A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on July 20, 20087, based on
Romans 8: 18-25:
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
The Legend of Leelawala
This past week, when we were at Niagra Falls, I saw a movie about the history of the area. It seems that a Native American tribe lived close by and the chief thought it would be a good idea to give his daughter, Leelawala, in marriage to the oldest man of the tribe. Leelawala submitted to the marriage, but was very distressed by it and after the ceremony she ran away from the camp. The legend tells that she heard the spirit of the Thundering Waters calling to her and she ran towards it. When she came to the river, she got in a canoe and paddled to the falls. Over she went and as she fell into the chaos below, her spirit became one with the Spirit of the Falls, and now she lives forever in eternal unity with that Spirit.
Now that may sound like a primitive legend, but we as Christians can sometimes adopt a similar way of thinking about our lives and our future prospects. Life can be very distressing and it sometimes seems as if we are being swept along, like Leelalwala in her canoe, towards the great cataclysm up ahead. Things get rockier and rockier in our lives, events speed up and we are hurled along, helpless, until at last we plunge over the falls and are dashed to bits on the rocks below. Dying, we ascend to heaven as disembodied spirits – like Leelawala – and live forever in paradise with God.
Our Destiny
Now there’s only one problem with that story – it’s not our Destiny. Yes, we will go to Heaven when we die – or as Jesus said to the dying thief, “today you will be with me in Paradise”. But living forever in a blissful, disembodied existence is not the final state for the believer. Heaven as we normally conceive of it is a sort of way station where we wait for the final summation of all things, the recreation of the physical universe. Our destiny is to be like Jesus in every way- and that includes physically. This is what Paul is talking about when he says we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved.
We were saved in hope that our bodies would be redeemed - not that we would that we would sit on misty clouds playing harps for all eternity!
Think of the body Jesus had after his resurrection. It was recognizable as a physical body. Mary thought the risen Christ was a gardener. And the two disciples on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus until he was revealed in the breaking of the bread. He was able to touch this bread and eat. He cooked breakfast for Peter and the disciples on the beach. Thomas touched the wounds of Christ’s physical body.
But this body was special. It could pass through walls, and disappear and ascend into the clouds. It was a Resurrection body – a Body that had passed through death and been transformed by the power of God, the same kind of body we will have in our own resurrection.
The apostle John describes the renewal of all things in his Revelation: “Behold I saw a new Heaven and a new earth coming down out of heaven. (Rev. 21:1) …for behold, God is making all things new (v. 5).
The physical universe was subjected to decay, suffering and death through the sin of the one man Adam. But through the righteous sacrifice of the man Jesus, God will make all things new – both human beings and physical matter will get a second chance – the opportunity to be cleansed of sin and to live free of death and suffering. This is the promise held out to all of us in Christ and even extended to the physical creation.
So What?!
So - sounds great, can’t wait. What does that mean to me right now?! …. It means, friends, that we should be people of Eager Expectation, in a word - Hope. The Greek word used to convey ‘Eager expectation’ has the sense of one who scans the horizon with his head thrust forward in order to spot the first signs of the dawn. This person is not discouraged by the darkness around, but focuses on the return of the light. His is not a ‘hope-so’ faith, but a Hope based on the sure knowledge that dawn follows night.
Personally, Expectant Hope means that even though we face challenges, sickness, strife and trouble, that this present reality is not the whole picture, but that a Restoration is on the way. Help is coming; in fact it’s already here - because
We have a Down Payment or ‘earnest money’ for our Hope. That deposit is the Holy Spirit, who resides within Christians, enlightening us, giving assurance that the Great Light will return and that we will have a part in it. It’s like the line from the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness”, we have “help for today and bright hope for tomorrow…Great is Thy Faithfulness, Lord unto me. Our Hope does not disappoint because of the Holy Spirit poured out within our hearts ( Romans 5:5).
Our eager expectation should be like the woman who expects an important guest, and cleans up the house in order to have a beautiful place to offer the guest - remembering, of course, that the guest is interested in us first. There is a sense of urgency: The guest is coming, we must be busy preparing for Him.
Extending this metaphor to the world around us, we believe that the watchword for all our outreach and ministry activity is “Redemption”.
Mission Tri State 4 Corners Blessing
Recently, a group of us from All Saints participated in a Mission Tri-State event where we blessed the four geographic corners of the City of Huntington. We had prayers of confession, prayers of blessing the city, prophecies and Communion. At the end of our worship, we poured the consecrated elements out on the ground, asking God to bless the ground itself. You’ll remember that we also did this at Hope House during our first memorial service, pouring out the elements of the very spot where each teen had fallen.
This action was based on the notion that the creation itself groans and eagerly anticipates its own redemption. It’s a little like saying, “Hang on, be patient, your time is coming – and in the meantime be blessed as we pray the Lord of the Harvest to save souls and to bring redemption to you, Ground”. We were proclaiming our belief that the blessings of salvation extend even to the physical universe.
Watchword: Redemption
In our work here on Earth, an important distinction needs to be made. There’s a difference between working for the Redemption of the world in view of the Resurrection, and trying to make this world Heaven.
When you don’t believe in resurrection and recreation, when you don’t believe that the sufferings of this world are not to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed, then this world is all there is. You take a look around you and you see that, just as Jesus said, there is good and bad in the world; the wheat and the tares grow up together. There is suffering in the world. People are selfish. They pursue their own good to the exclusion of others’ goods. They don’t love their neighbors as themselves. What do we think about this? What do we do about it?
The great temptation of our age has been to make the State the instrument of Salvation – to take away freedom from individuals and put it into the hands of powerful elites under the pretext of gaining safety and security or the salvation of the world order. These elites then profit personally and oppress everybody else. In order to coax people to give up their freedom, they have to be scared to death by various kinds of crises. Since we’re talking about the physical world today, we can mention the Environment as an issue that various false prophets use to terrify the masses into giving up control of their lives.
Folks, the world will not be destroyed by SUV emissions and cow Flatulence! God has a renewal plan for the universe and it doesn’t include humans leaving a barren earth and depending upon some stupid robot to clean up the mess we left behind. We are stewards of a magnificent, but fallen world that needs redemption, not mere recycling! …
Then finally, if we eagerly expect Resurrection, we should be eager to share this hope with others around us who do not have hope. This is the greatest news of all time; how can we keep it to ourselves?!
God has given us a Great Commission – to go into all the world and make disciples – to rescue those who are perishing, and to redeem them from sin and death; to be poured out as an offering and given as bread ‘for the life of the world”, just like Jesus says in John 6:51: I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
What we have is Life, the Life of the world. In all of our outreach work, we are offering Life to the world. We offer Life through introducing people to Jesus as Savior and Lord. We offer Life through ministering to people’s grief and sorrow. We offer Life when we reach out to alleviate poverty and hunger. We offer Life through teaching people how to live stable, productive and healed lives. And we do it all as collaborators with our wonderful God, knowing that our labor is not in vain, that all we do for the Kingdom of God will bear fruit in its time, and that one day, all we see around us will cease to groan and rejoice instead.
We are not like Leelawala. We don’t have to throw ourselves over the falls in order to escape our despair. The King is coming, bringing glorious redemption with Him. Let us eagerly expect His coming and live In Expectant Hope! Amen.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
An Unexpected Retreat
Chapter Talk
# 187,
written to the
Company of Jesus.
July 13, 2008
Niagra Falls, Ontario
Dear Company,
Greetings to all from the banks of the Thundering Waters of Niagra Falls.
When my wife, Cindy, informed me several months ago that she was flying to a Music for Young Children conference in Niagra Falls, I responded “That’s nice. Have a good time…” She quickly added, however, that she wanted me to go with her. With plane fares and the vagaries of flying what they are, I resisted her request but countered that we could drive the trip together in about 8 hours and save many hundreds of dollars. She quickly agreed, and I became the official chauffeur for her trip.
I really did not expect to do much other than hang out, read, and do some sightseeing in between Cindy’s conference sessions. However, I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving here that right next door to the Sheraton hotel, overlooking the Falls, is Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre (http://www.carmelniagara.com/).
On Saturday morning, I walked the half block to the Centre and wandered the grounds in silence and reflection. Then, indulging my bibliophilia, I perused the extensive book offerings and came away with the following titles:
“Grace is everywhere: reflections of an aspiring monk”, by James Stephen Behrens, a Trappist of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers Georgia (the site of our CoJ retreat two years ago).
“Merton’s Palace of Nowhere” by James Finley.
“One Foot in Eden: a celtic view of the stages of life” by J. Philip Newell.
“Inside the Psalms: reflections for novices” by Maureen McCabe, OSCO.
And, picking between five or six books about the famous Carmelite,
“The Spiritual Genius of St. Therese of Lisieux” by Jean Guitton.
Finally, “The Carmelite Rule”, with a brief preface by Bruce Baker, O.Carm. of the Mt. Carmel Spiritual Center and Gregory Klien, O.Carm. from Grand Island, NY.
I was also pleased to learn that Saturday was the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and there was to be a Mass at 3pm. Coming back later to the Mass, I encountered four large tour buses that had brought in a group from Toronto. The church was full of people, who seemed to be largely Hispanic, but there also seemed to be folks from every imaginable ethnic group as well: Africans, Koreans, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Indians and even White Anglo-Saxons. It really did seem like a foretaste of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. I was doubly pleased when the Celebrant pointedly invited everyone to come up for Communion. So, without the slightest qualms about not being Roman Catholic, I made eucharist with my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters from around the globe.
This morning, my retreat schedule continued with a 7:15 am Sunrise service on an outdoor plaza overlooking the Falls, led by local pastor Martin Goode, from Grace Gospel Church in Niagra Falls. He had very appropriately chosen Psalm 29 for unison reading. Verses 3 and 10 were especially meaningful in this context:
3) The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
10) The LORD sits enthroned over the flood (‘Niagra’ means ‘flood’); the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
What an awesome reminder of God’s sovereign majesty over nature and our lives!
Returning to Carmel, here are some further thoughts:
The Carmelite Rule
The very short Rule of Carmel was written by Patriarch Albert of Jerusalem between 1206 and 1214 in response to a request from a group of hermits who had gathered on Mt. Carmel to serve the Lord in His own land. These monks had their own cells and came together for common worship in a central oratory. According to the Rule, a Prior was to be chosen, and his cell was to be located near the entrance of the property, ‘so that he may be the first to meet those who approach, and whatever has to be done in consequence may all be carried out as he may decide and order” (Ch. 9) – very similar to the role of the porter and the reception of guests in the Rule of Benedict.
The Caremlite hermits were to eschew private property, to fast continually, abstaining from meat, but they were allowed to have as much livestock as needed. They were admonished to put on the full armor of God (Eph. 6) in order to guard them spiritually, and to do manual work to protect them from the dangers of idleness (ch. 19,20). Silence was enjoined on the brethren to ward off the dangers of the tongue’s offences (ch. 21). Finally in chapter 24, Albert concludes with these words:
“Here then are a few points I have written down to provide you with a standard of conduct to live up to, but our Lord, at his second coming, will reward anyone who does more than he is obliged to do. See that the bounds of common sense are not exceeded, however, for common sense is the guide of the virtues.”
May God give us all the grace not to exceed common sense, and to excel in all the virtues.
Andrew+
July 13, 2008
Niagra Falls, Ontario
Dear Company,
Greetings to all from the banks of the Thundering Waters of Niagra Falls.
When my wife, Cindy, informed me several months ago that she was flying to a Music for Young Children conference in Niagra Falls, I responded “That’s nice. Have a good time…” She quickly added, however, that she wanted me to go with her. With plane fares and the vagaries of flying what they are, I resisted her request but countered that we could drive the trip together in about 8 hours and save many hundreds of dollars. She quickly agreed, and I became the official chauffeur for her trip.
I really did not expect to do much other than hang out, read, and do some sightseeing in between Cindy’s conference sessions. However, I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving here that right next door to the Sheraton hotel, overlooking the Falls, is Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre (http://www.carmelniagara.com/).
On Saturday morning, I walked the half block to the Centre and wandered the grounds in silence and reflection. Then, indulging my bibliophilia, I perused the extensive book offerings and came away with the following titles:
“Grace is everywhere: reflections of an aspiring monk”, by James Stephen Behrens, a Trappist of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers Georgia (the site of our CoJ retreat two years ago).
“Merton’s Palace of Nowhere” by James Finley.
“One Foot in Eden: a celtic view of the stages of life” by J. Philip Newell.
“Inside the Psalms: reflections for novices” by Maureen McCabe, OSCO.
And, picking between five or six books about the famous Carmelite,
“The Spiritual Genius of St. Therese of Lisieux” by Jean Guitton.
Finally, “The Carmelite Rule”, with a brief preface by Bruce Baker, O.Carm. of the Mt. Carmel Spiritual Center and Gregory Klien, O.Carm. from Grand Island, NY.
I was also pleased to learn that Saturday was the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and there was to be a Mass at 3pm. Coming back later to the Mass, I encountered four large tour buses that had brought in a group from Toronto. The church was full of people, who seemed to be largely Hispanic, but there also seemed to be folks from every imaginable ethnic group as well: Africans, Koreans, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, Indians and even White Anglo-Saxons. It really did seem like a foretaste of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. I was doubly pleased when the Celebrant pointedly invited everyone to come up for Communion. So, without the slightest qualms about not being Roman Catholic, I made eucharist with my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters from around the globe.
This morning, my retreat schedule continued with a 7:15 am Sunrise service on an outdoor plaza overlooking the Falls, led by local pastor Martin Goode, from Grace Gospel Church in Niagra Falls. He had very appropriately chosen Psalm 29 for unison reading. Verses 3 and 10 were especially meaningful in this context:
3) The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
10) The LORD sits enthroned over the flood (‘Niagra’ means ‘flood’); the LORD is enthroned as King forever.
What an awesome reminder of God’s sovereign majesty over nature and our lives!
Returning to Carmel, here are some further thoughts:
The Carmelite Rule
The very short Rule of Carmel was written by Patriarch Albert of Jerusalem between 1206 and 1214 in response to a request from a group of hermits who had gathered on Mt. Carmel to serve the Lord in His own land. These monks had their own cells and came together for common worship in a central oratory. According to the Rule, a Prior was to be chosen, and his cell was to be located near the entrance of the property, ‘so that he may be the first to meet those who approach, and whatever has to be done in consequence may all be carried out as he may decide and order” (Ch. 9) – very similar to the role of the porter and the reception of guests in the Rule of Benedict.
The Caremlite hermits were to eschew private property, to fast continually, abstaining from meat, but they were allowed to have as much livestock as needed. They were admonished to put on the full armor of God (Eph. 6) in order to guard them spiritually, and to do manual work to protect them from the dangers of idleness (ch. 19,20). Silence was enjoined on the brethren to ward off the dangers of the tongue’s offences (ch. 21). Finally in chapter 24, Albert concludes with these words:
“Here then are a few points I have written down to provide you with a standard of conduct to live up to, but our Lord, at his second coming, will reward anyone who does more than he is obliged to do. See that the bounds of common sense are not exceeded, however, for common sense is the guide of the virtues.”
May God give us all the grace not to exceed common sense, and to excel in all the virtues.
Andrew+
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Okey Dokey
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on July 6, 2008 at St. Mary's Medical Center Convent Chapel, based on Romans 7:21-8:6
My father in law, Paul Arbogast tells a story about an elderly woman who went to the same Pilgrim Holiness Church that he attended as a boy. As you may know, the Holiness tradition is very much about what you may and may not do. This church expected the women to wear their hair long and to avoid makeup. All their members were to wear long sleeves, to be teetotalers, and to be tobacco free. But this particular woman picked up the habit of rubbing snuff along the way, and was very dedicated to her habit.
One day, her pastor confronted her about her habit. In response, she assured him that she would make it a matter of earnest prayer. Several days later, when the pastor saw the woman again, he asked her, “So what did the Lord tell you about your snuff habit?”
Obviously on the spot, she was quiet for a moment and then blurted out emphatically, “He said “Okey Dokey!” - and as far as she was concerned, that was the last word on the subject!
This lady manifested exactly the opposite attitude towards her behavior compared to the Apostle Paul. Paul looked at the Law of God and agreed with it. He agreed that he should Love God above all else, that he shouldn’t lie, steal, cheat or covet his neighbor’s stuff – and yet in practical application, when he tried to live it out, he found that he just could not do it in his own power.
He found that there was a force, an evil that dwelt within him that pulled him towards the wrong thing. This he identified as ‘the flesh’ or ‘Sarks’ in Greek. The flesh was what bound Paul to the law of sin and death, setting his mind (Nous) against his flesh. As a result he found himself engaged in a terrible struggle. Unlike the snuff -rubbing woman who simply put words of contrived approval in God’s mouth, Paul realized that there is no escape from his dilemma and he cried out with the most pitiful lament, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death!?
John Wesley Angst
Some 1700 years later, JohnWesley echoed these same sentiments when he wrote in his journal: “I see that the whole law of God is holy, just, and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul ought to bear God’s image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I feel that ’I am sold under sin’. I know that I, too, deserve nothing but wrath, being full of all abominations, and having no good thing in me to atone for them or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves. So that my mouth is stopped. I have nothing to plead. God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consuming fire; I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed.” (John Wesley, in a letter to a friend, May 24, 1738).
Contrast this with today’s cult of self-esteem and the desire to be free of all constraints. Instead of recognizing that God is holy and unbending - that He lays claim upon our lives, modern people demand an unbending right to live out their every whim - and be congratulated for it to boot! As Jonah Greenberg points out: “The underlying…dogma of [today’s culture] is that social and gender roles are not fixed, that tradition, religion and natural law have no binding power of authority over the individual’s will to power,..” (Quoted in Liberal Fascism, pg. 361.
A Matter of Worldview
The Judeo-Christian worldview starts with God as the Creator, who speaks His Word to His creature, Man – who in turn conforms his experience to God’s Word – leading to Salvation, transformation into Christ’s likeness and even dare we say it, ‘divinization’ – partaking of the very nature of God itself.
The Humanist, on the other hand, starts with himself as the measure of all things, bringing his experience to the Word, and all Tradition. Rejecting all authority, he will brook no limits on his own freedom, and simply replaces God with himself. A variation on this would be to retain a form of religion, but to then look at God’s Word through the lens of one’s own experience, finding support for these experiences – no matter how foreign they are to traditional morality or ethics. The result is a ‘sanctified lifestyle of Choice” in which God loves me and supports me in whatever I wish to do. He always says ‘Okey Dokey’ because after all, He wants me to be happy and don’t all paths lead to God anyway?”
This is how we get to the place where a bishop of the church of God can divorce his wife of thirty years, renounce his God-ordained role as husband and father, and then remarry a male ‘partner’ in plain violation of the clear, written ordinance of God.
No one who has read Paul or John Wesley could possibly have gotten this one mixed up, except that they simply don’t want to believe the testimony of the Word of God and they don’t want to be told what to do. Bottom line: That’s not Christianity; it’s the religion of “Okey Dokey, Do Whatever”.
God does not sanctify our sin, he punishes it in Christ and then finds us Not Guilty by way of substitution. That’s the Gospel. Left to your own devices, even the good we do is worthy of condemnation, just as Wesley laments. But thanks be to God, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!
An Important Caveat
Here we want to give an important disclaimer: you must be focused on the Spirit, not the flesh.
John Wesley experienced this directly. He recorded these famous words in his journal:
“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street,”… Notice he said unwillingly. His flesh did not want to go.
GK Chesterton once said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” Wesley’s flesh was finding this process difficult. Nevertheless, he went to the meeting, “… where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation: and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The next morning he wrote: “The moment I awaked ‘Jesus, Master’ was in my heart and in my mouth”.
You see, Wesley had gone from trying to be good in himself to being righteous ‘in Christ’ - from having his mind set on the flesh, to being focused on the Spirit. Of course, it was a work of God’s grace that set him free from the law of sin and death. He went from feeling inner turmoil to feeling ‘strangely warmed’ – not exactly the way one would describe the successful culmination of a self-directed spiritual quest!
Going back to the letter he had written his friend, Wesley pointedly asked, “Do we already feel ‘peace with God’ and ‘joy in the Holy Ghost?” Does His Spirit bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” Alas! Mine does not….
He did not have an assurance of Salvation. He could not definitely say he was a Christian, despite extensive tutoring in the faith as a child at his mother’s knee –and even despite being a priest in the Church of England! As Wesley and millions of others have come to know, being a Christian is not simply about endorsing the right ideas about God, it is a living relationship – one that God himself validates by giving the believer a witness, or experience of Himself. Not a human-based, flesh-focused experience, but one that conforms to the Word of God and that functions to help us conform our lives to the Lordship of Christ.
Friends, we cannot live the Christian life in our own strength, in our flesh. We must focus our minds on the Spirit. We must be like Stephen - men and women ‘full of the Spirit”. Only then can we discern God’s will for us and have the motive power we need to walk daily with God and do righteous works for God. Only then can we find true freedom.
I close with this prayer from Wesley’s letter: “O Thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting in anything but Thee! Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in believing; and let nothing separate us from Thy love, in time or in eternity.”
If you are like John Wesley and have never experienced that internal witness of the Holy Spirit that assures you that you are a child of God, please speak with Fr. Mark or myself. Don’t let the appearance of difficulty stand in your way. Throw yourself on His mercy and you will find grace to help and life in the Spirit.
Amen
My father in law, Paul Arbogast tells a story about an elderly woman who went to the same Pilgrim Holiness Church that he attended as a boy. As you may know, the Holiness tradition is very much about what you may and may not do. This church expected the women to wear their hair long and to avoid makeup. All their members were to wear long sleeves, to be teetotalers, and to be tobacco free. But this particular woman picked up the habit of rubbing snuff along the way, and was very dedicated to her habit.
One day, her pastor confronted her about her habit. In response, she assured him that she would make it a matter of earnest prayer. Several days later, when the pastor saw the woman again, he asked her, “So what did the Lord tell you about your snuff habit?”
Obviously on the spot, she was quiet for a moment and then blurted out emphatically, “He said “Okey Dokey!” - and as far as she was concerned, that was the last word on the subject!
This lady manifested exactly the opposite attitude towards her behavior compared to the Apostle Paul. Paul looked at the Law of God and agreed with it. He agreed that he should Love God above all else, that he shouldn’t lie, steal, cheat or covet his neighbor’s stuff – and yet in practical application, when he tried to live it out, he found that he just could not do it in his own power.
He found that there was a force, an evil that dwelt within him that pulled him towards the wrong thing. This he identified as ‘the flesh’ or ‘Sarks’ in Greek. The flesh was what bound Paul to the law of sin and death, setting his mind (Nous) against his flesh. As a result he found himself engaged in a terrible struggle. Unlike the snuff -rubbing woman who simply put words of contrived approval in God’s mouth, Paul realized that there is no escape from his dilemma and he cried out with the most pitiful lament, “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death!?
John Wesley Angst
Some 1700 years later, JohnWesley echoed these same sentiments when he wrote in his journal: “I see that the whole law of God is holy, just, and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul ought to bear God’s image and superscription. But how am I fallen from the glory of God! I feel that ’I am sold under sin’. I know that I, too, deserve nothing but wrath, being full of all abominations, and having no good thing in me to atone for them or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves. So that my mouth is stopped. I have nothing to plead. God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consuming fire; I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed.” (John Wesley, in a letter to a friend, May 24, 1738).
Contrast this with today’s cult of self-esteem and the desire to be free of all constraints. Instead of recognizing that God is holy and unbending - that He lays claim upon our lives, modern people demand an unbending right to live out their every whim - and be congratulated for it to boot! As Jonah Greenberg points out: “The underlying…dogma of [today’s culture] is that social and gender roles are not fixed, that tradition, religion and natural law have no binding power of authority over the individual’s will to power,..” (Quoted in Liberal Fascism, pg. 361.
A Matter of Worldview
The Judeo-Christian worldview starts with God as the Creator, who speaks His Word to His creature, Man – who in turn conforms his experience to God’s Word – leading to Salvation, transformation into Christ’s likeness and even dare we say it, ‘divinization’ – partaking of the very nature of God itself.
The Humanist, on the other hand, starts with himself as the measure of all things, bringing his experience to the Word, and all Tradition. Rejecting all authority, he will brook no limits on his own freedom, and simply replaces God with himself. A variation on this would be to retain a form of religion, but to then look at God’s Word through the lens of one’s own experience, finding support for these experiences – no matter how foreign they are to traditional morality or ethics. The result is a ‘sanctified lifestyle of Choice” in which God loves me and supports me in whatever I wish to do. He always says ‘Okey Dokey’ because after all, He wants me to be happy and don’t all paths lead to God anyway?”
This is how we get to the place where a bishop of the church of God can divorce his wife of thirty years, renounce his God-ordained role as husband and father, and then remarry a male ‘partner’ in plain violation of the clear, written ordinance of God.
No one who has read Paul or John Wesley could possibly have gotten this one mixed up, except that they simply don’t want to believe the testimony of the Word of God and they don’t want to be told what to do. Bottom line: That’s not Christianity; it’s the religion of “Okey Dokey, Do Whatever”.
God does not sanctify our sin, he punishes it in Christ and then finds us Not Guilty by way of substitution. That’s the Gospel. Left to your own devices, even the good we do is worthy of condemnation, just as Wesley laments. But thanks be to God, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!
An Important Caveat
Here we want to give an important disclaimer: you must be focused on the Spirit, not the flesh.
John Wesley experienced this directly. He recorded these famous words in his journal:
“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street,”… Notice he said unwillingly. His flesh did not want to go.
GK Chesterton once said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” Wesley’s flesh was finding this process difficult. Nevertheless, he went to the meeting, “… where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation: and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The next morning he wrote: “The moment I awaked ‘Jesus, Master’ was in my heart and in my mouth”.
You see, Wesley had gone from trying to be good in himself to being righteous ‘in Christ’ - from having his mind set on the flesh, to being focused on the Spirit. Of course, it was a work of God’s grace that set him free from the law of sin and death. He went from feeling inner turmoil to feeling ‘strangely warmed’ – not exactly the way one would describe the successful culmination of a self-directed spiritual quest!
Going back to the letter he had written his friend, Wesley pointedly asked, “Do we already feel ‘peace with God’ and ‘joy in the Holy Ghost?” Does His Spirit bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” Alas! Mine does not….
He did not have an assurance of Salvation. He could not definitely say he was a Christian, despite extensive tutoring in the faith as a child at his mother’s knee –and even despite being a priest in the Church of England! As Wesley and millions of others have come to know, being a Christian is not simply about endorsing the right ideas about God, it is a living relationship – one that God himself validates by giving the believer a witness, or experience of Himself. Not a human-based, flesh-focused experience, but one that conforms to the Word of God and that functions to help us conform our lives to the Lordship of Christ.
Friends, we cannot live the Christian life in our own strength, in our flesh. We must focus our minds on the Spirit. We must be like Stephen - men and women ‘full of the Spirit”. Only then can we discern God’s will for us and have the motive power we need to walk daily with God and do righteous works for God. Only then can we find true freedom.
I close with this prayer from Wesley’s letter: “O Thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting in anything but Thee! Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in believing; and let nothing separate us from Thy love, in time or in eternity.”
If you are like John Wesley and have never experienced that internal witness of the Holy Spirit that assures you that you are a child of God, please speak with Fr. Mark or myself. Don’t let the appearance of difficulty stand in your way. Throw yourself on His mercy and you will find grace to help and life in the Spirit.
Amen
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Who to Die For
A Sermon delivered on Father's Day, June 15, 2008 to All Saints Anglican Church, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, and based on Romans 5:6-11
In the movie series Band of Brothers, we can see a contrast between two different types of leaders. The first is typified by Captain Sobel, who is the drill instructor for Easy Company, a group of paratroopers being prepared for the assault on Normandy. Captain Sobel’s job is to train his troops to a high level of skill, but he also seems to enjoy tormenting his men – nitpicking at their uniforms and finding contraband in their bunks, which then in turn results in his favorite punishment: running up Currahee mountain behind the barracks. He cancels leave on a whim and seems personally offended by the idea of fun. He’s petty and vindictive, and his men hate him for it.
In contrast to Sobel, we see the rise of Lieutenant Winter through the ranks. This man is a hard worker, competent in leading and fair. He earns the respect of the men through faithful service to them over the months and years.
After two years of training, the troops are finally sent to England. As war game preparation intensifies, Captain Sobel shows himself to be a dithering and incompetent leader. He makes foolish and wrong-headed mistakes, while Lt. Winter accomplishes his team goals and shows himself to be reliable under pressure.
As D-day gets closer, tension within the ranks over the DI increases, and finally a group of NCOs decides to resign their positions and refuses to follow the Sobel into battle. This is basically a revolt with very serious consequences. Most of the men are busted and some are sent off to other assignments. However, the General in charge realizes there is a huge problem in the company. He ‘promotes’ the incompetent and hated Captain Sobel to a position training Chaplains and other non-combatants – Stateside. “The war effort needs you elsewhere” are the terse words that go along with a congratulatory glass of whiskey.
Lieutenant Winter is promoted to Captain and goes on to lead Easy Company in many battles throughout the war.
This is an example of how soldiers shrewdly size up who they will die for and who they won’t. They know their skins depend on their leader and it doesn’t take long to figure out who they will follow.
During the same war, in 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian Kolbe in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982.
With these examples in mind, consider our text today: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6, 7).
Christ died – not for someone who was being unfairly persecuted or for a beloved officer leading his troops into battle, but for sinners, enemies of God, people like me who said, “I hate Christians and I detest Christianity” - people whose sins had sent Jesus to the cross – and glad of it!”
Now this is an amazing thought: There are those of us who were militantly opposed to God – who hated him, Am I the only one here, or did some of you also hate God? Yes, I see that hand.
However, the death of Jesus is not like that of Fr. Maximillian Kolbe – and not like soldiers who are conscripted to fight and die for a country they love. Jesus’ death was a voluntary action on behalf of those who were opposed to Him – dead in their sins, people who could not help themselves. In this passage we can see clearly that, contrary to Benjamin Franklin, God is not the God of those who are able to help themselves in their own strength. Rather God is the God of those who cannot help themselves. “For while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
Now as obvious as it sounds, we could ask, “How many of our sins were still in the future when Christ died for us? - All of them! That means that not only the sins we commit before we become Christians, but also those we commit afterwards are covered by His blood. This is an important point. As a counselor, I frequently talk to people who are struggling with the effects of some sin they have committed. They are struggling to accept forgiveness because their actions seem so bad. It’s as though they say it’s OK for Jesus to die for the sins of everyone else, but not for me. Or: All the sins I committed before I became a Christian were forgiven – but now this one. Especially those who are scrupulous have problems. They have problems letting go and remembering that they are forgiven. All their sins are Forgiven.!
Returning to our text, we can see Paul emphasizing this point – “If the blood of Christ justified us, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Remember, the death of Christ is the Propitiation for our sins It is a gift or sacrifice offered by God that turns away the wrath of God. By the blood of Christ once offered for us, we are reconciled to God. We are declared righteous; the Righteousness of Christ is put on to us. This is a legal, judicial action, done by God, the righteous Judge, to us, on our behalf, for the mere price of our heartfelt belief!
And when we believe in Christ, when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then we receive the Life of God. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, leading us into truth, illuminating God’s truth for us, comforting and convicting us, conforming us into the image of Christ.
Therefore, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation. Because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God - access into His Grace and we also rejoice in the Hope that we carry with us.
Link to Father’s Day
Being that today is Father’s Day; I’d like to bring out four points about True Fatherhood from this text.
One: True Fatherhood takes the Initiative. Salvation is initiated by God the Father. The Father sends the Son to be the Propitiation for our sins. This type of Father is active and seeks out love from us, his children. He sends his only begotten Son to die for us, going to the very greatest lengths for us, so that we don’t have to die but might have eternal life.
Two. True Fatherhood is Just. God the Father does not sweep our sins under the carpet. He doesn’t simply excuse evil. Rather, he deals with our sins justly, providing the sacrifice Lamb to die in our place.
Three: True Fatherhood is Magnanimous. While we were still sinners, God sent Christ to die for us. He Himself took the great part for us. He could have simply wiped us all out, but He didn’t. He decided to exercise Great mercy and save us while we were weak and rebellious.
Finally, True Fatherhood is self-sacrificing. He himself bore our sins…. As I talk to men in my counseling office, they tell me that all the effort they expend in their career is focused around providing for their families. And when men go through divorce – often because they work too much – many times they lose their motivation to work. It’s as though without the mission to provide for the family, and the support system that goes with the family, all the work doesn’t make sense anymore.
Most men understand implicitly that they will work without respite to provide for their families. For the most part men are still not at liberty to pursue the same options that women have regarding work. But the remarkable thing is that there are very few Men’s Liberation marches demanding equal treatment. There’s just no wholesale anger over the expectation that a man will work all his life, often with little recognition.
Perhaps the proof of that is today itself. Father’s Day is usually the day when the phone companies rack up the most charges for collect calls! We move heaven and earth to honor our mothers on their day – and we call our fathers collect. True fathers understand that self-sacrifice is part of the deal.
So today, when you’re trying to honor your father – think about all the things he does without question, and give thanks that a Truly godly father can model the same love shown to us by God the Father, and His son Jesus Christ. AMEN.
In the movie series Band of Brothers, we can see a contrast between two different types of leaders. The first is typified by Captain Sobel, who is the drill instructor for Easy Company, a group of paratroopers being prepared for the assault on Normandy. Captain Sobel’s job is to train his troops to a high level of skill, but he also seems to enjoy tormenting his men – nitpicking at their uniforms and finding contraband in their bunks, which then in turn results in his favorite punishment: running up Currahee mountain behind the barracks. He cancels leave on a whim and seems personally offended by the idea of fun. He’s petty and vindictive, and his men hate him for it.
In contrast to Sobel, we see the rise of Lieutenant Winter through the ranks. This man is a hard worker, competent in leading and fair. He earns the respect of the men through faithful service to them over the months and years.
After two years of training, the troops are finally sent to England. As war game preparation intensifies, Captain Sobel shows himself to be a dithering and incompetent leader. He makes foolish and wrong-headed mistakes, while Lt. Winter accomplishes his team goals and shows himself to be reliable under pressure.
As D-day gets closer, tension within the ranks over the DI increases, and finally a group of NCOs decides to resign their positions and refuses to follow the Sobel into battle. This is basically a revolt with very serious consequences. Most of the men are busted and some are sent off to other assignments. However, the General in charge realizes there is a huge problem in the company. He ‘promotes’ the incompetent and hated Captain Sobel to a position training Chaplains and other non-combatants – Stateside. “The war effort needs you elsewhere” are the terse words that go along with a congratulatory glass of whiskey.
Lieutenant Winter is promoted to Captain and goes on to lead Easy Company in many battles throughout the war.
This is an example of how soldiers shrewdly size up who they will die for and who they won’t. They know their skins depend on their leader and it doesn’t take long to figure out who they will follow.
During the same war, in 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian Kolbe in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982.
With these examples in mind, consider our text today: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6, 7).
Christ died – not for someone who was being unfairly persecuted or for a beloved officer leading his troops into battle, but for sinners, enemies of God, people like me who said, “I hate Christians and I detest Christianity” - people whose sins had sent Jesus to the cross – and glad of it!”
Now this is an amazing thought: There are those of us who were militantly opposed to God – who hated him, Am I the only one here, or did some of you also hate God? Yes, I see that hand.
However, the death of Jesus is not like that of Fr. Maximillian Kolbe – and not like soldiers who are conscripted to fight and die for a country they love. Jesus’ death was a voluntary action on behalf of those who were opposed to Him – dead in their sins, people who could not help themselves. In this passage we can see clearly that, contrary to Benjamin Franklin, God is not the God of those who are able to help themselves in their own strength. Rather God is the God of those who cannot help themselves. “For while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
Now as obvious as it sounds, we could ask, “How many of our sins were still in the future when Christ died for us? - All of them! That means that not only the sins we commit before we become Christians, but also those we commit afterwards are covered by His blood. This is an important point. As a counselor, I frequently talk to people who are struggling with the effects of some sin they have committed. They are struggling to accept forgiveness because their actions seem so bad. It’s as though they say it’s OK for Jesus to die for the sins of everyone else, but not for me. Or: All the sins I committed before I became a Christian were forgiven – but now this one. Especially those who are scrupulous have problems. They have problems letting go and remembering that they are forgiven. All their sins are Forgiven.!
Returning to our text, we can see Paul emphasizing this point – “If the blood of Christ justified us, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Remember, the death of Christ is the Propitiation for our sins It is a gift or sacrifice offered by God that turns away the wrath of God. By the blood of Christ once offered for us, we are reconciled to God. We are declared righteous; the Righteousness of Christ is put on to us. This is a legal, judicial action, done by God, the righteous Judge, to us, on our behalf, for the mere price of our heartfelt belief!
And when we believe in Christ, when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then we receive the Life of God. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, leading us into truth, illuminating God’s truth for us, comforting and convicting us, conforming us into the image of Christ.
Therefore, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation. Because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God - access into His Grace and we also rejoice in the Hope that we carry with us.
Link to Father’s Day
Being that today is Father’s Day; I’d like to bring out four points about True Fatherhood from this text.
One: True Fatherhood takes the Initiative. Salvation is initiated by God the Father. The Father sends the Son to be the Propitiation for our sins. This type of Father is active and seeks out love from us, his children. He sends his only begotten Son to die for us, going to the very greatest lengths for us, so that we don’t have to die but might have eternal life.
Two. True Fatherhood is Just. God the Father does not sweep our sins under the carpet. He doesn’t simply excuse evil. Rather, he deals with our sins justly, providing the sacrifice Lamb to die in our place.
Three: True Fatherhood is Magnanimous. While we were still sinners, God sent Christ to die for us. He Himself took the great part for us. He could have simply wiped us all out, but He didn’t. He decided to exercise Great mercy and save us while we were weak and rebellious.
Finally, True Fatherhood is self-sacrificing. He himself bore our sins…. As I talk to men in my counseling office, they tell me that all the effort they expend in their career is focused around providing for their families. And when men go through divorce – often because they work too much – many times they lose their motivation to work. It’s as though without the mission to provide for the family, and the support system that goes with the family, all the work doesn’t make sense anymore.
Most men understand implicitly that they will work without respite to provide for their families. For the most part men are still not at liberty to pursue the same options that women have regarding work. But the remarkable thing is that there are very few Men’s Liberation marches demanding equal treatment. There’s just no wholesale anger over the expectation that a man will work all his life, often with little recognition.
Perhaps the proof of that is today itself. Father’s Day is usually the day when the phone companies rack up the most charges for collect calls! We move heaven and earth to honor our mothers on their day – and we call our fathers collect. True fathers understand that self-sacrifice is part of the deal.
So today, when you’re trying to honor your father – think about all the things he does without question, and give thanks that a Truly godly father can model the same love shown to us by God the Father, and His son Jesus Christ. AMEN.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
A sermon based on Romans 3:1-21/28, delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on 6/1/2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
Today we begin a long focused time in the book of Romans. The Lectionary has us camping out in this book until the middle of September, so we will get a nice big chunk and basically be able to give you a broad overview.
Paul appears to have written this letter to the Romans from Corinth, where he was in the midst of collecting money for the poor of Jerusalem. After delivering the money to Jerusalem, he intended to visit Rome, then go on to Spain. However, he was arrested in Jerusalem and his plans changed rather drastically. He did make it to Rome, but this time as a prisoner waiting to appear before Caesar. A woman named “Phoebe, who belonged to the church at Cenchrea near Corinth (16:1) probably carried the letter to Rome.” (Ryrie Study Bible intro to the book of Romans).
Romans has been said to be the clearest, most systematic statement of the Gospel in the whole of the New Testament. It is certainly the most concentrated in terms of doctrine. It’s overall theme is “The Righteousness of God”, the theme verses being found in Chapter 1: 16, 17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
What Manner of God Do We Worship?
In this very first mention of the theme, we see Paul describing God as righteous. What does that mean?
It means that God is Pure - as light is pure, Simple – as Truth is simple, Straight – as a ruler is straight, Just – as a wise and fair judge is just; and Sincere, having no mixture of chaff and grain. God’s righteousness will not allow anything impure to come near it and live.
Only that which is pure in itself can stand before the presence of a Righteous God. And this is what causes us problems as human beings.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have been tainted with the guilt and stain of Sin. This guilt comes to us by way of heredity; we are born into it before we have even done anything, good or bad. All human beings have a ‘Sin-Nature’ – the default setting if you will, that causes every area of our lives to be flawed and inherently imperfect. Even our attempts to be good are flawed by our imperfect motivations: the desire to look good before others, to feel good about ourselves, or to be prideful in some way, etc.
As a result we sin – ‘we miss the mark’. We sin because we are infected with an imperfect nature. Acts of sinfulness are a result of our Sin Nature doing its natural thing. And our reading is very clear about the extent of Sin: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Some people try to be good and fail because the effort itself is doomed by inherent imperfection. Others know enough about the truth to know what God requires; yet choose to do the wrong thing anyway. This willful rebellion against the Truth elicits God’s wrath. (Romans 1: 18: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousenss of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…)
God’s wrath is the antipathy that light has for darkness, truth has for falseness and purity has for impurity. But God’s wrath is not simply an impersonal force – it’s personal. He is personally offended by our sin. After all, He set up human beings in a perfect environment, needing nothing to make our lives more complete – and we went and messed it up – just because we could. I say ‘we’ because we are all present in Adam’s loins as it were. Adam’s sin is every man’s sin. Thus, every human who has ever been born carries with him or her the guilt and stain of sin that inherently alienates us from a just and holy God.
And we know this. We know that God’s wrath needs to be propitiated – or turned away. We know we need to offer Him something to take away His terrible – and justified wrath. Our problem is that we have don’t have anything pure enough or holy enough to offer him. Even if we were to live the life of St. Francis or Clare, St. Benedict or Scholastica, even then our meager acts of goodness would not be enough to appease God.
Indeed the Law of Moses was given precisely so we could see just how impossible it is to please God through trying to observe the law. Verse 20 of Chapter 3 spells it out very starkly: …”For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Bad, Bad news!
Good News
But the Good news is this:
21 … the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
We can become righteous through faith in Christ! Even though all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, yet we are justified ( made righteous) by his grace, as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (v24) 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
There is that word again, ‘Propitiation’. According to Howard Marshall, in his book The Work of Christ ( pg 77) it means ‘to appease an offended person so that he is willing to forgive.’ Marshall goes on to explain that in pagan religious language, the word described attempts to placate angry gods who broke out in judgment against men. To speak in such terms of the sacrifice of Christ might suggest (to some) that God is as capricious as a pagan deity.”
Therefore some Bible translators have said, “Propitiation makes God to seem too much like us, too petty!. Let’s not use that word. Instead let’s use the word ‘expiate’. That word means that sin will be wiped out or canceled so that it no longer stands between the sinner and God. The only problem is that ‘sin’ is not a simple ‘thing’ to be dealt with in a clinical fashion. Sin is a personal affront to God, and it arouses his wrath.
And religion, says Marshall, ‘is not concerned with ‘things’ but with personal relationships between men and their Creator. Only the word ‘propitiation’ will communicate the reality of God’s wrath as a personal reaction to Sin.
But again, the Good News is that God himself has offered Jesus as the Propitiation for sin, taking away the offense. The very same holy and righteous judge who reacts against sin shows us His mercy by giving His own Son as a sacrifice for sin. As a result God is ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.’ (v. 27).
When you place your faith in Christ, you are accepting a gift – a perfect gift that cannot be replicated through attempts to live according to the works of the law. Just as Paul concludes in v. 28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Friends, when you die and go to stand before God, there won’t be any of this happy nonsense that people spout about getting into heaven, “I’m a good person – I haven’t killed anyone – I don’t eat meat – and I use florescent light bulbs”
No! You will stand before an inflexibly pure God whom you have personally offended by your own willfulness and rebellion. Unless you carry with you something more substantial than a green consciousness and good intentions, you will quickly find yourself on the receiving end of God’s wrath.
When you stand before God, you better be wearing the white robe of righteousness that you get from believing in Jesus as the Propitiation of your sin against God the Father. If you don’t’ have it – you better get it – today, before you leave this place. It’s free for the asking; all you have to do is accept it.
For those of us who have received this gift, we better appreciate it! There is nothing more valuable on earth than having had the guilt and stain of our sin removed through believing in Jesus. So, when you come to receive communion, give thanks! Make Eucharist, taking the elements… in remembrance that Christ died for you…. and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving!. Amen.
Today we begin a long focused time in the book of Romans. The Lectionary has us camping out in this book until the middle of September, so we will get a nice big chunk and basically be able to give you a broad overview.
Paul appears to have written this letter to the Romans from Corinth, where he was in the midst of collecting money for the poor of Jerusalem. After delivering the money to Jerusalem, he intended to visit Rome, then go on to Spain. However, he was arrested in Jerusalem and his plans changed rather drastically. He did make it to Rome, but this time as a prisoner waiting to appear before Caesar. A woman named “Phoebe, who belonged to the church at Cenchrea near Corinth (16:1) probably carried the letter to Rome.” (Ryrie Study Bible intro to the book of Romans).
Romans has been said to be the clearest, most systematic statement of the Gospel in the whole of the New Testament. It is certainly the most concentrated in terms of doctrine. It’s overall theme is “The Righteousness of God”, the theme verses being found in Chapter 1: 16, 17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
What Manner of God Do We Worship?
In this very first mention of the theme, we see Paul describing God as righteous. What does that mean?
It means that God is Pure - as light is pure, Simple – as Truth is simple, Straight – as a ruler is straight, Just – as a wise and fair judge is just; and Sincere, having no mixture of chaff and grain. God’s righteousness will not allow anything impure to come near it and live.
Only that which is pure in itself can stand before the presence of a Righteous God. And this is what causes us problems as human beings.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have been tainted with the guilt and stain of Sin. This guilt comes to us by way of heredity; we are born into it before we have even done anything, good or bad. All human beings have a ‘Sin-Nature’ – the default setting if you will, that causes every area of our lives to be flawed and inherently imperfect. Even our attempts to be good are flawed by our imperfect motivations: the desire to look good before others, to feel good about ourselves, or to be prideful in some way, etc.
As a result we sin – ‘we miss the mark’. We sin because we are infected with an imperfect nature. Acts of sinfulness are a result of our Sin Nature doing its natural thing. And our reading is very clear about the extent of Sin: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Some people try to be good and fail because the effort itself is doomed by inherent imperfection. Others know enough about the truth to know what God requires; yet choose to do the wrong thing anyway. This willful rebellion against the Truth elicits God’s wrath. (Romans 1: 18: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousenss of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…)
God’s wrath is the antipathy that light has for darkness, truth has for falseness and purity has for impurity. But God’s wrath is not simply an impersonal force – it’s personal. He is personally offended by our sin. After all, He set up human beings in a perfect environment, needing nothing to make our lives more complete – and we went and messed it up – just because we could. I say ‘we’ because we are all present in Adam’s loins as it were. Adam’s sin is every man’s sin. Thus, every human who has ever been born carries with him or her the guilt and stain of sin that inherently alienates us from a just and holy God.
And we know this. We know that God’s wrath needs to be propitiated – or turned away. We know we need to offer Him something to take away His terrible – and justified wrath. Our problem is that we have don’t have anything pure enough or holy enough to offer him. Even if we were to live the life of St. Francis or Clare, St. Benedict or Scholastica, even then our meager acts of goodness would not be enough to appease God.
Indeed the Law of Moses was given precisely so we could see just how impossible it is to please God through trying to observe the law. Verse 20 of Chapter 3 spells it out very starkly: …”For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Bad, Bad news!
Good News
But the Good news is this:
21 … the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
We can become righteous through faith in Christ! Even though all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, yet we are justified ( made righteous) by his grace, as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (v24) 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
There is that word again, ‘Propitiation’. According to Howard Marshall, in his book The Work of Christ ( pg 77) it means ‘to appease an offended person so that he is willing to forgive.’ Marshall goes on to explain that in pagan religious language, the word described attempts to placate angry gods who broke out in judgment against men. To speak in such terms of the sacrifice of Christ might suggest (to some) that God is as capricious as a pagan deity.”
Therefore some Bible translators have said, “Propitiation makes God to seem too much like us, too petty!. Let’s not use that word. Instead let’s use the word ‘expiate’. That word means that sin will be wiped out or canceled so that it no longer stands between the sinner and God. The only problem is that ‘sin’ is not a simple ‘thing’ to be dealt with in a clinical fashion. Sin is a personal affront to God, and it arouses his wrath.
And religion, says Marshall, ‘is not concerned with ‘things’ but with personal relationships between men and their Creator. Only the word ‘propitiation’ will communicate the reality of God’s wrath as a personal reaction to Sin.
But again, the Good News is that God himself has offered Jesus as the Propitiation for sin, taking away the offense. The very same holy and righteous judge who reacts against sin shows us His mercy by giving His own Son as a sacrifice for sin. As a result God is ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.’ (v. 27).
When you place your faith in Christ, you are accepting a gift – a perfect gift that cannot be replicated through attempts to live according to the works of the law. Just as Paul concludes in v. 28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Friends, when you die and go to stand before God, there won’t be any of this happy nonsense that people spout about getting into heaven, “I’m a good person – I haven’t killed anyone – I don’t eat meat – and I use florescent light bulbs”
No! You will stand before an inflexibly pure God whom you have personally offended by your own willfulness and rebellion. Unless you carry with you something more substantial than a green consciousness and good intentions, you will quickly find yourself on the receiving end of God’s wrath.
When you stand before God, you better be wearing the white robe of righteousness that you get from believing in Jesus as the Propitiation of your sin against God the Father. If you don’t’ have it – you better get it – today, before you leave this place. It’s free for the asking; all you have to do is accept it.
For those of us who have received this gift, we better appreciate it! There is nothing more valuable on earth than having had the guilt and stain of our sin removed through believing in Jesus. So, when you come to receive communion, give thanks! Make Eucharist, taking the elements… in remembrance that Christ died for you…. and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving!. Amen.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Dangerous, Interesting Ministry of the Holy Spirit
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on Pentecost Sunday, May 11, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
From our scripture readings today: Acts 2:1-11; I Cor. 12:4-13, and John 20:19-23, it is apparent that the gift of the Holy Spirit is power for ministry and witness. On the day of Pentecost, the spirit comes with such power that it sounds like a mighty rushing wind, giving the disciples the gift of communicating the Gospel in other tongues. Tongues of fire appear over the head of each one, giving us our liturgical color red for this day.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus specifically tells the disciples he is sending them out, just as the Father sent him and he gives them the breath, the wind, of the Spirit to help them and comfort them. Incidentally, this is one of the verses that theologians point to, to explain the so-called ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’. In the Nicene Creed we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and this is the literal description of that procession.
So the ministry of the Spirit is about empowerment for ministry. God knows we need it. What we have been asked to do as Christians is impossible without God’s power. In the first place, the task of going into all the world and making disciples of all nations is too big for human effort alone. In the second place, we are involved in a pitched battle with forces who do not love God and who try to thwart God’s will be neutralizing or even taking us out if possible.
On Friday evening, after we finished building the forms for the concrete at Hope House, Mel Cummings Cindy and a story about how he had had a very close call the day before. He was driving up the steep road that leads from fifth street hill up to the museum and as he was going up the steepest part, a tree fell across the road taking out power lines with it causing the ancient tree to catch on fire immediately. Apparently it was quite the fireworks show – and it all happened only about 20 feet in front of Mel. He told us that he was sobered by the realization that had he been going just a little faster, he could have been killed by this falling tree or electrocuted by the downed power lines.
Now Mel is a very important person to the work of Hope House. I believe that God sent him our way, because he is a man of many skills and someone who has given us the full benefit of his years of building experience – all at a 20% discount! I really think the Spirit led him to us. I really think the Enemy tried to take him out. And I really think that the Spirit protected Mel from death – not only for his family’s sake, but also because we need him for this work that the Lord has called us to do. So the Spirit empowers us for ministry – and I think he protects us for that ministry when he needs to.
Since God has commissioned us to go out and minister to the world, I also think that the Holy Spirit arranges meetings for us. On Friday, same day that we heard Mel’s story, Cindy and I had just pulled up over at Hope House, when a young black man walked by. We greeted him and he stopped and remarked that his niece and dated Donte Ward, that he himself attended St. Jospeph Catholic Church, and that we were doing a good work at the house. He told us his name was Rich.
As he talked with us some more, he also told us that he was from Miami and had moved here recently after having been robbed and shot by a young man who had originally asked him for a dollar on the streets of Miami – in broad daylight! . For the thirty dollars that he had in his pocket, the robber put a .38 in Rich’s mouth and pulled the trigger – propelling the bullet through the side of his cheek. (The scar was still plainly visible.) Rich was also shot in the belly and when he dropped to the ground, the robber shot him twice in the back and attempted to shoot him in the head twice – but these bullets missed him. He went to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami and waited 12 hours without being seen because the staff was too busy treating other gunshot wounds.
Finally in frustration, Rich, dug the bullet out of his belly himself with his pocket knife ( he is a paramedic by training) and dropped the bullet on the nurses desk, saying ‘Thanks for nothing”. He walked out and still carries two bullets in his back! There was more to his story – but believe me, it’s too awful to relate to you here today. The point is, that somehow Rich walked by Hope House at the precise moment we were there to great him.
At one point in his story, he began to cry. We awkwardly tried to console him, and after a minute or two of conversation, he walked off down the street. We started in to work, and all of a sudden, who should appear but Rich, saying that ‘something’ told him to come back and help us – which he did. He picked up a sledge hammer and busted up some concrete before going off down the street.
What was the something that told him to come back? What was it that caused our paths to cross? I believe it was the work of the Spirit.
I don’t claim to understand it and I don’t have any idea whether or not I will ever see Rich again. I only know that as Christians, when we attempt to be directed by, and controlled by the Spirit, all kinds of interesting things happen to us.
We are called to go into the world, taking salvation, healing and reconciliation with us into the midst of the world's pain. Being available to the Holy Spirit as his vehicle is not necessarily comfortable. It might even be dangerous at times. But there’s nothing more exciting or interesting in life either.
I fully expect that in the next week, we are going to see marvelous things take place in the run-up to our Day of Hope on May 17. I’m confident that we will also experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the day, especially at the Memorial service. At the present time, we have some ten different churches cooperating to contribute to this event! That alone is a minor miracle!
I pray for us as a church that God would give us the grace to put ourselves out on a limb for Him. As we do so, I am confident that we will see God do great works in our midst, for truly, God’s power is perfected in weakness, and he gives help to those who realize they are too small to help themselves. Amen.
From our scripture readings today: Acts 2:1-11; I Cor. 12:4-13, and John 20:19-23, it is apparent that the gift of the Holy Spirit is power for ministry and witness. On the day of Pentecost, the spirit comes with such power that it sounds like a mighty rushing wind, giving the disciples the gift of communicating the Gospel in other tongues. Tongues of fire appear over the head of each one, giving us our liturgical color red for this day.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus specifically tells the disciples he is sending them out, just as the Father sent him and he gives them the breath, the wind, of the Spirit to help them and comfort them. Incidentally, this is one of the verses that theologians point to, to explain the so-called ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’. In the Nicene Creed we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and this is the literal description of that procession.
So the ministry of the Spirit is about empowerment for ministry. God knows we need it. What we have been asked to do as Christians is impossible without God’s power. In the first place, the task of going into all the world and making disciples of all nations is too big for human effort alone. In the second place, we are involved in a pitched battle with forces who do not love God and who try to thwart God’s will be neutralizing or even taking us out if possible.
On Friday evening, after we finished building the forms for the concrete at Hope House, Mel Cummings Cindy and a story about how he had had a very close call the day before. He was driving up the steep road that leads from fifth street hill up to the museum and as he was going up the steepest part, a tree fell across the road taking out power lines with it causing the ancient tree to catch on fire immediately. Apparently it was quite the fireworks show – and it all happened only about 20 feet in front of Mel. He told us that he was sobered by the realization that had he been going just a little faster, he could have been killed by this falling tree or electrocuted by the downed power lines.
Now Mel is a very important person to the work of Hope House. I believe that God sent him our way, because he is a man of many skills and someone who has given us the full benefit of his years of building experience – all at a 20% discount! I really think the Spirit led him to us. I really think the Enemy tried to take him out. And I really think that the Spirit protected Mel from death – not only for his family’s sake, but also because we need him for this work that the Lord has called us to do. So the Spirit empowers us for ministry – and I think he protects us for that ministry when he needs to.
Since God has commissioned us to go out and minister to the world, I also think that the Holy Spirit arranges meetings for us. On Friday, same day that we heard Mel’s story, Cindy and I had just pulled up over at Hope House, when a young black man walked by. We greeted him and he stopped and remarked that his niece and dated Donte Ward, that he himself attended St. Jospeph Catholic Church, and that we were doing a good work at the house. He told us his name was Rich.
As he talked with us some more, he also told us that he was from Miami and had moved here recently after having been robbed and shot by a young man who had originally asked him for a dollar on the streets of Miami – in broad daylight! . For the thirty dollars that he had in his pocket, the robber put a .38 in Rich’s mouth and pulled the trigger – propelling the bullet through the side of his cheek. (The scar was still plainly visible.) Rich was also shot in the belly and when he dropped to the ground, the robber shot him twice in the back and attempted to shoot him in the head twice – but these bullets missed him. He went to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami and waited 12 hours without being seen because the staff was too busy treating other gunshot wounds.
Finally in frustration, Rich, dug the bullet out of his belly himself with his pocket knife ( he is a paramedic by training) and dropped the bullet on the nurses desk, saying ‘Thanks for nothing”. He walked out and still carries two bullets in his back! There was more to his story – but believe me, it’s too awful to relate to you here today. The point is, that somehow Rich walked by Hope House at the precise moment we were there to great him.
At one point in his story, he began to cry. We awkwardly tried to console him, and after a minute or two of conversation, he walked off down the street. We started in to work, and all of a sudden, who should appear but Rich, saying that ‘something’ told him to come back and help us – which he did. He picked up a sledge hammer and busted up some concrete before going off down the street.
What was the something that told him to come back? What was it that caused our paths to cross? I believe it was the work of the Spirit.
I don’t claim to understand it and I don’t have any idea whether or not I will ever see Rich again. I only know that as Christians, when we attempt to be directed by, and controlled by the Spirit, all kinds of interesting things happen to us.
We are called to go into the world, taking salvation, healing and reconciliation with us into the midst of the world's pain. Being available to the Holy Spirit as his vehicle is not necessarily comfortable. It might even be dangerous at times. But there’s nothing more exciting or interesting in life either.
I fully expect that in the next week, we are going to see marvelous things take place in the run-up to our Day of Hope on May 17. I’m confident that we will also experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the day, especially at the Memorial service. At the present time, we have some ten different churches cooperating to contribute to this event! That alone is a minor miracle!
I pray for us as a church that God would give us the grace to put ourselves out on a limb for Him. As we do so, I am confident that we will see God do great works in our midst, for truly, God’s power is perfected in weakness, and he gives help to those who realize they are too small to help themselves. Amen.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
That They All May Be One
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on May 4, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, based on John 17:1-11.
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life,that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "
When Doc Loomis visited with us last week, there was lots of talk about what is happening in the Anglican Communion at this time. After he left, he responded to a couple of questions via email, clarifying some of his statements about current events. He says in part:
A new US Province will ultimately form, and the AMiA will almost certainly be a part of it. The overarching relationship scheme is difficult to predict as many issues must needs be addressed by the (Southern Sponsored) American Anglican groups who desire unity…but the final outcome will likely be ONE new province (in a worldwide communion of provinces) and the AMiA will serve as a Missionary Order within that province. At this moment, we are a Missionary Jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of Rwanda… On a prophetic note: the A[nglican] C[ommunion], as we now understand it, will likely begin the final stages of its inevitable unraveling at GAFCON [Global Anglican Future Conference]. So, whatever forms here will almost certainly not be a part of Canterbury’s lot. So, ECUSA will not be in communion with us then, as they are not now.
Jesus, in his so-called ‘high priestly prayer, prays for unity in the church. He asks that we may be One as He is one with the father. Now that’s a big ticket – being unified. And at first glance, we might think that this prayer has gone unanswered – or that we Christians have been so rebellious that we have thwarted God’s will.
But we must see this in light of God’s overarching will for his people – to be One in the spirit. Whatever else we might think about organizational unity in the church, such unity was lost officially in 1054 with the Great Schism between East and West. But it really began to go south about 200 years prior to that when there grew to be a conflict about who was going to be the head honcho – Rome or Constantinople. The Church of Rome has also had its splits. During one infamous period of time between 1305 and 1376 when there were actually Pairs of Popes – one in Rome and one in Avignon France.
While I’m sure Jesus would have liked nothing better than for us to be organizationally unified, yet the church has been compared rightfully to a family – and we know that families often have trouble with unity amongst themselves. We can see that with Jesus’ own family. He begins his earthly ministry in Capernaum and his family comes to get him and try to drag him back home. They think he has lost his marbles, or come down with a case of delusions of grandeur. Jesus replies to their concerns with the rather caustic response, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Here, I think, we can see something of what it means to be truly unified. We become unified in our faith, in the Spirit, in our dedication to Christ. When people loose that, they are no longer truly unified and whether they attend the same church doesn’t really matter. The spirit of unity has fled. In our own experience we know that even though we belong to a family with a certain name –Counts or Walker or Arbogast or Brown, we often are not really at one or unified with our own family members. Our interests can diverge to such an extent that we can’t imagine how it was we happened to fall into the same genetic sibling group. (Who knows, perhaps we were indeed seeded here by aliens, as Richard Dawkins suggests…).
At any rate, unity does not come about simply because you are part of the same organization. This can be true in the business world, where we work for the same company but are radically different from our fellows in our approach to our jobs. It can perhaps be suggested, that truly great companies are those that have figured out how to be unified under a great leader, a great vision, or a great set of organizational principles. True unity is of the spirit, not necessarily the flesh.
One of the things that Doc spoke about when he was here was the idea that the church is going through a reformation, not realignment. The latter speaks of a rearrangement of something that was already there. You get your car’s wheels re-aligned when they get out of alignment. It’s an adjustment of what it already there. But with a reformation, something different takes place. A reformation is where you take your car in to the shop and they remove the front wheel assembly and rebuild it completely. It’s a fundamental change.
Now during the history of the church, there have been several reformations. The first reformation came in response to the widespread acceptance of Christianity as an official religion of Rome. When whole armies of soldiers were baptized by marching them through rivers on their horses, something fundamental changed about the nature of professing faith. The desert fathers and mothers of Egypt went out to the waste places to practice the true faith and to really meet God. Through their asceticism, they showed the church how to reach the height and depth of true belief and sanctity. St. Benedict took the wisdom and insight of these desert fathers, such as Anthony and Basil, and adapted it to a communal lifestyle. In so doing he created the pattern for the evangelization of Western Europe. He wasn’t starting out to make a reformation; he was only trying to live the gospel in the presence of a few others who were trying to do the same. But his divinely inspired Rule became the blueprint for the next thousand years of Christian growth.
By the time that St. Francis came around in the 1200’s, the church had fallen into corruption and laziness. It was badly in need of a reformation. Jesus conveyed this to Francis when he spoke to Francis from the cross at San Damiano. “Rebuild my church” was the message given to the young Italian. Taking the message literally, Francis proceeded to beg rocks and mortar to rebuild churches that had fallen into disrepair. But soon enough, it became apparent that Jesus was interested in a more profound reformation than just stones and mortar. For within Francis’ lifetime, he had made such a huge impact on ordinary believers, that he single-handedly brought reformation to the Catholic Church of his day. Amazingly enough, Francis inspired true reformation while maintaining complete loyalty to the Pope, whom he saw as God’s true representative on earth. His was not an organizational reformation, but a reformation of the heart. In a sense we can say that what Benedict started, Francis reformed through the same radical spirit of love and devotion to Jesus Christ.
Skipping ahead to the “Reformation” proper of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Church of England, here we have an example of a different type of reformation, one that resulted in unintentional organizational breaks from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was keen to reform the church from within, not to start his own church. And had he lived in Francis’ time instead of his own, it’s possible that he may not have had to split from Rome. But with the prevailing political climate what it was in Europe and with the new technology of the printing press, Luther faced circumstances that Francis could not even have imagined.
As doc related to us, some have said that the first Reformation was about getting the Word into the hands of the people – and this effort was met with such resistance from Rome that organizational unity was broken.
The Church of England, of course, tried to find a middle way, reforming but remaining Catholic in spirit and worship practice. Here too, however, the organizational split between Rome and King Henry might never have come about if Henry hadn’t had difficulty producing an heir and trying to find money for his government. Politics and money have always had an impact on the church. We are, after all, in the world.
Granted, Jesus told us that we should be in the world but not of the world, and some of our problems in the church have come about because the world was too much in the church and some of us couldn’t stand it. This is just as much a part of reformation as politics and money. Some believers are truly zealous for truth and can’t stand the idea of sharing the communion rail with people who openly reject what we believe as Christians: namely: this is eternal life , that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
In our own time, the Apostasy of the Episcopal Church has compelled us to walk away from a church that can no longer be recognized as distinctly Christian. Thus we find ourselves in flight from heresy, but also drawn to something that we can hardly imagine: another Reformation. If indeed the First Reformation was about getting the Bible into the hands of the people, then the second reformation has been prophetically labeled ‘getting the ministry into the hands of the people’
As with any Reformation, one looks back on hundreds of years, not tens of years to assess what has actually come to pass. Five hundred years after the first Book of Common Prayer, historians are still writing books about the first reformation. Thus as we live through these trying and uncertain times, we must remember that all of us here will die before the next crop of historians figure out what our time was really about.
One thing we do know is that the current movement of the Holy Spirit is operating across denominational lines. Denominations are not being erased, but there is a new cooperation across lines, while Churches still affirm their own unique identity. Thus, on Thursday, I participated with the leaders of several other congregations to pray for our nation and our institutions. We were from different groups but there was a spirit of unity present –largely because we had come to know each other over many years. Almost without exception, the people in the room had prayed and worked together many times previously, and have come to love and appreciate each other, while holding on to their own denominational distinctives.
Politically, we live in an era when people are not as dedicated to parties or organizations as they once were. This affects the church negatively in that people don’t grow up Methodist and stay Methodist ‘just because’ they grew up that way. Rather, people affiliate by Affinity with those to whom they feel a soul connection.
And it is in this spirit that we can often find a true spirit of unity with our brothers and sisters from other churches. I have come to respect and appreciate Darrel Buttram from the 10th Avenue Church of God, as a very spiritually sensitive, gifted and passionate preacher. I don’t have the same affinity for his denomination as he does, (and to hear him tell it, he struggles with it himself)…but we have enough in common that we can appear on the same platform together at our upcoming community memorial service.
In a recent pastors’ meeting, Darrel said to me that one of the things that All Saints Anglican Church can really do for our community is to offer Communion again as we did last year. Our understanding of the Lord’s Table is one of the unique gifts that we have to offer our World, and folks from other traditions see and appreciate this. While they may not understand our sacramental view of the Lords’ supper or agree with it, yet there is a respect present. Chuck Lawrence from Christ Temple remarked to me after last year’s Memorial service, that it really was very beautiful.
So again, here is where we find unity, in the spirit of love and mutual respect, based in our love for Jesus Christ. Our true brothers and sisters are those believers who love Jesus and are unafraid to proclaim this love. Given a choice between a Jesus-lovin’ Pentecostal and a Unitarian fish wife who can’t articulate why she goes to a Christian church, I’ll pick the Pentecostal any day!
We are continuing to pray for discernment as a church regarding affiliation with AMIA vs. CANA. We still have some questions to ponder. For instance, here’s docs’ response to the question of Womens’ Ordination:
...whatever happens here, [in America] the AMiA will not support the ordination of women to the presbyterate,[everbody say prez- boo- er- ate] and will not come under the specific authority of leaders who do.
In contrast, here is what the CANA web site says on this issue:
CANA recognizes that there are differing theological positions in the Anglican Communion about women in ordained ministry. CANA acknowledges the integrity of those who understand Holy Scripture to permit the ordination of women to the presbytereate and those who believe the Scripture prohibits women’s ordination. Because of the differing positions, CANA policies regarding the ordination of women will be developed from a biblical and pastoral perspective. CANA is committed to modeling for American Anglicans the possibility of respecting both integrities regarding the ordination of women within one ecclesial body. There has been at least one woman deacon ordained by a CANA bishop and there are several other women clergy who have been licensed. Yet, a CANA congregation which objects to women in the presbytereate will not be expected to endorse or call women clergy to serve in their community.
How will this issue affect our ability to come together as a unified body of orthodox Anglicans? I myself would accept a woman deacon, but not a priest. I cannot in good conscience affiliate with a group that accepts women priests, yet I know that there are orthodox Anglicans who do, and I want to accept them, but not their view on that issue. Beyond this, there is the simple expedient of which group is geographically closest to us and can best support us. Which group most closely matches our personality and mission as a congregation?
If we had the advantage of a hundred years of history upon which to base our decision, perhaps it wouldn’t be so seemingly complex. But we don’t. We have to live through this Reformation and wait to see what it becomes – if we live that long. Therefore, let us seek out those with whom we have unity of Spirit, kindred hearts, and minds set upon similar purposes, and let us boldly move ahead, secure in the knowledge that God has more power to lead us than the Devil has to deceive us. AMEN.
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life,that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "
When Doc Loomis visited with us last week, there was lots of talk about what is happening in the Anglican Communion at this time. After he left, he responded to a couple of questions via email, clarifying some of his statements about current events. He says in part:
A new US Province will ultimately form, and the AMiA will almost certainly be a part of it. The overarching relationship scheme is difficult to predict as many issues must needs be addressed by the (Southern Sponsored) American Anglican groups who desire unity…but the final outcome will likely be ONE new province (in a worldwide communion of provinces) and the AMiA will serve as a Missionary Order within that province. At this moment, we are a Missionary Jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of Rwanda… On a prophetic note: the A[nglican] C[ommunion], as we now understand it, will likely begin the final stages of its inevitable unraveling at GAFCON [Global Anglican Future Conference]. So, whatever forms here will almost certainly not be a part of Canterbury’s lot. So, ECUSA will not be in communion with us then, as they are not now.
Jesus, in his so-called ‘high priestly prayer, prays for unity in the church. He asks that we may be One as He is one with the father. Now that’s a big ticket – being unified. And at first glance, we might think that this prayer has gone unanswered – or that we Christians have been so rebellious that we have thwarted God’s will.
But we must see this in light of God’s overarching will for his people – to be One in the spirit. Whatever else we might think about organizational unity in the church, such unity was lost officially in 1054 with the Great Schism between East and West. But it really began to go south about 200 years prior to that when there grew to be a conflict about who was going to be the head honcho – Rome or Constantinople. The Church of Rome has also had its splits. During one infamous period of time between 1305 and 1376 when there were actually Pairs of Popes – one in Rome and one in Avignon France.
While I’m sure Jesus would have liked nothing better than for us to be organizationally unified, yet the church has been compared rightfully to a family – and we know that families often have trouble with unity amongst themselves. We can see that with Jesus’ own family. He begins his earthly ministry in Capernaum and his family comes to get him and try to drag him back home. They think he has lost his marbles, or come down with a case of delusions of grandeur. Jesus replies to their concerns with the rather caustic response, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Here, I think, we can see something of what it means to be truly unified. We become unified in our faith, in the Spirit, in our dedication to Christ. When people loose that, they are no longer truly unified and whether they attend the same church doesn’t really matter. The spirit of unity has fled. In our own experience we know that even though we belong to a family with a certain name –Counts or Walker or Arbogast or Brown, we often are not really at one or unified with our own family members. Our interests can diverge to such an extent that we can’t imagine how it was we happened to fall into the same genetic sibling group. (Who knows, perhaps we were indeed seeded here by aliens, as Richard Dawkins suggests…).
At any rate, unity does not come about simply because you are part of the same organization. This can be true in the business world, where we work for the same company but are radically different from our fellows in our approach to our jobs. It can perhaps be suggested, that truly great companies are those that have figured out how to be unified under a great leader, a great vision, or a great set of organizational principles. True unity is of the spirit, not necessarily the flesh.
One of the things that Doc spoke about when he was here was the idea that the church is going through a reformation, not realignment. The latter speaks of a rearrangement of something that was already there. You get your car’s wheels re-aligned when they get out of alignment. It’s an adjustment of what it already there. But with a reformation, something different takes place. A reformation is where you take your car in to the shop and they remove the front wheel assembly and rebuild it completely. It’s a fundamental change.
Now during the history of the church, there have been several reformations. The first reformation came in response to the widespread acceptance of Christianity as an official religion of Rome. When whole armies of soldiers were baptized by marching them through rivers on their horses, something fundamental changed about the nature of professing faith. The desert fathers and mothers of Egypt went out to the waste places to practice the true faith and to really meet God. Through their asceticism, they showed the church how to reach the height and depth of true belief and sanctity. St. Benedict took the wisdom and insight of these desert fathers, such as Anthony and Basil, and adapted it to a communal lifestyle. In so doing he created the pattern for the evangelization of Western Europe. He wasn’t starting out to make a reformation; he was only trying to live the gospel in the presence of a few others who were trying to do the same. But his divinely inspired Rule became the blueprint for the next thousand years of Christian growth.
By the time that St. Francis came around in the 1200’s, the church had fallen into corruption and laziness. It was badly in need of a reformation. Jesus conveyed this to Francis when he spoke to Francis from the cross at San Damiano. “Rebuild my church” was the message given to the young Italian. Taking the message literally, Francis proceeded to beg rocks and mortar to rebuild churches that had fallen into disrepair. But soon enough, it became apparent that Jesus was interested in a more profound reformation than just stones and mortar. For within Francis’ lifetime, he had made such a huge impact on ordinary believers, that he single-handedly brought reformation to the Catholic Church of his day. Amazingly enough, Francis inspired true reformation while maintaining complete loyalty to the Pope, whom he saw as God’s true representative on earth. His was not an organizational reformation, but a reformation of the heart. In a sense we can say that what Benedict started, Francis reformed through the same radical spirit of love and devotion to Jesus Christ.
Skipping ahead to the “Reformation” proper of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Church of England, here we have an example of a different type of reformation, one that resulted in unintentional organizational breaks from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was keen to reform the church from within, not to start his own church. And had he lived in Francis’ time instead of his own, it’s possible that he may not have had to split from Rome. But with the prevailing political climate what it was in Europe and with the new technology of the printing press, Luther faced circumstances that Francis could not even have imagined.
As doc related to us, some have said that the first Reformation was about getting the Word into the hands of the people – and this effort was met with such resistance from Rome that organizational unity was broken.
The Church of England, of course, tried to find a middle way, reforming but remaining Catholic in spirit and worship practice. Here too, however, the organizational split between Rome and King Henry might never have come about if Henry hadn’t had difficulty producing an heir and trying to find money for his government. Politics and money have always had an impact on the church. We are, after all, in the world.
Granted, Jesus told us that we should be in the world but not of the world, and some of our problems in the church have come about because the world was too much in the church and some of us couldn’t stand it. This is just as much a part of reformation as politics and money. Some believers are truly zealous for truth and can’t stand the idea of sharing the communion rail with people who openly reject what we believe as Christians: namely: this is eternal life , that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
In our own time, the Apostasy of the Episcopal Church has compelled us to walk away from a church that can no longer be recognized as distinctly Christian. Thus we find ourselves in flight from heresy, but also drawn to something that we can hardly imagine: another Reformation. If indeed the First Reformation was about getting the Bible into the hands of the people, then the second reformation has been prophetically labeled ‘getting the ministry into the hands of the people’
As with any Reformation, one looks back on hundreds of years, not tens of years to assess what has actually come to pass. Five hundred years after the first Book of Common Prayer, historians are still writing books about the first reformation. Thus as we live through these trying and uncertain times, we must remember that all of us here will die before the next crop of historians figure out what our time was really about.
One thing we do know is that the current movement of the Holy Spirit is operating across denominational lines. Denominations are not being erased, but there is a new cooperation across lines, while Churches still affirm their own unique identity. Thus, on Thursday, I participated with the leaders of several other congregations to pray for our nation and our institutions. We were from different groups but there was a spirit of unity present –largely because we had come to know each other over many years. Almost without exception, the people in the room had prayed and worked together many times previously, and have come to love and appreciate each other, while holding on to their own denominational distinctives.
Politically, we live in an era when people are not as dedicated to parties or organizations as they once were. This affects the church negatively in that people don’t grow up Methodist and stay Methodist ‘just because’ they grew up that way. Rather, people affiliate by Affinity with those to whom they feel a soul connection.
And it is in this spirit that we can often find a true spirit of unity with our brothers and sisters from other churches. I have come to respect and appreciate Darrel Buttram from the 10th Avenue Church of God, as a very spiritually sensitive, gifted and passionate preacher. I don’t have the same affinity for his denomination as he does, (and to hear him tell it, he struggles with it himself)…but we have enough in common that we can appear on the same platform together at our upcoming community memorial service.
In a recent pastors’ meeting, Darrel said to me that one of the things that All Saints Anglican Church can really do for our community is to offer Communion again as we did last year. Our understanding of the Lord’s Table is one of the unique gifts that we have to offer our World, and folks from other traditions see and appreciate this. While they may not understand our sacramental view of the Lords’ supper or agree with it, yet there is a respect present. Chuck Lawrence from Christ Temple remarked to me after last year’s Memorial service, that it really was very beautiful.
So again, here is where we find unity, in the spirit of love and mutual respect, based in our love for Jesus Christ. Our true brothers and sisters are those believers who love Jesus and are unafraid to proclaim this love. Given a choice between a Jesus-lovin’ Pentecostal and a Unitarian fish wife who can’t articulate why she goes to a Christian church, I’ll pick the Pentecostal any day!
We are continuing to pray for discernment as a church regarding affiliation with AMIA vs. CANA. We still have some questions to ponder. For instance, here’s docs’ response to the question of Womens’ Ordination:
...whatever happens here, [in America] the AMiA will not support the ordination of women to the presbyterate,[everbody say prez- boo- er- ate] and will not come under the specific authority of leaders who do.
In contrast, here is what the CANA web site says on this issue:
CANA recognizes that there are differing theological positions in the Anglican Communion about women in ordained ministry. CANA acknowledges the integrity of those who understand Holy Scripture to permit the ordination of women to the presbytereate and those who believe the Scripture prohibits women’s ordination. Because of the differing positions, CANA policies regarding the ordination of women will be developed from a biblical and pastoral perspective. CANA is committed to modeling for American Anglicans the possibility of respecting both integrities regarding the ordination of women within one ecclesial body. There has been at least one woman deacon ordained by a CANA bishop and there are several other women clergy who have been licensed. Yet, a CANA congregation which objects to women in the presbytereate will not be expected to endorse or call women clergy to serve in their community.
How will this issue affect our ability to come together as a unified body of orthodox Anglicans? I myself would accept a woman deacon, but not a priest. I cannot in good conscience affiliate with a group that accepts women priests, yet I know that there are orthodox Anglicans who do, and I want to accept them, but not their view on that issue. Beyond this, there is the simple expedient of which group is geographically closest to us and can best support us. Which group most closely matches our personality and mission as a congregation?
If we had the advantage of a hundred years of history upon which to base our decision, perhaps it wouldn’t be so seemingly complex. But we don’t. We have to live through this Reformation and wait to see what it becomes – if we live that long. Therefore, let us seek out those with whom we have unity of Spirit, kindred hearts, and minds set upon similar purposes, and let us boldly move ahead, secure in the knowledge that God has more power to lead us than the Devil has to deceive us. AMEN.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Prayer for Families
A Prayer composed for the National Day of Prayer, May 1, 2008. Given at the West Virginia State Capitol Rotunda
Holy and Gracious Father, in your infinite love, you created the Family and ordained it to be the institution by which our children are nurtured in safety and first come to know You. We humbly pray you to forgive us for our failure to live up to our high calling to lead godly lives before You, and to reproduce a godly heritage.
We have not been faithful to protect marital bonds. We have pursued our own selfish ambitions to the detriment of our children. We have put the pursuit of material things above the spiritual wellbeing of our loved ones and we have reaped a whirlwind of brokenness and conflict, reproducing failure upon failure.
God be merciful and forgive us and cause your face to shed its light upon us. Give us grace to humble ourselves before You and cry out for strength to live sober and disciplined lives, that our works may find favor in your sight, and that our families may be blessed with fruitfulness.
God turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. God be gracious to all mothers, and especially to those who struggle valiantly to raise their children alone. God remember all long-suffering grandparents who courageously care for their grandchildren. God give us all a spirit of adoption, by which we reach out to care for the orphan and the abandoned, to those who are in danger because of abuse, or who suffer neglect and want because of the careless disregard of the adults around them.
Have mercy on us O Lord, Have mercy, for in you is found forgiveness and You shall redeem us from all our sins, even as we put our hope in You. All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By Him and with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.
Holy and Gracious Father, in your infinite love, you created the Family and ordained it to be the institution by which our children are nurtured in safety and first come to know You. We humbly pray you to forgive us for our failure to live up to our high calling to lead godly lives before You, and to reproduce a godly heritage.
We have not been faithful to protect marital bonds. We have pursued our own selfish ambitions to the detriment of our children. We have put the pursuit of material things above the spiritual wellbeing of our loved ones and we have reaped a whirlwind of brokenness and conflict, reproducing failure upon failure.
God be merciful and forgive us and cause your face to shed its light upon us. Give us grace to humble ourselves before You and cry out for strength to live sober and disciplined lives, that our works may find favor in your sight, and that our families may be blessed with fruitfulness.
God turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. God be gracious to all mothers, and especially to those who struggle valiantly to raise their children alone. God remember all long-suffering grandparents who courageously care for their grandchildren. God give us all a spirit of adoption, by which we reach out to care for the orphan and the abandoned, to those who are in danger because of abuse, or who suffer neglect and want because of the careless disregard of the adults around them.
Have mercy on us O Lord, Have mercy, for in you is found forgiveness and You shall redeem us from all our sins, even as we put our hope in You. All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By Him and with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
How Big is Your God?
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on April 13, 2008 at St. Mary's Medical Center Convent Chapel, based on Nehemiah 9:6-15
Fill in the musical blank as I sing:
My dog’s bigger than (your dog).
My Dog’s bigger than (your’s).
My dog’s bigger ‘cause he eats (Kennel Ration).
My dog’s bigger than (your’s).
Remember that from the 60’s? Let’s be a little impertinent and turn this around and ask:
How Big is your God? …
Is your God the One who made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their angelic hosts, the earth and all that is on it? Does your God preserve the sea and all that is in it? Does the host of Heaven bow down and worship your God?
Does your God make Covenants with people and does He keep them forever? Does he perform signs and wonders for His covenant people and lead them through deep waters - set pillars of cloud and fire to guide them through the desert, and then give them food from heaven to eat?
Is your God Gracious and Merciful, slow to anger and abounding in Steadfast Love, keeping faith with his people even when they lose faith and turn to worship other Gods? …
Is He?
Does He lead you beside still waters and restore your soul? Is He with you even in the shadow of Death?
Does He prepare a table before you in the Presence of your enemies? Does he anoint your head with oil and make your cup overflow?
Could you identify the sound of your God’s voice?
If someone was trying to imitate your God and disguised their voice to sound like His, could you tell the difference? Do you trust that voice enough to follow it wherever it leads you?
And would you willingly give up something precious for your God if that thing or person was leading you away from your God?
Would you?
If not, your God is too small and you need a bigger one to follow.
The Big God of Scripture
You need the One found in the pages of Nehemiah and Psalm 23 and John 10 and Acts 7 – a God who is Big enough and powerful enough to command the universe, but One who is loving enough to care for you and to desire a close personal relationship with you.
You need a God that you are willing to die for but One that you are willing to Live for as well - A God that speaks to you personally and a God that demands your allegiance because he made you – a God that is High and Lifted up – but one who stoops to help you in your weakness.
Friends, do you have a God like this?
Discovering the True God of the Bible
In our lesson from Nehemiah today, we pick up the story mid – way through - after Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and reconstructed the walls around the city despite the opposition of the surrounding peoples. A census had been taken of all the returned exiles and on a great day of dedication, the people had stood from early morning to until mid-day as the Book of the Law of Moses was read out in their hearing. They wept when they heard the law, and then they celebrated a Holy Day with feasting.
They constructed booths out of branches and lived in them for seven days while they were listening to the word and its explanation. And on the eighth day they confessed their sins before God and worshipped Him.
The Levite priests (be thankful you didn’t have to read their names today) told the people to Stand up and bless the Lord because His name is exalted above all blessing and praise. He’s a big God and He deserves all the praise we can muster before him.
The people praised God and recounted his actions in history towards them – and they confessed their sins very specifically – for a long time, a quarter of a day.
And then they made a written covenant with this God and sealed their names upon it. They solemnly swore to observe the Law he had given to Moses, to not allow intermarriage with the people of the surrounding areas, to observe the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee, and to bring the firstfruits of their labor to the Lord for the maintenance of the temple worship, saying “We will not neglect the house of our God.” (Neh 10:39).
Because Jerusalem’s walls had been torn down, it wasn’t safe to live there for many years, so after the new wall was completed the peoplecast lots and chose 10 % of the population to live there, while the rest of the people lived in smaller outlying towns. They dedicated the wall they had built and began daily temple worship, offering ‘great sacrifices’ with great joy – all because they were serving a great God.
Nehemiah’s Reforms
And then Nehemiah sets about cleaning house. He separates out from Israel all of foreign descent. No Ammonites or Moabites welcome –because their people did not help the Israelites and hired Balaam to curse them.
But then Nehemiah goes back to Babylon for several years. When he returns, he finds things have fallen apart. He discovers that the corrupt priest Eliashib had created a nice little crib for his homey Tobia in the temple – and he throws them both out on their ears and cleanses the place, returning it to its sacred storehouse function.
He discovers that the Levites had not been given their portion and they had had to go out and work in the fields instead of worshipping God. Nehemiah restores the tithe and the people bring in their first fruits to the Lord.
The observance of the Sabbath had gone by the boards, and he restores it – by force.
And then comes the coup de grace: Nehemiah learns that the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab and that half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, not Hebrew. Listen to how he handles this situation:
“And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God” …that they would not intermarry with the surrounding peoples! (Wow!)
The last thing he does is to chase off the son-in-law of Sanballat, who had caused so much trouble to the people.
And Nehemiah closes his book by asking God to remember him for God because he had cleansed everything foreign.
Now, is your God as big as Nehemiah’s?
For the sake of your God, are you willing to cleanse out of your life anything that displeases God? Are you willing to attempt big huge projects on behalf of your God because you love Him and the Law he has set before you? Are you willing to bring him the first and the best of all you have to offer?
And are you willing to stand up for righteousness and confront God’s people when they stray? ( Can you imagine Nehemiah at General Conference 2003?...!)
Are you? If you are, it’s because you have caught a vision for a God that is High and Lifted up, worthy of honor, much to be feared and obeyed as the absolute, sovereign Creator.
The Rest of the Story….
But this is only half the story about our God. The rest of it (as Paul Harvey says) is that God is a God of love, who desires an intimate relationship with you, the sheep of his hand.
Our Big View of God must include his power and righteousness. Without this we are impoverished as people. But our big view also has to include fact that Jesus died on the cross for us and has wiped away our certificate of debt before God the righteous judge.
This same God has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside of us and to have intimate fellowship with us. When Jesus said, in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me”, he wasn’t talking to non -believers, He was talking to the lukewarm church at Laodicea, trying to reprove and discipline them so that they could enter in to this close, loving relationship with God and eventually share the very throne of God with Him!
God, our God, Loves you and wants to spend time with you! This is the most amazing thing in the Universe! Surely there can be no higher privilege than to Hobnob with the Most High!
So let me challenge and encourage you to do some things:
1) Repent of your obtuseness in the Face of a Holy and Awesome God. He is your maker and he deserves the very best you have to offer, even if you don’t understand Him or what He’s doing in your life.
2) Love Him and spend time with him every day! This Mighty God of ours also cares about each hair on your head. He has an infinite amount of time for you – and for me too. No problem is too small for Him. “Cast your burden upon the Lord – for he will sustain you…” (Ps. 55:22).
3) Don’t fall prey to Benjamin Franklin’s quip that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s cute, but it ain’t right. God emphatically helps those who call upon Him for wisdom and then do what He tells them to do. This is the opposite of self-sufficiency.
4) Give Him yourself – it’s the best and only thing you really have to Give Him.
I’d like to close with this prayer of dedication that we usually pray during our Celtic Eucharist
Prayer of Dedication
Each thing I have received,
from YOU it came.
Each thing for which I hope,
from YOUR love it will come.
Each thing I enjoy,
it is of YOUR Bounty.
So I am giving YOU offering with my
whole thought.
I am giving YOU Love with my
whole heart.
I am giving YOU affection with my
whole devotion.
And I am giving You my soul,
O God of all Gods.
AMEN.
Fill in the musical blank as I sing:
My dog’s bigger than (your dog).
My Dog’s bigger than (your’s).
My dog’s bigger ‘cause he eats (Kennel Ration).
My dog’s bigger than (your’s).
Remember that from the 60’s? Let’s be a little impertinent and turn this around and ask:
How Big is your God? …
Is your God the One who made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their angelic hosts, the earth and all that is on it? Does your God preserve the sea and all that is in it? Does the host of Heaven bow down and worship your God?
Does your God make Covenants with people and does He keep them forever? Does he perform signs and wonders for His covenant people and lead them through deep waters - set pillars of cloud and fire to guide them through the desert, and then give them food from heaven to eat?
Is your God Gracious and Merciful, slow to anger and abounding in Steadfast Love, keeping faith with his people even when they lose faith and turn to worship other Gods? …
Is He?
Does He lead you beside still waters and restore your soul? Is He with you even in the shadow of Death?
Does He prepare a table before you in the Presence of your enemies? Does he anoint your head with oil and make your cup overflow?
Could you identify the sound of your God’s voice?
If someone was trying to imitate your God and disguised their voice to sound like His, could you tell the difference? Do you trust that voice enough to follow it wherever it leads you?
And would you willingly give up something precious for your God if that thing or person was leading you away from your God?
Would you?
If not, your God is too small and you need a bigger one to follow.
The Big God of Scripture
You need the One found in the pages of Nehemiah and Psalm 23 and John 10 and Acts 7 – a God who is Big enough and powerful enough to command the universe, but One who is loving enough to care for you and to desire a close personal relationship with you.
You need a God that you are willing to die for but One that you are willing to Live for as well - A God that speaks to you personally and a God that demands your allegiance because he made you – a God that is High and Lifted up – but one who stoops to help you in your weakness.
Friends, do you have a God like this?
Discovering the True God of the Bible
In our lesson from Nehemiah today, we pick up the story mid – way through - after Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and reconstructed the walls around the city despite the opposition of the surrounding peoples. A census had been taken of all the returned exiles and on a great day of dedication, the people had stood from early morning to until mid-day as the Book of the Law of Moses was read out in their hearing. They wept when they heard the law, and then they celebrated a Holy Day with feasting.
They constructed booths out of branches and lived in them for seven days while they were listening to the word and its explanation. And on the eighth day they confessed their sins before God and worshipped Him.
The Levite priests (be thankful you didn’t have to read their names today) told the people to Stand up and bless the Lord because His name is exalted above all blessing and praise. He’s a big God and He deserves all the praise we can muster before him.
The people praised God and recounted his actions in history towards them – and they confessed their sins very specifically – for a long time, a quarter of a day.
And then they made a written covenant with this God and sealed their names upon it. They solemnly swore to observe the Law he had given to Moses, to not allow intermarriage with the people of the surrounding areas, to observe the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee, and to bring the firstfruits of their labor to the Lord for the maintenance of the temple worship, saying “We will not neglect the house of our God.” (Neh 10:39).
Because Jerusalem’s walls had been torn down, it wasn’t safe to live there for many years, so after the new wall was completed the peoplecast lots and chose 10 % of the population to live there, while the rest of the people lived in smaller outlying towns. They dedicated the wall they had built and began daily temple worship, offering ‘great sacrifices’ with great joy – all because they were serving a great God.
Nehemiah’s Reforms
And then Nehemiah sets about cleaning house. He separates out from Israel all of foreign descent. No Ammonites or Moabites welcome –because their people did not help the Israelites and hired Balaam to curse them.
But then Nehemiah goes back to Babylon for several years. When he returns, he finds things have fallen apart. He discovers that the corrupt priest Eliashib had created a nice little crib for his homey Tobia in the temple – and he throws them both out on their ears and cleanses the place, returning it to its sacred storehouse function.
He discovers that the Levites had not been given their portion and they had had to go out and work in the fields instead of worshipping God. Nehemiah restores the tithe and the people bring in their first fruits to the Lord.
The observance of the Sabbath had gone by the boards, and he restores it – by force.
And then comes the coup de grace: Nehemiah learns that the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab and that half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, not Hebrew. Listen to how he handles this situation:
“And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God” …that they would not intermarry with the surrounding peoples! (Wow!)
The last thing he does is to chase off the son-in-law of Sanballat, who had caused so much trouble to the people.
And Nehemiah closes his book by asking God to remember him for God because he had cleansed everything foreign.
Now, is your God as big as Nehemiah’s?
For the sake of your God, are you willing to cleanse out of your life anything that displeases God? Are you willing to attempt big huge projects on behalf of your God because you love Him and the Law he has set before you? Are you willing to bring him the first and the best of all you have to offer?
And are you willing to stand up for righteousness and confront God’s people when they stray? ( Can you imagine Nehemiah at General Conference 2003?...!)
Are you? If you are, it’s because you have caught a vision for a God that is High and Lifted up, worthy of honor, much to be feared and obeyed as the absolute, sovereign Creator.
The Rest of the Story….
But this is only half the story about our God. The rest of it (as Paul Harvey says) is that God is a God of love, who desires an intimate relationship with you, the sheep of his hand.
Our Big View of God must include his power and righteousness. Without this we are impoverished as people. But our big view also has to include fact that Jesus died on the cross for us and has wiped away our certificate of debt before God the righteous judge.
This same God has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside of us and to have intimate fellowship with us. When Jesus said, in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me”, he wasn’t talking to non -believers, He was talking to the lukewarm church at Laodicea, trying to reprove and discipline them so that they could enter in to this close, loving relationship with God and eventually share the very throne of God with Him!
God, our God, Loves you and wants to spend time with you! This is the most amazing thing in the Universe! Surely there can be no higher privilege than to Hobnob with the Most High!
So let me challenge and encourage you to do some things:
1) Repent of your obtuseness in the Face of a Holy and Awesome God. He is your maker and he deserves the very best you have to offer, even if you don’t understand Him or what He’s doing in your life.
2) Love Him and spend time with him every day! This Mighty God of ours also cares about each hair on your head. He has an infinite amount of time for you – and for me too. No problem is too small for Him. “Cast your burden upon the Lord – for he will sustain you…” (Ps. 55:22).
3) Don’t fall prey to Benjamin Franklin’s quip that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s cute, but it ain’t right. God emphatically helps those who call upon Him for wisdom and then do what He tells them to do. This is the opposite of self-sufficiency.
4) Give Him yourself – it’s the best and only thing you really have to Give Him.
I’d like to close with this prayer of dedication that we usually pray during our Celtic Eucharist
Prayer of Dedication
Each thing I have received,
from YOU it came.
Each thing for which I hope,
from YOUR love it will come.
Each thing I enjoy,
it is of YOUR Bounty.
So I am giving YOU offering with my
whole thought.
I am giving YOU Love with my
whole heart.
I am giving YOU affection with my
whole devotion.
And I am giving You my soul,
O God of all Gods.
AMEN.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
PEFT for the World
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on April 6, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
A couple of years ago on a weekend trip to visit my parents, I had a sudden epiphany about my mother’s Mission in Life. For several weeks previous to our visit, Mom and Dad had been having trouble with a raccoon which had been raiding their trash and garden. The night before we arrived at their home, my father had trapped this huge raccoon in a ‘Have a Heart” cage, intending to drive it far out into the country and drop it off in a new home.
About an hour before Dad and I were to make our little trip into the country, my mother announced that she was taking some cat food out to the raccoon, allowing as it was probably hungry! At that very moment I realized that despite whatever other roles she had played in life: wife, mother, teacher, church member, etc, her REAL Mission in life was “To feed living things”. It mattered not what species – neighborhood dog, stray cat, foraging deer – even fat raccoons – they all fell under my mother’s Divine Mandate to feed living things. At that moment it also became clear to me why she had majored in Home Economics and why I was 20 years old before I realized that breakfast is not necessarily a four-course meal! It was all beause of my mother Mission in Life to feed living things!
Thesis:
Today I would like to suggest to you that Jesus has a similar mission in our lives: To make himself known to us and the world in the breaking of bread.
We could perhaps restate this by saying that Our Worship, Fellowship and Outreach as Christians is based around Companionship – being those who break bread together.
Scriptures:
In our Gospel lesson from Luke 24:13-35, we find Jesus walking with two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, talking with them about the recent events, “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” V. 16. After extensive discussion about the Christ being prophecied in Scripture, they all sit down to a meal. And “when he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” vv. 30,31
Here we can see what has been called the Four-Fold Eucharistic action. Jesus:
Took Bread
Blessed it
Broke it
Gave it to them.
Each Sunday we re-enact this pattern in our Worship. If my mom were here today, she’d be very happy, because it’s all about feeding living things!
Basis for Fellowship
In Acts 2:42, 46, we see a similar pattern for something we could call Eucharistic Fellowship: V42 And they devoted themselves to:
the apostles' teaching and
the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and
the prayers.
46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts…
So the people were going to church and eating together, receiving their food with thanksgiving, or “Eucharistically” .
I’ve taken the liberty of categorizing the four basic actions in these two passages into an acronym: PEFT. Both in their worship and their fellowship the early Christians did these four actions;
P ray
E at
F ellowship
T each
At the center of it all was eating – either eating the body and blood of Jesus, or having a so-called ‘Agape’ or fellowship meal.
Basis for Evangelism.
The result was Evangelism. The message about Jesus was spread abroad:
“…Then they told [the others]what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Lk. 24: 35.
“And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” ACTS 2:47
I grant you that it’s too simple to say that the church grew because people worshipped and ate together. There’s also this amazing testimony from Acts:
43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. …47 praising God and having favor with all the people.
Signs and Wonders and community living also had a huge impact on the spread of the Gospel early on.
But as a local church, if we think about our strategy for reaching out to others, what could be simpler than a four fold plan:
Pray
Eat
Fellowship
Teach
Application:
In other words, invite people to come and eat with you. Go to lunch with them, invite them to your homes for dinner or to your small groups.
Get to know people through the fellowship you have with them over a meal.
Offer to pray for them – for their healing, for their businesses, for their family lives, for their salvation.
Then Teach. Teach through studying the Bible together. Teach what you’ve learned through your life experience: older ones mentor younger ones. Teach new believers how to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Help them to know how to order their lives in a way that would be pleasing to God and profitable for them.
In light of all this, I’m thinking about a popular slogan: ‘The Gospel is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”.
I’m also thinking that maybe my Mom is on to something. Maybe the Gospel is really all about Feeding Living Things.
Based on today’s lessons, I think that might be the case. So I say, “Pass the bread and Eat up!” Let’s Pray:
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
A couple of years ago on a weekend trip to visit my parents, I had a sudden epiphany about my mother’s Mission in Life. For several weeks previous to our visit, Mom and Dad had been having trouble with a raccoon which had been raiding their trash and garden. The night before we arrived at their home, my father had trapped this huge raccoon in a ‘Have a Heart” cage, intending to drive it far out into the country and drop it off in a new home.
About an hour before Dad and I were to make our little trip into the country, my mother announced that she was taking some cat food out to the raccoon, allowing as it was probably hungry! At that very moment I realized that despite whatever other roles she had played in life: wife, mother, teacher, church member, etc, her REAL Mission in life was “To feed living things”. It mattered not what species – neighborhood dog, stray cat, foraging deer – even fat raccoons – they all fell under my mother’s Divine Mandate to feed living things. At that moment it also became clear to me why she had majored in Home Economics and why I was 20 years old before I realized that breakfast is not necessarily a four-course meal! It was all beause of my mother Mission in Life to feed living things!
Thesis:
Today I would like to suggest to you that Jesus has a similar mission in our lives: To make himself known to us and the world in the breaking of bread.
We could perhaps restate this by saying that Our Worship, Fellowship and Outreach as Christians is based around Companionship – being those who break bread together.
Scriptures:
In our Gospel lesson from Luke 24:13-35, we find Jesus walking with two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, talking with them about the recent events, “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” V. 16. After extensive discussion about the Christ being prophecied in Scripture, they all sit down to a meal. And “when he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” vv. 30,31
Here we can see what has been called the Four-Fold Eucharistic action. Jesus:
Took Bread
Blessed it
Broke it
Gave it to them.
Each Sunday we re-enact this pattern in our Worship. If my mom were here today, she’d be very happy, because it’s all about feeding living things!
Basis for Fellowship
In Acts 2:42, 46, we see a similar pattern for something we could call Eucharistic Fellowship: V42 And they devoted themselves to:
the apostles' teaching and
the fellowship,
to the breaking of bread and
the prayers.
46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts…
So the people were going to church and eating together, receiving their food with thanksgiving, or “Eucharistically” .
I’ve taken the liberty of categorizing the four basic actions in these two passages into an acronym: PEFT. Both in their worship and their fellowship the early Christians did these four actions;
P ray
E at
F ellowship
T each
At the center of it all was eating – either eating the body and blood of Jesus, or having a so-called ‘Agape’ or fellowship meal.
Basis for Evangelism.
The result was Evangelism. The message about Jesus was spread abroad:
“…Then they told [the others]what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Lk. 24: 35.
“And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” ACTS 2:47
I grant you that it’s too simple to say that the church grew because people worshipped and ate together. There’s also this amazing testimony from Acts:
43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. …47 praising God and having favor with all the people.
Signs and Wonders and community living also had a huge impact on the spread of the Gospel early on.
But as a local church, if we think about our strategy for reaching out to others, what could be simpler than a four fold plan:
Pray
Eat
Fellowship
Teach
Application:
In other words, invite people to come and eat with you. Go to lunch with them, invite them to your homes for dinner or to your small groups.
Get to know people through the fellowship you have with them over a meal.
Offer to pray for them – for their healing, for their businesses, for their family lives, for their salvation.
Then Teach. Teach through studying the Bible together. Teach what you’ve learned through your life experience: older ones mentor younger ones. Teach new believers how to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. Help them to know how to order their lives in a way that would be pleasing to God and profitable for them.
In light of all this, I’m thinking about a popular slogan: ‘The Gospel is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”.
I’m also thinking that maybe my Mom is on to something. Maybe the Gospel is really all about Feeding Living Things.
Based on today’s lessons, I think that might be the case. So I say, “Pass the bread and Eat up!” Let’s Pray:
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Why Are You Here?
A Sermon Given to All Saints Anglican Church on Easter 2008 @ the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
Why are you here today? …. Is it because Easter is a cultural Holiday and you feel that you are expected to go to church before eating a meal with your family and having an Easter egg hunt with your kids? Is it because Christmas and Easter are two religious holidays that you can’t avoid – and so you must make an effort to attend so that God isn’t perturbed with you?
Or …. Do you come in order to recognize that the event we celebrate today actually happened and has changed Human existence more than any other religion or philosophy in the World?
I would suggest that for most, if not all, of us, it is the latter. We’re here because we have come to recognize that Jesus arose from the grave and this singular fact has changed our lives forever.
Jesus rose from the Dead. The grave is empty! This fact was noticed by the Roman soldiers who were charged with guarding the tomb against Jesus’ followers who were thought to be plotting to steal the body for their own purposes.
The Disciples noticed that the grave was empty and thought it was significant enough to turn the world upside down as they spread the News.
You and I have noticed that Jesus is not dead – and it has changed every area of our lives: how we think about ourselves, how we treat others, how we spend our money, and how we spend our Sunday mornings.
When we say that Jesus arose, this also entails several other things logically; namely, that Jesus actually existed! You might think this is a silly point to bring up – but there are those who have tried to say that Jesus never existed as a real historical person. There are those who say that he didn’t actually die on the cross, but swooned and was later revived, going on to get married and have a family with Mary Magdalene. People say all kinds of things about Jesus other than what the Bible says – because they don’t like the central focus of Jesus’ mission – to shed his blood on your behalf and mine.
You see, people don’t like to be told they have inherited the original guilt and stain from Adam and Eve, and that the natural condition of humans is to be alienated from God – even as ‘innocent’ children. We don’t like to hear that what we really deserve is death like the thieves on the cross, not peace and prosperity.
The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. (Rom. 3.23). That doesn’t mean that you have a good heart and just lack a few things to be perfect. No, that means that there is an infinite gap between your human goodness and the absolute perfection of God – a gap that is unbridgeable by human effort.
Our problem as humans is not that we are unenlightened, that we just need better self-esteem, or that we just need to clean up our act somewhat before God can accept us fully. The problem is that the Sin we inherit by being human fatally separates us from God.
It’s like on your computer when you se a message that says: “A Fatal error occurred and your computer must shut down”. Sin has shut down the human race and humans have no religious I.T. techs to get them started again via natural means. It’s not in our original software!
The only thing that will bridge the gap between us and God is Blood Sacrifice. This is what separated Able’s sacrifice from Cain’s. This is whey God set up the elaborate rituals for animal sacrifice in the Jewish Temple. This is what Jesus came to offer God on our behalf. And this is what the world objects to.
This past week I got a news letter from Lynn and Karen McAdams, who were dear friends of ours at Trinity and have served as missionaries in Germany for the last 25 years. Writing about the future of the church in Germany, Lynn quotes TV pastor Jurgen Fliege, who asserts,
“The church should offer a more positive picture of Jesus and not be continually talking about suffering and death…Jesus was a master of happiness. If the church keeps repeating that ‘Jesus died for me and my sins,’ that’s lie a dark cloud which hangs over people … Instead, we should learn from statements like ‘plants can teach us something.’ This is not esoteric, but a lesson from creation, as tress and plants are ‘the oldest siblings of mankind.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced that some of my teachers in school were actually plant life -- But you see, this statement tells us what the world wants: A religion that helps them to feel good about themselves and to realize that you’d be much happier if you just thought about your leafy siblings – and stopped thinking about Sin, Death, and Blood all the time. It’s just as CS Lewis said, “Christianity is not the kind of religion you would make up on your own…” It’s too bloody, too messy, and too difficult to believe. Easier to believe that “Plants are your friends”…
But friends I am here today to tell you that the only reason we are here today is to affirm and celebrate the uncomfortable facts of the Gospel: Jesus was a real Human being who was also real God at the same time. He came down from Heaven to live a perfect life and to teach us about God – but more importantly to die for us and to open the way to Heaven for us.
Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice. His blood is the only way to God. There is none other, and no other Name under heaven by which we can be saved. You can make up your own religion and sell it on TV all you want – but without the blood sacrifice you will not satisfy the necessary condition to bridge the gap between yourself and God.
It was because Jesus offered his own blood on Friday that we celebrate the empty tomb on Sunday. It’s the Blood of Jesus that we celebrate and re-present to God every Sunday in Thanksgiving. It’s the Blood of Jesus that Cleanses, not just covers Sin. And it’s the blood of Jesus that separates Christianity from all other religions.
If you’re here today because you have placed your faith and confidence in the blood of Jesus – I welcome you as a brother or sister in Christ. If you have never trusted the blood of Jesus to cleans you from sin and present you spotless before God, I challenge and invite you to do so before you leave this place today.
Make your time here today eternally meaningful by turning away from your own feeble attempts to be good, and trust in the shed blood of Christ. Come now and give yourself to Him. Now is the Time. Amen.
Why are you here today? …. Is it because Easter is a cultural Holiday and you feel that you are expected to go to church before eating a meal with your family and having an Easter egg hunt with your kids? Is it because Christmas and Easter are two religious holidays that you can’t avoid – and so you must make an effort to attend so that God isn’t perturbed with you?
Or …. Do you come in order to recognize that the event we celebrate today actually happened and has changed Human existence more than any other religion or philosophy in the World?
I would suggest that for most, if not all, of us, it is the latter. We’re here because we have come to recognize that Jesus arose from the grave and this singular fact has changed our lives forever.
Jesus rose from the Dead. The grave is empty! This fact was noticed by the Roman soldiers who were charged with guarding the tomb against Jesus’ followers who were thought to be plotting to steal the body for their own purposes.
The Disciples noticed that the grave was empty and thought it was significant enough to turn the world upside down as they spread the News.
You and I have noticed that Jesus is not dead – and it has changed every area of our lives: how we think about ourselves, how we treat others, how we spend our money, and how we spend our Sunday mornings.
When we say that Jesus arose, this also entails several other things logically; namely, that Jesus actually existed! You might think this is a silly point to bring up – but there are those who have tried to say that Jesus never existed as a real historical person. There are those who say that he didn’t actually die on the cross, but swooned and was later revived, going on to get married and have a family with Mary Magdalene. People say all kinds of things about Jesus other than what the Bible says – because they don’t like the central focus of Jesus’ mission – to shed his blood on your behalf and mine.
You see, people don’t like to be told they have inherited the original guilt and stain from Adam and Eve, and that the natural condition of humans is to be alienated from God – even as ‘innocent’ children. We don’t like to hear that what we really deserve is death like the thieves on the cross, not peace and prosperity.
The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. (Rom. 3.23). That doesn’t mean that you have a good heart and just lack a few things to be perfect. No, that means that there is an infinite gap between your human goodness and the absolute perfection of God – a gap that is unbridgeable by human effort.
Our problem as humans is not that we are unenlightened, that we just need better self-esteem, or that we just need to clean up our act somewhat before God can accept us fully. The problem is that the Sin we inherit by being human fatally separates us from God.
It’s like on your computer when you se a message that says: “A Fatal error occurred and your computer must shut down”. Sin has shut down the human race and humans have no religious I.T. techs to get them started again via natural means. It’s not in our original software!
The only thing that will bridge the gap between us and God is Blood Sacrifice. This is what separated Able’s sacrifice from Cain’s. This is whey God set up the elaborate rituals for animal sacrifice in the Jewish Temple. This is what Jesus came to offer God on our behalf. And this is what the world objects to.
This past week I got a news letter from Lynn and Karen McAdams, who were dear friends of ours at Trinity and have served as missionaries in Germany for the last 25 years. Writing about the future of the church in Germany, Lynn quotes TV pastor Jurgen Fliege, who asserts,
“The church should offer a more positive picture of Jesus and not be continually talking about suffering and death…Jesus was a master of happiness. If the church keeps repeating that ‘Jesus died for me and my sins,’ that’s lie a dark cloud which hangs over people … Instead, we should learn from statements like ‘plants can teach us something.’ This is not esoteric, but a lesson from creation, as tress and plants are ‘the oldest siblings of mankind.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced that some of my teachers in school were actually plant life -- But you see, this statement tells us what the world wants: A religion that helps them to feel good about themselves and to realize that you’d be much happier if you just thought about your leafy siblings – and stopped thinking about Sin, Death, and Blood all the time. It’s just as CS Lewis said, “Christianity is not the kind of religion you would make up on your own…” It’s too bloody, too messy, and too difficult to believe. Easier to believe that “Plants are your friends”…
But friends I am here today to tell you that the only reason we are here today is to affirm and celebrate the uncomfortable facts of the Gospel: Jesus was a real Human being who was also real God at the same time. He came down from Heaven to live a perfect life and to teach us about God – but more importantly to die for us and to open the way to Heaven for us.
Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice. His blood is the only way to God. There is none other, and no other Name under heaven by which we can be saved. You can make up your own religion and sell it on TV all you want – but without the blood sacrifice you will not satisfy the necessary condition to bridge the gap between yourself and God.
It was because Jesus offered his own blood on Friday that we celebrate the empty tomb on Sunday. It’s the Blood of Jesus that we celebrate and re-present to God every Sunday in Thanksgiving. It’s the Blood of Jesus that Cleanses, not just covers Sin. And it’s the blood of Jesus that separates Christianity from all other religions.
If you’re here today because you have placed your faith and confidence in the blood of Jesus – I welcome you as a brother or sister in Christ. If you have never trusted the blood of Jesus to cleans you from sin and present you spotless before God, I challenge and invite you to do so before you leave this place today.
Make your time here today eternally meaningful by turning away from your own feeble attempts to be good, and trust in the shed blood of Christ. Come now and give yourself to Him. Now is the Time. Amen.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on March 2, 2008 based on
John 9:1-38
Intro:
Today as we consider our Gospel lesson, we are going to learn something crucial about the nature of suffering in our lives and also about what I will call the LBR’s of salvation.
Listen, Believe, Receive.
First, a word about suffering and a Misconception about Illness:
We read that “[Jesus] saw a man blind from birth.” His disciples asked Jesus a question that reflects a fundamental misconception about the nature of Illness: (v2) “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answers the misconception saying, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
The misconception is that Illness is caused by someone’s specific sin. Under this misunderstanding, illness logically is a punishment upon individuals. This in turn leads to a conundrum about the Nature of God: How could a good and loving God ‘inflict’ suffering upon people He is supposed to love – especially innocent children who are hardly culpable for their actions? This is so confusing to the modern mind that people often reject the Bible altogether and say there is no way to reconcile the problem.
One example of this is a religion professor from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a prolific author. Some of his titles include:
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
The Gospel of Judas
Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Dr. Ehrman’s most recent book is:
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer
Here is an author who has come to the conclusion that there really is no answer to the problem of human suffering. I don’t have time here to go into an explanation and rebuttal of Dr. Ehrman’s book, but there are several important points to be made here:
One: The Fall of man caused the entrance of sin and suffering into the world. The doctrine of Original Sin tells us that the guilt and stain of Adam and Eve comes to each one of us as the result of inheritance, completely apart from any works we have done. We are all born into a world that is radically marred by Sin. Every area of our lives is marred by Sin. Illnesses are not the direct punishment or result of someone sinning. Rather, we live in a world corrupted by Sin, where genes mutate and often cause people problems.
Although some illnesses, such as Cirrhosis of the Liver, are usually (not always) the result of specific sinful behavior such as alcoholism, sometimes we suffer because of the sinful behavior of someone else – such as when a loved one dies at the hands of a drunk driver.
Two, God does not Smite us for our sins because we have passed out from under the Wrath of God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. He bore our sins and suffered the chastening for our well-being (Is. 53). Therefore, the Christian does not ask,”Who committed what sin?” Or, “ Why is God Smiting me thusly?” There is no need for this kind of punishment.
God’s Purposes
(Third) Instead, we understand that there are numerous causes for various ailments. Some of these causes involve the purposes of God, which only He can know. And so Jesus’ answer to the disciples is that the man was born this way to demonstrate God’s Glory. Keep in mind that this is a specific story about a specific man. This particular man was born to demonstrate how Jesus heals him. Not every blind person is born blind in order to demonstrate the Glory of God this same way.
Everyman
Nevertheless, we can learn something Universal about ourselves from this man’s plight: The Blind Man is US! We are all born spiritually blind, and every one of us needs to receive our spiritual sight. This particular man’s story demonstrates the glory of God because it highlights the difference between the man’s true faith and the spiritual pride of the Pharisees; between true sight and spiritual blindness; between begging for Truth and being spiritually blind guides of the blind; between the true light that comes into the world and the darkness put onto people by the arrogance of the priestly class.
A Word about the Uniqueness of Jesus’ Healings
This particular healing was accomplished with ‘means’. Jesus used mud to effect the healing. Every healing Jesus did was unique. So, by extension, we can assume that every person gets well in his or her own unique way. Medicines and medical care are often a crucial part of a healing regimen. But no less an authority than the CDC estimates that as much as 85% of illness has its roots in emotional or psychosocial problems!
I am happy to believe that Jesus saliva contains healing power and the mud may have been medicinal in some cosmic way, but it’s also easy to see that the mud was an instrument to help the man to activate his faith.
But what will the neighbors say?
Jesus asked the man to do something rather ‘silly’ or potentially embarrassing: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means ‘Sent’ or piped in from another water source). We often are worried about how we will appear to others if we obey the simple commands of Jesus. Our rationalism or pseudo –sophistication inhibits us from being too childlike or simplistic in our believing. As a result, we sometimes miss great blessing.
John tells us that the man ‘went and washed and came back seeing.’
He had to do something to receive his healing. Real faith is not simply passive: “God do something to me”, but active: “God I participate with you in receiving faith” This does not mean that my works affect righteousness. Only God’s grace can produce righteousness. But God is interested in us acting upon our faith, and this story illustrates how one man did just that. (Incidentally, it also provides us with the quintessential Christian Toast: “Here’s mud in your eye!...)
So this is a story about hearing (Listening to) God’s word, Believing it and acting upon our belief. The result is that we Receive Salvation (From the Latin word ‘Salve’: whole).
8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”
Witnessing
Receiving Salvation transforms us and causes people to notice. This gives us an opportunity to share our story – otherwise knows as Witnessing. A witness tells what he has seen or experienced, no more, no less. Sometimes, we get all upset about what kinds of theological justification we can offer to others, as if we have to be real apologetics experts in order to witness effectively. But in reality, all we have to do is tell what Jesus did for us. We are like the formerly blind man, a beggar telling others how we got our sight. “… One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Unfortunately for the Pharisees this is not enough. They demand a theological explanation from a man who had no education at all. Born blind, he never learned to read. He never went to seminary. He couldn’t give the fancy theological answer. Yet they demand such an answer from both the man and his parents.
The Pharisees also demand that Jesus fit into their theological mold: You can heal, just not on the Sabbath. They show their arrogance by saying, “We know that this man is a sinner. He doesn’t observe our traditions (small ‘t’ tradition). But God never said you couldn’t heal anybody on the Sabbath. This was an application of the law developed by the Pharisees – people who took the Scriptures seriously and tried to apply it to every area of their lives. Their application did not fulfill the Law of Love, because it would have left a man in his suffering just to abide by a man-made convention.
Relentlessly they press the hapless man for his statement about Jesus. Finally, under duress, he declares: “He is a prophet.”
The Failure to Listen
If you want to know whether God has a sense of humor, right here is all the evidence you need. Here we see an exquisite biting irony:
The Jews continue to pressure the man to explain how Jesus healed him, and he finally tells them pointedly, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
They get puffed up in their pride, their lineage: We are disciples of Moses – we don’t know where this man came from. Hrmmph!
Now the zinger: “Here is an amazing thing you do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes!” This is an open rebuke to their unbelief and obtuseness. The man goes on, “31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
In their indignation the Jews demand, Are you trying to teach us?!...” They drove the man out into ‘outer darkness’ while they themselves stayed stuck in their spiritual blindness.
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
This passage culminates in a simple demonstration of how to believe. Jesus asks a simple question, and makes a clear claim to Deity. The man accepts it and ‘gets saved’ and then worships Jesus.
So we have the LBR’s of Salvation: Listen, Believe, Receive , ,
The blind man first had to Listen to Jesus. He couldn’t see him, so all he had to go on was his voice. Unlike the Pharisees he listened to the Voice of God .
Then he believed. He first believed enough to Jesus put the mud in his eyes, and then he fulfilled the second part of listening, he obeyed and went and washed in the pool of Siloam.
As a result he received his healing – and more than that, his salvation.
This uneducated man, born to give Glory to God, personified the right response to Jesus. He contrasts with the learned Pharisees, who didn’t listen, who were blind and as a result could not receive either Jesus or the fruits of His work: Healing and Salvation.
They missed it because reality did not conform to their expectation.
They were a little bit like economists, who observe something happen in reality and fight about whether it could happen in theory.
The Message for Today
The message for us today is clear. First of all, we don’t understand our lives. We don’t know why good things happen, much less bad. We don’t have to be intimidated by Pharisees like Bart Ehrman, who write books demanding that the Bible explain suffering. It’s enough to say that things happen in our lives for reasons – many reasons and we will never be able to understand them all.
Then, we need to know that God specializes in redeeming bad situations. The Son of Man came into the world to seek and save that which was lost, to bring light into darkness and to make alive those who were spiritually dead.
The right way to respond to Jesus is through simple faith. “Yes, Lord, I believe.” Don’t try to make God fit into your theory about how He should work. Just let Him be God. Simply receive his work in your life. Remember, the old canard about God helping those who help themselves’ is not in the Bible. The truth is that just as Jesus healed this helpless blind man, God helps those who cannot help themselves. So come to the end of your own wisdom. Stop trying to figure things out. Listen to the Simple Word of God and Believe it. If you do this you will receive your sight, and you will be able to sing, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see”. AMEN.
John 9:1-38
Intro:
Today as we consider our Gospel lesson, we are going to learn something crucial about the nature of suffering in our lives and also about what I will call the LBR’s of salvation.
Listen, Believe, Receive.
First, a word about suffering and a Misconception about Illness:
We read that “[Jesus] saw a man blind from birth.” His disciples asked Jesus a question that reflects a fundamental misconception about the nature of Illness: (v2) “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answers the misconception saying, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
The misconception is that Illness is caused by someone’s specific sin. Under this misunderstanding, illness logically is a punishment upon individuals. This in turn leads to a conundrum about the Nature of God: How could a good and loving God ‘inflict’ suffering upon people He is supposed to love – especially innocent children who are hardly culpable for their actions? This is so confusing to the modern mind that people often reject the Bible altogether and say there is no way to reconcile the problem.
One example of this is a religion professor from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a prolific author. Some of his titles include:
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
The Gospel of Judas
Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Dr. Ehrman’s most recent book is:
God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer
Here is an author who has come to the conclusion that there really is no answer to the problem of human suffering. I don’t have time here to go into an explanation and rebuttal of Dr. Ehrman’s book, but there are several important points to be made here:
One: The Fall of man caused the entrance of sin and suffering into the world. The doctrine of Original Sin tells us that the guilt and stain of Adam and Eve comes to each one of us as the result of inheritance, completely apart from any works we have done. We are all born into a world that is radically marred by Sin. Every area of our lives is marred by Sin. Illnesses are not the direct punishment or result of someone sinning. Rather, we live in a world corrupted by Sin, where genes mutate and often cause people problems.
Although some illnesses, such as Cirrhosis of the Liver, are usually (not always) the result of specific sinful behavior such as alcoholism, sometimes we suffer because of the sinful behavior of someone else – such as when a loved one dies at the hands of a drunk driver.
Two, God does not Smite us for our sins because we have passed out from under the Wrath of God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. He bore our sins and suffered the chastening for our well-being (Is. 53). Therefore, the Christian does not ask,”Who committed what sin?” Or, “ Why is God Smiting me thusly?” There is no need for this kind of punishment.
God’s Purposes
(Third) Instead, we understand that there are numerous causes for various ailments. Some of these causes involve the purposes of God, which only He can know. And so Jesus’ answer to the disciples is that the man was born this way to demonstrate God’s Glory. Keep in mind that this is a specific story about a specific man. This particular man was born to demonstrate how Jesus heals him. Not every blind person is born blind in order to demonstrate the Glory of God this same way.
Everyman
Nevertheless, we can learn something Universal about ourselves from this man’s plight: The Blind Man is US! We are all born spiritually blind, and every one of us needs to receive our spiritual sight. This particular man’s story demonstrates the glory of God because it highlights the difference between the man’s true faith and the spiritual pride of the Pharisees; between true sight and spiritual blindness; between begging for Truth and being spiritually blind guides of the blind; between the true light that comes into the world and the darkness put onto people by the arrogance of the priestly class.
A Word about the Uniqueness of Jesus’ Healings
This particular healing was accomplished with ‘means’. Jesus used mud to effect the healing. Every healing Jesus did was unique. So, by extension, we can assume that every person gets well in his or her own unique way. Medicines and medical care are often a crucial part of a healing regimen. But no less an authority than the CDC estimates that as much as 85% of illness has its roots in emotional or psychosocial problems!
I am happy to believe that Jesus saliva contains healing power and the mud may have been medicinal in some cosmic way, but it’s also easy to see that the mud was an instrument to help the man to activate his faith.
But what will the neighbors say?
Jesus asked the man to do something rather ‘silly’ or potentially embarrassing: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means ‘Sent’ or piped in from another water source). We often are worried about how we will appear to others if we obey the simple commands of Jesus. Our rationalism or pseudo –sophistication inhibits us from being too childlike or simplistic in our believing. As a result, we sometimes miss great blessing.
John tells us that the man ‘went and washed and came back seeing.’
He had to do something to receive his healing. Real faith is not simply passive: “God do something to me”, but active: “God I participate with you in receiving faith” This does not mean that my works affect righteousness. Only God’s grace can produce righteousness. But God is interested in us acting upon our faith, and this story illustrates how one man did just that. (Incidentally, it also provides us with the quintessential Christian Toast: “Here’s mud in your eye!...)
So this is a story about hearing (Listening to) God’s word, Believing it and acting upon our belief. The result is that we Receive Salvation (From the Latin word ‘Salve’: whole).
8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”
Witnessing
Receiving Salvation transforms us and causes people to notice. This gives us an opportunity to share our story – otherwise knows as Witnessing. A witness tells what he has seen or experienced, no more, no less. Sometimes, we get all upset about what kinds of theological justification we can offer to others, as if we have to be real apologetics experts in order to witness effectively. But in reality, all we have to do is tell what Jesus did for us. We are like the formerly blind man, a beggar telling others how we got our sight. “… One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Unfortunately for the Pharisees this is not enough. They demand a theological explanation from a man who had no education at all. Born blind, he never learned to read. He never went to seminary. He couldn’t give the fancy theological answer. Yet they demand such an answer from both the man and his parents.
The Pharisees also demand that Jesus fit into their theological mold: You can heal, just not on the Sabbath. They show their arrogance by saying, “We know that this man is a sinner. He doesn’t observe our traditions (small ‘t’ tradition). But God never said you couldn’t heal anybody on the Sabbath. This was an application of the law developed by the Pharisees – people who took the Scriptures seriously and tried to apply it to every area of their lives. Their application did not fulfill the Law of Love, because it would have left a man in his suffering just to abide by a man-made convention.
Relentlessly they press the hapless man for his statement about Jesus. Finally, under duress, he declares: “He is a prophet.”
The Failure to Listen
If you want to know whether God has a sense of humor, right here is all the evidence you need. Here we see an exquisite biting irony:
The Jews continue to pressure the man to explain how Jesus healed him, and he finally tells them pointedly, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
They get puffed up in their pride, their lineage: We are disciples of Moses – we don’t know where this man came from. Hrmmph!
Now the zinger: “Here is an amazing thing you do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes!” This is an open rebuke to their unbelief and obtuseness. The man goes on, “31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
In their indignation the Jews demand, Are you trying to teach us?!...” They drove the man out into ‘outer darkness’ while they themselves stayed stuck in their spiritual blindness.
35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” 38 He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
This passage culminates in a simple demonstration of how to believe. Jesus asks a simple question, and makes a clear claim to Deity. The man accepts it and ‘gets saved’ and then worships Jesus.
So we have the LBR’s of Salvation: Listen, Believe, Receive , ,
The blind man first had to Listen to Jesus. He couldn’t see him, so all he had to go on was his voice. Unlike the Pharisees he listened to the Voice of God .
Then he believed. He first believed enough to Jesus put the mud in his eyes, and then he fulfilled the second part of listening, he obeyed and went and washed in the pool of Siloam.
As a result he received his healing – and more than that, his salvation.
This uneducated man, born to give Glory to God, personified the right response to Jesus. He contrasts with the learned Pharisees, who didn’t listen, who were blind and as a result could not receive either Jesus or the fruits of His work: Healing and Salvation.
They missed it because reality did not conform to their expectation.
They were a little bit like economists, who observe something happen in reality and fight about whether it could happen in theory.
The Message for Today
The message for us today is clear. First of all, we don’t understand our lives. We don’t know why good things happen, much less bad. We don’t have to be intimidated by Pharisees like Bart Ehrman, who write books demanding that the Bible explain suffering. It’s enough to say that things happen in our lives for reasons – many reasons and we will never be able to understand them all.
Then, we need to know that God specializes in redeeming bad situations. The Son of Man came into the world to seek and save that which was lost, to bring light into darkness and to make alive those who were spiritually dead.
The right way to respond to Jesus is through simple faith. “Yes, Lord, I believe.” Don’t try to make God fit into your theory about how He should work. Just let Him be God. Simply receive his work in your life. Remember, the old canard about God helping those who help themselves’ is not in the Bible. The truth is that just as Jesus healed this helpless blind man, God helps those who cannot help themselves. So come to the end of your own wisdom. Stop trying to figure things out. Listen to the Simple Word of God and Believe it. If you do this you will receive your sight, and you will be able to sing, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see”. AMEN.
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