing case that God has entered the world for the entire world—no one has the inside lane on this. The differences that separate us from each other have been set aside.
Paul’s teaching here points to our shared identity as people who go running after other gods. ‘There is no difference’ becomes ‘we’re all in the same boat,’ or maybe ‘misery loves company.’
What it means is that when we talk about what the gospel means and what it requires, no one is excluded, but no one is exempt, either. This is for everyone.
Proof that God is faithful to his promises.
Remember that the promises God made to the people he chose were simple: Be faithful and I will bless you and make you into a blessing for the whole world. That’s what’s happening in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Through Christ we see not only the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel, but also the keeping of the promise to bless the entire world through them.
This is one of those moments when we have to step back and consider just what it meant for God to come, to become human with all its weaknesses and problems, to suffer pain and torment and to die.
How does Christ’s death mean that was God faithful?
All of this is part of a bigger story called the Atonement. We spent some time on that earlier this year: The Atonement is a drama in three acts—the Cross, the Resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The point of this drama is that we’ve been offered reconciliation to God, to ourselves, to each other and to the earth.
But it all begins with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
What we learn through the Cross is that there is a common plight and a common solution for all of humanity.
Our common plight is what the Scriptures call sin: anything that separates us from living and loving and serving in the presence of God.
The common solution is Christ’s atoning work. Listen to how Scot McKnight describes the meaning of Christ’s death in his book on the Atonement.
McKnight suggests that “we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies ‘with us’—entering our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies ‘instead of us’—he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies ‘for us’—his death forgives our sin, ‘declares us right’, absorbs the wrath of God against us and creates new life where there was once only death…A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others and the world”
The Cross changes everything.
This passage is nothing less than a radical redefinition of what it means to be the people of God. What does this mean for us?
The human family is out of balance—like in that mobile John Bradshaw used to talk about the family. But the atonement puts us back into balance with God—literally, justified by him, through him, and for him.
So what do we do now? Two things:
First, live as people who have been bought with a price. Live as people who are trying to understand the gift we’ve been given in Jesus Christ.
Living that way changes everything—from the way we earn and spend, to the way we love and serve. From our parenting to our business practices—from what we look for in relationships to our treatment of the poor.
Living as people who’ve been purchased with a price becomes the way we define our lives. It replaces our education and careers, the achievements of our kids and the coolness of our cars.
Living as people who’ve been bought with a price transforms the way we fellowship with each other, the way we worship together—it changes the way we focus on growing into mature disciples and eventually the way we reach out to others.
Second, the call is on us to share that good news with the people in our lives. That looks different for each of us, but the principle is the same for everyone:
Experiencing God’s forgiveness in our lives in a real way leads naturally—inevitably—to sharing that forgiveness with the people around us. We do that individually, but we also do it as a community of faith—as this church family.
In ‘Deep Church, the book I mentioned last week, the author talks about the central role the gospel of Jesus Christ has in their church. He writes:
“The gospel is at the center of all we do. The 'gospel' is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God's kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus' work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness this radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. This good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship.”
Just to close: If the story ended with the pronouncement that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ then we would live lives of hopelessness and despair.
But that’s not the end of the story. The promise God makes to all of us is that no matter who we are or what we’ve done—no matter what we’ve said or even what we’ve believed before this moment.
No matter who we think we are, God sees us as the people he made and loves and gave himself up to save.
Whatever else you think about yourself, the good news is that when you come to him in faith, God sees you as perfect and spotless and shiny and new.
That’s the good news—that’s the gospel of Jesus Christ offered to each one of us, every day.
What’s left for us is to accept it—to live it—and to share it with the world Christ came to save.
Amen.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Clear Enough?
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 1:18-20
It’s one of the great, often true stereotypes about men in our culture. Here’s the stereotype: men usually don’t like to ask for directions or even read maps. I know, I know, some guys aren’t like this, but they just stick out and prove the rule most of the time. Is there a more iconic beginning to a fight in books or movies or TV? The wife says: We’re lost. The husband says: No we’re not. The wife asks the husband to stop for directions. The husband refuses and we’re off to the races…
Julie and I went to Normandy last year, and even though neither of us speaks French, we always knew where we were because the signs were so clear. Everywhere we looked there were arrows pointing to exactly what we wanted to see, and at the very least there was always one large sign that said ‘OVERLORD,’ the operational name for the D-Day invasion. Seriously, I remember thinking to myself that you’d have to be blind to get lost along that northern Normandy coast.
18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Before we get into that it’s worth a reminder of the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Last week we heard Paul say ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel,’ and the point of that for us as we move deeper into this important letter is that we stop being ashamed of the Gospel when we accept the fact that the Gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
So what about our text this morning?
It introduces a section on the state of things when the world rejects God. It starts with an ominous sentence: ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against godlessness and wickedness’…let’s come back to that one.
Then there’s a section listing a broad range of examples of what happens when people lose sight of God, followed by an explanation of God and people and sin and judgment that is rooted in the Jewish tradition—in the Jewish world view.
So let’s talk about how Paul addresses some of these things in our text this morning.
The first thing that jumps of the page is this business about the ‘Wrath of God’. We all have an image in our minds of what that might be. Lightning, plagues, hail, floods—there are all kinds of images we conjure up when someone mentions God’s wrath. For some people it confirms the worst about what they think about God and the Bible and Christians. Why give your life to a faith that’s rooted in fear of the wrath of a God you can’t even see?
But as you read through the rest of this chapter you’ll find that what Paul is actually describing is scarier than that. He says that when people choose to reject God…God lets them do it. Paul says: ‘Therefore God gave them over’ to whatever it is they wanted to do instead of worshipping and serving God. What? No fire…no brimstone? That doesn’t sound very wrathful.
But it does sound strangely loving. It’s the tough love that people talk about sometimes—when a parent has to make the painful choice to let a child make their own mess…and take the consequences. It’s when we stop enabling someone to keep on living in any form of self-destructive behavior—when we stop shielding them from the consequences—in the hopes that they’ll be shaken back into their senses.
God’s wrath is simply that he allows his people to go their own way—the way they choose for themselves.
That leaves a pretty comprehensive list covering everything from slander and gossip, questions of sexuality, and even arrogance and boastfulness. Let’s be clear about this part: none of the individual sins here are worse than any of the others. It’s the idea of sin itself—the things we do that separate us from God and from God’s ways—that’s what Paul is teaching us in this section of his letter.
But then we’re left with what God tries to do to bring us back to him—this idea of the ‘Visibility of God’. Through it all God tries to make himself plain—even obvious—to the world he made. The call to notice and follow: God’s ‘eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen’, Paul says, ‘being understood from what has been made.’
Most of us at some point or another, as we have struggled to know God and to believe that he really exists—most of us have said something like: ‘O God, I’d believe in you if you just showed me a sign.
That’s what’s behind those stories we see every so often about someone seeing Jesus or the Virgin Mary in a piece of fruit or a ham sandwich. It was the foundation of the controversy over the Shroud of Turin. It’s that moment that everyone has experienced where we’re sure we would be the people God called us to be if he would just show himself to us.
Does that ring true for you? Wouldn’t we all love to see a sign that proved beyond any doubt that God existed? What sign would be good enough?
Frederick Buechner imagines a story in his book, The Magnificent Defeat. After hearing the collective cries of his people for a sign, God reaches into the heavens and rearranges the stars so that they spell out ‘I EXIST’ in every language. The response is dramatic: Stadiums and arenas can’t contain local churches; elderly Christians weep at the confirmation that their faith has not been in vain; doubters and scoffers turn to God in passionate faith. After a period where the the Gospel spreads to every corner of the earth, a man walks with his young son to look at the night sky. As they stand together, hand-in-hand, reading God’s unmistakable self-revelation, the boy turns to his father and says,
‘So what?’
The signs that pointed to God’s existence had become so commonplace that those who had not known life without them failed to understand their message.
The point here is that the real question isn’t about whether or not we get to see a sign. The real point comes in the form of a question: Will we see the signs for what they truly are? Remember where our passage comes from—it’s a part of the introduction to an argument—to Paul making the case that God could be trusted in Rome and beyond because he had been faithful to his promises to Israel.
But even that’s not the heart of the matter. At the very core of this section of Paul’s letter is something that’s true for every person whether we admit it or not, and here it is:
Something or someone is going to be lord in our lives.
Bob Dylan said it a different way, of course: ‘You’re gonna serve somebody.’ Either way it’s true—each of us will make something lord in our life. The question that each of us has to answer is ‘who or what will it be?’
There’s no shortage of choices. People turn all kinds of things into gods for themselves: wealth, power, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, even safety. Money as a god has taken a beating in this past year, but even that one is always going to make a comeback.
We’re all going to choose something to be the lord of our life—it’s the way we’re wired. Remember that Paul has a goal in this letter—he’s trying to get Roman Christians to trust God because God has been faithful to his promises in the past.
He knows that God gives us all the freedom to choose whatever we want to follow as lord. Paul’s goal is to convince as many people as possible to choose Christ for that important job.
But first we have to notice him. First we have to see the signs.
The call on us in this passage is to see the indications of God in the world around us—not just in nature but in the beauty and creativity we see in the culture, too.
The call is to see all of that—to see the way that God communicates says ‘I EXIST' through the world around us—to see all of that and not respond by saying ‘So what?’
The call on us is to seek out what we can learn and experience and even know about God through our interactions with Creation, with each other and with the culture.
But even that isn’t enough. Today especially, as we remember World Communion Sunday, it’s important for us to remember that the practice of the Sacraments in worship is one critical way we experience God—experience the sacred—in our regular lives.
In the book that guides the worship in my own Presbyterian tradition, this is what it says about Communion—about the Lord’s Supper.
“The Lord’s Supper is the sign and seal of eating and drinking in communion with the crucified and risen Lord…On the day of his resurrection, the risen Jesus made himself known to his followers in the breaking of bread. He continued to show himself to believers, by blessing and breaking bread, by preparing, serving and sharing common meals…The New Testament describes the meal as a participation in Christ and with one another in the expectation of the Kingdom and as a foretaste of the messianic banquet.”
Communion is just one of many ways God makes himself known to us. We’re going to talk about more of those in the coming weeks and months.
But for now, maybe we have to train our eyes to see—maybe the signs have been there all along and we’ve gotten out of the habit of seeing them. Maybe we’ve chosen other gods and we don’t know how to get out from under those decisions and change our lives.
Whatever might be holding you back, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it’s never too late—there’s no place you can go that’s too far.
There is no shortage of ways we can find ourselves lost, but nothing we’ve ever said or done or even believed before this moment can separate us from the one who made us and loves us.
As we come to the Table today my invitation to you is to experience the presence of the Risen Christ in a real way. To see this meal as a ‘participation in Christ and with one another’ in the expectation of the Kingdom, and as a foretaste of the Great Banquet God promised.
The invitation to all of us who are coming in faith is to see God in the bread, in the cup, and in each other as we share this small feast.
It’s only appropriate that as we come to the Table we remember the one whose Table it is. We come as faithful people to worship and adore Christ the King. As we prepare our hearts today, let’s stand and sing another hymn out of season: 'O Come All Ye Faithful'
Romans 1:18-20
It’s one of the great, often true stereotypes about men in our culture. Here’s the stereotype: men usually don’t like to ask for directions or even read maps. I know, I know, some guys aren’t like this, but they just stick out and prove the rule most of the time. Is there a more iconic beginning to a fight in books or movies or TV? The wife says: We’re lost. The husband says: No we’re not. The wife asks the husband to stop for directions. The husband refuses and we’re off to the races…
Julie and I went to Normandy last year, and even though neither of us speaks French, we always knew where we were because the signs were so clear. Everywhere we looked there were arrows pointing to exactly what we wanted to see, and at the very least there was always one large sign that said ‘OVERLORD,’ the operational name for the D-Day invasion. Seriously, I remember thinking to myself that you’d have to be blind to get lost along that northern Normandy coast.
18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Before we get into that it’s worth a reminder of the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Last week we heard Paul say ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel,’ and the point of that for us as we move deeper into this important letter is that we stop being ashamed of the Gospel when we accept the fact that the Gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
So what about our text this morning?
It introduces a section on the state of things when the world rejects God. It starts with an ominous sentence: ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against godlessness and wickedness’…let’s come back to that one.
Then there’s a section listing a broad range of examples of what happens when people lose sight of God, followed by an explanation of God and people and sin and judgment that is rooted in the Jewish tradition—in the Jewish world view.
So let’s talk about how Paul addresses some of these things in our text this morning.
The first thing that jumps of the page is this business about the ‘Wrath of God’. We all have an image in our minds of what that might be. Lightning, plagues, hail, floods—there are all kinds of images we conjure up when someone mentions God’s wrath. For some people it confirms the worst about what they think about God and the Bible and Christians. Why give your life to a faith that’s rooted in fear of the wrath of a God you can’t even see?
But as you read through the rest of this chapter you’ll find that what Paul is actually describing is scarier than that. He says that when people choose to reject God…God lets them do it. Paul says: ‘Therefore God gave them over’ to whatever it is they wanted to do instead of worshipping and serving God. What? No fire…no brimstone? That doesn’t sound very wrathful.
But it does sound strangely loving. It’s the tough love that people talk about sometimes—when a parent has to make the painful choice to let a child make their own mess…and take the consequences. It’s when we stop enabling someone to keep on living in any form of self-destructive behavior—when we stop shielding them from the consequences—in the hopes that they’ll be shaken back into their senses.
God’s wrath is simply that he allows his people to go their own way—the way they choose for themselves.
That leaves a pretty comprehensive list covering everything from slander and gossip, questions of sexuality, and even arrogance and boastfulness. Let’s be clear about this part: none of the individual sins here are worse than any of the others. It’s the idea of sin itself—the things we do that separate us from God and from God’s ways—that’s what Paul is teaching us in this section of his letter.
But then we’re left with what God tries to do to bring us back to him—this idea of the ‘Visibility of God’. Through it all God tries to make himself plain—even obvious—to the world he made. The call to notice and follow: God’s ‘eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen’, Paul says, ‘being understood from what has been made.’
Most of us at some point or another, as we have struggled to know God and to believe that he really exists—most of us have said something like: ‘O God, I’d believe in you if you just showed me a sign.
That’s what’s behind those stories we see every so often about someone seeing Jesus or the Virgin Mary in a piece of fruit or a ham sandwich. It was the foundation of the controversy over the Shroud of Turin. It’s that moment that everyone has experienced where we’re sure we would be the people God called us to be if he would just show himself to us.
Does that ring true for you? Wouldn’t we all love to see a sign that proved beyond any doubt that God existed? What sign would be good enough?
Frederick Buechner imagines a story in his book, The Magnificent Defeat. After hearing the collective cries of his people for a sign, God reaches into the heavens and rearranges the stars so that they spell out ‘I EXIST’ in every language. The response is dramatic: Stadiums and arenas can’t contain local churches; elderly Christians weep at the confirmation that their faith has not been in vain; doubters and scoffers turn to God in passionate faith. After a period where the the Gospel spreads to every corner of the earth, a man walks with his young son to look at the night sky. As they stand together, hand-in-hand, reading God’s unmistakable self-revelation, the boy turns to his father and says,
‘So what?’
The signs that pointed to God’s existence had become so commonplace that those who had not known life without them failed to understand their message.
The point here is that the real question isn’t about whether or not we get to see a sign. The real point comes in the form of a question: Will we see the signs for what they truly are? Remember where our passage comes from—it’s a part of the introduction to an argument—to Paul making the case that God could be trusted in Rome and beyond because he had been faithful to his promises to Israel.
But even that’s not the heart of the matter. At the very core of this section of Paul’s letter is something that’s true for every person whether we admit it or not, and here it is:
Something or someone is going to be lord in our lives.
Bob Dylan said it a different way, of course: ‘You’re gonna serve somebody.’ Either way it’s true—each of us will make something lord in our life. The question that each of us has to answer is ‘who or what will it be?’
There’s no shortage of choices. People turn all kinds of things into gods for themselves: wealth, power, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, even safety. Money as a god has taken a beating in this past year, but even that one is always going to make a comeback.
We’re all going to choose something to be the lord of our life—it’s the way we’re wired. Remember that Paul has a goal in this letter—he’s trying to get Roman Christians to trust God because God has been faithful to his promises in the past.
He knows that God gives us all the freedom to choose whatever we want to follow as lord. Paul’s goal is to convince as many people as possible to choose Christ for that important job.
But first we have to notice him. First we have to see the signs.
The call on us in this passage is to see the indications of God in the world around us—not just in nature but in the beauty and creativity we see in the culture, too.
The call is to see all of that—to see the way that God communicates says ‘I EXIST' through the world around us—to see all of that and not respond by saying ‘So what?’
The call on us is to seek out what we can learn and experience and even know about God through our interactions with Creation, with each other and with the culture.
But even that isn’t enough. Today especially, as we remember World Communion Sunday, it’s important for us to remember that the practice of the Sacraments in worship is one critical way we experience God—experience the sacred—in our regular lives.
In the book that guides the worship in my own Presbyterian tradition, this is what it says about Communion—about the Lord’s Supper.
“The Lord’s Supper is the sign and seal of eating and drinking in communion with the crucified and risen Lord…On the day of his resurrection, the risen Jesus made himself known to his followers in the breaking of bread. He continued to show himself to believers, by blessing and breaking bread, by preparing, serving and sharing common meals…The New Testament describes the meal as a participation in Christ and with one another in the expectation of the Kingdom and as a foretaste of the messianic banquet.”
Communion is just one of many ways God makes himself known to us. We’re going to talk about more of those in the coming weeks and months.
But for now, maybe we have to train our eyes to see—maybe the signs have been there all along and we’ve gotten out of the habit of seeing them. Maybe we’ve chosen other gods and we don’t know how to get out from under those decisions and change our lives.
Whatever might be holding you back, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it’s never too late—there’s no place you can go that’s too far.
There is no shortage of ways we can find ourselves lost, but nothing we’ve ever said or done or even believed before this moment can separate us from the one who made us and loves us.
As we come to the Table today my invitation to you is to experience the presence of the Risen Christ in a real way. To see this meal as a ‘participation in Christ and with one another’ in the expectation of the Kingdom, and as a foretaste of the Great Banquet God promised.
The invitation to all of us who are coming in faith is to see God in the bread, in the cup, and in each other as we share this small feast.
It’s only appropriate that as we come to the Table we remember the one whose Table it is. We come as faithful people to worship and adore Christ the King. As we prepare our hearts today, let’s stand and sing another hymn out of season: 'O Come All Ye Faithful'
Monday, September 28, 2009
Nothing To Be Ashamed Of
(This message is part of a series on Romans titled "Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose.")
Romans 1:16-17
16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
We’re at the beginning of a journey through parts of Paul’s letter to the Christians in 1st-century Rome. As I said last week, there are a few things for us to know as we try to understand this complicated letter.
The Roman church was really a network of homes and converted synagogues where people gathered to worship and learn and serve in Christ’s name. Remember that there were more than 50,000 Jews in Rome at that time, and that a significant number of them had converted to Christianity and were worshipping side-by-side with Gentile Christians from Rome and other parts of the Empire.
Paul was the ideal person to write this pastoral letter. Paul had been a devout Jew for most of his life. He was trained as a Pharisee under the most famous Pharisee scholar of them all, a man named Gamaliel, which I said last week was the equivalent of getting an Ivy League PhD in Jewish law. Saul calls himself a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’, and even leads some of the early persecution of the Christian church.
But Saul becomes Paul when he meets Jesus on the road to Damascus, and everything changes for him. He takes his academic training, his ability to earn and raise money, and his passionate faith in Jesus Christ—he takes all of those into his new job—his new calling as one of the founders of the Christian church. It’s in that new role that Paul writes this crucial letter.
And so what was the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans?
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Simple, right?
It’s not really simple at all, but as we make our way through our text this morning, there are some things to notice about what Paul is teaching here.
First, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in the promises God made to the Jewish people.
Paul says in our text that the Gospel is “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” and the text ends with a quote from the prophet Habakkuk: “The righteous will live by faith.” Even in this short passage Paul is making the link between the Gospel of Jesus and the history of God’s relationship with the Jewish people.
Second, that Gospel, wherever it came from, is available to all people.
The Gospel is God’s “salvation for everyone who believes.” This is a key part of Paul’s ministry, and it also shapes the early history of the church. The Christian faith was born out of Judaism, but it was meant for everyone. Remember the promises we read last week and this morning that God made to Abram—that he would make him into a great nation with more descendants than he could count. All of that was meant for a purpose: “…and all the nations will be blessed through you.”
It’s the ministry of Jesus that becomes that blessing—it’s a blessing that comes through Jesus—through Judaism—and offers God’s redemption and reconciliation to the whole world
Finally we experience the full gift of the Gospel by faith alone.
“For in the Gospel a righteousness is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.”
This is a tricky one, because it’s in this single sentence that Paul is trying to change the entire world view of his Jewish convert readers. They would have believed from birth that “righteousness”—being reconciled to God, came from following the Law and offering the right sacrifices. Here Paul is saying that the gift of connection to God is just that. It’s a gift that comes by faith alone, and not by anything we can do to earn it.
It’s this theme that pushed Martin Luther into the movement that became the Reformation. So many things had been added by the church to the list of what people had to do to draw near to God. So many layers of religious stuff had been placed between the individual believer and God. When Luther read Paul’s letter to the Romans with fresh eyes, he learned that God had cleared out all of those obstructions—when Luther realized that what God wanted was for people to come to him by faith alone, it changed everything.
In the Jewish tradition tomorrow is Yom Kippur. It’s a day of solemn reflection and confession for sins against God and against other people—it’s also a day of repentance for both individual and corporate sins. The purpose of the day is to be cleansed—to be released from the guilt and shame that come from those things we do that separate us from God (not God from us, by the way).
The message of Romans, and the point that Paul is trying to communicate to his Gentile readers and Jewish converts at the same time, is that we’re not driven or controlled anymore by our guilt and shame. Because God has been faithful to his promises, we can come to him by faith alone.
But that doesn’t mean that ‘shame’ isn’t a real part of our lives.
John Bradshaw is a psychologist who specializes in dealing with the impact of shame on individuals and families. He wrote: “To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is somehow flawed—that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.” That’s what the Gospel is designed to transform in our lives—that feeling of being not quite fully human because of our sin and shame.
That brings us back to Paul’s bold claim: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” What was he saying?
Paul was making the point that he wasn’t ashamed of the gospel, because the point of the Gospel was to take away his shame. But mostly he’s saying that as strange as this story sounds, he knew that it was rooted in the history and promises and character of God himself, so there was no need to be embarrassed about it.
Paul said to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
What does that mean for us? The first two things we’ve said already:
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in God’s promises and relationship with Israel.
The Gospel is available to all people.
But there’s more.
The Gospel is something we grasp through faith, not science, not blind leap, but through our struggle to trust the God who has demonstrated his trustworthiness through the Cross and Resurrection.
As we grasp the Gospel we find that it takes away the shame we carry with us in our lives. That’s part of the point. As hard as it might be for us to fully comprehend, the Gospel restores us and remakes us into the people that God made us to be in the first place. Part of that process is helping us to acknowledge our sin and ask for forgiveness. The rest of that process is like a deep cleansing that the Scriptures tell us will make us ‘whiter than snow.’
Mostly this text is a reminder that just as he did with Paul, God invites us to stop being ashamed of the gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in history and available to everyone. It has the power to build community and spark reconciliation and give hope to every single person on earth.
But mostly we stop being ashamed of the Gospel when we accept the fact that the Gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
No matter what we done or said or thought or believed in the past, the gospel—the good news that Jesus Christ has come and lived and served and died and rose again—that Gospel takes us where we are, it cleanses us and restores us, and in the end it makes all things new.
When Yom Kippur was celebrated in the ancient world, it was the only day of the year when the high priest would enter the ‘Holy of Holies,’ the most important room in the Temple at Jerusalem. The gift of the gospel—the reason we’re all here today—is that through Jesus Christ we can approach God wherever we are and whenever we want. The call on us to come in faith, to trust in God’s promises, and to share that message with a hungry world.
That desire to share the message of the Gospel is what’s behind our closing hymn today. When Charles Wesley would have one of those moments where he realized the depth of God’s love for him, he would wish for a thousand voices to offer his love and praises to God.
Let’s stand together and ask for the same thing: “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
Romans 1:16-17
16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
We’re at the beginning of a journey through parts of Paul’s letter to the Christians in 1st-century Rome. As I said last week, there are a few things for us to know as we try to understand this complicated letter.
The Roman church was really a network of homes and converted synagogues where people gathered to worship and learn and serve in Christ’s name. Remember that there were more than 50,000 Jews in Rome at that time, and that a significant number of them had converted to Christianity and were worshipping side-by-side with Gentile Christians from Rome and other parts of the Empire.
Paul was the ideal person to write this pastoral letter. Paul had been a devout Jew for most of his life. He was trained as a Pharisee under the most famous Pharisee scholar of them all, a man named Gamaliel, which I said last week was the equivalent of getting an Ivy League PhD in Jewish law. Saul calls himself a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’, and even leads some of the early persecution of the Christian church.
But Saul becomes Paul when he meets Jesus on the road to Damascus, and everything changes for him. He takes his academic training, his ability to earn and raise money, and his passionate faith in Jesus Christ—he takes all of those into his new job—his new calling as one of the founders of the Christian church. It’s in that new role that Paul writes this crucial letter.
And so what was the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans?
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people.
It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Simple, right?
It’s not really simple at all, but as we make our way through our text this morning, there are some things to notice about what Paul is teaching here.
First, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in the promises God made to the Jewish people.
Paul says in our text that the Gospel is “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” and the text ends with a quote from the prophet Habakkuk: “The righteous will live by faith.” Even in this short passage Paul is making the link between the Gospel of Jesus and the history of God’s relationship with the Jewish people.
Second, that Gospel, wherever it came from, is available to all people.
The Gospel is God’s “salvation for everyone who believes.” This is a key part of Paul’s ministry, and it also shapes the early history of the church. The Christian faith was born out of Judaism, but it was meant for everyone. Remember the promises we read last week and this morning that God made to Abram—that he would make him into a great nation with more descendants than he could count. All of that was meant for a purpose: “…and all the nations will be blessed through you.”
It’s the ministry of Jesus that becomes that blessing—it’s a blessing that comes through Jesus—through Judaism—and offers God’s redemption and reconciliation to the whole world
Finally we experience the full gift of the Gospel by faith alone.
“For in the Gospel a righteousness is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.”
This is a tricky one, because it’s in this single sentence that Paul is trying to change the entire world view of his Jewish convert readers. They would have believed from birth that “righteousness”—being reconciled to God, came from following the Law and offering the right sacrifices. Here Paul is saying that the gift of connection to God is just that. It’s a gift that comes by faith alone, and not by anything we can do to earn it.
It’s this theme that pushed Martin Luther into the movement that became the Reformation. So many things had been added by the church to the list of what people had to do to draw near to God. So many layers of religious stuff had been placed between the individual believer and God. When Luther read Paul’s letter to the Romans with fresh eyes, he learned that God had cleared out all of those obstructions—when Luther realized that what God wanted was for people to come to him by faith alone, it changed everything.
In the Jewish tradition tomorrow is Yom Kippur. It’s a day of solemn reflection and confession for sins against God and against other people—it’s also a day of repentance for both individual and corporate sins. The purpose of the day is to be cleansed—to be released from the guilt and shame that come from those things we do that separate us from God (not God from us, by the way).
The message of Romans, and the point that Paul is trying to communicate to his Gentile readers and Jewish converts at the same time, is that we’re not driven or controlled anymore by our guilt and shame. Because God has been faithful to his promises, we can come to him by faith alone.
But that doesn’t mean that ‘shame’ isn’t a real part of our lives.
John Bradshaw is a psychologist who specializes in dealing with the impact of shame on individuals and families. He wrote: “To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is somehow flawed—that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.” That’s what the Gospel is designed to transform in our lives—that feeling of being not quite fully human because of our sin and shame.
That brings us back to Paul’s bold claim: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” What was he saying?
Paul was making the point that he wasn’t ashamed of the gospel, because the point of the Gospel was to take away his shame. But mostly he’s saying that as strange as this story sounds, he knew that it was rooted in the history and promises and character of God himself, so there was no need to be embarrassed about it.
Paul said to the Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”
What does that mean for us? The first two things we’ve said already:
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in God’s promises and relationship with Israel.
The Gospel is available to all people.
But there’s more.
The Gospel is something we grasp through faith, not science, not blind leap, but through our struggle to trust the God who has demonstrated his trustworthiness through the Cross and Resurrection.
As we grasp the Gospel we find that it takes away the shame we carry with us in our lives. That’s part of the point. As hard as it might be for us to fully comprehend, the Gospel restores us and remakes us into the people that God made us to be in the first place. Part of that process is helping us to acknowledge our sin and ask for forgiveness. The rest of that process is like a deep cleansing that the Scriptures tell us will make us ‘whiter than snow.’
Mostly this text is a reminder that just as he did with Paul, God invites us to stop being ashamed of the gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in history and available to everyone. It has the power to build community and spark reconciliation and give hope to every single person on earth.
But mostly we stop being ashamed of the Gospel when we accept the fact that the Gospel isn’t ashamed of us.
No matter what we done or said or thought or believed in the past, the gospel—the good news that Jesus Christ has come and lived and served and died and rose again—that Gospel takes us where we are, it cleanses us and restores us, and in the end it makes all things new.
When Yom Kippur was celebrated in the ancient world, it was the only day of the year when the high priest would enter the ‘Holy of Holies,’ the most important room in the Temple at Jerusalem. The gift of the gospel—the reason we’re all here today—is that through Jesus Christ we can approach God wherever we are and whenever we want. The call on us to come in faith, to trust in God’s promises, and to share that message with a hungry world.
That desire to share the message of the Gospel is what’s behind our closing hymn today. When Charles Wesley would have one of those moments where he realized the depth of God’s love for him, he would wish for a thousand voices to offer his love and praises to God.
Let’s stand together and ask for the same thing: “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing”
Monday, September 21, 2009
Based on a Promise, Called for a Purpose
Romans 1:1-7
An atheist was walking through the woods one day, admiring the nature around him. "What majestic trees! What a powerful river! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. Turning to look, he saw a 13-foot Kodiak brown bear beginning to charge towards him. He ran as fast as he could down the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was rapidly closing on him. Somehow, he ran even faster, so scared that tears came to his eyes. He looked again and the bear was even closer. His heart pounding in his chest, he tried to run faster yet.
But alas, he tripped and fell to the ground. As he rolled over to pick himself up, the bear was right over him, reaching for him with its left paw and raising its right paw to strike him.
"OH MY GOD—HELP ME! ..."
Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. Even the river stopped moving ... A brilliant light shone upon the man, a thunderous voice came from all around...
"YOU DENY MY EXISTENCE FOR ALL THESE YEARS, TEACH OTHERS THAT I DON'T EXIST AND EVEN CREDIT CREATION TO SOME COSMIC ACCIDENT. DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HELP YOU OUT OF THIS PREDICAMENT? AM I TO COUNT YOU AS A BELIEVER?"
Difficult as it was, the atheist looked directly into the light and said, "It would be hypocritical to ask to be a Christian after all these years, but perhaps you could make the bear a Christian?"
"VERY WELL." Said God.
The light went out. The river ran. The sounds of the forest resumed.
... and the bear dropped down on his knees, brought both paws together, bowed his head and spoke: "Lord, thank you for this food which I am about to receive."
That story has absolutely nothing to do with today’s message, but it was too good to pass up. In any case it’s a good reminder that it’s OK—maybe even recommended—to be very specific in our prayers…
Today we begin an exploration through Paul’s letter to the Romans. It’s the longest and most complicated of Paul’s letters, but it’s also very important for our understanding of who we are and whose we are as Christian people—as a Christian church.
Our text this morning is Romans 1:1-7.
1Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now Romans has a bad reputation. As books of the Bible go it has the reputation for being hard—for being too complicated—for being difficult to understand. Here’s a news flash: The reputation is true. Romans is a hard book to read. It’s long, which makes it hard to read in one sitting like you can with the other letters of Paul. But it’s not just its length. Think about what you’re trying to understand in reading this letter. This book of the Bible was written 2000 years ago by a converted Jew who was trained as a Pharisee. He was writing it to a city he hadn’t visited before, and trying to convince them that something that happened in one of the backwaters of the Roman Empire could offer them salvation from a God they were just getting to know.
Of course this letter is hard to read. But still, everyone has their favorite Romans verse, right?
Romans 1:16
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
Everyone has their favorite passage from Romans. I want to say very clearly as we get started here that these favorite passages, when you take them individually, can get in the way of understanding what this letter is all about.
The point of the letter is in our text, but it’s also rooted in the covenant promises that God made (and kept) to the Jewish people. (See Genesis 12:1-3 here)
Let’s put the letter into context.
The Apostle Paul is one of the central figures of the early church. He was born into the Jewish faith and trained as a Pharisee. We think of the Pharisees as the villains in most of the stories about Jesus in the gospels, but that’s not completely fair. The Pharisees were scholars whose job it was to make sure that people of faith followed the Hebrew laws to the very letter. They believed—they were people of deep faith who took their responsibility very seriously. But that’s what got them on the bad side of Jesus—too much law and not enough heart.
Paul, who starts out as Saul form a place called Tarsus, trained under a famous Pharisee scholar named Gamaliel, which is the equivalent of getting an Ivy League PhD in Jewish law. Saul calls himself a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’, and even leads some of the early persecution of the Christian church. But that’s only the beginning of his story. Saul meets Jesus in a miraculous vision on his way to Damascus. Jesus changes his name to Paul, and calls him to be the one who shares the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world.
Most of Paul’s letters were written within 20 or 30 years after Jesus’ earthly ministry. Paul is brilliant, blunt, abrasive, tender, and fearless—we’ll see all of those qualities as we move through his letter to the Romans.
Paul’s letter was written to the new Christian church in Rome. It was mostly Gentile but it had a strong core of Jewish converts. There were 50,000 Jews in Rome in the 1st century, and many of them converted to the Christian faith. Many of the early Christian churches in Rome were actually converted synagogues, so there was a deep sense of connection between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Roman church.
This letter was written in the year 55AD—fairly early in the history of Christianity. Remember that the Christian movement was still being persecuted at this point, and it would get worse as the church grew.
It makes sense then that the point of the letter would have something to do with both Jews and Gentiles, since both were involved in the Roman church.
And so what was the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans?
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people. It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Keep that in mind not only today but also through this entire series. Paul is making a case—he’s making an argument to the most influential city in the world—and it centers on God’s faithfulness to his promises to the Jewish people.
Let’s look at our text.
Notice in the second verse that Paul refers to the ‘gospel promised beforehand through the prophets and Holy Scriptures.’ That’s a clear indication that we’re supposed to see the life and ministry of Jesus in light of the prophecies of the Old Testament. Just a point of logical detail here, but the ‘Holy Scripture’ Paul mentions here is the Hebrew Bible—the Old Testament—since he’s writing before the New Testament is circulating. The real point, though, is that the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ—is rooted in the promises of the Jewish tradition.
We should also pay attention to the central role of the resurrection in Paul’s argument. It’s the resurrection of Jesus that proves God is faithful to his promise to bless everyone, Jew and Gentile and everyone in between. It’s the resurrection that Paul uses as proof that God can be trusted at his word.
All of this is built on a foundation of God’s grace: ‘Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from everywhere to faith.’ Grace is central to our understanding of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Grace takes on all kinds of different shapes. This past week there was a story about a guy who had been a season ticket holder with the Philadelphia Phillies (that’s an American baseball team, by the way) for years, but he’d never caught a foul ball. The other night a ball came his way and he made a great catch. The whole thing was caught on one of the TV cameras and the whole stadium was watching him. He celebrated with his friends and the fans around him, then gave the ball to his 3-year-old daughter. She smiled and threw the ball back onto the field.
The stadium went silent for a moment, and then the dad scooped up his daughter and gave her a huge hug. The stadium went crazy—the dad ended up on morning talk shows and becoming a local celebrity. When he was asked why he reacted the way he did, he said: “I didn’t want her to feel bad—I wanted her to know she was more important than the ball.”
Someday that little girl will realize what she did that day, but what she’ll really remember is that her father loved her anyway.
I posted that story on my Facebook page this past week, and one of Julie’s old friends commented that ‘that’s an example of parenting as it should be.’
She’s right. The dad in that story is an example of parenting with grace, and that’s the point Paul is making about God here. Through Christ we’re given the gift of grace from God himself, no matter what we’ve done, and it’s that grace that empowers us and gives us strength for the journey.
It’s through Christ that we get reminded that no matter what we’ve done, our father loves us anyway.
What does all of this mean for us?
Paul’s letter to the Romans, with all its theology and teaching and challenge and history—this letter is as much to us in this time and place as it was to the 1st-century Romans. The case that Paul was making to the Romans is the same case we all need to hear and share right now if we’re going to grow into the people he made us to be in the first place.
There are two main points for us to remember as we read this letter and as we seek to be Christ’s disciples in the world.
First, our trust in God is based on a promise. We believe and have hope because God has shown us over and over again that he can be trusted—that he’ll keep his word—that in the end he’ll “make all things new.” None of that means our lives are guaranteed to be rosy, by the way. God’s faithfulness doesn’t always equal an easy life for us. But the point of the resurrection—the reason Jesus Christ was risen from the dead was to prove that the reign of God extended even to the things we fear the most—that God’s Kingdom ruled over all people and all places and everything else, even death.
God has been and will be faithful, but that’s not the end of the story.
The second point for us to remember is this: In response to God’s faithfulness to his promises, we have been called for a purpose. Paul identifies himself in our text as a ‘servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.’
The same is true about us. Christ calls each one of us to serve him in some way—somehow each of us has some gift or talent to share with the whole body of Christ to make us whole—to make us better. We’re called to be apostles wherever we are—ambassadors of the message that God is faithful, that he keeps his promises, and that he loves all of his creation. Paul the apostle had to start the church. The call on us is to grow it and extend it to the ends of the earth.
Finally, we’re set apart for the gospel of God—set apart to be agents of the Good News in every situation. Now that’s a project that really doesn’t have an end to it—we never really accomplish it or complete it. It doesn’t have an end, but it needs to have a beginning and a middle. To be set apart is to hear the call to live differently—to love and earn and spend and serve in a new way because of what Christ has done for us.
That’s the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Our faith in Jesus Christ is based on the promise that God is who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he would do. Because of that we’re called to a purpose: to share that good news with anyone who will listen.
This letter is to the Roman church, but we’re going to see that it could just as easily be addressed to the churches in London. Hear the last verse of our text in a new way:
“To all in London who are loved by God and called to be saints. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
Because the resurrection is so central to this letter, and because we suddenly like to sing our hymns out of season, let’s stand and sing together one of the great Easter hymns—“Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”
An atheist was walking through the woods one day, admiring the nature around him. "What majestic trees! What a powerful river! What beautiful animals!" he said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. Turning to look, he saw a 13-foot Kodiak brown bear beginning to charge towards him. He ran as fast as he could down the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was rapidly closing on him. Somehow, he ran even faster, so scared that tears came to his eyes. He looked again and the bear was even closer. His heart pounding in his chest, he tried to run faster yet.
But alas, he tripped and fell to the ground. As he rolled over to pick himself up, the bear was right over him, reaching for him with its left paw and raising its right paw to strike him.
"OH MY GOD—HELP ME! ..."
Time stopped. The bear froze. The forest was silent. Even the river stopped moving ... A brilliant light shone upon the man, a thunderous voice came from all around...
"YOU DENY MY EXISTENCE FOR ALL THESE YEARS, TEACH OTHERS THAT I DON'T EXIST AND EVEN CREDIT CREATION TO SOME COSMIC ACCIDENT. DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HELP YOU OUT OF THIS PREDICAMENT? AM I TO COUNT YOU AS A BELIEVER?"
Difficult as it was, the atheist looked directly into the light and said, "It would be hypocritical to ask to be a Christian after all these years, but perhaps you could make the bear a Christian?"
"VERY WELL." Said God.
The light went out. The river ran. The sounds of the forest resumed.
... and the bear dropped down on his knees, brought both paws together, bowed his head and spoke: "Lord, thank you for this food which I am about to receive."
That story has absolutely nothing to do with today’s message, but it was too good to pass up. In any case it’s a good reminder that it’s OK—maybe even recommended—to be very specific in our prayers…
Today we begin an exploration through Paul’s letter to the Romans. It’s the longest and most complicated of Paul’s letters, but it’s also very important for our understanding of who we are and whose we are as Christian people—as a Christian church.
Our text this morning is Romans 1:1-7.
1Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now Romans has a bad reputation. As books of the Bible go it has the reputation for being hard—for being too complicated—for being difficult to understand. Here’s a news flash: The reputation is true. Romans is a hard book to read. It’s long, which makes it hard to read in one sitting like you can with the other letters of Paul. But it’s not just its length. Think about what you’re trying to understand in reading this letter. This book of the Bible was written 2000 years ago by a converted Jew who was trained as a Pharisee. He was writing it to a city he hadn’t visited before, and trying to convince them that something that happened in one of the backwaters of the Roman Empire could offer them salvation from a God they were just getting to know.
Of course this letter is hard to read. But still, everyone has their favorite Romans verse, right?
Romans 1:16
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
Everyone has their favorite passage from Romans. I want to say very clearly as we get started here that these favorite passages, when you take them individually, can get in the way of understanding what this letter is all about.
The point of the letter is in our text, but it’s also rooted in the covenant promises that God made (and kept) to the Jewish people. (See Genesis 12:1-3 here)
Let’s put the letter into context.
The Apostle Paul is one of the central figures of the early church. He was born into the Jewish faith and trained as a Pharisee. We think of the Pharisees as the villains in most of the stories about Jesus in the gospels, but that’s not completely fair. The Pharisees were scholars whose job it was to make sure that people of faith followed the Hebrew laws to the very letter. They believed—they were people of deep faith who took their responsibility very seriously. But that’s what got them on the bad side of Jesus—too much law and not enough heart.
Paul, who starts out as Saul form a place called Tarsus, trained under a famous Pharisee scholar named Gamaliel, which is the equivalent of getting an Ivy League PhD in Jewish law. Saul calls himself a ‘Hebrew of Hebrews’, and even leads some of the early persecution of the Christian church. But that’s only the beginning of his story. Saul meets Jesus in a miraculous vision on his way to Damascus. Jesus changes his name to Paul, and calls him to be the one who shares the gospel of Jesus Christ with the world.
Most of Paul’s letters were written within 20 or 30 years after Jesus’ earthly ministry. Paul is brilliant, blunt, abrasive, tender, and fearless—we’ll see all of those qualities as we move through his letter to the Romans.
Paul’s letter was written to the new Christian church in Rome. It was mostly Gentile but it had a strong core of Jewish converts. There were 50,000 Jews in Rome in the 1st century, and many of them converted to the Christian faith. Many of the early Christian churches in Rome were actually converted synagogues, so there was a deep sense of connection between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Roman church.
This letter was written in the year 55AD—fairly early in the history of Christianity. Remember that the Christian movement was still being persecuted at this point, and it would get worse as the church grew.
It makes sense then that the point of the letter would have something to do with both Jews and Gentiles, since both were involved in the Roman church.
And so what was the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans?
Romans was written to convince one group of people that God could be trusted because of his faithfulness to another group of people.
Let me say that another way:
The letter to the Romans was written to convince the Gentile Christians in Rome that God could be trusted because he kept his promises to his Jewish covenant people. It was also a reminder to the Jewish people that they hadn’t left their old faith behind for a new one, but that Christ was the completion of the faith they’d held all along.
Keep that in mind not only today but also through this entire series. Paul is making a case—he’s making an argument to the most influential city in the world—and it centers on God’s faithfulness to his promises to the Jewish people.
Let’s look at our text.
Notice in the second verse that Paul refers to the ‘gospel promised beforehand through the prophets and Holy Scriptures.’ That’s a clear indication that we’re supposed to see the life and ministry of Jesus in light of the prophecies of the Old Testament. Just a point of logical detail here, but the ‘Holy Scripture’ Paul mentions here is the Hebrew Bible—the Old Testament—since he’s writing before the New Testament is circulating. The real point, though, is that the gospel—the good news of Jesus Christ—is rooted in the promises of the Jewish tradition.
We should also pay attention to the central role of the resurrection in Paul’s argument. It’s the resurrection of Jesus that proves God is faithful to his promise to bless everyone, Jew and Gentile and everyone in between. It’s the resurrection that Paul uses as proof that God can be trusted at his word.
All of this is built on a foundation of God’s grace: ‘Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from everywhere to faith.’ Grace is central to our understanding of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Grace takes on all kinds of different shapes. This past week there was a story about a guy who had been a season ticket holder with the Philadelphia Phillies (that’s an American baseball team, by the way) for years, but he’d never caught a foul ball. The other night a ball came his way and he made a great catch. The whole thing was caught on one of the TV cameras and the whole stadium was watching him. He celebrated with his friends and the fans around him, then gave the ball to his 3-year-old daughter. She smiled and threw the ball back onto the field.
The stadium went silent for a moment, and then the dad scooped up his daughter and gave her a huge hug. The stadium went crazy—the dad ended up on morning talk shows and becoming a local celebrity. When he was asked why he reacted the way he did, he said: “I didn’t want her to feel bad—I wanted her to know she was more important than the ball.”
Someday that little girl will realize what she did that day, but what she’ll really remember is that her father loved her anyway.
I posted that story on my Facebook page this past week, and one of Julie’s old friends commented that ‘that’s an example of parenting as it should be.’
She’s right. The dad in that story is an example of parenting with grace, and that’s the point Paul is making about God here. Through Christ we’re given the gift of grace from God himself, no matter what we’ve done, and it’s that grace that empowers us and gives us strength for the journey.
It’s through Christ that we get reminded that no matter what we’ve done, our father loves us anyway.
What does all of this mean for us?
Paul’s letter to the Romans, with all its theology and teaching and challenge and history—this letter is as much to us in this time and place as it was to the 1st-century Romans. The case that Paul was making to the Romans is the same case we all need to hear and share right now if we’re going to grow into the people he made us to be in the first place.
There are two main points for us to remember as we read this letter and as we seek to be Christ’s disciples in the world.
First, our trust in God is based on a promise. We believe and have hope because God has shown us over and over again that he can be trusted—that he’ll keep his word—that in the end he’ll “make all things new.” None of that means our lives are guaranteed to be rosy, by the way. God’s faithfulness doesn’t always equal an easy life for us. But the point of the resurrection—the reason Jesus Christ was risen from the dead was to prove that the reign of God extended even to the things we fear the most—that God’s Kingdom ruled over all people and all places and everything else, even death.
God has been and will be faithful, but that’s not the end of the story.
The second point for us to remember is this: In response to God’s faithfulness to his promises, we have been called for a purpose. Paul identifies himself in our text as a ‘servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.’
The same is true about us. Christ calls each one of us to serve him in some way—somehow each of us has some gift or talent to share with the whole body of Christ to make us whole—to make us better. We’re called to be apostles wherever we are—ambassadors of the message that God is faithful, that he keeps his promises, and that he loves all of his creation. Paul the apostle had to start the church. The call on us is to grow it and extend it to the ends of the earth.
Finally, we’re set apart for the gospel of God—set apart to be agents of the Good News in every situation. Now that’s a project that really doesn’t have an end to it—we never really accomplish it or complete it. It doesn’t have an end, but it needs to have a beginning and a middle. To be set apart is to hear the call to live differently—to love and earn and spend and serve in a new way because of what Christ has done for us.
That’s the point of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Our faith in Jesus Christ is based on the promise that God is who he says he is, and that he’ll do what he said he would do. Because of that we’re called to a purpose: to share that good news with anyone who will listen.
This letter is to the Roman church, but we’re going to see that it could just as easily be addressed to the churches in London. Hear the last verse of our text in a new way:
“To all in London who are loved by God and called to be saints. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.
Because the resurrection is so central to this letter, and because we suddenly like to sing our hymns out of season, let’s stand and sing together one of the great Easter hymns—“Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Welcome Back Sunday: Where the Heart Is
(The following is a part of my message from Welcome Back Sunday. The reflection on 9/11 is just below this post.)
John 14:23
This is our season of homesickness. Some of you have just moved here, while others have been here for a while and have just returned from visiting family and friends. That’s where Julie and I are right now. We miss our daughter, our parents and siblings, and the cousins that I an played with while we were back in California. It’s a season of homesickness. Many of us are here today missing places where we feel loved—places where many of the people we love still are. That’s really the essence of homesickness, isn’t it? Missing the places where we love and feel loved.
But it’s not just people and houses that define home for us. There are all kinds of things that we miss when we feel homesick. That gives me a good opportunity to share with you one of my most deeply held beliefs.
It’s something I learned from my grandfather as a child and was reinforced in my relationships at home and at church in my teens.
It’s something that grew in me during my college and seminary years.
It’s my firm and passionate belief that in almost every way that matters, baseball is superior to football. Now I know that football season just started, but that doesn’t change what I believe. I miss baseball, can you tell?
I’m not alone in this. One of the great philosophers of the 20th century agrees with me on the superiority of God’s game, er, baseball over football. Of course I’m talking about George Carlin. Listen to how he describes it:
Football is played on a gridiron. Baseball is played in a park.
Football players wear helmets. Baseball players wear caps.
In football the specialist comes in to kick something. In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.
Baseball has the 7th-inning stretch. Football has the 2-minute warning.
Baseball gets extra innings. Football has sudden death.
In football the runner gives you the stiff arm. In baseball the runner gets to slide.
But the biggest difference is that in football the main objective is military: The battle is fought in the trenches, the field general (you know him as the quarterback) seeks to evade the blitz and soften up the enemy line with a pounding ground attack and aerial bombardment. Sometimes he uses bullet passes; when he thinks it will work, he goes for a bomb to riddle the enemy defenses and penetrate the end zone.
In baseball, the object is to go home.
See what I mean? There’s no arguing with George Carlin on this one.
23Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
John’s gospel is a unique book in the New Testament. The other three gospels can be grouped together because they follow the same patterns and tell the same stories, but John is different. He covers a lot of the same events—and a few that aren’t in the other three books—but he tells those stories differently. He uses images like ‘word’ and ‘light’ and ‘life’ that make it easier to understand who Jesus is and what he was trying to do.
John’s gospel is the one we give to new Christians, because it gives people a great foundation for getting to know Christ in a meaningful way. If you’ve never read it from start to finish, or haven’t in a long time, I’d recommend it to you.
Chapter 14 of John’s gospel is the beginning of the ‘Farewell Discourses,’ a series of teachings and prayers to help the disciples learn to live and serve without Jesus being physically present with them.
The chapter starts with some familiar passages: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled…in my father’s house there are many rooms, or mansions,’ followed by a promise to go and prepare a place for his followers. By the time we get to our text in verse 23, Jesus is still talking about the idea of ‘home.’
There’s a little bit of profiling going on in our text. Listen to what Jesus says: ‘You’ll recognize the one who loves me because she’ll obey my teaching.’
Now Jesus isn’t saying that ‘if we’ll do A, then B will happen—that if we love him then God will love us in return’ He’s giving the profile of what a Christian really looks and sounds and acts like: You can recognize the people who love me—they’re the ones living out my teachings.
That’s a big part of what we want to do together in this church over the coming year. To focus on the teachings of Jesus and the way they’re interpreted and explained in the Scriptures is a big part of what we’re all about in this place.
Just looking back on the last year together, we’ve walked through a lot of what Jesus had to say. We spent last fall on the Lord’s Prayer, and how those words of Jesus teach not only how to pray, but how to live.
During Advent last year we talked about Christmas Gifts You Can Use: the way Jesus inspires Faith and Joy and Love and Hope for the world.
During Lent this year we talked about the meaning of the Atonement, of Christ’s sacrifice for all of us. And from there we explored the Resurrection and what it means for us, and then Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and how it transforms our lives individually and as a church.
This past summer we enjoyed the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Starting next week we’re going to begin a journey through Paul’s Letter to the Romans—a letter he wrote to explain what faith in Christ means for people in the most influential city of the day. Because there’s a message for London in this letter to Rome.
Learning the teachings of Jesus—and learning to obey those teachings—is the road map for growth as a Christian disciple.
All of that’s important, but what I really love is the next part of the text. The promise in our passage goes like this: God promises to make his home with the people who love him.
To put that another way, the promise to everyone on the journey of faith is not just that we’ll live with God somewhere, somehow in the future. The promise is that he’ll come and live with us and redefine what home means to us right now.
This past week we remembered the tragedy of 9/11. There was an essay in the Guardian by a writer who described a pair of shoes he keeps in a cupboard in his office. They belonged to his father. They’re scuffed and scratched—they’re covered in dust and sealed in a plastic bag.
The writer’s father had been in one of the twin towers, on the 59th floor, and had survived by making the long walk down the stairs to the street. When he got out of the building, he started walking, and he walked all the way to his family’s home on 71st Street.
The writer can’t make himself get rid of those shoes, or even to store them in a place where he won’t see them as often. The shoes are a part of what saved his father. The shoes are what brought his father home.
That leaves us with a few questions as we reflect on our text today.
What is it that rescues you from the disasters in your own life?
What is it that reminds you that you’re safe and secure and loved?
What is it that brings you to the place where you feel at home?
As a recovering English major there’s a little voice in the back of my head that reminds me that every new paragraph—every new section—every new year begins with a topic sentence. I’ve been thinking about what that sentence should be for us, and here it is:
Jesus Christ is the one who defines what ‘home’ really means for us.
In this church—among this diverse group of people from Britain and America and all over the world. In this place we believe that Jesus Christ offers the true comforts of home to every person. We find out what that means as we learn his teachings, as we become obedient to what those teachings call us to do, and as we grow into mature disciples of the one who made us, redeems us, and calls us into his family.
If you’ve been coming to this church for a while now, then welcome back.
If you’re here for the first time or new to London or just getting started with us—if you’ve come here this morning feeling more than a little homesick, then welcome. You’re among friends, and you’re in for a great year.
John 14:23
This is our season of homesickness. Some of you have just moved here, while others have been here for a while and have just returned from visiting family and friends. That’s where Julie and I are right now. We miss our daughter, our parents and siblings, and the cousins that I an played with while we were back in California. It’s a season of homesickness. Many of us are here today missing places where we feel loved—places where many of the people we love still are. That’s really the essence of homesickness, isn’t it? Missing the places where we love and feel loved.
But it’s not just people and houses that define home for us. There are all kinds of things that we miss when we feel homesick. That gives me a good opportunity to share with you one of my most deeply held beliefs.
It’s something I learned from my grandfather as a child and was reinforced in my relationships at home and at church in my teens.
It’s something that grew in me during my college and seminary years.
It’s my firm and passionate belief that in almost every way that matters, baseball is superior to football. Now I know that football season just started, but that doesn’t change what I believe. I miss baseball, can you tell?
I’m not alone in this. One of the great philosophers of the 20th century agrees with me on the superiority of God’s game, er, baseball over football. Of course I’m talking about George Carlin. Listen to how he describes it:
Football is played on a gridiron. Baseball is played in a park.
Football players wear helmets. Baseball players wear caps.
In football the specialist comes in to kick something. In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.
Baseball has the 7th-inning stretch. Football has the 2-minute warning.
Baseball gets extra innings. Football has sudden death.
In football the runner gives you the stiff arm. In baseball the runner gets to slide.
But the biggest difference is that in football the main objective is military: The battle is fought in the trenches, the field general (you know him as the quarterback) seeks to evade the blitz and soften up the enemy line with a pounding ground attack and aerial bombardment. Sometimes he uses bullet passes; when he thinks it will work, he goes for a bomb to riddle the enemy defenses and penetrate the end zone.
In baseball, the object is to go home.
See what I mean? There’s no arguing with George Carlin on this one.
23Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
John’s gospel is a unique book in the New Testament. The other three gospels can be grouped together because they follow the same patterns and tell the same stories, but John is different. He covers a lot of the same events—and a few that aren’t in the other three books—but he tells those stories differently. He uses images like ‘word’ and ‘light’ and ‘life’ that make it easier to understand who Jesus is and what he was trying to do.
John’s gospel is the one we give to new Christians, because it gives people a great foundation for getting to know Christ in a meaningful way. If you’ve never read it from start to finish, or haven’t in a long time, I’d recommend it to you.
Chapter 14 of John’s gospel is the beginning of the ‘Farewell Discourses,’ a series of teachings and prayers to help the disciples learn to live and serve without Jesus being physically present with them.
The chapter starts with some familiar passages: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled…in my father’s house there are many rooms, or mansions,’ followed by a promise to go and prepare a place for his followers. By the time we get to our text in verse 23, Jesus is still talking about the idea of ‘home.’
There’s a little bit of profiling going on in our text. Listen to what Jesus says: ‘You’ll recognize the one who loves me because she’ll obey my teaching.’
Now Jesus isn’t saying that ‘if we’ll do A, then B will happen—that if we love him then God will love us in return’ He’s giving the profile of what a Christian really looks and sounds and acts like: You can recognize the people who love me—they’re the ones living out my teachings.
That’s a big part of what we want to do together in this church over the coming year. To focus on the teachings of Jesus and the way they’re interpreted and explained in the Scriptures is a big part of what we’re all about in this place.
Just looking back on the last year together, we’ve walked through a lot of what Jesus had to say. We spent last fall on the Lord’s Prayer, and how those words of Jesus teach not only how to pray, but how to live.
During Advent last year we talked about Christmas Gifts You Can Use: the way Jesus inspires Faith and Joy and Love and Hope for the world.
During Lent this year we talked about the meaning of the Atonement, of Christ’s sacrifice for all of us. And from there we explored the Resurrection and what it means for us, and then Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and how it transforms our lives individually and as a church.
This past summer we enjoyed the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Starting next week we’re going to begin a journey through Paul’s Letter to the Romans—a letter he wrote to explain what faith in Christ means for people in the most influential city of the day. Because there’s a message for London in this letter to Rome.
Learning the teachings of Jesus—and learning to obey those teachings—is the road map for growth as a Christian disciple.
All of that’s important, but what I really love is the next part of the text. The promise in our passage goes like this: God promises to make his home with the people who love him.
To put that another way, the promise to everyone on the journey of faith is not just that we’ll live with God somewhere, somehow in the future. The promise is that he’ll come and live with us and redefine what home means to us right now.
This past week we remembered the tragedy of 9/11. There was an essay in the Guardian by a writer who described a pair of shoes he keeps in a cupboard in his office. They belonged to his father. They’re scuffed and scratched—they’re covered in dust and sealed in a plastic bag.
The writer’s father had been in one of the twin towers, on the 59th floor, and had survived by making the long walk down the stairs to the street. When he got out of the building, he started walking, and he walked all the way to his family’s home on 71st Street.
The writer can’t make himself get rid of those shoes, or even to store them in a place where he won’t see them as often. The shoes are a part of what saved his father. The shoes are what brought his father home.
That leaves us with a few questions as we reflect on our text today.
What is it that rescues you from the disasters in your own life?
What is it that reminds you that you’re safe and secure and loved?
What is it that brings you to the place where you feel at home?
As a recovering English major there’s a little voice in the back of my head that reminds me that every new paragraph—every new section—every new year begins with a topic sentence. I’ve been thinking about what that sentence should be for us, and here it is:
Jesus Christ is the one who defines what ‘home’ really means for us.
In this church—among this diverse group of people from Britain and America and all over the world. In this place we believe that Jesus Christ offers the true comforts of home to every person. We find out what that means as we learn his teachings, as we become obedient to what those teachings call us to do, and as we grow into mature disciples of the one who made us, redeems us, and calls us into his family.
If you’ve been coming to this church for a while now, then welcome back.
If you’re here for the first time or new to London or just getting started with us—if you’ve come here this morning feeling more than a little homesick, then welcome. You’re among friends, and you’re in for a great year.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Remembering and Shaking Free from Memory
It's an awful sort of anniversary.
I've been reading posts today about where people were and what they were doing when the attacks came. My East Coast friends were on their way to work, people near where I lived in Southern California were mostly waking up to the deed already done, and folks here in the UK were at lunch. Everyone remembers. Everyone does something different with their memories.
Some have come to see the world as a far more complicated place than they thought it was. No one can fully grasp the full array of ethnicities and religions and cultures around the world, but most know more than they did on 9/11. Some have devoted themselves to seeking common ground with those who committed (and supported) the attacks, as if conversation alone would prevent fanatics from being, well, fanatics.
Others have allowed their memories of that day to make them hard and angry and defensive. Many of these people were like that before, which really points to an odd sort of resistance to the impact of the attacks: they really weren't changed by them at all. But there are many who evolved into a reactive form of fearful bitterness, and it's those people who grieve me the most.
Because in my little corner of the world, most of my close friends and family are Christians. Not only that, but many of us would identify ourselves (with varying degrees of volume) as evangelicals--people who believe that Jesus Christ died to redeem the world, and that it is every believer's task to share that message. That specific description of our faith and ethics is important, because I fear that it has become yet another casualty of the terrorist attacks eight years ago.
There is a disconnect these days between the faith we assent to and the decisions we make. I suppose that's always been true: Christian history is dotted with decisions and events that seem to go directly against the doctrinal and ethical beliefs of the faith. But I can't do anything about the Crusades or the Salem Witch Trials or slavery. What I'm talking about, in the historically disciplined words of Pete Townsend, is my generation.
My generation of evangelicals has allowed the attacks of 9/11 to separate their faith from how they interact ethically and politically.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer a case in point. Now I'm not much of a pacifist, but I do recognize the inherent theological challenge of violent action for the Christian. It's John Calvin's 500th birthday this year, so let's give him an opportunity to weigh in. After making a solid case for a government's responsibility to provide for national defense, he says this:
But it is the duty of all magistrates here to guard particularly against giving vent to their passions even in the slightest degree. Rather, if they have to punish, let them not be carried away with headlong anger, or be seized with hatred, or burn with implacable severity.
Calvin continues with what I believe to be the point in all of this:
Let them also (as Augustine says) have pity on the common nature in the one whose special fault they are punishing.
That's the part we evangelicals too often seem to have lost. True evangelicalism is driven by compassion for people who haven't yet experienced the forgiveness and restoration that comes from Christ alone. True Christianity is marked by the compassion demonstrated by Jesus himself in his earthly ministry: sacrificial, redemptive, and available to all. True Christian discipleship leads us inevitably to the awareness of our own redeemed depravity, and teaches us to humbly acknowledge what we have in common with our enemy.
Not much of that is working its way into public discourse about the wars we're fighting, which is catastrophically disappointing to me for a country that enjoys the myth of being built on Christian principles.
Which brings me (strangely) to the current debate over creating a public health service in the US. I'm glad the debate is taking place. It's long overdue, and I believe there are important philosophical questions to be asked about the role of government in the lives of individuals. I believe that to be true, and yet the people disappointing me the most are my evangelical Christian brothers and sisters. Few that I have heard, even if they have perfectly valid objections to the expansion of social programs, have articulated a Christian response either to the problem or to the proposed solution.
Most of the people I have in mind have a sort of hero-worshipping relationship to Winston Churchill. They admire, as I do, his courage and tenacity and his strong leadership in a time of war. Most will be shocked to learn that he gave strong, early support to the formation of the National Health Service. Listen to what he said in 1944:
The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.
I'll pause to let that sink in.
Most will be even more surprised to learn that after the NHS was established by a postwar socialist government, Churchill returned to power and had the opportunity to close the entire thing down. Even under pressure from his own Conservative party, he refused to do it.
I think we could learn a lot from the later views of Winston Churchill. The Second World War was far more devastating than the 9/11 attacks, and it was far more traumatic in the UK than in the US. And yet, on the other side of that horrible event, with most of his cities still in bombed-out rubble, Churchill came out more compassionate, more sacrificial, more willing to make sure his neighbor was taken care of.
I know I've read those principles somewhere before.
It's an awful sort of anniversary, but maybe there's still time to redeem something from it. There is an enormous amount of room for debate on the issues that confront us these days, but I have little patience for Christian people who refuse to wrestle with Christian principles in those debates. To call Jesus your Savior without acknowledging your enemy's need of salvation is a sin. To enjoy the benefits of Christ's sacrifice without being willing to sacrifice in turn for your neighbor is a scandal.
On this awful anniversary my prayer is that we'll resist the temptation to use the memory of 9/11 to fuel our bitterness and anger and fear. My prayer is that we'll take this day to pray that God would soften our hearts, sharpen our minds, and make us into more mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
I've been reading posts today about where people were and what they were doing when the attacks came. My East Coast friends were on their way to work, people near where I lived in Southern California were mostly waking up to the deed already done, and folks here in the UK were at lunch. Everyone remembers. Everyone does something different with their memories.
Some have come to see the world as a far more complicated place than they thought it was. No one can fully grasp the full array of ethnicities and religions and cultures around the world, but most know more than they did on 9/11. Some have devoted themselves to seeking common ground with those who committed (and supported) the attacks, as if conversation alone would prevent fanatics from being, well, fanatics.
Others have allowed their memories of that day to make them hard and angry and defensive. Many of these people were like that before, which really points to an odd sort of resistance to the impact of the attacks: they really weren't changed by them at all. But there are many who evolved into a reactive form of fearful bitterness, and it's those people who grieve me the most.
Because in my little corner of the world, most of my close friends and family are Christians. Not only that, but many of us would identify ourselves (with varying degrees of volume) as evangelicals--people who believe that Jesus Christ died to redeem the world, and that it is every believer's task to share that message. That specific description of our faith and ethics is important, because I fear that it has become yet another casualty of the terrorist attacks eight years ago.
There is a disconnect these days between the faith we assent to and the decisions we make. I suppose that's always been true: Christian history is dotted with decisions and events that seem to go directly against the doctrinal and ethical beliefs of the faith. But I can't do anything about the Crusades or the Salem Witch Trials or slavery. What I'm talking about, in the historically disciplined words of Pete Townsend, is my generation.
My generation of evangelicals has allowed the attacks of 9/11 to separate their faith from how they interact ethically and politically.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offer a case in point. Now I'm not much of a pacifist, but I do recognize the inherent theological challenge of violent action for the Christian. It's John Calvin's 500th birthday this year, so let's give him an opportunity to weigh in. After making a solid case for a government's responsibility to provide for national defense, he says this:
But it is the duty of all magistrates here to guard particularly against giving vent to their passions even in the slightest degree. Rather, if they have to punish, let them not be carried away with headlong anger, or be seized with hatred, or burn with implacable severity.
Calvin continues with what I believe to be the point in all of this:
Let them also (as Augustine says) have pity on the common nature in the one whose special fault they are punishing.
That's the part we evangelicals too often seem to have lost. True evangelicalism is driven by compassion for people who haven't yet experienced the forgiveness and restoration that comes from Christ alone. True Christianity is marked by the compassion demonstrated by Jesus himself in his earthly ministry: sacrificial, redemptive, and available to all. True Christian discipleship leads us inevitably to the awareness of our own redeemed depravity, and teaches us to humbly acknowledge what we have in common with our enemy.
Not much of that is working its way into public discourse about the wars we're fighting, which is catastrophically disappointing to me for a country that enjoys the myth of being built on Christian principles.
Which brings me (strangely) to the current debate over creating a public health service in the US. I'm glad the debate is taking place. It's long overdue, and I believe there are important philosophical questions to be asked about the role of government in the lives of individuals. I believe that to be true, and yet the people disappointing me the most are my evangelical Christian brothers and sisters. Few that I have heard, even if they have perfectly valid objections to the expansion of social programs, have articulated a Christian response either to the problem or to the proposed solution.
Most of the people I have in mind have a sort of hero-worshipping relationship to Winston Churchill. They admire, as I do, his courage and tenacity and his strong leadership in a time of war. Most will be shocked to learn that he gave strong, early support to the formation of the National Health Service. Listen to what he said in 1944:
The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.
I'll pause to let that sink in.
Most will be even more surprised to learn that after the NHS was established by a postwar socialist government, Churchill returned to power and had the opportunity to close the entire thing down. Even under pressure from his own Conservative party, he refused to do it.
I think we could learn a lot from the later views of Winston Churchill. The Second World War was far more devastating than the 9/11 attacks, and it was far more traumatic in the UK than in the US. And yet, on the other side of that horrible event, with most of his cities still in bombed-out rubble, Churchill came out more compassionate, more sacrificial, more willing to make sure his neighbor was taken care of.
I know I've read those principles somewhere before.
It's an awful sort of anniversary, but maybe there's still time to redeem something from it. There is an enormous amount of room for debate on the issues that confront us these days, but I have little patience for Christian people who refuse to wrestle with Christian principles in those debates. To call Jesus your Savior without acknowledging your enemy's need of salvation is a sin. To enjoy the benefits of Christ's sacrifice without being willing to sacrifice in turn for your neighbor is a scandal.
On this awful anniversary my prayer is that we'll resist the temptation to use the memory of 9/11 to fuel our bitterness and anger and fear. My prayer is that we'll take this day to pray that God would soften our hearts, sharpen our minds, and make us into more mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Comings and Goings
(The following is part of a message given at the American Church in London this past Sunday, as we said goodbye to Kate Obermueller.)
Judges 18:1-6
1 In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. 2 So the Danites sent five warriors from Zorah and Eshtaol to spy out the land and explore it. These men represented all their clans. They told them, "Go, explore the land." The men entered the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah, where they spent the night. 3 When they were near Micah's house, they recognized the voice of the young Levite; so they turned in there and asked him, "Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? Why are you here?"
4 He told them what Micah had done for him, and said, "He has hired me and I am his priest."
5 Then they said to him, "Please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful."
6 The priest answered them, "Go in peace. Your journey has the LORD's approval."
The Book of Judges covers the period between Joshua and King Saul—between the wars fought over entering the Promised Land and the establishment of the Nation of Israel. You might recognize some of the names of the judges: Gideon, Deborah, and Samson.
It was a tough time, but the judges helped by governing and organizing the 12 tribes into one nation. At times they all wondered if the journey and the conflict and the moving around were worth it. In our passage one the leaders is trying find out if his efforts fit in with God’s plan for his people.
You heard the response: ‘Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.’
What a great thing to hear.
After more than 20 years in different kinds of ministry, among all the things that people ask me, there’s one question that comes up more than all the rest.
It’s some variation of: How do I know where God wants me to be?
Now some people have more basic questions about who God is and if he really exists. But for those who have made a commitment to be followers of Jesus Christ—people who want their lives to reflect their faith in a meaningful way—questions about how to determine God’s leading–God’s plan for our lives—is the one we ask the most.
How do I know where God wants me to be?
How do I know what God wants me to do?
How can we as a congregation know where God wants us to be?
One of the movies I watched on the plane this summer was the new Star Trek. It’s sort of prequel—it tells the story of how Jim Kirk and Spock and Bones McCoy met before we saw them on TV in the 60s. Capt. Kirk earned his reputation by changing the rules of a leadership test so that he could survive a no-win situation.
I try to do the same thing when people ask me how they should figure out where God wants them to be. I’ll never give a straight answer to that kind of question. Partly I do it because answering the question for someone else is a no-win proposition. But I also do it because I’ve never really had a lightning-bolt experience before. No voice from heaven or burning bush has ever really helped be make a life choice. To be honest, the closest I’ve ever experienced to that was the call to come here, to this church, to make the move from California to London to be your pastor.
When people come to me with the ‘How do I know where God wants me to be?’ question, my goal is usually to reframe the question into something slightly different. The important question for us isn’t as much where we’re supposed to live as it is how we’re supposed to live. We spend an enormous amount of time waiting to hear from God about where we should go and what we should do. But it’s what we do in that wherever we are that can make all the difference.
Because being God’s faithful disciples is less about where we should be, and more about how we should be wherever we are.
To put it in other words: It’s not ‘Where does God want me to be?, but rather ‘What does God want me to be like?’
When we frame the question that way we can see some tangible answers for ourselves.
We know we’re called to pray and to worship, to study and to serve. The Bible is pretty clear that we’re supposed to work for justice and to forgive each other—that we should share our own stories of faith with the people we encounter in our daily lives. There are all kinds of answers to the ‘What does God want me to be like’ question.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to discern where God wants us to be. There’s still something important about listening for God’s call to a new place—something critical for each of us about hearing that call and acting on it at different times in our lives.
That’s what we’re celebrating today as we say goodbye to Kate. I have a very clear memory of our first conversation on the phone back in 2007. We talked about life and ministry and food and movies—the really important stuff—and then she cut the call short so she could go jump out of an airplane. As the call ended I decided that if she survived that day, she might make a good assistant minister.
The last two years have confirmed Kate’s sense of call to this place—and our invitation to her—over and over again. Through children’s ministry and work with our youth groups. In the midst of relationships with the young adults and her service on Council. Kate has lived out the call on her life to serve in this place. She makes it easy to say, as we heard in our passage today: ‘Go in peace—your journey has the Lord’s approval.’
It’s with that same hope that we call Stephanie to come and serve here starting next week. The gifts and training and qualifications are all there, but the most important quality she’ll being is the same one Kate brought with her—a willingness to hear God’s call and act on it—a desire to be the person God made her to be, and to serve our young people and this church in Christ’s name.
In the end that’s what God wants from all of us, in big ways and also in those little everyday situations that tend to change the world. God calls us to be people who fellowship in true community, who worship with passion and creativity, who desire to grow in our knowledge and faith, and who will turn outward in service so that people will hear and experience the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.
Next week we officially begin a new church year in this place. As we say goodbye to one friend and welcome a new one, my prayer for us is that we will offer ourselves in service to Christ and to this church—that we’ll commit individually and as a community of faith—to allow ourselves to be transformed into the people God made us to be all along.
As we come to the Table this morning, my prayer for each one of us is that we’ll listen for God’s call on our lives—whatever and wherever that may be—that we’ll hear that call and follow it with faith and humility and passion.
Let’s pray together.
Judges 18:1-6
1 In those days Israel had no king. And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. 2 So the Danites sent five warriors from Zorah and Eshtaol to spy out the land and explore it. These men represented all their clans. They told them, "Go, explore the land." The men entered the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah, where they spent the night. 3 When they were near Micah's house, they recognized the voice of the young Levite; so they turned in there and asked him, "Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? Why are you here?"
4 He told them what Micah had done for him, and said, "He has hired me and I am his priest."
5 Then they said to him, "Please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful."
6 The priest answered them, "Go in peace. Your journey has the LORD's approval."
The Book of Judges covers the period between Joshua and King Saul—between the wars fought over entering the Promised Land and the establishment of the Nation of Israel. You might recognize some of the names of the judges: Gideon, Deborah, and Samson.
It was a tough time, but the judges helped by governing and organizing the 12 tribes into one nation. At times they all wondered if the journey and the conflict and the moving around were worth it. In our passage one the leaders is trying find out if his efforts fit in with God’s plan for his people.
You heard the response: ‘Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.’
What a great thing to hear.
After more than 20 years in different kinds of ministry, among all the things that people ask me, there’s one question that comes up more than all the rest.
It’s some variation of: How do I know where God wants me to be?
Now some people have more basic questions about who God is and if he really exists. But for those who have made a commitment to be followers of Jesus Christ—people who want their lives to reflect their faith in a meaningful way—questions about how to determine God’s leading–God’s plan for our lives—is the one we ask the most.
How do I know where God wants me to be?
How do I know what God wants me to do?
How can we as a congregation know where God wants us to be?
One of the movies I watched on the plane this summer was the new Star Trek. It’s sort of prequel—it tells the story of how Jim Kirk and Spock and Bones McCoy met before we saw them on TV in the 60s. Capt. Kirk earned his reputation by changing the rules of a leadership test so that he could survive a no-win situation.
I try to do the same thing when people ask me how they should figure out where God wants them to be. I’ll never give a straight answer to that kind of question. Partly I do it because answering the question for someone else is a no-win proposition. But I also do it because I’ve never really had a lightning-bolt experience before. No voice from heaven or burning bush has ever really helped be make a life choice. To be honest, the closest I’ve ever experienced to that was the call to come here, to this church, to make the move from California to London to be your pastor.
When people come to me with the ‘How do I know where God wants me to be?’ question, my goal is usually to reframe the question into something slightly different. The important question for us isn’t as much where we’re supposed to live as it is how we’re supposed to live. We spend an enormous amount of time waiting to hear from God about where we should go and what we should do. But it’s what we do in that wherever we are that can make all the difference.
Because being God’s faithful disciples is less about where we should be, and more about how we should be wherever we are.
To put it in other words: It’s not ‘Where does God want me to be?, but rather ‘What does God want me to be like?’
When we frame the question that way we can see some tangible answers for ourselves.
We know we’re called to pray and to worship, to study and to serve. The Bible is pretty clear that we’re supposed to work for justice and to forgive each other—that we should share our own stories of faith with the people we encounter in our daily lives. There are all kinds of answers to the ‘What does God want me to be like’ question.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to discern where God wants us to be. There’s still something important about listening for God’s call to a new place—something critical for each of us about hearing that call and acting on it at different times in our lives.
That’s what we’re celebrating today as we say goodbye to Kate. I have a very clear memory of our first conversation on the phone back in 2007. We talked about life and ministry and food and movies—the really important stuff—and then she cut the call short so she could go jump out of an airplane. As the call ended I decided that if she survived that day, she might make a good assistant minister.
The last two years have confirmed Kate’s sense of call to this place—and our invitation to her—over and over again. Through children’s ministry and work with our youth groups. In the midst of relationships with the young adults and her service on Council. Kate has lived out the call on her life to serve in this place. She makes it easy to say, as we heard in our passage today: ‘Go in peace—your journey has the Lord’s approval.’
It’s with that same hope that we call Stephanie to come and serve here starting next week. The gifts and training and qualifications are all there, but the most important quality she’ll being is the same one Kate brought with her—a willingness to hear God’s call and act on it—a desire to be the person God made her to be, and to serve our young people and this church in Christ’s name.
In the end that’s what God wants from all of us, in big ways and also in those little everyday situations that tend to change the world. God calls us to be people who fellowship in true community, who worship with passion and creativity, who desire to grow in our knowledge and faith, and who will turn outward in service so that people will hear and experience the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.
Next week we officially begin a new church year in this place. As we say goodbye to one friend and welcome a new one, my prayer for us is that we will offer ourselves in service to Christ and to this church—that we’ll commit individually and as a community of faith—to allow ourselves to be transformed into the people God made us to be all along.
As we come to the Table this morning, my prayer for each one of us is that we’ll listen for God’s call on our lives—whatever and wherever that may be—that we’ll hear that call and follow it with faith and humility and passion.
Let’s pray together.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Vacation Update 2
We spent a week at my Mom's house in Shell Beach. My grandmother bought the place when I was 7 years old (in 1970), and it's been a special place since then. We hung out with my sister and her family, our daughter and her husband, and some friends from our last church. It was a really good time. Here are some pics.
The view down the street from Mom's place.
Ian and Ericka looking for hermit crabs.
The kids headed out to the tidepools.
Ericka and Julie.
Ian riding around in my Aunt Lynette's old cart. She died a few years ago but my Mom lets the kids drive it up and down the street. It's a lot of fun, and they tell stories about Lynette as they scoot around.
Relaxing with son-in-law and brother-in-law after a rough day at the beach.
Ian and a friend with some retro candy (remember Wax Lips?).
Ian fished for the first time ever. We went to the San Luis pier where I learned, and he caught 5 fish in his first hour. We celebrated with ice cream afterward.
Ian and some of his cousins in front of Mom's house.
The kids had their own campfire.
Ian met a local girl...
The view down the street from Mom's place.
Ian and Ericka looking for hermit crabs.
The kids headed out to the tidepools.
Ericka and Julie.
Ian riding around in my Aunt Lynette's old cart. She died a few years ago but my Mom lets the kids drive it up and down the street. It's a lot of fun, and they tell stories about Lynette as they scoot around.
Relaxing with son-in-law and brother-in-law after a rough day at the beach.
Ian and a friend with some retro candy (remember Wax Lips?).
Ian fished for the first time ever. We went to the San Luis pier where I learned, and he caught 5 fish in his first hour. We celebrated with ice cream afterward.
Ian and some of his cousins in front of Mom's house.
The kids had their own campfire.
Ian met a local girl...Thursday, August 06, 2009
Vacation Update
I've been in California for a week and a half now, reconnecting with friends and family, and most importantly with Julie and Ian. We were apart for almost three weeks, which was the longest ever for us, and I didn't like it much at all.
Julie and Ian picked me up from the airport and took me straight to In-N-Out for dinner. That has become a tradition for return visits, but she also surprised me by having most of our old small group there to meet us. It was great to see all of them, jet-jagged and all. I spent the next few days adjusting to LA time and playing with Ian.
Last Sunday we went to our old church, where I heard Stephanie Kremmel (our incoming Director of Student Ministries) preach. She was great, and I got to lead a prayer for her as she transitions out of Glendale Presbyterian Church and into the American Church in London. Stephanie and I spent Monday and Tuesday getting to know each other and walking through the first part of her orientation.
Most of the rest of my time here has been filled with amazing meals shared with people I love. What a blessing to come back to LA and find that our community is still here, still behind us, still as crazy funny as ever. My mother-in-law has done her best (which is quite good) to fatten me up on all kinds of delicious foods.
Today I was up early to finish the last forms related to Stephanie's visa. The church has to be licensed to bring workers from outside the UK, and so I have been working on getting that license for a few months now. It was just approved this week, which left me with another set of forms to complete so that Stephanie can send in her own visa application. Now we're praying that everything is completed to the UK Border Agency's liking, and that the visa comes through in time for Stephanie's flight to London on the 20th. When she gets there Kate will complete her orientation to London and to the position.
Tomorrow we head up to Shell Beach for a week. My grandmother bought a house up there in 1970, and it's been a favorite vacation spot ever since. My sister and her family will be there for the first half of the week, and then some friends with kids are coming up on Wednesday.
Through all of this my church family in London is never far from my thoughts and prayers. We have so much good work ahead of us as we grow in faith and service--part of me is anxious to get back, though I know that I need this time away. I've been reading Daniel Kirk's recent book on Romans, and am getting ready to teach and preach on that important letter in the fall.
But first I'm going to continue this time of R&R. Keep us in your prayers...
Julie and Ian picked me up from the airport and took me straight to In-N-Out for dinner. That has become a tradition for return visits, but she also surprised me by having most of our old small group there to meet us. It was great to see all of them, jet-jagged and all. I spent the next few days adjusting to LA time and playing with Ian.
Last Sunday we went to our old church, where I heard Stephanie Kremmel (our incoming Director of Student Ministries) preach. She was great, and I got to lead a prayer for her as she transitions out of Glendale Presbyterian Church and into the American Church in London. Stephanie and I spent Monday and Tuesday getting to know each other and walking through the first part of her orientation.
Most of the rest of my time here has been filled with amazing meals shared with people I love. What a blessing to come back to LA and find that our community is still here, still behind us, still as crazy funny as ever. My mother-in-law has done her best (which is quite good) to fatten me up on all kinds of delicious foods.
Today I was up early to finish the last forms related to Stephanie's visa. The church has to be licensed to bring workers from outside the UK, and so I have been working on getting that license for a few months now. It was just approved this week, which left me with another set of forms to complete so that Stephanie can send in her own visa application. Now we're praying that everything is completed to the UK Border Agency's liking, and that the visa comes through in time for Stephanie's flight to London on the 20th. When she gets there Kate will complete her orientation to London and to the position.
Tomorrow we head up to Shell Beach for a week. My grandmother bought a house up there in 1970, and it's been a favorite vacation spot ever since. My sister and her family will be there for the first half of the week, and then some friends with kids are coming up on Wednesday.
Through all of this my church family in London is never far from my thoughts and prayers. We have so much good work ahead of us as we grow in faith and service--part of me is anxious to get back, though I know that I need this time away. I've been reading Daniel Kirk's recent book on Romans, and am getting ready to teach and preach on that important letter in the fall.
But first I'm going to continue this time of R&R. Keep us in your prayers...
Monday, July 27, 2009
My Goodness
2 Thessalonians 1:11-12
I’ve been cleaning up my office, trying to get it in shape for Craig before I go on vacation. Last week I found this little book—it’s a reprint of a little manual for proper behavior from back in the late 1800s. The title is simply: ‘Don’t’
Some of the rules have to do with table manners, like this one: “Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, or spread it upon your breast. Bibs are for the nursery.”
Others have to do with personal hygiene. “Don’t cleanse your ears, or your nose, or trim and clean your fingernails in public. These should be done in the privacy of one’s apartment only.”
Some of the rules are downright strange: “Don’t have the habit of smiling or grinning at nothing. Smile or laugh when there is occasion to do either, but at other times keep your mouth shut and your manner composed. People who laugh at everything are often capable of nothing.”
Another says: “Don’t be over familiar. Don’t strike your friends on the back, nudge them in the side, or give other physical manifestation of your pleasure. Don’t indulge in these familiarities, or submit to them from others.”
Women come in for some special rules: “Don’t over-trim your gowns or other articles of apparel. The excess in trimmings on women’s garments, now so common, is taste little less than barbaric, and evinces ignorance of the first principles of beauty.”
And finally, the author decides it’s important to comment on women’s diets: “Don’t indulge in confections or other sweets. It must be said that American women devour an immense deal of rubbish. If they would banish from the table pickles, preserves, pastry, cakes, and similar indigestible articles, and never touch candy…we would see their cheeks bloom like a rose.”
Too often we define goodness—being good—with a list of things that we don’t do. Some of you will remember the saying—it might actually be a parody of a real saying: ‘I don’t drink, smoke or chew, or go with girls who do.’ I actually did go out with someone who tried some of my chew in my wilder days, but we’ll leave that for another time.
The point is that as we think about goodness as one facet of the fruit of the Spirit, we’re going to have to get away from thinking of it as simply following a list of ‘don’ts’.
11With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 12We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text that’s guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing.
The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
Today we’re going to focus on where ‘goodness’ fits into this package deal.
The apostle Paul was the founder of the Thessalonian church, which was in a major port city in Roman-controlled Greece. There are two surviving letters to this church community, and in this one there are two important themes that he’s trying to communicate.
The first has to do with the Hebrew idea of the ‘Day of the Lord,’ the day when God would come and complete his plan for the salvation of his people. There was a disagreement in the church about whether or not this had already happened, and Paul spends part of his time helping them to understand.
But the other part of the letter has to do with living honorable lives as followers of Christ in a culture that was hostile to the faith. That’s where our passage comes in. Paul is praying for the Thessalonians—praying that they will live and behave in a way that reflects their relationship to God—that their actions would flow naturally from their faith in Christ.
We’ve been talking about these nine qualities that Paul calls the ‘fruit of the Spirit.’ That’s what he’s calling his readers to in our text today.
Think about the image of the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of anything is the product that comes from the blending of ingredients or parts into something new—it’s what comes from the actions and reactions of all those pieces.
An apple isn’t simply made up of ground up seeds, water and fertilizer—who’d eat that? An apple comes out of the process that takes a fertilized seed, the right amount of water and nutrients and sunshine, and grows them into something completely different—something new and useful and delicious.
That’s how we can understand the goodness that comes from God—the goodness that enters into us by his Holy Spirit—the Christ-like goodness that joins with our gifts and skills and personalities to become something new and unique and precious.
When we think about it that way, ‘goodness’ becomes so much more than just following a list of rules.
Goodness becomes that way we live differently because of what God has done for us.
Goodness becomes the way God himself works in and through us.
Goodness ends up being the best way we communicate the truth of the Gospel to a world that doesn’t believe it anymore, but needs to hear it anyway.
Earlier this year I met someone at a party. We talked for a while, and then the host came by and introduced me as the minister here. The guy looked at me and blurted out something about how the church had no place teaching morality to contemporary society, because it had done a poor job of it in the past. Now I think he couldn’t have been more wrong, but I understood his point.
We have a lot to say about personal and social morality—about ethics and goodness—we just tend to say it poorly. When we focus on the rules we miss the chance to talk about the radical, transforming power of God in our lives—of what it means to have the God who made us and redeems us and gives us hope—to have that same Savior living and working in us and through us.
That’s what it means to be good—to show that part of the fruit of the Spirit that we call ‘goodness.’
But I know this isn’t easy. Being an agent of goodness in a world that would just as soon trample you as allow you to help is a hard thing. This past week I was rereading part of Stephen Carter’s book called Civility—it was published in the mid-90s. Carter is a law professor at Yale who writes on issues of ethics and morality, and also faith and public policy. Listen to how he described this concept of goodness in the context of Christ’s command to love our neighbors.
“In both Christianity and Judaism, the ability of the human to love other imperfect humans is a symbol of God’s love for his creation. That is the significance of Jesus’ calling on his followers to love one another as he has loved them. The idea that we are called upon to love because God loves is more solid, more satisfactory than the competing secular moral ideal of compassion…And yet, whether our motivation for treating our neighbor well is religious devotion, secular moral understanding or even simple self-interest, the one thing that remains crystal clear is that loving our neighbor is hard work.”
That’s true, isn’t it? Loving our neighbor—being good—showing the goodness of God in our lives and relationships—that’s all hard work. But it’s also a key part of what it means to be a Christian—to be a mature and maturing disciple of Jesus Christ.
When Germany occupied France in WWII, the Nazis forced local governments to turn over all Jewish citizens so they could be moved to concentration camps. Most of the towns and villages complied with the order, but in the little village of Le Chambon something very different happened. A minister in that town led his congregation, which represented most of the community, to resist the order and hide hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. This wasn’t just a household here and there, but virtually everyone in town played a part in the conspiracy. For the people of Le Chambon it was more important to live out their faith than it was to preserve their own safety—even their own lives.
After describing the terrible risks those people took to save their neighbors—to protect innocent lives even when it would have been easier to let the Nazis have their way—after telling the story of how a group of French villagers came to be examples of good in the world, the author who researched the story said this:
“Goodness is the simplest thing in the world, and also the most complex—like opening a door.”
Being agents of goodness in the world can be a challenging thing—because it’s hard—because it can be complicated sometimes. Goodness is challenging, but let’s be honest—few of us will ever have to face the same sort of challenges as the people of Le Chambon. But still, it’s a core part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus—it comes naturally, even when it’s hard—it flows naturally out of our belief that Christ is who he said he is, and that he’ll do what he promised he would do. It happens when we open the door to living life in a different way.
One writer said that this kind of discipleship-based goodness “is the visible proof that a [person] has really and gratefully grasped the new opportunity for existence” as a follower of Christ.
What does that mean for us? What does it mean for us to grasp a new opportunity for existence? Do you feel like you’ve grasped that new existence in your own life?
It goes against our mindset to hear what I’m about to say, but I’m convinced that it’s not only true, but that it’s the only way true goodness and the rest of the Spirit’s fruit can be present and active and flowing from our lives.
Are you ready for this?
The only way for this to work is to remember that the fruit of the Spirit is the Spirit’s fruit and not ours.
This is one of those places—one of those times in our lives of discipleship individually and as a community of faith—this is one of those times where we have to acknowledge that only God can make this happen. It’s one of those times when we have to step aside and allow the Spirit of God to do God’s work in our lives.
My prayer for us not only during this series but always, is that we’ll be wise enough and faithful enough and brave enough to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us to shape us into the people we were meant to be all along.
My prayer for this place is the same one Paul prayed for the Thessalonians:
“We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Amen.
I’ve been cleaning up my office, trying to get it in shape for Craig before I go on vacation. Last week I found this little book—it’s a reprint of a little manual for proper behavior from back in the late 1800s. The title is simply: ‘Don’t’
Some of the rules have to do with table manners, like this one: “Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, or spread it upon your breast. Bibs are for the nursery.”
Others have to do with personal hygiene. “Don’t cleanse your ears, or your nose, or trim and clean your fingernails in public. These should be done in the privacy of one’s apartment only.”
Some of the rules are downright strange: “Don’t have the habit of smiling or grinning at nothing. Smile or laugh when there is occasion to do either, but at other times keep your mouth shut and your manner composed. People who laugh at everything are often capable of nothing.”
Another says: “Don’t be over familiar. Don’t strike your friends on the back, nudge them in the side, or give other physical manifestation of your pleasure. Don’t indulge in these familiarities, or submit to them from others.”
Women come in for some special rules: “Don’t over-trim your gowns or other articles of apparel. The excess in trimmings on women’s garments, now so common, is taste little less than barbaric, and evinces ignorance of the first principles of beauty.”
And finally, the author decides it’s important to comment on women’s diets: “Don’t indulge in confections or other sweets. It must be said that American women devour an immense deal of rubbish. If they would banish from the table pickles, preserves, pastry, cakes, and similar indigestible articles, and never touch candy…we would see their cheeks bloom like a rose.”
Too often we define goodness—being good—with a list of things that we don’t do. Some of you will remember the saying—it might actually be a parody of a real saying: ‘I don’t drink, smoke or chew, or go with girls who do.’ I actually did go out with someone who tried some of my chew in my wilder days, but we’ll leave that for another time.
The point is that as we think about goodness as one facet of the fruit of the Spirit, we’re going to have to get away from thinking of it as simply following a list of ‘don’ts’.
11With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. 12We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text that’s guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing.
The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
Today we’re going to focus on where ‘goodness’ fits into this package deal.
The apostle Paul was the founder of the Thessalonian church, which was in a major port city in Roman-controlled Greece. There are two surviving letters to this church community, and in this one there are two important themes that he’s trying to communicate.
The first has to do with the Hebrew idea of the ‘Day of the Lord,’ the day when God would come and complete his plan for the salvation of his people. There was a disagreement in the church about whether or not this had already happened, and Paul spends part of his time helping them to understand.
But the other part of the letter has to do with living honorable lives as followers of Christ in a culture that was hostile to the faith. That’s where our passage comes in. Paul is praying for the Thessalonians—praying that they will live and behave in a way that reflects their relationship to God—that their actions would flow naturally from their faith in Christ.
We’ve been talking about these nine qualities that Paul calls the ‘fruit of the Spirit.’ That’s what he’s calling his readers to in our text today.
Think about the image of the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of anything is the product that comes from the blending of ingredients or parts into something new—it’s what comes from the actions and reactions of all those pieces.
An apple isn’t simply made up of ground up seeds, water and fertilizer—who’d eat that? An apple comes out of the process that takes a fertilized seed, the right amount of water and nutrients and sunshine, and grows them into something completely different—something new and useful and delicious.
That’s how we can understand the goodness that comes from God—the goodness that enters into us by his Holy Spirit—the Christ-like goodness that joins with our gifts and skills and personalities to become something new and unique and precious.
When we think about it that way, ‘goodness’ becomes so much more than just following a list of rules.
Goodness becomes that way we live differently because of what God has done for us.
Goodness becomes the way God himself works in and through us.
Goodness ends up being the best way we communicate the truth of the Gospel to a world that doesn’t believe it anymore, but needs to hear it anyway.
Earlier this year I met someone at a party. We talked for a while, and then the host came by and introduced me as the minister here. The guy looked at me and blurted out something about how the church had no place teaching morality to contemporary society, because it had done a poor job of it in the past. Now I think he couldn’t have been more wrong, but I understood his point.
We have a lot to say about personal and social morality—about ethics and goodness—we just tend to say it poorly. When we focus on the rules we miss the chance to talk about the radical, transforming power of God in our lives—of what it means to have the God who made us and redeems us and gives us hope—to have that same Savior living and working in us and through us.
That’s what it means to be good—to show that part of the fruit of the Spirit that we call ‘goodness.’
But I know this isn’t easy. Being an agent of goodness in a world that would just as soon trample you as allow you to help is a hard thing. This past week I was rereading part of Stephen Carter’s book called Civility—it was published in the mid-90s. Carter is a law professor at Yale who writes on issues of ethics and morality, and also faith and public policy. Listen to how he described this concept of goodness in the context of Christ’s command to love our neighbors.
“In both Christianity and Judaism, the ability of the human to love other imperfect humans is a symbol of God’s love for his creation. That is the significance of Jesus’ calling on his followers to love one another as he has loved them. The idea that we are called upon to love because God loves is more solid, more satisfactory than the competing secular moral ideal of compassion…And yet, whether our motivation for treating our neighbor well is religious devotion, secular moral understanding or even simple self-interest, the one thing that remains crystal clear is that loving our neighbor is hard work.”
That’s true, isn’t it? Loving our neighbor—being good—showing the goodness of God in our lives and relationships—that’s all hard work. But it’s also a key part of what it means to be a Christian—to be a mature and maturing disciple of Jesus Christ.
When Germany occupied France in WWII, the Nazis forced local governments to turn over all Jewish citizens so they could be moved to concentration camps. Most of the towns and villages complied with the order, but in the little village of Le Chambon something very different happened. A minister in that town led his congregation, which represented most of the community, to resist the order and hide hundreds of Jews from the Nazis. This wasn’t just a household here and there, but virtually everyone in town played a part in the conspiracy. For the people of Le Chambon it was more important to live out their faith than it was to preserve their own safety—even their own lives.
After describing the terrible risks those people took to save their neighbors—to protect innocent lives even when it would have been easier to let the Nazis have their way—after telling the story of how a group of French villagers came to be examples of good in the world, the author who researched the story said this:
“Goodness is the simplest thing in the world, and also the most complex—like opening a door.”
Being agents of goodness in the world can be a challenging thing—because it’s hard—because it can be complicated sometimes. Goodness is challenging, but let’s be honest—few of us will ever have to face the same sort of challenges as the people of Le Chambon. But still, it’s a core part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus—it comes naturally, even when it’s hard—it flows naturally out of our belief that Christ is who he said he is, and that he’ll do what he promised he would do. It happens when we open the door to living life in a different way.
One writer said that this kind of discipleship-based goodness “is the visible proof that a [person] has really and gratefully grasped the new opportunity for existence” as a follower of Christ.
What does that mean for us? What does it mean for us to grasp a new opportunity for existence? Do you feel like you’ve grasped that new existence in your own life?
It goes against our mindset to hear what I’m about to say, but I’m convinced that it’s not only true, but that it’s the only way true goodness and the rest of the Spirit’s fruit can be present and active and flowing from our lives.
Are you ready for this?
The only way for this to work is to remember that the fruit of the Spirit is the Spirit’s fruit and not ours.
This is one of those places—one of those times in our lives of discipleship individually and as a community of faith—this is one of those times where we have to acknowledge that only God can make this happen. It’s one of those times when we have to step aside and allow the Spirit of God to do God’s work in our lives.
My prayer for us not only during this series but always, is that we’ll be wise enough and faithful enough and brave enough to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us and through us to shape us into the people we were meant to be all along.
My prayer for this place is the same one Paul prayed for the Thessalonians:
“We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Amen.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Kindness: Real 'Haute Couture'
Colossians 3:12
The Guardian ran a story a week or so ago on haute couture—on high fashion. Now I’m even less qualified to talk about fashion than I was last week to talk about patience—I’m a Men’s Wearhouse/Tie Rack kind of guy. But you know what I’m talking about. It’s that strange line of designer clothing that makes the news every year—designers spend millions on the dresses and shows, even though historically haute couture lines never turn a profit. I know I’m supposed to understand or at least appreciate this sort of thing as an art form, but to me it tends to look like tall women in enormous hats and tiny dresses, all looking as though they wish they could be somewhere else.
The comments I usually hear, even from people, even those who appreciate this stuff more than I do, go like this:
Where could anyone really wear an outfit like that?
When would I ever wear that?
Is that really useful?
Keep those questions in mind as we hear our text this morning. This passage comes in the middle of one of my favorite books in the New Testament. Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a guide to faith and practice not only in the 1st century, but today as well. In the 3rd chapter of the letter Paul is talking about how we align our lives to our faith in Christ (notice that it’s not the other way around). He’s encouraging his readers to set our hearts and minds on Christ as a regular part of our decision-making—as a part of the discipline of living in families and communities and society.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text from Galatians that is guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing. The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
Our text today shows us an important facet of how all the fruit of the Spirit function in our lives. Our text today reminds us that in the covenant relationship we enjoy with God, sometimes something is demanded from us.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
My friend Cameron preached on this passage a few years ago. He used the image of looking into a closet, trying to decide what to wear—how to look—what to communicate about ourselves—to the people with come into contact with. His point was that we have to choose how our lives will reflect God’s presence in us.
One of the fun parts for me of working through these nine qualities we call the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ has been seeing how the individual words have been used in other parts of the Bible. The word that Paul uses to mean ‘kindness’ evolved from a word in classical Greek that meant suitable and proper and…useful. The word was often used to describe a nice, mild wine, and more broadly, any food that was pleasing and satisfying.
In the Old Testament the word was used to describe the qualities of God—how he sustains us gently and lovingly, even when we’re less-than-perfect followers of him.
In the New Testament we return to an old use of this word. Luke uses it in his parable about new wine in old wineskins, and again later as a way of describing how generous we’re called to be to others—in light of how generous God has been with us.
But I’m drawn to this link between kindness and being useful.
Not just in a practical sense. There’s an important difference between usefulness and utilitarianism, where people and things are valued and defined by their function. The usefulness here is more like the experience of a good meal—something tasty and filling and nourishing and communal. Kindness, as Paul uses it, accomplishes something important for the body—for the church—for the Kingdom. By using this word for ‘kindness’ Paul is describing a sort of holy usefulness.
Tomorrow we remember the 40th anniversary of the first people to walk on the moon. I met Buzz Aldrin here in London a few weeks ago—he still looks like he could take on another moon mission. The anniversary of the moon landing is bringing back my childhood memories of that day. I can remember all of us gathered around our state-of-the-art black and white TV, listening to Walter Cronkite describe the events taking place. I can remember Neil Armstrong’s words about small steps and giant leaps.
But my favorite memory of that day came after my friends and I got bored watching the news reports and cooked up an idea for turning it all into a game. The three of us got backpacks and our football helmets (mine was in the old blue and white colors of the LA Rams), and went to the park to re-enact the landing. What I remember most is walking very slowly, pretending we were trudging along in zero gravity. I’m not sure how we decided who was who, or what we did with the third kid. Maybe we had him circle the park as Michael Collins. I do remember that we had a great time doing it.
Hard to imagine that was 40 years ago—getting back to the moon seems like such a remote possibility these days. One of the main reasons the US and other nations stopped going to the moon is the enormous cost of planning and executing missions like that. But so many of the inventions that came from the space program have become central to our lives—so many useful things came out of the research that made space exploration possible.
Have you ever seen the list of inventions from the space program that improve our lives today?
Baby food, satellite dishes, padding for shoes, high-resolution body scans, the ear thermometer, smoke detectors, firefighter protection, cordless tools like dustbusters and drills and saws. We have the space program to thank for the joystick controllers we use in our video games, the Teflon that prevents so many kitchen disasters, and also for pens that will write in zero gravity. Now about the pens, NASA spent something like $25000 developing a pen that would write in space. The Russians simply gave their cosmonauts pencils.
But apart from that, so many useful things came out of the creativity and enormous investment that it took to send those astronauts into space.
In our text today, and in the list of the fruit of the Spirit, what we see is a call to live as people who have received a great gift from God—a gift that came at a huge cost—the call to show a genuine, useful sort of kindness as a mirror or reflection of the kindness God has shown us. One writer said that Paul’s “purpose is to show the meaning of kindness in the life of a [person] whom Christ has grasped…As a direct outworking of God’s love, it is always alive and active, breaking out spontaneously in the life of a [person] who is led by Christ.”
How often do you feel “grasped” or “led” by Christ?
How often do you see this useful, nourishing sort of kindness breaking out spontaneously in your life?
I don’t think I experience this nearly enough, and yet it’s so central to the life God calls us to—it’s so central to the life we can live when the Spirit gets in and starts to work in us and through us. But it begins with us making a choice to clothe ourselves, as God’s people, holy and dearly loved, with “compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.”
I went to the National Prayer Breakfast here in London a few weeks ago. All around Westminster Hall there were church and political leaders talking about big programs and all the great things they wanted to do. At one point a young Irish folk singer named Foy Vance went up front and sang for the entire gathering.
The song was called “An Indiscriminate Act of Kindness,” and it told the story of a desperate young woman who stumbled into a hotel tired and cold and broke. She asked for a room, but made in clear that she had no way to pay for it. The concierge showed compassion to her and gave her a room, dried her off, and sat with her as she cried.
In the morning the young woman says to the concierge: “What you did for me was hard to believe.” But he said back to her: “I was only doing what was right. No one who knows love could leave you out there on such a night.” If you can help someone, bear this in mind, and consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness.”
There’s a temptation for us to see ‘kindness’ and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit simply as nice personal qualities to have, like clean hands or fresh breath. When we do that we miss the point. We miss the radical, transforming power of relating to each other and the world in a new way. We miss the way that all nine of these examples of the Spirit’s work demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom of God in the world.
That takes me back to my friend Cameron, and his image of staring into the closet and deciding what to wear.
As followers of Jesus—as people who have known love—Paul’s words to the Colossians leave us with some questions:
How do we want to look to the people around us?
How do we choose a way to look and to be that communicates the work of God’s Spirit in each of our lives?
As we stand in front of the mirror and prepare to meet the world, what do we reflect about how God loves us, how he forgives us, and how his kindness changes our lives forever?
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
That’s real high fashion—not the kind you see on the catwalk, and not the kind you’ll see in any magazine, but it’s the life we’re called to—the sort of life that changes the world one indiscriminate act of kindness at a time.
My prayer for us as we move through this season of looking at how the Spirit works in our lives—my prayer for myself and each person here, is that we’ll clothe ourselves with the love and compassion and useful kindness we see in the Scriptures. Not just so that we’ll be nicer people, but so we can share the blessings we’ve received from God to a tired, hungry world. Amen.
The Guardian ran a story a week or so ago on haute couture—on high fashion. Now I’m even less qualified to talk about fashion than I was last week to talk about patience—I’m a Men’s Wearhouse/Tie Rack kind of guy. But you know what I’m talking about. It’s that strange line of designer clothing that makes the news every year—designers spend millions on the dresses and shows, even though historically haute couture lines never turn a profit. I know I’m supposed to understand or at least appreciate this sort of thing as an art form, but to me it tends to look like tall women in enormous hats and tiny dresses, all looking as though they wish they could be somewhere else.
The comments I usually hear, even from people, even those who appreciate this stuff more than I do, go like this:
Where could anyone really wear an outfit like that?
When would I ever wear that?
Is that really useful?
Keep those questions in mind as we hear our text this morning. This passage comes in the middle of one of my favorite books in the New Testament. Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a guide to faith and practice not only in the 1st century, but today as well. In the 3rd chapter of the letter Paul is talking about how we align our lives to our faith in Christ (notice that it’s not the other way around). He’s encouraging his readers to set our hearts and minds on Christ as a regular part of our decision-making—as a part of the discipline of living in families and communities and society.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text from Galatians that is guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing. The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
Our text today shows us an important facet of how all the fruit of the Spirit function in our lives. Our text today reminds us that in the covenant relationship we enjoy with God, sometimes something is demanded from us.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
My friend Cameron preached on this passage a few years ago. He used the image of looking into a closet, trying to decide what to wear—how to look—what to communicate about ourselves—to the people with come into contact with. His point was that we have to choose how our lives will reflect God’s presence in us.
One of the fun parts for me of working through these nine qualities we call the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ has been seeing how the individual words have been used in other parts of the Bible. The word that Paul uses to mean ‘kindness’ evolved from a word in classical Greek that meant suitable and proper and…useful. The word was often used to describe a nice, mild wine, and more broadly, any food that was pleasing and satisfying.
In the Old Testament the word was used to describe the qualities of God—how he sustains us gently and lovingly, even when we’re less-than-perfect followers of him.
In the New Testament we return to an old use of this word. Luke uses it in his parable about new wine in old wineskins, and again later as a way of describing how generous we’re called to be to others—in light of how generous God has been with us.
But I’m drawn to this link between kindness and being useful.
Not just in a practical sense. There’s an important difference between usefulness and utilitarianism, where people and things are valued and defined by their function. The usefulness here is more like the experience of a good meal—something tasty and filling and nourishing and communal. Kindness, as Paul uses it, accomplishes something important for the body—for the church—for the Kingdom. By using this word for ‘kindness’ Paul is describing a sort of holy usefulness.
Tomorrow we remember the 40th anniversary of the first people to walk on the moon. I met Buzz Aldrin here in London a few weeks ago—he still looks like he could take on another moon mission. The anniversary of the moon landing is bringing back my childhood memories of that day. I can remember all of us gathered around our state-of-the-art black and white TV, listening to Walter Cronkite describe the events taking place. I can remember Neil Armstrong’s words about small steps and giant leaps.
But my favorite memory of that day came after my friends and I got bored watching the news reports and cooked up an idea for turning it all into a game. The three of us got backpacks and our football helmets (mine was in the old blue and white colors of the LA Rams), and went to the park to re-enact the landing. What I remember most is walking very slowly, pretending we were trudging along in zero gravity. I’m not sure how we decided who was who, or what we did with the third kid. Maybe we had him circle the park as Michael Collins. I do remember that we had a great time doing it.
Hard to imagine that was 40 years ago—getting back to the moon seems like such a remote possibility these days. One of the main reasons the US and other nations stopped going to the moon is the enormous cost of planning and executing missions like that. But so many of the inventions that came from the space program have become central to our lives—so many useful things came out of the research that made space exploration possible.
Have you ever seen the list of inventions from the space program that improve our lives today?
Baby food, satellite dishes, padding for shoes, high-resolution body scans, the ear thermometer, smoke detectors, firefighter protection, cordless tools like dustbusters and drills and saws. We have the space program to thank for the joystick controllers we use in our video games, the Teflon that prevents so many kitchen disasters, and also for pens that will write in zero gravity. Now about the pens, NASA spent something like $25000 developing a pen that would write in space. The Russians simply gave their cosmonauts pencils.
But apart from that, so many useful things came out of the creativity and enormous investment that it took to send those astronauts into space.
In our text today, and in the list of the fruit of the Spirit, what we see is a call to live as people who have received a great gift from God—a gift that came at a huge cost—the call to show a genuine, useful sort of kindness as a mirror or reflection of the kindness God has shown us. One writer said that Paul’s “purpose is to show the meaning of kindness in the life of a [person] whom Christ has grasped…As a direct outworking of God’s love, it is always alive and active, breaking out spontaneously in the life of a [person] who is led by Christ.”
How often do you feel “grasped” or “led” by Christ?
How often do you see this useful, nourishing sort of kindness breaking out spontaneously in your life?
I don’t think I experience this nearly enough, and yet it’s so central to the life God calls us to—it’s so central to the life we can live when the Spirit gets in and starts to work in us and through us. But it begins with us making a choice to clothe ourselves, as God’s people, holy and dearly loved, with “compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.”
I went to the National Prayer Breakfast here in London a few weeks ago. All around Westminster Hall there were church and political leaders talking about big programs and all the great things they wanted to do. At one point a young Irish folk singer named Foy Vance went up front and sang for the entire gathering.
The song was called “An Indiscriminate Act of Kindness,” and it told the story of a desperate young woman who stumbled into a hotel tired and cold and broke. She asked for a room, but made in clear that she had no way to pay for it. The concierge showed compassion to her and gave her a room, dried her off, and sat with her as she cried.
In the morning the young woman says to the concierge: “What you did for me was hard to believe.” But he said back to her: “I was only doing what was right. No one who knows love could leave you out there on such a night.” If you can help someone, bear this in mind, and consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness.”
There’s a temptation for us to see ‘kindness’ and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit simply as nice personal qualities to have, like clean hands or fresh breath. When we do that we miss the point. We miss the radical, transforming power of relating to each other and the world in a new way. We miss the way that all nine of these examples of the Spirit’s work demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom of God in the world.
That takes me back to my friend Cameron, and his image of staring into the closet and deciding what to wear.
As followers of Jesus—as people who have known love—Paul’s words to the Colossians leave us with some questions:
How do we want to look to the people around us?
How do we choose a way to look and to be that communicates the work of God’s Spirit in each of our lives?
As we stand in front of the mirror and prepare to meet the world, what do we reflect about how God loves us, how he forgives us, and how his kindness changes our lives forever?
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
That’s real high fashion—not the kind you see on the catwalk, and not the kind you’ll see in any magazine, but it’s the life we’re called to—the sort of life that changes the world one indiscriminate act of kindness at a time.
My prayer for us as we move through this season of looking at how the Spirit works in our lives—my prayer for myself and each person here, is that we’ll clothe ourselves with the love and compassion and useful kindness we see in the Scriptures. Not just so that we’ll be nicer people, but so we can share the blessings we’ve received from God to a tired, hungry world. Amen.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Patience: Waiting and Waiting
James 5:7-11
Samsung has a new handheld device on the market, and they’re pushing it with a splashy marketing campaign. The tag in the commercials and on the billboards is simple: “Impatience is a virtue.” Now we know that Samsung’s sales pitch is a twisting around of an old saying: “Patience is a virtue.’ That saying is one of a handful that seem as though they came from the Bible, but really didn’t. Like “God helps those who help themselves”, or “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Neither of those is in the Bible…sorry.
But what about the saying, “patience is a virtue”? Does that mean anything for us? Isn’t the idea of ‘virtue’ a little outdated? And patience. Do we think of patience as an important behavior or has it lived out its usefulness for us? Samsung didn’t start their campaign without expecting to tap into a feeling out there—or in here—that will help them sell some phones. So what about it? Is patience a virtue?
One definition of patience reads like this: "Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties."
But patience is a lot more than just being able to do the Zen thing when we’re faced with a long line at the grocery store, or too much traffic on the roads. It’s more than just mindlessly waiting.
Patience is central to what it means to be a mature Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ who seeks to be an agent of his Kingdom. Let’s see what our text teaches about that.
7Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. 8You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. 9Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text that is guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing. The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
The James who wrote our text is considered to be the brother of Jesus himself. He’s also the head of the Jerusalem Council, one of the earliest organizations of the Christian movement. It’s a pretty early letter—he describes a fairly simple order for leading a church, and he still refers to local congregations as synagogues instead of churches. The audience for the letter is clearly Jewish—the Christians who started out in Judaism before converting to Christianity.
The best known part of James’ letter is his teaching about the relationship between faith and action. Where most of the New Testament seems to place a higher value on what we believe over what we do, James pretty bluntly shifts the balance the other way. In the first chapter he says: “Don’t just listen to the word—do what it says.” He says in chapter 2 that “faith without deeds is dead.”
By the time we get to our passage, James has made a case for what life in the community of faith is supposed to be like. He makes a strong case against discrimination in the church, and sets faith and action as the only measures of value or status among the followers of Christ.
Right before our text James has some strong words for rich people who oppress the poor—people who hoard their wealth but neglect to treat their employees fairly. We won’t go into that part of the letter right now, but trust me, you don’t want to be that person.
The point here is that our passage was written in the context of a longer discussion about how we’re supposed to live and behave as people who enjoy God’s love and grace and forgiveness.
In our passage we see patience tied to the natural progression of things. James says: “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its crop…and how patient he is?” It’s like the quote from Fred Brooks, a famous project manager, who reminds his clients that “the bearing of a child takes nine months…no matter how many women are assigned.”
The word that James uses for patience has a special meaning in the Bible. It doesn’t have anything to do with being passive, in fact, the root of the word is actually ‘wrath.’ That’s right. As strange as it sounds, the root of the word used to describe ‘patience’ as an expression of the fruit of the Spirit—that root is ‘wrath’ or ‘anger.’
But in the form we find it, the word that describes this special kind of patience in the New Testament actually means to restrain wrath, to put it off for a later date, to endure present troubles and sufferings and debts, and to hold off on claiming our right to punish—to show our wrath.
So the opposite of patience isn’t impatience or hastiness. The opposite of patience as a fruit of the Spirit is wrath—it’s retribution, it’s demanding a price for sin.
The other place we see this same word is in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18. This is one of the parables of Jesus that focuses on forgiveness. A king is checking over his accounts and finds that one of his servants owes him 10,000 talents—an absurd amount of money—something like a billion pounds today—an amount he could never pay pack. When he can’t pay and is about to lose everything, he begs the king: “Be patient with me!” Literally: postpone your wrath.
The king says yes, but the servant goes out immediately and demands payment from someone who owes him a hundred denarii—maybe just a few pounds. When the man can’t pay and is about to be punished, he says the same thing.
In both cases the one who owes the debt says: “Be patient with me.” Postpone giving me what I deserve. Let me have more time. Hold back from taking out your wrath on me.
The point is that all of us have had a debt forgiven that we never could have paid back on our own. All of us have experienced the mercy of that servant who owed a billion pounds, only to have his debt forgiven. The point is that being a recipient of that kind of grace—that kind of patience—calls us to be generous and forgiving—to restrain our own wrath—to be patient—in our dealings with each other and with strangers.
Last night I watched Dr. Strangelove, one of the great dark comedies to come out of the Cold War era. A character in the film played by George C. Scott wanted to destroy the Soviet Union so bad he could taste it. In one scene he’s in such a rush to make his point that he falls down as he crossed from one side of the room to another. It was really an accident—George C. Scott was so into his character, so hell-bent on pushing the button, that he slipped and fell, and then he got up and kept going with the scene. Stanley Kubrick left the fall in the movie because it fit the point he was trying to make.
Patience isn’t just sitting serenely by, passively doing nothing in our relationships with God and each other and the world. Patience is the disciplined restraint we show to people who delay us or hurt us or wrong us. It’s the foundation for the line in the Lord’s Prayer where we say ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’
The implications of this are limitless. If true patience is holding off on claiming our rights or the claiming of a debt from someone who’s done something to us, then that has an impact on the way we treat people close to us—the way we treat strangers on the street or the bus—it even affects the values we choose in the people we elect to lead us.
Patience is so much more than just waiting. Patience is extending the same mercy and love and forgiveness to people around us as God has shown to us. It’s forgiving and withholding punishment, instead of being in such a rush to destroy that we fall all over ourselves in the process. That’s a huge thing. That’s a radical way to live and interact with our families and friends and communities. That’s what living life in the power of the Holy Spirit looks like and feels like and tastes like.
It may not make sense in the values of a world that’s rejected God—a world that thinks it might be too smart to believe in a God. But for those who have received mercy—for those who have experienced the forgiveness that comes from Christ’s atoning work for us—and for those who have allowed the Holy Spirit to work in and through their lives, this kind of patience is truly life-changing.
How would this kind of patience—this kind of waiting—change your life? How would it change your job? Your family? How would it transform the way you live and act in this city or anywhere?
My prayer for all of us as we make this journey together through the fruit of the Spirit, is that God will reach into each one of our lives, that he’d fill us with his Spirit, and make us into the people he made us to be. Amen.
Samsung has a new handheld device on the market, and they’re pushing it with a splashy marketing campaign. The tag in the commercials and on the billboards is simple: “Impatience is a virtue.” Now we know that Samsung’s sales pitch is a twisting around of an old saying: “Patience is a virtue.’ That saying is one of a handful that seem as though they came from the Bible, but really didn’t. Like “God helps those who help themselves”, or “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Neither of those is in the Bible…sorry.
But what about the saying, “patience is a virtue”? Does that mean anything for us? Isn’t the idea of ‘virtue’ a little outdated? And patience. Do we think of patience as an important behavior or has it lived out its usefulness for us? Samsung didn’t start their campaign without expecting to tap into a feeling out there—or in here—that will help them sell some phones. So what about it? Is patience a virtue?
One definition of patience reads like this: "Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties."
But patience is a lot more than just being able to do the Zen thing when we’re faced with a long line at the grocery store, or too much traffic on the roads. It’s more than just mindlessly waiting.
Patience is central to what it means to be a mature Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ who seeks to be an agent of his Kingdom. Let’s see what our text teaches about that.
7Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. 8You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near. 9Don't grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
On the front of your bulletin you’ll find the text that is guiding us through this summer series. The fruit of the Spirit is a new way of life, redeemed through Christ’s work and empowered to live in a new way through the Holy Spirit. The ‘fruit’ here is singular—it’s a list of nine qualities or behaviors that work together as an expression of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives—how God’s spirit shows in us as we grow in faith and service.
Notice that these are relational qualities—the Spirit’s fruit teach us how to live with God and with each other—with family and friends and even strangers. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—all of these together describe a radically different way of relating to each other.
But it’s still important to remember that these are a package deal—there’s no picking and choosing here. It’s all or nothing. The fruit of the Spirit—shown in all nine of these qualities—is the result of us allowing God to show us how to live in a different way.
The James who wrote our text is considered to be the brother of Jesus himself. He’s also the head of the Jerusalem Council, one of the earliest organizations of the Christian movement. It’s a pretty early letter—he describes a fairly simple order for leading a church, and he still refers to local congregations as synagogues instead of churches. The audience for the letter is clearly Jewish—the Christians who started out in Judaism before converting to Christianity.
The best known part of James’ letter is his teaching about the relationship between faith and action. Where most of the New Testament seems to place a higher value on what we believe over what we do, James pretty bluntly shifts the balance the other way. In the first chapter he says: “Don’t just listen to the word—do what it says.” He says in chapter 2 that “faith without deeds is dead.”
By the time we get to our passage, James has made a case for what life in the community of faith is supposed to be like. He makes a strong case against discrimination in the church, and sets faith and action as the only measures of value or status among the followers of Christ.
Right before our text James has some strong words for rich people who oppress the poor—people who hoard their wealth but neglect to treat their employees fairly. We won’t go into that part of the letter right now, but trust me, you don’t want to be that person.
The point here is that our passage was written in the context of a longer discussion about how we’re supposed to live and behave as people who enjoy God’s love and grace and forgiveness.
In our passage we see patience tied to the natural progression of things. James says: “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its crop…and how patient he is?” It’s like the quote from Fred Brooks, a famous project manager, who reminds his clients that “the bearing of a child takes nine months…no matter how many women are assigned.”
The word that James uses for patience has a special meaning in the Bible. It doesn’t have anything to do with being passive, in fact, the root of the word is actually ‘wrath.’ That’s right. As strange as it sounds, the root of the word used to describe ‘patience’ as an expression of the fruit of the Spirit—that root is ‘wrath’ or ‘anger.’
But in the form we find it, the word that describes this special kind of patience in the New Testament actually means to restrain wrath, to put it off for a later date, to endure present troubles and sufferings and debts, and to hold off on claiming our right to punish—to show our wrath.
So the opposite of patience isn’t impatience or hastiness. The opposite of patience as a fruit of the Spirit is wrath—it’s retribution, it’s demanding a price for sin.
The other place we see this same word is in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18. This is one of the parables of Jesus that focuses on forgiveness. A king is checking over his accounts and finds that one of his servants owes him 10,000 talents—an absurd amount of money—something like a billion pounds today—an amount he could never pay pack. When he can’t pay and is about to lose everything, he begs the king: “Be patient with me!” Literally: postpone your wrath.
The king says yes, but the servant goes out immediately and demands payment from someone who owes him a hundred denarii—maybe just a few pounds. When the man can’t pay and is about to be punished, he says the same thing.
In both cases the one who owes the debt says: “Be patient with me.” Postpone giving me what I deserve. Let me have more time. Hold back from taking out your wrath on me.
The point is that all of us have had a debt forgiven that we never could have paid back on our own. All of us have experienced the mercy of that servant who owed a billion pounds, only to have his debt forgiven. The point is that being a recipient of that kind of grace—that kind of patience—calls us to be generous and forgiving—to restrain our own wrath—to be patient—in our dealings with each other and with strangers.
Last night I watched Dr. Strangelove, one of the great dark comedies to come out of the Cold War era. A character in the film played by George C. Scott wanted to destroy the Soviet Union so bad he could taste it. In one scene he’s in such a rush to make his point that he falls down as he crossed from one side of the room to another. It was really an accident—George C. Scott was so into his character, so hell-bent on pushing the button, that he slipped and fell, and then he got up and kept going with the scene. Stanley Kubrick left the fall in the movie because it fit the point he was trying to make.
Patience isn’t just sitting serenely by, passively doing nothing in our relationships with God and each other and the world. Patience is the disciplined restraint we show to people who delay us or hurt us or wrong us. It’s the foundation for the line in the Lord’s Prayer where we say ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’
The implications of this are limitless. If true patience is holding off on claiming our rights or the claiming of a debt from someone who’s done something to us, then that has an impact on the way we treat people close to us—the way we treat strangers on the street or the bus—it even affects the values we choose in the people we elect to lead us.
Patience is so much more than just waiting. Patience is extending the same mercy and love and forgiveness to people around us as God has shown to us. It’s forgiving and withholding punishment, instead of being in such a rush to destroy that we fall all over ourselves in the process. That’s a huge thing. That’s a radical way to live and interact with our families and friends and communities. That’s what living life in the power of the Holy Spirit looks like and feels like and tastes like.
It may not make sense in the values of a world that’s rejected God—a world that thinks it might be too smart to believe in a God. But for those who have received mercy—for those who have experienced the forgiveness that comes from Christ’s atoning work for us—and for those who have allowed the Holy Spirit to work in and through their lives, this kind of patience is truly life-changing.
How would this kind of patience—this kind of waiting—change your life? How would it change your job? Your family? How would it transform the way you live and act in this city or anywhere?
My prayer for all of us as we make this journey together through the fruit of the Spirit, is that God will reach into each one of our lives, that he’d fill us with his Spirit, and make us into the people he made us to be. Amen.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Ian's First Climbing Lesson
Some friends here in London invited Ian to do a little climbing. I was wondering how he'd do (he said he didn't want to go at first), but he really took to it. There's a great climbing wall at a rec center near our house (Swiss Cottage), and that's where these pictures were taken.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Peace in Pieces
Philippians 4:4-7
Years ago I broke something of Julie’s that was in way too many pieces for me to fix. I took every bit of it that I could find and put it into a box and stored it on top of one of my bookshelves. Over the next few years I had to move that box a dozen times or so—when we repainted the office, when we moved furniture around, on those rare occasions when I dusted the top of the bookcase. When we got some new bookcases I found the box of pieces and moved it into the closet, up on another shelf where it sat until we packed up to move to London back in 2006.
I don’t know what made me keep that box for so long. The pieces inside were of something that had been precious to Julie, but there wasn’t any hope that I was going to be able to fix it on my own. And so I carried it and moved it from place to place until there was no place left to store it.
4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
On the front of your bulletin you can read the passage from Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit—the nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show the way the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ. Today we’re going to take a look at what it means to say the Spirit produces ‘peace’ in our lives.
But first, take a look at the passage from Galatians. Notice again that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. All nine of these are the fruit of the Spirit—not just any one or two of them. This is not a smorgasbord. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’
The fruit of the Spirit is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.
That’s important, because it builds on the concepts we’ve been talking about all year.
We started back in February with an extended conversation about the way things were supposed to be. We were made to live in God’s perfect Shalom, a sense of wholeness and completeness. The ‘webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ Remember that?
And when that perfect Shalom was broken—when it was shattered into pieces—God provided a way back to him—a way to put the pieces back together—a way back to wholeness and the way we were meant to live. We’ve been talking about the Atonement as God’s drama in three acts—as God’s invitation to come and live the way he made us to live in the first place. The first two acts were Christ’s death on the cross as God’s response to the problem of sin, and then Christ’s resurrection that demonstrates God’s power over all things, even death.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is the third act in that play, and it brings with it a quality of life that we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—the fruit of the Spirit describe what that Shalom life is supposed to look like. It describes what it can look like when we let the Spirit live in us and work through us.
The city of Philippi was an interesting part of the Roman Empire. It was a retirement community for veterans of the Roman legions, and a very patriotic and nationalistic place. It was also a place where strong women had a long tradition of running things: businesses, private armies, and one source says that women in Philippi regularly negotiated treaties with other cities and states. Paul loved the Philippians—this letter is the most personal of all his writings. We’re going to spend some time in Philippians in the coming year.
Paul writes this letter while he’s in prison awaiting execution. He has no idea when his life might be taken from him, but his confidence in God is so great that in the first section of this letter he makes a bold statement: Whether he lives or dies he trusts that God has a plan for him. ‘For to me,’ Paul says, ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’
Paul is clearly operating with a completely different set of values here. Let’s tally it up: He’s in prison for sharing his faith, he’s separated from his friends and home and work, and he’s waiting to see when and how his death sentence is going to be carried out.
By any of our measures Paul is in an awful place, and yet he sees it through the perspective of one who purpose and calling comes from God, and is measured by the values that come from living a life of faithful discipleship. It’s not that Paul doesn’t care about his life. The point is that Paul cares about his life in the context of his devotion to the one who gave him that life in the first place. He’s not being flippant about suffering and dying—I’m sure he would choose not to be a martyr—but he’s being honest about what his own life means within the larger task of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to a hungry world.
In our text Paul directly addresses some people in the church who were having a hard time working together—two women who were leaders in the church in Philippi. That’s in the verses just before our text. Here he is, waiting for his own execution, and he’s concerned about an argument between people he cares about in a church he loves. Amazing.
In our text Paul is still talking about living radical lives marked by the Spirit—notice the other examples of ‘spirit life’ in the text:
There’s joy. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ Really? I still have a hard time believing that Paul was rejoicing as he sat in his cell, and yet part of me is envious of Paul—of the strength of his faith. I wonder what it would be like to live that way—to genuinely feel that way.
And there’s another example of the Spirit’s work in this text. ‘Let your gentleness be evident to all.’ Everyone? Seriously. It’s hard enough to be gentle with people we love sometimes, but everyone? In our Spring Bible study here we talked for a long time about how hard it is to show love and patience to people who annoy us or threaten us.
And then the kicker: And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I love this part, because he’s not saying just that God’s peace is so great that we can’t even comprehend it. He’s saying that the peace of the Spirit isn’t always going to make sense to us—it’s not always going to conform to our values.
How does the Spirit show through us in the form of peace?
It’s far too easy to reduce this call to peace as an invitation to ‘inner peace.’ You know what I mean: So much of the talk about spirituality in our culture is offering a sort of detachment from the cares of the world. There’s a Facebook advertisement for a Kabbalah retreat in the Peak District, and the banner at the top says that I can ‘De-Stress and Be Inspired.’
The guy in front of the Scientology office down the street is forever inviting me in for a stress test, as if the reduction of stress is what life is about. That one bugs me especially because I do my best work under stress—why would he want to take that away from me? That’s just mean.
And then we come to the fruit of the Spirit. We read our text and we’re tempted to miss the truly radical gift that’s being offered. Let me say that a different way: to reduce the fruit of the Spirit to a list of nice qualities to have is a complete misreading not only of the text, but of God’s intent for our lives. The fruit of the spirit represent a new way of relating to each other—to our families and friends and even to strangers.
The fruit of the Spirit describe a radically different way of approaching the real concerns of this world. They don’t call us to detach—to find serenity or calmness or our bliss, whatever that means. The fruit of the Spirit are the mark of living life as if God exists—as if the Lord of the Universe actually has something to say and do and transform in the way things work.
Which brings us back to ‘peace’ as evidence that the Spirit is working in our lives.
One of the small benefits of occasional insomnia is that every once in a while I’m up late enough to see the CBS Evening News from the States on Sky. I saw an amazing story last week.
Dan Cherry was an American pilot in the Vietnam War. During his service he was in a famous dogfight with a North Vietnamese pilot—the History Channel even made a documentary about it complete with actual voice recordings and computer imagery.
In the end Dan Cherry shot the other plane out of the sky, but he always wondered what happened to the other pilot. After the release of the documentary he went looking for the pilot he shot down, and ended up being reunited with him on a Vietnamese version of ‘This is Your Life’, a show that brought long lost friends back together.
Now these two warriors weren’t friends, but they became close after meeting each other in person. They’ve traveled together, Cherry wrote a book about his experiences, and in the closing image of the report, the two men are holding each other’s grandchildren, and the narrator said:
‘And just like that, the War went away.’
This doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? I mean, if anyone has a right to hold a grudge, it’s the North Vietnamese pilot who had his plane blown out from under him. And yet, even though it defies logic—even though it ‘transcends all understanding’—these two men found…and made…peace between them.
If these two enemies can experience the gift of peace between them, then there really isn’t much good reason why we can’t be agents of peace in our lives—in this world that cries out for the hope that comes from an authentic life of peace. The truly radical, mysterious and transforming power of peace from the Holy Spirit is that it accomplishes for us what we can’t do on our own.
That leaves us with some questions.
How do we make the war go away?
How do we acknowledge the broken pieces we carry around with us from place to place?
How do we take those pieces out of their hiding places and let God reassemble them?
How do we step aside and let the Holy Spirit work in us and through us to restore the Shalom we were made to enjoy—to produce fruit in our lives—to show himself in qualities that mark us as followers of Jesus?
As with most things that matter, there aren’t easy answers to any of these questions.
But if you take anything away from this message today, I hope it’s that you see peace in all its forms as a central part of what it means to be a Christian person.
Being forgiving, generous, loving agents of peace to our families and friends, and to strangers and even enemies—that’s a part of what it means to have the Holy Spirit living and working in each one of us.
In that sense this isn’t as much something we have to do, as something we’re called to allow the Spirit to do in and through our lives.
The call on each one of us is to live that way even when it goes against the culture, or conventional wisdom, or even just the prevailing winds. The call on each one of us is to be agents of the Prince of Peace, even when it surpasses all our understanding. Amen.
Years ago I broke something of Julie’s that was in way too many pieces for me to fix. I took every bit of it that I could find and put it into a box and stored it on top of one of my bookshelves. Over the next few years I had to move that box a dozen times or so—when we repainted the office, when we moved furniture around, on those rare occasions when I dusted the top of the bookcase. When we got some new bookcases I found the box of pieces and moved it into the closet, up on another shelf where it sat until we packed up to move to London back in 2006.
I don’t know what made me keep that box for so long. The pieces inside were of something that had been precious to Julie, but there wasn’t any hope that I was going to be able to fix it on my own. And so I carried it and moved it from place to place until there was no place left to store it.
4Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
On the front of your bulletin you can read the passage from Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit—the nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show the way the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ. Today we’re going to take a look at what it means to say the Spirit produces ‘peace’ in our lives.
But first, take a look at the passage from Galatians. Notice again that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. All nine of these are the fruit of the Spirit—not just any one or two of them. This is not a smorgasbord. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’
The fruit of the Spirit is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.
That’s important, because it builds on the concepts we’ve been talking about all year.
We started back in February with an extended conversation about the way things were supposed to be. We were made to live in God’s perfect Shalom, a sense of wholeness and completeness. The ‘webbing together of God, humans and creation in justice, fulfillment and delight.’ Remember that?
And when that perfect Shalom was broken—when it was shattered into pieces—God provided a way back to him—a way to put the pieces back together—a way back to wholeness and the way we were meant to live. We’ve been talking about the Atonement as God’s drama in three acts—as God’s invitation to come and live the way he made us to live in the first place. The first two acts were Christ’s death on the cross as God’s response to the problem of sin, and then Christ’s resurrection that demonstrates God’s power over all things, even death.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is the third act in that play, and it brings with it a quality of life that we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control—the fruit of the Spirit describe what that Shalom life is supposed to look like. It describes what it can look like when we let the Spirit live in us and work through us.
The city of Philippi was an interesting part of the Roman Empire. It was a retirement community for veterans of the Roman legions, and a very patriotic and nationalistic place. It was also a place where strong women had a long tradition of running things: businesses, private armies, and one source says that women in Philippi regularly negotiated treaties with other cities and states. Paul loved the Philippians—this letter is the most personal of all his writings. We’re going to spend some time in Philippians in the coming year.
Paul writes this letter while he’s in prison awaiting execution. He has no idea when his life might be taken from him, but his confidence in God is so great that in the first section of this letter he makes a bold statement: Whether he lives or dies he trusts that God has a plan for him. ‘For to me,’ Paul says, ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’
Paul is clearly operating with a completely different set of values here. Let’s tally it up: He’s in prison for sharing his faith, he’s separated from his friends and home and work, and he’s waiting to see when and how his death sentence is going to be carried out.
By any of our measures Paul is in an awful place, and yet he sees it through the perspective of one who purpose and calling comes from God, and is measured by the values that come from living a life of faithful discipleship. It’s not that Paul doesn’t care about his life. The point is that Paul cares about his life in the context of his devotion to the one who gave him that life in the first place. He’s not being flippant about suffering and dying—I’m sure he would choose not to be a martyr—but he’s being honest about what his own life means within the larger task of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to a hungry world.
In our text Paul directly addresses some people in the church who were having a hard time working together—two women who were leaders in the church in Philippi. That’s in the verses just before our text. Here he is, waiting for his own execution, and he’s concerned about an argument between people he cares about in a church he loves. Amazing.
In our text Paul is still talking about living radical lives marked by the Spirit—notice the other examples of ‘spirit life’ in the text:
There’s joy. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always.’ Really? I still have a hard time believing that Paul was rejoicing as he sat in his cell, and yet part of me is envious of Paul—of the strength of his faith. I wonder what it would be like to live that way—to genuinely feel that way.
And there’s another example of the Spirit’s work in this text. ‘Let your gentleness be evident to all.’ Everyone? Seriously. It’s hard enough to be gentle with people we love sometimes, but everyone? In our Spring Bible study here we talked for a long time about how hard it is to show love and patience to people who annoy us or threaten us.
And then the kicker: And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I love this part, because he’s not saying just that God’s peace is so great that we can’t even comprehend it. He’s saying that the peace of the Spirit isn’t always going to make sense to us—it’s not always going to conform to our values.
How does the Spirit show through us in the form of peace?
It’s far too easy to reduce this call to peace as an invitation to ‘inner peace.’ You know what I mean: So much of the talk about spirituality in our culture is offering a sort of detachment from the cares of the world. There’s a Facebook advertisement for a Kabbalah retreat in the Peak District, and the banner at the top says that I can ‘De-Stress and Be Inspired.’
The guy in front of the Scientology office down the street is forever inviting me in for a stress test, as if the reduction of stress is what life is about. That one bugs me especially because I do my best work under stress—why would he want to take that away from me? That’s just mean.
And then we come to the fruit of the Spirit. We read our text and we’re tempted to miss the truly radical gift that’s being offered. Let me say that a different way: to reduce the fruit of the Spirit to a list of nice qualities to have is a complete misreading not only of the text, but of God’s intent for our lives. The fruit of the spirit represent a new way of relating to each other—to our families and friends and even to strangers.
The fruit of the Spirit describe a radically different way of approaching the real concerns of this world. They don’t call us to detach—to find serenity or calmness or our bliss, whatever that means. The fruit of the Spirit are the mark of living life as if God exists—as if the Lord of the Universe actually has something to say and do and transform in the way things work.
Which brings us back to ‘peace’ as evidence that the Spirit is working in our lives.
One of the small benefits of occasional insomnia is that every once in a while I’m up late enough to see the CBS Evening News from the States on Sky. I saw an amazing story last week.
Dan Cherry was an American pilot in the Vietnam War. During his service he was in a famous dogfight with a North Vietnamese pilot—the History Channel even made a documentary about it complete with actual voice recordings and computer imagery.
In the end Dan Cherry shot the other plane out of the sky, but he always wondered what happened to the other pilot. After the release of the documentary he went looking for the pilot he shot down, and ended up being reunited with him on a Vietnamese version of ‘This is Your Life’, a show that brought long lost friends back together.
Now these two warriors weren’t friends, but they became close after meeting each other in person. They’ve traveled together, Cherry wrote a book about his experiences, and in the closing image of the report, the two men are holding each other’s grandchildren, and the narrator said:
‘And just like that, the War went away.’
This doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? I mean, if anyone has a right to hold a grudge, it’s the North Vietnamese pilot who had his plane blown out from under him. And yet, even though it defies logic—even though it ‘transcends all understanding’—these two men found…and made…peace between them.
If these two enemies can experience the gift of peace between them, then there really isn’t much good reason why we can’t be agents of peace in our lives—in this world that cries out for the hope that comes from an authentic life of peace. The truly radical, mysterious and transforming power of peace from the Holy Spirit is that it accomplishes for us what we can’t do on our own.
That leaves us with some questions.
How do we make the war go away?
How do we acknowledge the broken pieces we carry around with us from place to place?
How do we take those pieces out of their hiding places and let God reassemble them?
How do we step aside and let the Holy Spirit work in us and through us to restore the Shalom we were made to enjoy—to produce fruit in our lives—to show himself in qualities that mark us as followers of Jesus?
As with most things that matter, there aren’t easy answers to any of these questions.
But if you take anything away from this message today, I hope it’s that you see peace in all its forms as a central part of what it means to be a Christian person.
Being forgiving, generous, loving agents of peace to our families and friends, and to strangers and even enemies—that’s a part of what it means to have the Holy Spirit living and working in each one of us.
In that sense this isn’t as much something we have to do, as something we’re called to allow the Spirit to do in and through our lives.
The call on each one of us is to live that way even when it goes against the culture, or conventional wisdom, or even just the prevailing winds. The call on each one of us is to be agents of the Prince of Peace, even when it surpasses all our understanding. Amen.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Book Review: A Place at the Table
I got a nice review from Books & Culture in the current issue. Check it out:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/mayjun/presentandnotyet.html
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/mayjun/presentandnotyet.html
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Bottom Line
Galatians 5:1-6
The roommates I had in seminary were a big part of my experience there. Most of us liked to talk—about everything: from theology to sports to movies to, well, just about anything. We could stretch a conversation about theology deep into the night. Sometimes it was just for fun. I had a housemate for a while who had grown up in the Mennonite tradition—she was a committed pacifist. In the theological discussions it became our goal to aggravate her to the point when she would hit us, just for fun. She had a mean right.
I had a housemate who wasn’t much of a talker. Now that’s an unfortunate personality trait in an institution that was preparing people to talk for a living. In one conversation with the quiet guy I can remember him getting agitated and uncomfortable with how long it was taking us to talk about some topic. When he couldn’t take it anymore he blurted out: “Would you please just ‘bottom line’ this for me?”
‘Just get to the point,’ he meant—what’s the one thing I need to know in order to move on.
In our text this morning we see the apostle Paul get to a similar moment. He’s been making a case for several chapters now, but he’s getting to the point—the bottom line.
1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
‘The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’ That’s the bottom line. Hold that thought—we’re going to come back to that.
We’ve been talking about the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.
Last week our two youth preachers helped us understand who the Holy Spirit is. Through the summer we’re going to look at how the Spirit works in us and through us—where do we see the evidence for the work of the Spirit in our lives and in our church?
Earlier we heard the passage from this chapter about the fruit of the Spirit. Nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show how the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
Notice that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. Now little details like that aren’t always helpful, but in this case it prevents us from picking and choosing from the list. All nine are the fruit of the Spirit. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’
This is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. Over the next 10 weeks we’ll be looking at each of these qualities—these pieces of evidence that show the Spirit at work. But just because we’re looking at one each Sunday doesn’t mean that they stand alone. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses a specific context, and it’s important for us to understand that context as we begin this study. Paul was writing to a community that was getting conflicting messages about how to make a commitment to Christ. There was a strong group within the church that believed you had to become a Jew first in order to become a Christian. They taught that you had to follow the rules and food restrictions of Judaism in order to join the Christian church. They end up being called Judaizers, because they required Judaism to be a part of Christianity.
Now the whole idea of circumcision as a metaphor can be pretty uncomfortable for us (no preacher really ever wants to talk about it) but it was a key part of the process of following this path into a Jewish form of the Christian faith. In other words, when a new members class was being offered, the prize for finishing was the requirement that you get circumcised before becoming a member of the church. I wonder how many new members we'd get if that was the 'prize.'
Circumcision is an initiation into a specific way of believing and living. Now for a lot of us the idea of initiation conjures up images from movies like ‘A Man Called Horse’ or ‘Animal House’: Kevin Bacon saying “Thank you sir. May I have another.” But it’s a lot more than just that.
The other night I participated in a small part in the Court of Honor of the American School’s Scout Troop. The process of moving through the ranks of Scouting, from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout—all of that begins with an initiation—an induction where you pledge to follow a certain path in a certain direction, and to follow it until completion. In part of that ceremony the Scout Leader says this:
“The more you participate and the more effort you put in, the stronger your flame becomes and more difficult to extinguish. At some point, your flame will become a burning ember deep in your heart that will be impossible to ever put out.”
As Paul uses it, Circumcision is an initiation into a promise to follow a certain path—the path of trying to earn our way back to God strictly by following all of the rules of the Jewish Law. The promise made in circumcision is to follow the Law until completion.
One writer put it this way: Paul ‘knows that circumcision symbolizes something very important—the identification of the Jewish people, the mark of those who live their lives under the jurisdiction of the torah…when a Gentile receives circumcision, he declares his own identity in terms of the torah,’ of the entire Law of Judaism.
It’s important for us to understand here that Paul isn’t accusing the Judaizers of some horrible sin. He’s warning them that by trusting the law for their redemption they’re missing out of the limitless gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
Paul’s point, as you can see if you read the whole letter, is that Christ offers us a different path to God—that the Atonement heals our relationships in a new way, a way that begins not with Circumcision, but with baptism.
And it’s in baptism that we experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives individually and as a community of faith. That transforming power shows itself in us as fruit—as product—as visible evidence that something dramatic and profound is happening in us. We see the Holy Spirit at work when we see lives that are defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Today our focus is on that ‘bottom line’ statement that Paul makes in our text about ‘faith expressing itself through love.’
Victor Paul Furnish is one of the great scholars of Paul and his writings. He said this about our text:
“…for Paul, faith’s obedience is an obedience in love, an obedience that has the character of love because it is grounded in God’s own love by which the sinner has been claimed and reconciled to God. The Christian is summoned to love in a double sense: to be loved and to be loving. Within Paul’s writings those two are inseparable.”
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
That expression of love by way of faith is a two-way street.
First, we show our faith—and the work of the Spirit in our lives, when we live as people who are confident in God’s love for us. When we live as people who are grateful for the way Christ’s atoning work demonstrates just how fully and completely God loves us. Remember the sentence I gave us to memorize on Easter Sunday?
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
Part of being a loving community—of being people whose faith is expressed through love—is living as if we believe that behind the Easter miracle there is a God who loves us and wants the best for us and who offers to shape us into the people we were meant to be.
Allowing ourselves to be loved is one of the most important ways we grow in our faith and our understanding of who God is.
But that love is meant to be turned outward, too.
‘Faith expressing itself through love’ is really the bottom line when it comes to how we live the Christian faith beyond these walls and beyond ourselves. If it’s true that we’re a community who gathers not because of anything we’ve done, but because we’ve been loved by the God who made us, then that naturally turns us outward to a world that hasn’t yet experienced that gift.
As we close this school year it’s good for us to look back on the way this has happened here. The Soup Kitchen serves this community five days a week right outside these windows. We partnered with Young Life to reach out to kids in our community who didn’t have a Christian group to enjoy. During the winter months we offered hot meals and a place to sleep to a group of homeless people with nowhere else to go.
But even within the church we’re starting to see how important it is that we love each other. This has always been a welcoming kind of church, but our hospitality continues to grow as we welcome visitors and new expats and neighbors to our fellowship.
More significantly, we’re gradually starting to heal some old wounds that keep us from being the church we’re called to be. That process is ongoing, but it’s happening, and it’s a demonstration of the Holy Spirit in this place.
Even as we say goodbye today to some dear friends in this church, we don’t see it as some tragic end to the way we want things. We see it as a transition—in a life that is full of them—for people as they go on to new homes and new communities and new opportunities to serve, and also for us as we wait and see who God brings here next.
We are called to demonstrate God’s love to his world, and it’s a joy to watch and to participate when it happens.
Over the next few months we’re going to spend some time looking at the way the Holy Spirit works in and through each one of us. I want to say again that as we look at the different expressions of the Spirit’s work individually, that we do that knowing that they’re part of a package deal.
God doesn’t love us a la carte—he doesn’t pick and choose which parts of us meet his standard. Because he’s a God of grace—of radical love and generosity—he loves us through and through, without exception and without limits. What he asks in return—not as a precondition but as a grateful response, is that we allow his Spirit to enter in and transform our lives.
As we move through this series over the next few months, remember that it all comes down to this bottom line: What really counts is our faith expressing itself in love to God, to each other, and to the world. Amen.
Let’s remember the source of that love by standing and singing together “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”
The roommates I had in seminary were a big part of my experience there. Most of us liked to talk—about everything: from theology to sports to movies to, well, just about anything. We could stretch a conversation about theology deep into the night. Sometimes it was just for fun. I had a housemate for a while who had grown up in the Mennonite tradition—she was a committed pacifist. In the theological discussions it became our goal to aggravate her to the point when she would hit us, just for fun. She had a mean right.
I had a housemate who wasn’t much of a talker. Now that’s an unfortunate personality trait in an institution that was preparing people to talk for a living. In one conversation with the quiet guy I can remember him getting agitated and uncomfortable with how long it was taking us to talk about some topic. When he couldn’t take it anymore he blurted out: “Would you please just ‘bottom line’ this for me?”
‘Just get to the point,’ he meant—what’s the one thing I need to know in order to move on.
In our text this morning we see the apostle Paul get to a similar moment. He’s been making a case for several chapters now, but he’s getting to the point—the bottom line.
1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
‘The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’ That’s the bottom line. Hold that thought—we’re going to come back to that.
We’ve been talking about the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.
Last week our two youth preachers helped us understand who the Holy Spirit is. Through the summer we’re going to look at how the Spirit works in us and through us—where do we see the evidence for the work of the Spirit in our lives and in our church?
Earlier we heard the passage from this chapter about the fruit of the Spirit. Nine qualities or characteristics or behaviors that show how the Spirit transforms us into mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
Notice that ‘fruit’ is singular here—it’s like that in the original language, too. Now little details like that aren’t always helpful, but in this case it prevents us from picking and choosing from the list. All nine are the fruit of the Spirit. We can’t say ‘I’m loving and faithful, but don’t ask me to have any self-control.’ Or ‘I’m quite happy being gentle and good, as long as I don’t have to be patient with people who annoy me.’
This is a package deal, and that’s crucial for our understanding this summer of what the Spirit does in our lives. Over the next 10 weeks we’ll be looking at each of these qualities—these pieces of evidence that show the Spirit at work. But just because we’re looking at one each Sunday doesn’t mean that they stand alone. The fruit of the Spirit is expressed in all nine of these important ways.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses a specific context, and it’s important for us to understand that context as we begin this study. Paul was writing to a community that was getting conflicting messages about how to make a commitment to Christ. There was a strong group within the church that believed you had to become a Jew first in order to become a Christian. They taught that you had to follow the rules and food restrictions of Judaism in order to join the Christian church. They end up being called Judaizers, because they required Judaism to be a part of Christianity.
Now the whole idea of circumcision as a metaphor can be pretty uncomfortable for us (no preacher really ever wants to talk about it) but it was a key part of the process of following this path into a Jewish form of the Christian faith. In other words, when a new members class was being offered, the prize for finishing was the requirement that you get circumcised before becoming a member of the church. I wonder how many new members we'd get if that was the 'prize.'
Circumcision is an initiation into a specific way of believing and living. Now for a lot of us the idea of initiation conjures up images from movies like ‘A Man Called Horse’ or ‘Animal House’: Kevin Bacon saying “Thank you sir. May I have another.” But it’s a lot more than just that.
The other night I participated in a small part in the Court of Honor of the American School’s Scout Troop. The process of moving through the ranks of Scouting, from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout—all of that begins with an initiation—an induction where you pledge to follow a certain path in a certain direction, and to follow it until completion. In part of that ceremony the Scout Leader says this:
“The more you participate and the more effort you put in, the stronger your flame becomes and more difficult to extinguish. At some point, your flame will become a burning ember deep in your heart that will be impossible to ever put out.”
As Paul uses it, Circumcision is an initiation into a promise to follow a certain path—the path of trying to earn our way back to God strictly by following all of the rules of the Jewish Law. The promise made in circumcision is to follow the Law until completion.
One writer put it this way: Paul ‘knows that circumcision symbolizes something very important—the identification of the Jewish people, the mark of those who live their lives under the jurisdiction of the torah…when a Gentile receives circumcision, he declares his own identity in terms of the torah,’ of the entire Law of Judaism.
It’s important for us to understand here that Paul isn’t accusing the Judaizers of some horrible sin. He’s warning them that by trusting the law for their redemption they’re missing out of the limitless gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
Paul’s point, as you can see if you read the whole letter, is that Christ offers us a different path to God—that the Atonement heals our relationships in a new way, a way that begins not with Circumcision, but with baptism.
And it’s in baptism that we experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives individually and as a community of faith. That transforming power shows itself in us as fruit—as product—as visible evidence that something dramatic and profound is happening in us. We see the Holy Spirit at work when we see lives that are defined by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Today our focus is on that ‘bottom line’ statement that Paul makes in our text about ‘faith expressing itself through love.’
Victor Paul Furnish is one of the great scholars of Paul and his writings. He said this about our text:
“…for Paul, faith’s obedience is an obedience in love, an obedience that has the character of love because it is grounded in God’s own love by which the sinner has been claimed and reconciled to God. The Christian is summoned to love in a double sense: to be loved and to be loving. Within Paul’s writings those two are inseparable.”
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
That expression of love by way of faith is a two-way street.
First, we show our faith—and the work of the Spirit in our lives, when we live as people who are confident in God’s love for us. When we live as people who are grateful for the way Christ’s atoning work demonstrates just how fully and completely God loves us. Remember the sentence I gave us to memorize on Easter Sunday?
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
Part of being a loving community—of being people whose faith is expressed through love—is living as if we believe that behind the Easter miracle there is a God who loves us and wants the best for us and who offers to shape us into the people we were meant to be.
Allowing ourselves to be loved is one of the most important ways we grow in our faith and our understanding of who God is.
But that love is meant to be turned outward, too.
‘Faith expressing itself through love’ is really the bottom line when it comes to how we live the Christian faith beyond these walls and beyond ourselves. If it’s true that we’re a community who gathers not because of anything we’ve done, but because we’ve been loved by the God who made us, then that naturally turns us outward to a world that hasn’t yet experienced that gift.
As we close this school year it’s good for us to look back on the way this has happened here. The Soup Kitchen serves this community five days a week right outside these windows. We partnered with Young Life to reach out to kids in our community who didn’t have a Christian group to enjoy. During the winter months we offered hot meals and a place to sleep to a group of homeless people with nowhere else to go.
But even within the church we’re starting to see how important it is that we love each other. This has always been a welcoming kind of church, but our hospitality continues to grow as we welcome visitors and new expats and neighbors to our fellowship.
More significantly, we’re gradually starting to heal some old wounds that keep us from being the church we’re called to be. That process is ongoing, but it’s happening, and it’s a demonstration of the Holy Spirit in this place.
Even as we say goodbye today to some dear friends in this church, we don’t see it as some tragic end to the way we want things. We see it as a transition—in a life that is full of them—for people as they go on to new homes and new communities and new opportunities to serve, and also for us as we wait and see who God brings here next.
We are called to demonstrate God’s love to his world, and it’s a joy to watch and to participate when it happens.
Over the next few months we’re going to spend some time looking at the way the Holy Spirit works in and through each one of us. I want to say again that as we look at the different expressions of the Spirit’s work individually, that we do that knowing that they’re part of a package deal.
God doesn’t love us a la carte—he doesn’t pick and choose which parts of us meet his standard. Because he’s a God of grace—of radical love and generosity—he loves us through and through, without exception and without limits. What he asks in return—not as a precondition but as a grateful response, is that we allow his Spirit to enter in and transform our lives.
As we move through this series over the next few months, remember that it all comes down to this bottom line: What really counts is our faith expressing itself in love to God, to each other, and to the world. Amen.
Let’s remember the source of that love by standing and singing together “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.”
Thursday, June 11, 2009
A Mini-Reflection on the Atonement
For months now I’ve been thinking about a quote from a book I read this past spring. The book was A Community Called Atonement, by Scot McKnight.
“Atonement is the work of God to create and ready his people for just these things: union with God and communion with others in a place of perfection, with a society of justice and peace and above all worship of the Lamb of God on the throne . . . We need to observe that the biblical language of eternity stokes heated passions to yearn the way Jesus yearned—that God’s kingdom might come ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ Any atonement theory that thinks exclusively of the earth is inadequate, just as any theory that shifts to thinking too much of eternity is also inadequate.” (p.27)
Recent developments among Christian thinkers have pointed to a deeper and more complete understanding of the Atonement as both a doctrine and a source of ethics. Those of us who grew up in or around evangelical traditions can have a limited view: “Christ’s blood cleanses me of my sin and absolves me from the punishment I deserve from an angry, righteous God.”
Now I still believe that, but it’s no longer all I believe about Christ’s atoning work.
I’ve been teaching and preaching for years now that the Kingdom of God is not a realm or a place with limits and boundaries, but rather Christ’s eternal reign—a demonstration of his power over all things, even death. (My American Church in London readers will have that sentence memorized by now.) If that’s the case, then there is much more to Christ’s atoning work than simply my—or anyone’s—personal salvation.
Over the Lenten season I preached a series of messages—indebted to Scot McKnight’s book—on the way the atonement offers healing for our relationship with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. (You can read those messages if you scroll down far enough to find Lent and Easter.) It’s possible that I’ll spend the rest of my conscious days trying to grasp (and experience) what that truly means.
And that’s a good thing.
Because of all the doctrines we have inherited from our Christian parents, none is more important, more dynamic, or more central to the overall message of the Scriptures than the Atonement. The Atonement describes what God has done to reconcile us in every direction. It’s a gift that gives us at the same time everything that we long for and more than we know we need.
Over the next year we’ll revisit this in more depth. My summer reading is packed with books related to the topics of atonement and justification and hope—stay tuned.
“Atonement is the work of God to create and ready his people for just these things: union with God and communion with others in a place of perfection, with a society of justice and peace and above all worship of the Lamb of God on the throne . . . We need to observe that the biblical language of eternity stokes heated passions to yearn the way Jesus yearned—that God’s kingdom might come ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ Any atonement theory that thinks exclusively of the earth is inadequate, just as any theory that shifts to thinking too much of eternity is also inadequate.” (p.27)
Recent developments among Christian thinkers have pointed to a deeper and more complete understanding of the Atonement as both a doctrine and a source of ethics. Those of us who grew up in or around evangelical traditions can have a limited view: “Christ’s blood cleanses me of my sin and absolves me from the punishment I deserve from an angry, righteous God.”
Now I still believe that, but it’s no longer all I believe about Christ’s atoning work.
I’ve been teaching and preaching for years now that the Kingdom of God is not a realm or a place with limits and boundaries, but rather Christ’s eternal reign—a demonstration of his power over all things, even death. (My American Church in London readers will have that sentence memorized by now.) If that’s the case, then there is much more to Christ’s atoning work than simply my—or anyone’s—personal salvation.
Over the Lenten season I preached a series of messages—indebted to Scot McKnight’s book—on the way the atonement offers healing for our relationship with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. (You can read those messages if you scroll down far enough to find Lent and Easter.) It’s possible that I’ll spend the rest of my conscious days trying to grasp (and experience) what that truly means.
And that’s a good thing.
Because of all the doctrines we have inherited from our Christian parents, none is more important, more dynamic, or more central to the overall message of the Scriptures than the Atonement. The Atonement describes what God has done to reconcile us in every direction. It’s a gift that gives us at the same time everything that we long for and more than we know we need.
Over the next year we’ll revisit this in more depth. My summer reading is packed with books related to the topics of atonement and justification and hope—stay tuned.
Friday, June 05, 2009
I’m Not Disappointed
I’ve been reading the deeply felt responses to Nick Fiedler’s post describing his disappointment with the Emergent movement. The posts run the gamut from those who lament its loss of outsider status to those who resent the idea that some folks are making a living off of their participation in the movement. One post accuses ‘traditionalists’ of glee that the Emergents are struggling. That's particularly untrue and unfair, as you're about to see.
If you’ve been reading these pages recently you’ll know that I don’t exactly fit the Emergent profile. First off, I’m 46 years old, but that’s not the half of it. I’m also an historian of evangelicalism and a PCUSA-ordained minister in a fairly traditional church. I still believe that denominations, as problematic as they can be, will end up playing a crucial role in the partnership to revive and reform the Christian faith. See what I mean? I’m not really the most likely participant/defender of Emergent-ness.
Maybe that puts me in a helpful place to comment on the current state of things.
It might make good sense to feel a letdown after the heady progress Emergents have made over the past few years. Stale models of both doctrine and church have been challenged—mostly effectively—and some real change has come out of that. New people have come to faith and many who had been wounded by the church rediscovered a faith home. Some of us who were still in the center of traditional church life were provoked (in the best sense of the term) to rethink our understanding of what it meant to be Christians. I participated in a small group of 40-somethings that wrestled with Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy for almost a year, and it was enormously valuable for us…even when we disagreed.
All of those represent astounding achievements in an era marked by secularization and faithlessness.
But historians tend to see movements like this in a different light. Most of us have expected some sort of leveling off or decline in the trajectory of the Emergent movement, and many of us have hoped that the maturing of the project wouldn’t become its downfall. The best of the correctives in church history have started as parallel movements that end up realigning with the broader body of Christ. That process of re-merging has given the church its energy and seasoning at various crucial times since the Reformation.
Even if we just focus on a handful of examples from the last century or so, we can see how this has happened. (Now please note that these are quantitative examples, not qualitative ones.) Separatist fundamentalists evolved into the new evangelical intellectual resurgence of the mid-20th century (the source of places like Fuller Seminary). The Pentecostal and charismatic movements—which also saw themselves as being a separate, new way of ‘doing’ church, folded back into the broader church movement and changed, well, just about everything. More recently the Willow Creek experiment, which for a while tried to conform existing churches to its model, ended up becoming more flexible and malleable and usable, resulting in a far more lasting influence on the broader church.
If the Emergent movement as we have seen and experienced it over the past few years doesn’t turn out to change everything, and remake the Christian Way from scratch, it will still be credited with having had an enormous impact on the church. If it folds back into the broader church, while retaining its transformative perspective on the way churches operate, would that really be so bad?
What the Emergent movement has happily avoided is the unchecked, unmanaged expansion and hubris that killed off Promise Keepers (remember them?). For the complaints I’m reading from Emergents about people in the movement making a living at it, money has not become either the driving force or life blood of Emergent ministry. That’s a great thing. That’s a sign of wisdom and prudence and maturity (sorry for the traditionalist litany there) that PK and other flashes in the pan never had.
Mostly what I want to say—from my place on the margins of it all—comes from my own admiration and appreciation for what Emergent thinkers and leaders have given to the broader church.
I’m not disappointed at all.
As I was growing up the concern among younger visionaries was how to escape from the materialism of Boomer Christianity and into a more authentic expression of Jesus-following. We took that into our lives and ministries—traditional and not—to the benefit of the broader church.
The Emergent movement is poised to do the very same thing.
Some will choose to participate in established churches, but will bring new energy and critical change to those bodies. Some will remain outside the mainstream and provide important correctives to the rest of us as we stumble along in churches that may or may not want to grow out of their calcified state. Either way, the influence of the Emergent project—whether in doctrine or ecclesiology or ethics—is here to stay.
As one who has benefitted from Emergent influence (even when I’ve been the target of its critique), I’m far from disappointed with what it has become.
Mostly, I’m just grateful.
If you’ve been reading these pages recently you’ll know that I don’t exactly fit the Emergent profile. First off, I’m 46 years old, but that’s not the half of it. I’m also an historian of evangelicalism and a PCUSA-ordained minister in a fairly traditional church. I still believe that denominations, as problematic as they can be, will end up playing a crucial role in the partnership to revive and reform the Christian faith. See what I mean? I’m not really the most likely participant/defender of Emergent-ness.
Maybe that puts me in a helpful place to comment on the current state of things.
It might make good sense to feel a letdown after the heady progress Emergents have made over the past few years. Stale models of both doctrine and church have been challenged—mostly effectively—and some real change has come out of that. New people have come to faith and many who had been wounded by the church rediscovered a faith home. Some of us who were still in the center of traditional church life were provoked (in the best sense of the term) to rethink our understanding of what it meant to be Christians. I participated in a small group of 40-somethings that wrestled with Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy for almost a year, and it was enormously valuable for us…even when we disagreed.
All of those represent astounding achievements in an era marked by secularization and faithlessness.
But historians tend to see movements like this in a different light. Most of us have expected some sort of leveling off or decline in the trajectory of the Emergent movement, and many of us have hoped that the maturing of the project wouldn’t become its downfall. The best of the correctives in church history have started as parallel movements that end up realigning with the broader body of Christ. That process of re-merging has given the church its energy and seasoning at various crucial times since the Reformation.
Even if we just focus on a handful of examples from the last century or so, we can see how this has happened. (Now please note that these are quantitative examples, not qualitative ones.) Separatist fundamentalists evolved into the new evangelical intellectual resurgence of the mid-20th century (the source of places like Fuller Seminary). The Pentecostal and charismatic movements—which also saw themselves as being a separate, new way of ‘doing’ church, folded back into the broader church movement and changed, well, just about everything. More recently the Willow Creek experiment, which for a while tried to conform existing churches to its model, ended up becoming more flexible and malleable and usable, resulting in a far more lasting influence on the broader church.
If the Emergent movement as we have seen and experienced it over the past few years doesn’t turn out to change everything, and remake the Christian Way from scratch, it will still be credited with having had an enormous impact on the church. If it folds back into the broader church, while retaining its transformative perspective on the way churches operate, would that really be so bad?
What the Emergent movement has happily avoided is the unchecked, unmanaged expansion and hubris that killed off Promise Keepers (remember them?). For the complaints I’m reading from Emergents about people in the movement making a living at it, money has not become either the driving force or life blood of Emergent ministry. That’s a great thing. That’s a sign of wisdom and prudence and maturity (sorry for the traditionalist litany there) that PK and other flashes in the pan never had.
Mostly what I want to say—from my place on the margins of it all—comes from my own admiration and appreciation for what Emergent thinkers and leaders have given to the broader church.
I’m not disappointed at all.
As I was growing up the concern among younger visionaries was how to escape from the materialism of Boomer Christianity and into a more authentic expression of Jesus-following. We took that into our lives and ministries—traditional and not—to the benefit of the broader church.
The Emergent movement is poised to do the very same thing.
Some will choose to participate in established churches, but will bring new energy and critical change to those bodies. Some will remain outside the mainstream and provide important correctives to the rest of us as we stumble along in churches that may or may not want to grow out of their calcified state. Either way, the influence of the Emergent project—whether in doctrine or ecclesiology or ethics—is here to stay.
As one who has benefitted from Emergent influence (even when I’ve been the target of its critique), I’m far from disappointed with what it has become.
Mostly, I’m just grateful.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Some Burning Coals For Us
The story below put tears in my eyes.
Over the last month I've been engaged in several (at times) heated discussions, covering topics from faith and patriotism to the role of denominations in the ordination of ministers (see the posts below). The point, at least for me, is that those issues can easily represent a great 'missing of the point' for those of us who call ourselves Christians.
Those topics, which generate so much heat in our public and private discussions, miss the point because they rarely lead to any meaningful improvement in the ways we share the faith with people in or out of the church.
That's too bad.
One of the threads that keeps me identified as a 'card-carrying evangelical' is the priority we're supposed to place on drawing new believers into the fold. Isn't that what we're all about? And if that's the case, then isn't any topic/argument/action that doesn't contribute to the accomplishing of that priority an exercise in missing the point?
Now I'm not naive. I know that the story below fits into the 'man-bites-dog' category, which is why it made the news. But there's a twinge in me that wishes that more Christians would behave this way toward their enemies, not for the headlines but so that more people would be drawn to faith in Jesus (see above).
This news item made me revisit Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. The point of that parable wasn't simply that one guy helped another, but rather that a guy who was hated and marginalized by Jesus' audience helped another. Keep that in mind as you read what follows.
In Proverbs we see a strange phrase, one that is quoted later in Paul's Letter to the Romans :
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
The point of this text is that when we respond in a way that goes against people's expectations, with radical generosity, we can make them rethink how they see us and what we believe.
Take a moment to read the story. See it as a dare to act in a radical way to reach out to those we might have a right to avoid or reject. See it as an example of how to behave, courtesy of someone who represents a group that many of us would rather hate or marginalize.
Look out for the hot coals.
I look forward to your comments.
By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. – A rifle-toting convenience store owner said he decided to show mercy on a would-be robber after seeing the man collapse into tears and claim he was only committing the crime to support his starving family.
The Long Island store owner provided the bat-wielding man with $40 and a loaf of bread and made him promise never to rob again.
"This was a grown man, crying like a baby," Mohammad Sohail, owner of the Shirley Express convenience store about 65 miles east of New York City, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
The man dropped the bat, picked up the bread and tucked the $40 into his waistband before fleeing, said Suffolk County police Sgt. John Best.
Sohail, who moved to the United States from Pakistan about 20 years ago, said he was getting ready to close his store shortly after midnight on May 21 when the man in his 40s entered with a bat in his hand. Sohail said he tried to stall for a moment and then grabbed a rifle he keeps behind the counter and ordered the assailant to drop the bat.
The would-be thief dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness, Sohail said.
"He started crying that he was out of work and was trying to feed his hungry family," he said. "I felt bad for him. I mean, this wasn't some kid."
He said he tossed $40 to the man, who then stood up and told Sohail he was inspired by the act of mercy and wanted to become a fellow Muslim. Sohail said he led the man in a profession of Muslim faith and the two ended up shaking hands.
Sohail said he went to the back of the store to get some milk to give to the man, but when he returned the man had fled. He said he called police and reported the attempted robbery, but he doesn't want to press charges if the man is ever caught.
Best said detectives have reviewed a store surveillance video of the attempted holdup, but said it would be difficult for anyone to identify the suspect because he was wearing a mask.
Sohail, who said he had never been the victim of a robbery attempt, said he didn't expect any accolades for what he had done.
"I'm a very little man. I just did a good job," said the married father of one. "I have a good feeling in my heart. I feel very good."
Over the last month I've been engaged in several (at times) heated discussions, covering topics from faith and patriotism to the role of denominations in the ordination of ministers (see the posts below). The point, at least for me, is that those issues can easily represent a great 'missing of the point' for those of us who call ourselves Christians.
Those topics, which generate so much heat in our public and private discussions, miss the point because they rarely lead to any meaningful improvement in the ways we share the faith with people in or out of the church.
That's too bad.
One of the threads that keeps me identified as a 'card-carrying evangelical' is the priority we're supposed to place on drawing new believers into the fold. Isn't that what we're all about? And if that's the case, then isn't any topic/argument/action that doesn't contribute to the accomplishing of that priority an exercise in missing the point?
Now I'm not naive. I know that the story below fits into the 'man-bites-dog' category, which is why it made the news. But there's a twinge in me that wishes that more Christians would behave this way toward their enemies, not for the headlines but so that more people would be drawn to faith in Jesus (see above).
This news item made me revisit Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan. The point of that parable wasn't simply that one guy helped another, but rather that a guy who was hated and marginalized by Jesus' audience helped another. Keep that in mind as you read what follows.
In Proverbs we see a strange phrase, one that is quoted later in Paul's Letter to the Romans :
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.
The point of this text is that when we respond in a way that goes against people's expectations, with radical generosity, we can make them rethink how they see us and what we believe.
Take a moment to read the story. See it as a dare to act in a radical way to reach out to those we might have a right to avoid or reject. See it as an example of how to behave, courtesy of someone who represents a group that many of us would rather hate or marginalize.
Look out for the hot coals.
I look forward to your comments.
By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
GARDEN CITY, N.Y. – A rifle-toting convenience store owner said he decided to show mercy on a would-be robber after seeing the man collapse into tears and claim he was only committing the crime to support his starving family.
The Long Island store owner provided the bat-wielding man with $40 and a loaf of bread and made him promise never to rob again.
"This was a grown man, crying like a baby," Mohammad Sohail, owner of the Shirley Express convenience store about 65 miles east of New York City, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
The man dropped the bat, picked up the bread and tucked the $40 into his waistband before fleeing, said Suffolk County police Sgt. John Best.
Sohail, who moved to the United States from Pakistan about 20 years ago, said he was getting ready to close his store shortly after midnight on May 21 when the man in his 40s entered with a bat in his hand. Sohail said he tried to stall for a moment and then grabbed a rifle he keeps behind the counter and ordered the assailant to drop the bat.
The would-be thief dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness, Sohail said.
"He started crying that he was out of work and was trying to feed his hungry family," he said. "I felt bad for him. I mean, this wasn't some kid."
He said he tossed $40 to the man, who then stood up and told Sohail he was inspired by the act of mercy and wanted to become a fellow Muslim. Sohail said he led the man in a profession of Muslim faith and the two ended up shaking hands.
Sohail said he went to the back of the store to get some milk to give to the man, but when he returned the man had fled. He said he called police and reported the attempted robbery, but he doesn't want to press charges if the man is ever caught.
Best said detectives have reviewed a store surveillance video of the attempted holdup, but said it would be difficult for anyone to identify the suspect because he was wearing a mask.
Sohail, who said he had never been the victim of a robbery attempt, said he didn't expect any accolades for what he had done.
"I'm a very little man. I just did a good job," said the married father of one. "I have a good feeling in my heart. I feel very good."
Monday, June 01, 2009
Pentecost: A Brilliant Third Act
(This message was given on Pentecost Sunday at the American Church in London.)
Acts 2:1-13
There are reruns of the TV show 'Everybody Loves Raymond' that still play here in the UK. That show was funny for a lot of reasons—not least because every so often I could catch glimpses of the Italian-American side of my own family. So many of the episodes center around food—Marie, the mother-in-law, cooks amazing food and gets her identity from it, while Debra, the daughter-in-law, can’t cook as well and always feels inferior to Marie.
In one of my favorite episodes Debra begs Marie to teach her how to make meatballs. They spend the day together talking and mixing and cooking, but at the end of the day, when Debra asks Raymond to sample the food, he gags and says there’s something wrong with it. As it turns out, Marie had changed one of the labels on a jar of spice, so that Debra would never get the recipe right. She did it to protect her identity—her role in the family as the maker of food—but in the end she had to apologize.
Now I know most of you think that I spend way too much time talking about food, but something wonderful can happen when all the right components are put together in a meal. Something truly memorable can happen when that final ingredient is added to the mix—the one that makes everything just right—just as it was meant to be.
We’re going to see something like that in our text today.
1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11(both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" 12Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"
13Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine.
What a great picture that is. The disciples and other followers are all together when a storm blows through the place. All of a sudden they can speak languages they didn’t know, and people around them could understand them. I especially love the way the text ends: ‘Amazed and perplexed they asked one another “What does this mean?”’ The people around them had an answer: They thought the Christians were drunk—that they’d partied a little too hard that night.
We spent the last few weeks looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
I’ve been describing the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.
We’ve been talking about Jesus ministry and especially the Cross as the first act of the Atonement story. In dramatic terms, The first act is used to establish the main characters, their relationships and the normal world they live in. Early in the first act some incident occurs that confronts the main character, whose attempts to deal with this incident leads to a second and more dramatic situation, known as the first turning point, which signals the end of the first act, ensures life will never be the same again for the protagonist and raises a dramatic question that will be answered in the climax of the film. The dramatic question should be framed in terms of the protagonist's call to action: How will the character respond to this new turn of events?
If we see the resurrection as the second act, listen to how that’s described in dramatic terms. The second act, also referred to as "rising action" (perfect!), typically depicts the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. They must not only learn new skills but arrive at a higher sense of awareness of who they are and what they are capable of, in order to deal with their predicament. This cannot be achieved alone and they are usually aided and abetted by mentors and co-protagonists.
Finally, the third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. The climax, also known as the second turning point, is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are.
Thinking about the Atonement as a three-act drama is helpful here, especially now that we’ve gotten to the final act. In dramatic terms, the gift of the Holy Spirit gives us resolution of the story and its subplots. It ensures that the main dramatic question is answered. And finally, Pentecost leaves the protagonist and other characters—that’s us, by the way—with a new sense of who we really are
When the Holy Spirit enters the picture and becomes the main driver of the church, the church’s story finds its resolution and its purpose. It’s with the gift of the Spirit that we see the whole story at least a little more clearly, and the plots and subplots start to make sense.
The Spirit also answers that main dramatic question: Why did all of this happen? As we grow and learn and serve together we see how the three parts of the Atonement drama accomplish God’s plan of bringing us back to him.
And finally, in keeping with the classic three-act dramatic form, Pentecost leaves us with a new sense of who we are. The gift of the Holy Spirit transforms us into the people we were meant to be all along, both individually and even more profoundly as a community of faith. The gift of the Spirit is more than just the introduction of some strange languages into the mix. It’s the ingredient that gets into us and completes us for the task of being Christ’s disciples and Christ’s church. That’s what we celebrate at Pentecost.
This year the BBC is celebrating English poets and poetry—the slogan for the series is ‘Let Poetry into Your Life.’ As a recovering literature major I was compelled to watch Simon Schama’s amazing journey through the poetry of John Donne. I completed my senior seminar at UCLA on the religious poetry of Donne, and have read him ever since.
At the beginning of the hour, Schama was walking the streets of London and asking people if they knew who Donne was, and it was sad to see how many people said they had never heard of him. The reviewer in the Guardian the next day complained that people had lost the sense ‘that this is the sort of thing we ought to lie about.’
Donne was known for writing some of the truly great carnal poetry in the history of the English language. In his seduction poem ‘The Flea’ he basically says to his partner: Since that flea has bitten us both, our blood is already mixed. (You can see where this is going.) We might as well finish the job. In the poem ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ he’s not above begging. He says: ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go’ Try some of Donne’s poetry at home—he doesn’t disappoint.
But Donne was a passionate Christian, too. When he became the Dean of St Paul’s here in London he took those hot-blooded images into the sermons and Christian poetry he wrote during the rest of his life. In one of his Holy Sonnets he says to God:
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The BBC has it right this time. We could all stand to let a little poetry into our lives.
I suppose the call to each one of us at Pentecost is to ‘let the Holy Spirit into our lives’. Just as poetry is supposed to get into our hearts and minds in a way that other forms of language can never do, the Holy Spirit calls us and transforms us in a way that nothing else ever could.
Think back on all the claims we made about the Holy Spirit in our creed today.
We confessed our belief that the Holy Spirit,
justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the church.
That the same Spirit
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
and calls women and men to all ministries of the church.
We admitted today that we believe the Holy Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
Maybe if we were to go out and share that message about the Holy Spirit our neighbors would think we were drunk, too.
So what?
What do we care if people misunderstand what our faith is about, at least at first—even when we struggle with it? The point for us at Pentecost is to remember that the Holy Spirit completes the Atonement process perfectly and decisively. That the Holy Spirit functions as that last ingredient that makes the rest of the meal taste exactly as it should.
The Holy Spirit comes and makes all of us, both individually and as a community of faith—the Spirit makes all of us into the people we were meant to be all along. People who share their faith whether they talk about it or not, with every person they meet—at home, in the workplace, on the bus, and in this church.
Listen to how John Donne preached this at St Paul’s on Pentecost Sunday in 1628. I’ve updated the language a little but here’s what he said:
The Holy Spirit is poured into you, if he has made any entry, if he has taken hold of any corrupt affection in your life. But if the Spirit is poured in, he can also be poured out of you. Just as wine is poured into a glass and fills it from top to bottom, the Spirit fills you and covers every part of you.
When we are filled, the Spirit then overflows to the benefit of those around us. Receive, then, the Holy Spirit, so that it can overflow from your example to the edification of others.
That you may go home and say to your children: receive the Spirit in contentment and thankfulness.
You can say to your employees: receive the Spirit with integrity and a sense of duty.
You can say to your neighbors: receive the Holy Spirit in the name of peace and quiet.
To those you owe money to you can say: receive the Spirit with patience and tenderness and compassion.
To those who owe you money: receive the Spirit for your resourcefulness and hard work.
You see, preaching itself is useless if the Holy Spirit is not in the midst of it. And if the Spirit is in the midst of it, we all become like the apostles, called to be fishers of men, people who take part in God’s plan to redeem the world.
We do this by the best preaching there is, Donne said, an exemplary life and holy conversation.
Isn’t that wonderful? Donne pretty much gets the last word here. Not much to add to that, except this: We offer this final hymn today as a prayer that the Holy Spirit might pour out of us in every relationship—every place we live and work and go—to the glory of God alone.
Amen.
Let's stand and sing together: ‘O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing'
Acts 2:1-13
There are reruns of the TV show 'Everybody Loves Raymond' that still play here in the UK. That show was funny for a lot of reasons—not least because every so often I could catch glimpses of the Italian-American side of my own family. So many of the episodes center around food—Marie, the mother-in-law, cooks amazing food and gets her identity from it, while Debra, the daughter-in-law, can’t cook as well and always feels inferior to Marie.
In one of my favorite episodes Debra begs Marie to teach her how to make meatballs. They spend the day together talking and mixing and cooking, but at the end of the day, when Debra asks Raymond to sample the food, he gags and says there’s something wrong with it. As it turns out, Marie had changed one of the labels on a jar of spice, so that Debra would never get the recipe right. She did it to protect her identity—her role in the family as the maker of food—but in the end she had to apologize.
Now I know most of you think that I spend way too much time talking about food, but something wonderful can happen when all the right components are put together in a meal. Something truly memorable can happen when that final ingredient is added to the mix—the one that makes everything just right—just as it was meant to be.
We’re going to see something like that in our text today.
1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11(both Jews and converts to Judaism Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" 12Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"
13Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine.
What a great picture that is. The disciples and other followers are all together when a storm blows through the place. All of a sudden they can speak languages they didn’t know, and people around them could understand them. I especially love the way the text ends: ‘Amazed and perplexed they asked one another “What does this mean?”’ The people around them had an answer: They thought the Christians were drunk—that they’d partied a little too hard that night.
We spent the last few weeks looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
I’ve been describing the Atonement as a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is something like the final ingredient in God’s plan for the church. He’s called it, redeemed it, demonstrated his power to give it confidence, and now he’s made good on his promise to come and make the community of faith into what it was meant to be—to complete the recipe for his church.
We’ve been talking about Jesus ministry and especially the Cross as the first act of the Atonement story. In dramatic terms, The first act is used to establish the main characters, their relationships and the normal world they live in. Early in the first act some incident occurs that confronts the main character, whose attempts to deal with this incident leads to a second and more dramatic situation, known as the first turning point, which signals the end of the first act, ensures life will never be the same again for the protagonist and raises a dramatic question that will be answered in the climax of the film. The dramatic question should be framed in terms of the protagonist's call to action: How will the character respond to this new turn of events?
If we see the resurrection as the second act, listen to how that’s described in dramatic terms. The second act, also referred to as "rising action" (perfect!), typically depicts the protagonist's attempt to resolve the problem initiated by the first turning point. They must not only learn new skills but arrive at a higher sense of awareness of who they are and what they are capable of, in order to deal with their predicament. This cannot be achieved alone and they are usually aided and abetted by mentors and co-protagonists.
Finally, the third act features the resolution of the story and its subplots. The climax, also known as the second turning point, is the scene or sequence in which the main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are.
Thinking about the Atonement as a three-act drama is helpful here, especially now that we’ve gotten to the final act. In dramatic terms, the gift of the Holy Spirit gives us resolution of the story and its subplots. It ensures that the main dramatic question is answered. And finally, Pentecost leaves the protagonist and other characters—that’s us, by the way—with a new sense of who we really are
When the Holy Spirit enters the picture and becomes the main driver of the church, the church’s story finds its resolution and its purpose. It’s with the gift of the Spirit that we see the whole story at least a little more clearly, and the plots and subplots start to make sense.
The Spirit also answers that main dramatic question: Why did all of this happen? As we grow and learn and serve together we see how the three parts of the Atonement drama accomplish God’s plan of bringing us back to him.
And finally, in keeping with the classic three-act dramatic form, Pentecost leaves us with a new sense of who we are. The gift of the Holy Spirit transforms us into the people we were meant to be all along, both individually and even more profoundly as a community of faith. The gift of the Spirit is more than just the introduction of some strange languages into the mix. It’s the ingredient that gets into us and completes us for the task of being Christ’s disciples and Christ’s church. That’s what we celebrate at Pentecost.
This year the BBC is celebrating English poets and poetry—the slogan for the series is ‘Let Poetry into Your Life.’ As a recovering literature major I was compelled to watch Simon Schama’s amazing journey through the poetry of John Donne. I completed my senior seminar at UCLA on the religious poetry of Donne, and have read him ever since.
At the beginning of the hour, Schama was walking the streets of London and asking people if they knew who Donne was, and it was sad to see how many people said they had never heard of him. The reviewer in the Guardian the next day complained that people had lost the sense ‘that this is the sort of thing we ought to lie about.’
Donne was known for writing some of the truly great carnal poetry in the history of the English language. In his seduction poem ‘The Flea’ he basically says to his partner: Since that flea has bitten us both, our blood is already mixed. (You can see where this is going.) We might as well finish the job. In the poem ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’ he’s not above begging. He says: ‘Licence my roving hands, and let them go’ Try some of Donne’s poetry at home—he doesn’t disappoint.
But Donne was a passionate Christian, too. When he became the Dean of St Paul’s here in London he took those hot-blooded images into the sermons and Christian poetry he wrote during the rest of his life. In one of his Holy Sonnets he says to God:
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The BBC has it right this time. We could all stand to let a little poetry into our lives.
I suppose the call to each one of us at Pentecost is to ‘let the Holy Spirit into our lives’. Just as poetry is supposed to get into our hearts and minds in a way that other forms of language can never do, the Holy Spirit calls us and transforms us in a way that nothing else ever could.
Think back on all the claims we made about the Holy Spirit in our creed today.
We confessed our belief that the Holy Spirit,
justifies us by grace through faith,
sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor,
and binds us together with all believers
in the one body of Christ, the church.
That the same Spirit
rules our faith and life in Christ through Scripture,
engages us through the Word proclaimed,
claims us in the waters of baptism,
feeds us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation,
and calls women and men to all ministries of the church.
We admitted today that we believe the Holy Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.
Maybe if we were to go out and share that message about the Holy Spirit our neighbors would think we were drunk, too.
So what?
What do we care if people misunderstand what our faith is about, at least at first—even when we struggle with it? The point for us at Pentecost is to remember that the Holy Spirit completes the Atonement process perfectly and decisively. That the Holy Spirit functions as that last ingredient that makes the rest of the meal taste exactly as it should.
The Holy Spirit comes and makes all of us, both individually and as a community of faith—the Spirit makes all of us into the people we were meant to be all along. People who share their faith whether they talk about it or not, with every person they meet—at home, in the workplace, on the bus, and in this church.
Listen to how John Donne preached this at St Paul’s on Pentecost Sunday in 1628. I’ve updated the language a little but here’s what he said:
The Holy Spirit is poured into you, if he has made any entry, if he has taken hold of any corrupt affection in your life. But if the Spirit is poured in, he can also be poured out of you. Just as wine is poured into a glass and fills it from top to bottom, the Spirit fills you and covers every part of you.
When we are filled, the Spirit then overflows to the benefit of those around us. Receive, then, the Holy Spirit, so that it can overflow from your example to the edification of others.
That you may go home and say to your children: receive the Spirit in contentment and thankfulness.
You can say to your employees: receive the Spirit with integrity and a sense of duty.
You can say to your neighbors: receive the Holy Spirit in the name of peace and quiet.
To those you owe money to you can say: receive the Spirit with patience and tenderness and compassion.
To those who owe you money: receive the Spirit for your resourcefulness and hard work.
You see, preaching itself is useless if the Holy Spirit is not in the midst of it. And if the Spirit is in the midst of it, we all become like the apostles, called to be fishers of men, people who take part in God’s plan to redeem the world.
We do this by the best preaching there is, Donne said, an exemplary life and holy conversation.
Isn’t that wonderful? Donne pretty much gets the last word here. Not much to add to that, except this: We offer this final hymn today as a prayer that the Holy Spirit might pour out of us in every relationship—every place we live and work and go—to the glory of God alone.
Amen.
Let's stand and sing together: ‘O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing'
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
A Shot Over the Bow
What follows is a bit of a rant about the relationship between Christian faith and American patriotism. That may seem like old news or a closed topic to some of you, but I'm getting the feeling that it's about to make a comeback. I write this as someone with ties to both camps, as an American and a Christian, and also as an historian of the relationship between the two. Mark Noll introduced one of his books by saying that he was writing as a ‘wounded lover,’ and I think I’m beginning to understand what he meant. With that said, here goes.
I’m proud to be an American.
There, I said it. That may be one of the most unpopular things a guy can say these days, especially when he lives outside the US.
I love the country that gave me birth and provided a place where I could meet Jesus freely and without fear of persecution. I love the ideas that illuminated the Founders and drove them to the truly audacious conclusions that became our Constitution. I love the size and diversity and complexity of the place, and the way that, at its best, it welcomes newcomers eagerly and with the expectation that they will bring some new and necessary ingredient to the table. I'm proud, hopefully in an appropriate way, to be an American. Now that doesn't mean I think the place is perfect or above criticism...far from it. The resources and ingenuity and freedoms of this country mean that we may have even more of a responsibility to be just, generous and humble. It's on these items that we might be judged most harshly; it's in these precise areas that we fail most often.
Being a Christian and an American is a difficult dance sometimes. Some of my friends think it’s impossible to be both, that the exploitive and violent acts in our history mean that the nation’s legacy has to be abandoned along the way to mature discipleship. Others see the same events and practices and arrive at the opposite conclusion. ‘America is God’s chosen and ordained nation,’ they say, ‘the greatest force for good in the history of the world.’ To be an American, they might say, necessarily includes being a Christian.
The ‘America-as-villain’ point of view is easy to find these days, but check this out if you’re not convinced about the ‘America-as-New-Israel’ orientation. There’s a new edition of the Bible that is targeted at American Christians who believe that God has set the USA apart from all other nations in the history of the world. This reframing of the Scriptures, called The American Patriot’s Bible (Thomas Nelson Publishers), is just the latest in a long line of attempts to position American history (which I love) in a narrow understanding of God’s plan for his creation (which I reject). See the perceptive review on the Christianity Today blog, 'Out Of Ur':
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/05/book_review_the.html
So let me get this straight. The choices appear to be to see America as the pinnacle of God’s work among the nations, tied inextricably to his plan for the world, or to dismiss the nation as so bloated and sinful and deviated from holy purposes as to be beyond the pale. Hmmm…
I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to disassociate from both of these positions.
Instead I talk a lot to Christians about balancing our responsibilities as citizens with our deeper identities as followers of Jesus. I was raised to be proud of my country, and when I was old enough to choose for myself I found that didn’t change. As a historian I know that there are episodes in our past that erode our image and faithfulness to our values, but unlike stone, that erosion is repaired quickly by the generosity and courage of other Americans. For every injustice there are multiple examples of people who work for fairness and the marginalization of tyranny. For every corrupt politician whose indiscretions dominate the news, there are hundreds of public servants who do the right thing…even if they could earn far more in the private sector.
I suppose the point here is that I have been reminded lately that the idea of America is a living thing—it heals its own wounds and renews its own depleted energies through the commitment and creativity of its citizens. Completely apart from religious belief, there is something unique and special about the inception and development—and even the future prospects—of the United States.
What really matters about America is the network of new ideas that formed its foundation. Bernard Bailyn, one of the great historians of American history, said this about the creators of the American Constitution in a series of lectures that later became the book, To Begin the World Anew (2003).
“We know for certain, what they could only experimentally and prayerfully propose, that formal, written constitutions, upheld by judicial bodies, can effectively constrain the tyrannies of both executive force and populist majorities.
“We know, because they had the imagination to perceive it, that there is a sense, mysterious as it may be, in which human rights can be seen to exist independent of privileges, gifts, and donations of the powerful, and that these rights can somehow be defined and protected by the force of law.
“We casually assume, because they were somehow able to imagine, that the exercise of power is no natural birthright but must be a gift of those who are subject to it.
“And we know, what Jefferson so imaginatively perceived and brilliantly expressed, that religion—religion of any kind, secular or revealed—in the hands of power can be the worst kind of tyranny…”
All of that is great. I loved re-reading it and writing it for you because I believe it and hope to pass it on to my son as he develops his own ideas of what it means to be an American. But the awareness and careful stewardship of my American-ness is has to be balanced—overshadowed, even—by my core identity as a follower of Jesus Christ. I think I should say that in a more declarative way.
My identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.
Why go into all of that?
Because some of my American Christian friends are starting to sound a bit shrill in their complaints about the direction of their country. They picture themselves as patriot-heroes, but in reality they’re (mostly) middle-aged, middle-class professionals dreaming of a new Revolutionary War. Each new edition of the Drudge Report sends them to new levels of panic and anger. Taxes? Too damned high. Gun control? Some gibberish about their ‘cold, dead fingers.’ Cooperation with other nations? No! Only America’s interests matter!
Uh-oh.
They talk about intrusive government and the gay lobby, and they rail about Communism just like their dads did. I’ve heard some talk about panic in the streets and a brewing revolution in ways that used to be caricatured in films and TV shows about skinheads and other crazy radical groups. Some worry constantly that between homosexuality, Islam and Barack Obama, America is going to hell in a handcart.
What calms me is the reminder from Dr. Bailyn that the idea of America is based on restraint and the rule of law. The idea of America—which is really its core essence—will survive the attempts of the good and the not-so-good to steer it off its path.
What gives me a sense of peace is the more important reminder that my identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.
What is sad to me, though, is that some of the people most likely to affirm that last statement are also among the most likely to be threatened by what it means.
Because if we’re honest and faithful (in addition to being historically and biblically accurate), then our allegiance to Christ subsumes or even replaces all other allegiances, including the one we used to pledge every morning at school. Throwing our eternal weight on the one who made us, redeemed us and sustains us is a higher, bigger and more important thing than any earthly citizenship. To believe differently is to miss the point not only of the Christian faith, but also of what it means to be American.
Of course there were strong Christian influences on the founding of the United States, but it’s so important to know that the Christianity practiced in those days would be virtually unrecognizable to contemporary evangelicals. Evangelical Christianity as we might know it doesn’t really emerge until 1740 or so, and without any effective mass media it takes almost a century for Christianity to become the dominant cultural influence in America. People toss around the term ‘Deism’ as if it described just another variant of the Christianity they would find at their church. From that faulty foundation too many will build a continuity of faith and practice between then and now which simply does not exist.
Why is that important? Because the result is a misunderstanding not only of what was present at the founding, but also a near complete misreading of what is under threat today. Some of my friends will lament the growing dominance and acceptance of lifestyles which might not align with how we read our Scriptures. But they miss the point when they equate a loss of Christian control or influence over American politics with a decline of Christianity in America.
The two were never—nor were they ever meant to be—one and the same.
The strong link between Christian faith and American political life left us with a generation, oddly enough, of conservative American Christians so dependent on their influence in politics that they ended up (get this) too lazy to compete in their own religious free market. What a shame.
Now they perceive a new president’s liberal vision as being imposed on them from the outside, when the fact is that all partisanship should have been seen that way. As Christians we should hold all political and national loyalties lightly, not least to prevent us from mistaking them for the one loyalty we should hold above all others. The complaints I’m hearing about the threat to Americanism are sadly much louder and heartfelt than any complaints I’ve heard about the nation’s treatment of the poor, or the lack of biblical literacy among many Christian adults and children, or for any unrepentant sinner who hasn’t yet heard a credible expression of the gospel.
For Christ’s sake—seriously—for Christ’s sake! How can any Christian complain, say, about the loss of the freedom to own an assault rifle when people are living lives apart from the good news of Jesus Christ. Just what, exactly, is so evangelical about that?
Bernard Bailyn was right when he talked about religion in the hands of the powerful as “the worst kind of tyranny.” That makes the shrill complaints of today’s frightened American evangelicals even more hollow. It’s not really tyranny that they fear, but rather, in too many cases, the loss of their own leadership role in that tyranny.
It should concern us that in discussions about God’s standards for his American faithful, some evangelicals seem more comfortable quoting John Winthrop’s sermon than the Sermon on the Mount. Winthrop, in a 1630 sermon given to his shipmates on the Arbella, said this:
‘For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken... we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God... We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going.’
That ‘city upon a hill’ line is from another, far more important sermon—a sermon for all people, not just Americans. In its original context Jesus said:
‘You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:13-16)
Oops.
Not much there to support the idea of American or any other kind of national exceptionalism. Not much there to indicate that Jesus was saying: ‘Wait about 1600 years, when my true followers get their country started, and you’ll see how this is really supposed to look.’
Later in the same sermon Jesus clarifies where our true allegiances should be:
‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’ (Matthew 6:19-24)
When American evangelical Christians (of whom I count myself one) realize that the faith they have inherited, when joined with the resources they control, could be a force for good and freedom that would exceed even that of the entire nation, then we’ll see a real revolution that matters. But as long as there are those among us who would serve two masters, who would trade the redemption of the world for nationalist glory or financial security, we’re going to continue on as if paralyzed somehow.
Patriotism that isn’t shaped and informed and fully yielded to Jesus Christ and him only is doomed to be the very problem it seeks to remedy. Without that crucial level of submission we won’t get any farther, or accomplish anything greater, than a dog chasing its own tail. What a shame.
I’m proud to be an American.
There, I said it. That may be one of the most unpopular things a guy can say these days, especially when he lives outside the US.
I love the country that gave me birth and provided a place where I could meet Jesus freely and without fear of persecution. I love the ideas that illuminated the Founders and drove them to the truly audacious conclusions that became our Constitution. I love the size and diversity and complexity of the place, and the way that, at its best, it welcomes newcomers eagerly and with the expectation that they will bring some new and necessary ingredient to the table. I'm proud, hopefully in an appropriate way, to be an American. Now that doesn't mean I think the place is perfect or above criticism...far from it. The resources and ingenuity and freedoms of this country mean that we may have even more of a responsibility to be just, generous and humble. It's on these items that we might be judged most harshly; it's in these precise areas that we fail most often.
Being a Christian and an American is a difficult dance sometimes. Some of my friends think it’s impossible to be both, that the exploitive and violent acts in our history mean that the nation’s legacy has to be abandoned along the way to mature discipleship. Others see the same events and practices and arrive at the opposite conclusion. ‘America is God’s chosen and ordained nation,’ they say, ‘the greatest force for good in the history of the world.’ To be an American, they might say, necessarily includes being a Christian.
The ‘America-as-villain’ point of view is easy to find these days, but check this out if you’re not convinced about the ‘America-as-New-Israel’ orientation. There’s a new edition of the Bible that is targeted at American Christians who believe that God has set the USA apart from all other nations in the history of the world. This reframing of the Scriptures, called The American Patriot’s Bible (Thomas Nelson Publishers), is just the latest in a long line of attempts to position American history (which I love) in a narrow understanding of God’s plan for his creation (which I reject). See the perceptive review on the Christianity Today blog, 'Out Of Ur':
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/05/book_review_the.html
So let me get this straight. The choices appear to be to see America as the pinnacle of God’s work among the nations, tied inextricably to his plan for the world, or to dismiss the nation as so bloated and sinful and deviated from holy purposes as to be beyond the pale. Hmmm…
I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to disassociate from both of these positions.
Instead I talk a lot to Christians about balancing our responsibilities as citizens with our deeper identities as followers of Jesus. I was raised to be proud of my country, and when I was old enough to choose for myself I found that didn’t change. As a historian I know that there are episodes in our past that erode our image and faithfulness to our values, but unlike stone, that erosion is repaired quickly by the generosity and courage of other Americans. For every injustice there are multiple examples of people who work for fairness and the marginalization of tyranny. For every corrupt politician whose indiscretions dominate the news, there are hundreds of public servants who do the right thing…even if they could earn far more in the private sector.
I suppose the point here is that I have been reminded lately that the idea of America is a living thing—it heals its own wounds and renews its own depleted energies through the commitment and creativity of its citizens. Completely apart from religious belief, there is something unique and special about the inception and development—and even the future prospects—of the United States.
What really matters about America is the network of new ideas that formed its foundation. Bernard Bailyn, one of the great historians of American history, said this about the creators of the American Constitution in a series of lectures that later became the book, To Begin the World Anew (2003).
“We know for certain, what they could only experimentally and prayerfully propose, that formal, written constitutions, upheld by judicial bodies, can effectively constrain the tyrannies of both executive force and populist majorities.
“We know, because they had the imagination to perceive it, that there is a sense, mysterious as it may be, in which human rights can be seen to exist independent of privileges, gifts, and donations of the powerful, and that these rights can somehow be defined and protected by the force of law.
“We casually assume, because they were somehow able to imagine, that the exercise of power is no natural birthright but must be a gift of those who are subject to it.
“And we know, what Jefferson so imaginatively perceived and brilliantly expressed, that religion—religion of any kind, secular or revealed—in the hands of power can be the worst kind of tyranny…”
All of that is great. I loved re-reading it and writing it for you because I believe it and hope to pass it on to my son as he develops his own ideas of what it means to be an American. But the awareness and careful stewardship of my American-ness is has to be balanced—overshadowed, even—by my core identity as a follower of Jesus Christ. I think I should say that in a more declarative way.
My identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.
Why go into all of that?
Because some of my American Christian friends are starting to sound a bit shrill in their complaints about the direction of their country. They picture themselves as patriot-heroes, but in reality they’re (mostly) middle-aged, middle-class professionals dreaming of a new Revolutionary War. Each new edition of the Drudge Report sends them to new levels of panic and anger. Taxes? Too damned high. Gun control? Some gibberish about their ‘cold, dead fingers.’ Cooperation with other nations? No! Only America’s interests matter!
Uh-oh.
They talk about intrusive government and the gay lobby, and they rail about Communism just like their dads did. I’ve heard some talk about panic in the streets and a brewing revolution in ways that used to be caricatured in films and TV shows about skinheads and other crazy radical groups. Some worry constantly that between homosexuality, Islam and Barack Obama, America is going to hell in a handcart.
What calms me is the reminder from Dr. Bailyn that the idea of America is based on restraint and the rule of law. The idea of America—which is really its core essence—will survive the attempts of the good and the not-so-good to steer it off its path.
What gives me a sense of peace is the more important reminder that my identity as an American resides as a distant second to my standing as a redeemed child of the living God.
What is sad to me, though, is that some of the people most likely to affirm that last statement are also among the most likely to be threatened by what it means.
Because if we’re honest and faithful (in addition to being historically and biblically accurate), then our allegiance to Christ subsumes or even replaces all other allegiances, including the one we used to pledge every morning at school. Throwing our eternal weight on the one who made us, redeemed us and sustains us is a higher, bigger and more important thing than any earthly citizenship. To believe differently is to miss the point not only of the Christian faith, but also of what it means to be American.
Of course there were strong Christian influences on the founding of the United States, but it’s so important to know that the Christianity practiced in those days would be virtually unrecognizable to contemporary evangelicals. Evangelical Christianity as we might know it doesn’t really emerge until 1740 or so, and without any effective mass media it takes almost a century for Christianity to become the dominant cultural influence in America. People toss around the term ‘Deism’ as if it described just another variant of the Christianity they would find at their church. From that faulty foundation too many will build a continuity of faith and practice between then and now which simply does not exist.
Why is that important? Because the result is a misunderstanding not only of what was present at the founding, but also a near complete misreading of what is under threat today. Some of my friends will lament the growing dominance and acceptance of lifestyles which might not align with how we read our Scriptures. But they miss the point when they equate a loss of Christian control or influence over American politics with a decline of Christianity in America.
The two were never—nor were they ever meant to be—one and the same.
The strong link between Christian faith and American political life left us with a generation, oddly enough, of conservative American Christians so dependent on their influence in politics that they ended up (get this) too lazy to compete in their own religious free market. What a shame.
Now they perceive a new president’s liberal vision as being imposed on them from the outside, when the fact is that all partisanship should have been seen that way. As Christians we should hold all political and national loyalties lightly, not least to prevent us from mistaking them for the one loyalty we should hold above all others. The complaints I’m hearing about the threat to Americanism are sadly much louder and heartfelt than any complaints I’ve heard about the nation’s treatment of the poor, or the lack of biblical literacy among many Christian adults and children, or for any unrepentant sinner who hasn’t yet heard a credible expression of the gospel.
For Christ’s sake—seriously—for Christ’s sake! How can any Christian complain, say, about the loss of the freedom to own an assault rifle when people are living lives apart from the good news of Jesus Christ. Just what, exactly, is so evangelical about that?
Bernard Bailyn was right when he talked about religion in the hands of the powerful as “the worst kind of tyranny.” That makes the shrill complaints of today’s frightened American evangelicals even more hollow. It’s not really tyranny that they fear, but rather, in too many cases, the loss of their own leadership role in that tyranny.
It should concern us that in discussions about God’s standards for his American faithful, some evangelicals seem more comfortable quoting John Winthrop’s sermon than the Sermon on the Mount. Winthrop, in a 1630 sermon given to his shipmates on the Arbella, said this:
‘For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken... we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God... We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going.’
That ‘city upon a hill’ line is from another, far more important sermon—a sermon for all people, not just Americans. In its original context Jesus said:
‘You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:13-16)
Oops.
Not much there to support the idea of American or any other kind of national exceptionalism. Not much there to indicate that Jesus was saying: ‘Wait about 1600 years, when my true followers get their country started, and you’ll see how this is really supposed to look.’
Later in the same sermon Jesus clarifies where our true allegiances should be:
‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’ (Matthew 6:19-24)
When American evangelical Christians (of whom I count myself one) realize that the faith they have inherited, when joined with the resources they control, could be a force for good and freedom that would exceed even that of the entire nation, then we’ll see a real revolution that matters. But as long as there are those among us who would serve two masters, who would trade the redemption of the world for nationalist glory or financial security, we’re going to continue on as if paralyzed somehow.
Patriotism that isn’t shaped and informed and fully yielded to Jesus Christ and him only is doomed to be the very problem it seeks to remedy. Without that crucial level of submission we won’t get any farther, or accomplish anything greater, than a dog chasing its own tail. What a shame.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Getting Down to Business
Matthew 28:16-20
We’ve had a lot of guests here in the 2 ½ years since we came to London. Our parents have come multiple times, our daughter and her husband have visited, and we’ve had a handful of friends who have stayed with us for days or even weeks. As I talk to people about their experiences if they’ve moved over here from the States as we have, this is a pretty common story.
Julie and Ian and I have settled into a pattern when we know that guests are coming. We try to stock the house with some of our guests’ favorite foods, we charge up our visitor mobile phone, put some money on the spare Oyster card, and then we start cleaning the house. There’s a sense of expectation, even when we’re doing the most menial things, of what it’s going to be like to have some visitors around. The last step is usually making a list of things to go out and do.
Usually, the first thing we do is pick up a 24 bus near our house and ride it all the way to Westminster Abbey and back. You see a lot—Camden, the West End, and Big Ben. You also come back up right in front of the church. Mostly we do that first because it’s cheap, and most of our guests from California fall asleep early on that first day. Bus fare isn’t much to risk.
The work of getting ready for a visit is a part of the hope of seeing someone special again.
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
As we wrap up this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.
We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.
I quoted Scot McKnight here last week. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:
‘Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’
The Atonement is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.
Last week I talked about Peter’s recomissioning—about the role that repentance and forgiveness and restoration play in each of our lives and in the life of this church. The need for repentance is something we’re going to talk about from time to time in the coming year. Your church Council had a very productive and inspiring conversation about it this past week.
All of this matters because we’re just about ready to celebrate Pentecost. Next Sunday we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit—the very presence and power of God, given to prepare us and equip us for the life of faith. Next week we welcome a guest to come and stay with us, and so this week we’re doing a little housecleaning.
In our text this morning the remaining disciples meet Jesus on a mountain. Whether or not this is the same place where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew seems to be using it as a reminder or a closing statement from that sermon.
They gathered there and worshipped, even in the midst of some doubts. That alone is instructive for us—after the traveling and ministry and growth, followed by the traumatic events of the visit to Jerusalem, the disciples were still struggling with what to believe. But that didn’t stop them from answering Christ’s call to come to meet him one last time.
When Jesus begins to teach them, we know from the other Gospel accounts that he’s helping to prepare them for a visitor—for a new arrival—the Holy Spirit. We saw a few weeks ago that Jesus said to the disciples: ‘I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ In other words, stay where you are and get ready for a visit you won’t believe.
In our text this morning Jesus has shifted to talking about what the disciples were going to do together once the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.
‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,’ Jesus said. That’s a pretty bold claim, but it’s the one that gives the disciples the confidence to believe that Jesus is going to make good on all of his promises.
‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…’ Now we’re getting into it. Now we’re getting down to business. This is the one-line version of the marching orders Christ gives his followers, his church, to all of us here in this room today.
‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’ For us this morning it’s important to notice that Jesus’ marching orders come with a plan and a promise.
The plan comes in two parts. First, there’s this bit about baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There’s a lot more to that than just dunking or sprinkling water. Think back on the baptism we had here last week. Baptism is a three-part covenant between God, families and communities of faith.
The plan here is to commit ourselves to living and nurturing each other in faithful communities—gatherings where young and old, single and married, mature disciples and new believers can grow together, can worship together, can support each other through times of terrible sadness and reckless joy.
To baptize is to initiate relationships that are anchored in the journey of faith, and that’s where we get to the second part of the plan.
‘Teach the people to live by all that I have shared with you.’ That’s a big part of the plan Christ leaves for all of us. The Christian faith is by nature a shared faith. We’re called to share it with people around us who might be curious. We share it on a daily basis with people we live with and work with and worship with. In this part of the plan Jesus is reminding the disciples that it’s not enough just to know him. The call on each believer is to introduce him to our neighbor.
They must have been thinking: ‘This guy is crazy. He has no idea what we’ve just been through. We should be on a beach somewhere, healing up from all of our hard work.’
Jesus anticipated their response to his plan, and he offers a promise along with it. ‘You don’t have to do all of this alone,’ he said. ‘You won’t be left to figure all of this out by yourselves.’
‘Surely I am with you always,’ Jesus said, ‘even to the very end of the age.’
That’s the promise. That’s the announcement of the visitor who is coming. That’s the call to get the house ready and to start mapping out where you’re going to go.
For us this is a reminder as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week. The Holy Spirit comes and inspires and empowers all of us to lives the lives God calls us to live from the very beginning.
For us this is a reminder of who we are and what we’re called to be as a community of faith—as a church of Jesus Christ in this community.
We say it a lot around here, but this church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ and it’s expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.
We gather and build relationships together in Fellowship. In Worship we remember who we are and whose we are as we honor God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Discipleship we learn and pray and grow together as we learn what God calls us and prepares us to do. And in the end, all of this is turned outward as we serve the world in Christ’s name—as we do our part to accomplish the Mission of Christ’s church.
Listen to the text again. Listen for where we see the Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission in Christ’s marching orders.
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Every visit begins with an invitation. As we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week, let’s make this last song our prayer as we invite the Holy Spirit to be here, in each one of us, and in this church family.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on all of us today and always. Amen.
We’ve had a lot of guests here in the 2 ½ years since we came to London. Our parents have come multiple times, our daughter and her husband have visited, and we’ve had a handful of friends who have stayed with us for days or even weeks. As I talk to people about their experiences if they’ve moved over here from the States as we have, this is a pretty common story.
Julie and Ian and I have settled into a pattern when we know that guests are coming. We try to stock the house with some of our guests’ favorite foods, we charge up our visitor mobile phone, put some money on the spare Oyster card, and then we start cleaning the house. There’s a sense of expectation, even when we’re doing the most menial things, of what it’s going to be like to have some visitors around. The last step is usually making a list of things to go out and do.
Usually, the first thing we do is pick up a 24 bus near our house and ride it all the way to Westminster Abbey and back. You see a lot—Camden, the West End, and Big Ben. You also come back up right in front of the church. Mostly we do that first because it’s cheap, and most of our guests from California fall asleep early on that first day. Bus fare isn’t much to risk.
The work of getting ready for a visit is a part of the hope of seeing someone special again.
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
As we wrap up this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.
We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.
I quoted Scot McKnight here last week. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:
‘Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’
The Atonement is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.
Last week I talked about Peter’s recomissioning—about the role that repentance and forgiveness and restoration play in each of our lives and in the life of this church. The need for repentance is something we’re going to talk about from time to time in the coming year. Your church Council had a very productive and inspiring conversation about it this past week.
All of this matters because we’re just about ready to celebrate Pentecost. Next Sunday we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit—the very presence and power of God, given to prepare us and equip us for the life of faith. Next week we welcome a guest to come and stay with us, and so this week we’re doing a little housecleaning.
In our text this morning the remaining disciples meet Jesus on a mountain. Whether or not this is the same place where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew seems to be using it as a reminder or a closing statement from that sermon.
They gathered there and worshipped, even in the midst of some doubts. That alone is instructive for us—after the traveling and ministry and growth, followed by the traumatic events of the visit to Jerusalem, the disciples were still struggling with what to believe. But that didn’t stop them from answering Christ’s call to come to meet him one last time.
When Jesus begins to teach them, we know from the other Gospel accounts that he’s helping to prepare them for a visitor—for a new arrival—the Holy Spirit. We saw a few weeks ago that Jesus said to the disciples: ‘I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ In other words, stay where you are and get ready for a visit you won’t believe.
In our text this morning Jesus has shifted to talking about what the disciples were going to do together once the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost.
‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,’ Jesus said. That’s a pretty bold claim, but it’s the one that gives the disciples the confidence to believe that Jesus is going to make good on all of his promises.
‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…’ Now we’re getting into it. Now we’re getting down to business. This is the one-line version of the marching orders Christ gives his followers, his church, to all of us here in this room today.
‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’ For us this morning it’s important to notice that Jesus’ marching orders come with a plan and a promise.
The plan comes in two parts. First, there’s this bit about baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There’s a lot more to that than just dunking or sprinkling water. Think back on the baptism we had here last week. Baptism is a three-part covenant between God, families and communities of faith.
The plan here is to commit ourselves to living and nurturing each other in faithful communities—gatherings where young and old, single and married, mature disciples and new believers can grow together, can worship together, can support each other through times of terrible sadness and reckless joy.
To baptize is to initiate relationships that are anchored in the journey of faith, and that’s where we get to the second part of the plan.
‘Teach the people to live by all that I have shared with you.’ That’s a big part of the plan Christ leaves for all of us. The Christian faith is by nature a shared faith. We’re called to share it with people around us who might be curious. We share it on a daily basis with people we live with and work with and worship with. In this part of the plan Jesus is reminding the disciples that it’s not enough just to know him. The call on each believer is to introduce him to our neighbor.
They must have been thinking: ‘This guy is crazy. He has no idea what we’ve just been through. We should be on a beach somewhere, healing up from all of our hard work.’
Jesus anticipated their response to his plan, and he offers a promise along with it. ‘You don’t have to do all of this alone,’ he said. ‘You won’t be left to figure all of this out by yourselves.’
‘Surely I am with you always,’ Jesus said, ‘even to the very end of the age.’
That’s the promise. That’s the announcement of the visitor who is coming. That’s the call to get the house ready and to start mapping out where you’re going to go.
For us this is a reminder as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week. The Holy Spirit comes and inspires and empowers all of us to lives the lives God calls us to live from the very beginning.
For us this is a reminder of who we are and what we’re called to be as a community of faith—as a church of Jesus Christ in this community.
We say it a lot around here, but this church is built on a foundation of Jesus Christ and it’s expressed through Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission.
We gather and build relationships together in Fellowship. In Worship we remember who we are and whose we are as we honor God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Discipleship we learn and pray and grow together as we learn what God calls us and prepares us to do. And in the end, all of this is turned outward as we serve the world in Christ’s name—as we do our part to accomplish the Mission of Christ’s church.
Listen to the text again. Listen for where we see the Fellowship, Worship, Discipleship and Mission in Christ’s marching orders.
16Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Every visit begins with an invitation. As we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next week, let’s make this last song our prayer as we invite the Holy Spirit to be here, in each one of us, and in this church family.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on all of us today and always. Amen.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Coming Clean
(This message was given at The American Church in London on 17 May 2009.)
John 21:15-17
One of the most important components of a Greek tragedy is the fatal flaw. The word used to describe that flaw was the word ‘hamartia.’ Technically, hamartia literally meant ‘to miss the mark’, but in Greek tragedies it came to represent something more. The hamartia was an error in judgment or unwitting mistake in the actions of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective. By making an error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of their objective, usually with disastrous consequences. Keep that in mind this morning.
As we continue this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.
But sometimes that love requires something of us. Sometimes God’s love calls us to live differently, to reconsider things we used to believe. Sometimes God asks us to do something, not to earn his love, but in response to having already received his love.
15When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
16Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?"
He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.
We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the Resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.
I’ve quoted Scot McKnight here before. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:
‘We cannot back down from this. If this is Jesus’ vision then the creation of a community where God’s will is done is inherent to the meaning of atonement…Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’
This understanding of the community of faith as a place where God’s will is done and lived out is crucial for understanding our text today.
So back to our story of Jesus and Peter. To grasp what happens in our text today we have to go back to the relationship Jesus had with Peter as they worked together over the past three years.
In Matthew 16 Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement—as part of the foundation for his church. Peter was the first to understand who Jesus really was, and because of that Jesus said to him: ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of John—now you will be called Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’
But just 10 chapters later Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Peter was given three chances to acknowledge that he was a follower of Jesus, and each time he got angry and said he didn’t know him.
And so just before our text today Peter and some of the disciples were going back to work as fishermen. They had a lousy night’s fishing, and as they were coming in Jesus told them to throw their nets in one more time. This time they caught a huge load of fish—so many that they couldn’t lift the net back into the boat.
When they were all ashore they ate some grilled fish together and then Jesus looked at Peter and started to grill him. Do you love me?…Do you truly love me?…Do you love me? Peter says yes all three times, and in the end Jesus moves on as if everything was fine.
There are several reasons why Jesus did what he did with Peter.
We’ve already seen that Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement, but also that Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Because of that, Peter needed to be restored.
Jesus knew that if he built his church on someone with unresolved, unconfessed, unforgiven sin—if Jesus built his church on someone who hadn’t come clean—the whole thing would crumble. That’s where we come back to the ancient Greek tragedy idea of the fatal flaw.
There’s a lesson for us as we think back on the word hamartia. In the evolution of that word from ancient Greek to marketplace Greek—that’s the Greek used in the NT—in that evolution the word hamartia stopped describing a dramatic fatal flaw, and came to represent the biblical idea of sin.
Some people have seen this passage as Jesus’ way of humiliating or punishing Peter—that’s certainly how Peter saw it. But it’s closer to the truth to say that Jesus was restoring Peter by giving him three chances to say what he should have said in Jerusalem. Jesus was giving Peter a chance to say sorry for his sin, and to get on with his life.
What I like about this is that Jesus doesn’t ask Peter to grovel or define his faith with some complex doctrinal statement. Jesus simply asks him if he loves him, and when he says he does, Jesus recommissions Peter for the job Jesus wanted him to have all along: ‘Feed my lambs,’ Jesus said. ‘Take care of my sheep.’
This story, more than most, gets at the heart of the Christian faith. We are created and called for a purpose, but we get in our own way and have to be restored—recommissioned for the job Jesus wanted us to have all along. But first, and then from time to time along the way, we stop to say sorry for our sins.
That’s an idea that matters for us as individuals, and also as a community of faith—as a community of the Atonement.
As individual disciples part of the discipline of living the life of faith is to come before God in confession every so often. Every person has a past—every person has a past—and it’s in confession—in repentance and forgiveness, that we get cleaned off and made ready to be faithful people again.
But as a church that gets more complicated. Every church has history—some of it great and some of it not so great at all. Every church has a past, and it’s always up to the present congregation and leadership to manage that past and get on with the business of being an effective, caring, creative community of Christian faith.
Even this church has a few dark moments in its past—times when it wounded people by not doing what it should have done. Those dark moments need to be acknowledged and reconciled so that this place can be restored like Peter—restored to accomplish what God has in store for us.
It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.
When I bought my first house I learned that one of the fees you pay in the States is for something called ‘title insurance.’ Title insurance is protection against claims on the property based on the actions of a previous owner. It covers all kinds of things to make sure that when you buy a house you actually get what you’re paying for.
Why do I bring that up? Because title insurance doesn’t exist in the church.
Apart from repentance and forgiveness and restoration, there isn’t any protection against claims on this community based on the actions of previous owners.
It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.
But we do, and we will. Not to settle scores or continue battles or to be vindictive, but so that we can be a community that lives as if the atonement really means what Christ said it means. So that we can be a place where God’s will is done and lived out by each of us on our own, and by all of us when we gather as a church.
So back to the Greek tragedies—the goal, desired outcome in a Greek tragedy was something called catharsis.
Catharsis is another Greek word—this one means "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." In different forms it can mean "to purify, or to purge,” or "pure or clean."
In the Christian tradition we call that repentance and forgiveness and restoration. Those are normal, necessary parts of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. When we miss the mark—when we sin—God’s forgiveness is there for anyone and any church who is willing to repent. It’s God’s forgiveness and grace that keep our past actions from becoming fatal flaws.
We need that grace in our own lives, and we need it in this church.
We’re going to revisit this idea from time to time here in the coming year, and your church Council is going to be talking about it, too.
As we travel this road together it’ll be good to remember Peter the disciple—the one who Jesus called, the one who committed a terrible sin, the one who was restored through repentance and forgiveness, and the one who ultimately served the church faithfully and sacrificially.
As with all things, we bring our lives and this church before the throne of God as a reminder that we are his, and that we’ve been purchased with a price.
In the end that’s the only title insurance we can truly have or hope for. Amen.
Because the sinless savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the Just is satisfied,
To look on Him and pardon me.
Let’s sing that together: ‘Before the Throne of God Above.’
John 21:15-17
One of the most important components of a Greek tragedy is the fatal flaw. The word used to describe that flaw was the word ‘hamartia.’ Technically, hamartia literally meant ‘to miss the mark’, but in Greek tragedies it came to represent something more. The hamartia was an error in judgment or unwitting mistake in the actions of the hero. For example, the hero might attempt to achieve a certain objective. By making an error in judgment, however, the hero instead achieves the opposite of their objective, usually with disastrous consequences. Keep that in mind this morning.
As we continue this series of Easter messages that will take us into Pentecost, it’s good to be reminded of what we continue to celebrate during this season:
We celebrate Easter to remember the miraculous raising from the dead of Jesus the Messiah—God in human form, who came and lived and served and loved and died in order to demonstrate the depth of God’s love for all of his creation.
That’s our baseline—the foundation for whatever else we might say in this season or any season. At Easter we celebrate the lengths God will go to in order to demonstrate his love for us.
But sometimes that love requires something of us. Sometimes God’s love calls us to live differently, to reconsider things we used to believe. Sometimes God asks us to do something, not to earn his love, but in response to having already received his love.
15When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
16Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?"
He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.
We’ve been looking at the appearances of Jesus after Holy Week—after the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus appeared to his disciples and to hundreds of other people in those strange days after his death. It’s those appearances, and the way they’re written about and understood in the Scriptures, that make up the basis for our faith—for our hope that Christ really is who he said he is, and that he can do what he said he would do.
We’ve also been trying to get some perspective on just exactly what the Atonement means for us. The Atonement is the theological term for what God has done to bring us back to him. During the run up to Easter we talked about how Christ’s atoning work offers healing for all of our relationships: with God, with ourselves, with each other and with the earth. This is crucially important stuff for us to wrestle with as we grow in our faith as disciples of Jesus.
The Atonement is like a drama that happens in three acts: the Cross, the Resurrection, and Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit. On the Cross, a price is paid for the sin and brokenness in all of our lives. The resurrection—the Easter miracle—demonstrates that God has power over all things, even death. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of inspiring and empowering each of us to be the people he made us to be in the first place.
We should be very clear on this point: It’s the Atonement—the work God has done to bring us back to him—it’s the Atonement that makes us who we are as Christian individuals and as a community of Christian faith.
I’ve quoted Scot McKnight here before. Listen to how he describes the link between the Atonement and the church:
‘We cannot back down from this. If this is Jesus’ vision then the creation of a community where God’s will is done is inherent to the meaning of atonement…Atonement, if we let the Bible speak for itself, is about creating communities of faith wherein God’s will is done and lived out.’
This understanding of the community of faith as a place where God’s will is done and lived out is crucial for understanding our text today.
So back to our story of Jesus and Peter. To grasp what happens in our text today we have to go back to the relationship Jesus had with Peter as they worked together over the past three years.
In Matthew 16 Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement—as part of the foundation for his church. Peter was the first to understand who Jesus really was, and because of that Jesus said to him: ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of John—now you will be called Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’
But just 10 chapters later Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Peter was given three chances to acknowledge that he was a follower of Jesus, and each time he got angry and said he didn’t know him.
And so just before our text today Peter and some of the disciples were going back to work as fishermen. They had a lousy night’s fishing, and as they were coming in Jesus told them to throw their nets in one more time. This time they caught a huge load of fish—so many that they couldn’t lift the net back into the boat.
When they were all ashore they ate some grilled fish together and then Jesus looked at Peter and started to grill him. Do you love me?…Do you truly love me?…Do you love me? Peter says yes all three times, and in the end Jesus moves on as if everything was fine.
There are several reasons why Jesus did what he did with Peter.
We’ve already seen that Jesus had set Peter aside as the leader of his movement, but also that Peter had denied Jesus when he needed him most. Because of that, Peter needed to be restored.
Jesus knew that if he built his church on someone with unresolved, unconfessed, unforgiven sin—if Jesus built his church on someone who hadn’t come clean—the whole thing would crumble. That’s where we come back to the ancient Greek tragedy idea of the fatal flaw.
There’s a lesson for us as we think back on the word hamartia. In the evolution of that word from ancient Greek to marketplace Greek—that’s the Greek used in the NT—in that evolution the word hamartia stopped describing a dramatic fatal flaw, and came to represent the biblical idea of sin.
Some people have seen this passage as Jesus’ way of humiliating or punishing Peter—that’s certainly how Peter saw it. But it’s closer to the truth to say that Jesus was restoring Peter by giving him three chances to say what he should have said in Jerusalem. Jesus was giving Peter a chance to say sorry for his sin, and to get on with his life.
What I like about this is that Jesus doesn’t ask Peter to grovel or define his faith with some complex doctrinal statement. Jesus simply asks him if he loves him, and when he says he does, Jesus recommissions Peter for the job Jesus wanted him to have all along: ‘Feed my lambs,’ Jesus said. ‘Take care of my sheep.’
This story, more than most, gets at the heart of the Christian faith. We are created and called for a purpose, but we get in our own way and have to be restored—recommissioned for the job Jesus wanted us to have all along. But first, and then from time to time along the way, we stop to say sorry for our sins.
That’s an idea that matters for us as individuals, and also as a community of faith—as a community of the Atonement.
As individual disciples part of the discipline of living the life of faith is to come before God in confession every so often. Every person has a past—every person has a past—and it’s in confession—in repentance and forgiveness, that we get cleaned off and made ready to be faithful people again.
But as a church that gets more complicated. Every church has history—some of it great and some of it not so great at all. Every church has a past, and it’s always up to the present congregation and leadership to manage that past and get on with the business of being an effective, caring, creative community of Christian faith.
Even this church has a few dark moments in its past—times when it wounded people by not doing what it should have done. Those dark moments need to be acknowledged and reconciled so that this place can be restored like Peter—restored to accomplish what God has in store for us.
It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.
When I bought my first house I learned that one of the fees you pay in the States is for something called ‘title insurance.’ Title insurance is protection against claims on the property based on the actions of a previous owner. It covers all kinds of things to make sure that when you buy a house you actually get what you’re paying for.
Why do I bring that up? Because title insurance doesn’t exist in the church.
Apart from repentance and forgiveness and restoration, there isn’t any protection against claims on this community based on the actions of previous owners.
It would be nice if we didn’t have to do this every so often.
But we do, and we will. Not to settle scores or continue battles or to be vindictive, but so that we can be a community that lives as if the atonement really means what Christ said it means. So that we can be a place where God’s will is done and lived out by each of us on our own, and by all of us when we gather as a church.
So back to the Greek tragedies—the goal, desired outcome in a Greek tragedy was something called catharsis.
Catharsis is another Greek word—this one means "purification", "cleansing" or "clarification." In different forms it can mean "to purify, or to purge,” or "pure or clean."
In the Christian tradition we call that repentance and forgiveness and restoration. Those are normal, necessary parts of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. When we miss the mark—when we sin—God’s forgiveness is there for anyone and any church who is willing to repent. It’s God’s forgiveness and grace that keep our past actions from becoming fatal flaws.
We need that grace in our own lives, and we need it in this church.
We’re going to revisit this idea from time to time here in the coming year, and your church Council is going to be talking about it, too.
As we travel this road together it’ll be good to remember Peter the disciple—the one who Jesus called, the one who committed a terrible sin, the one who was restored through repentance and forgiveness, and the one who ultimately served the church faithfully and sacrificially.
As with all things, we bring our lives and this church before the throne of God as a reminder that we are his, and that we’ve been purchased with a price.
In the end that’s the only title insurance we can truly have or hope for. Amen.
Because the sinless savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the Just is satisfied,
To look on Him and pardon me.
Let’s sing that together: ‘Before the Throne of God Above.’
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