A sermon given during the Profession Eucharist of the Company of Jesus, October 11, 2008 at the Davis-Cain Cabin, Lexington, VA. Third of a series of three talks.
Tonight we come to receive two new vocations into the Company of Jesus. We describe ourselves as a Third Order Franciscan and Benedictine Community. We come from many different places and from many different backgrounds. Because we are so spread out, we are mostly a ‘virtual’ community. Our emails and phone calls go a long way towards helping us know each other, but it’s not and can never be the same as living together in a cloister, or even in the same town or attending the same church. These profession retreats and services are a partial attempt to mitigate the distance that separates us, helping us to continue to forge relationships ‘electronically’ between our face to face meetings.
Our calling in the Company of Jesus is monastic – essentially alone, even if we are married and have families. Because there are not many of us in any one place, we have to walk out our calling mostly alone. That’s how it was when I first became a Benedictine. There wasn’t another CoJ member within 400 miles of me. But it didn’t matter because I knew what God had built into my spirit and what he was calling me to, regardless of what anyone else did.
But after a while, a funny thing began to happen. God brought Mark Goldman alongside me and we started walking out this life together. Mark and Brenda and Cindy and I began to meet for dinner, conversation and prayer on a monthly basis. We began to have a sense of Community together, and this was tremendously encouraging. Later, God also brought a Franciscan, Sr. Connie Mershon, and another Benedictine, Ryan Connor to walk with us – Ryan and his wife Shannon joined our monthly dinners and things were going swimmingly for us as a CoJ ‘Chapter” - until October 1, 2006 - when we started All Saints – and soon afterward bought Hope House - and that’s when our schedules began to get really complicated and our monthly meetings became quarterly, and if it keeps up, probably semi-annually! Our sense of community has taken a hit.
We live in a paradoxical world. Because of the Internet and phone service, I know some of you who live 400 miles away better than my next door neighbor. Because we live so close to each other in cities, we put distance between ourselves emotionally. We know intimate details about each other via Facebook, but not that our next door neighbor is having major personal problems. When it comes to our church life, it’s sometimes not a whole lot better. Unless we have a small group structure where we can come to know one another, it’s very possible to go to church with someone for years without ever really knowing them personally or spiritually. We have to work intentionally to build community.
One of the things that was so impressive about the very early Christians was that they were living a life of close community. They were seeking God through prayer and they were taking care of one another –Loving God and loving their neighbors.
Tonight, I believe that God is bringing together The Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church into a new interaction a new expression of Christian Community – one that has a lot to do with our Mission of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
I’ve said before what a powerful impact the 8th Day Life Center had on me personally, and I’ve always wondered if God wouldn’t somehow bring that ministry back around in a new form. Back in the ‘Day’ Fr. David and I dreamed about having a religious order close by St. Luke’s Church to pray and to support the 8th Day ministry as an ‘apostlate’ (as the Roman Catholics would say).
Now, I believe God is doing something similar with Hope House as the Center.
Historically, the monastic pattern as been that a group of (voluntarily) poor monks go to a desert or waste place and set up a monastery. Through their continual prayer and work (ora et labora) the monks begin to produce agricultural surpluses, which they use to help feed the poor in their area. As a result, the whole region is built up and stabilized, allowing for civilization to flourish. Material blessings come to the people surrounding the monastic house as a result of the blessings overflowing from a worshipping community, and many are drawn to follow the Lord. In short, the community is transformed.
BUB
To a much smaller extent, we’ve seen this sort of pattern with Hope House. Every since November of 2006, we’ve been meeting on Friday afternoons for “None”. We pray for the families of the slain teenagers and then “prayerwalk’ around the block and pick up trash. We frequently meet and talk to our neighbors, sometimes we pray for them directly. We’ve begun to know our neighbors – most notably the new managers of a gas station convenience store on the corner, where another murder occurred several years ago. For several weeks, we’ve been picking trash there at the station and getting to know Abe – a Muslim, and Christo, an Orthodox Christian.
One of our All Saints ministries is what we call Bless Ur Biz – BUB – in which we go to businesses and pray a blessing over them. This past Saturday, Abe and Christo allowed us to come and bless their business. By God’s grace He gave us favor with them, and they welcomed us very warmly. It’s been very gratifying to see this kind of reception, and I believe we are bringing the Life of Christ to the world through this work. We are creating community with our neighbors through expressions of care, concern and divine blessing.
Another recent event took place that made a big impression on me. Thursday evening, September 25, about 30 people gathered at Hope House for a candlelight service to mark National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. Those gathered included members of All Saints, family members of the murdered teens, the Mayor, Police Chief and Treasurer of the City of Huntington – and several press people from TV and newspaper outlets.
That night, in the midst of a dark, unfinished construction site, I caught a vision for people gathering there at Hope House to pray the daily offices, seeking God in the darkness in order to bring the Light of Christ to the community. I could envision Company of Jesus members relocating to this struggling, ‘desert’ of Huntington, living in apartments close by Hope House, working in secular jobs, or even industries yet to be conceived through the Neighboring Initiative, praying the offices at Hope House – creating Christian community in order to bring blessing and transformation to our larger community.
What we’re talking about is like the concentric rings created by dropping a pebble into a pond. Hope House is a ministry taken on by a small community of believers, but it has touched both the community of suffering families, as well as the larger community of Huntington and the surrounding region. Our slogan for Hope House is: Turning Tragedy into Triumph. It seems to me that the Lord has indeed done that. Through media coverage, there is almost no one in the Tri-State region who doesn’t know what is happening at Hope House – and I believe it has been a great blessing to everyone – even in its smallness and unfinished state.
But there is an even bigger task to take on – praying for revival.
On September 21, in my Chapter Talk, I related how Cindy and I heard Rhonda Hughey speak at a local church in Huntington. David and Carol Ann were there as well. Rhonda is one of the leaders of the “International House of Prayer” in Kansas City. Its mission is to lift up 24/7 prayer and intercession, and indeed, hundreds of people have been doing this continual prayer for nine years now. Rhonda also is very involved in the “Transformation” movement which encourages people to pray earnestly for God to visit our communities and to dwell with us in a manifestly glorious way. Ms. Hughey had just returned from visiting Fiji, where hundreds of villages have experienced mind-boggling divine transformations.
In her talk, Hughey related a typical scenario, in which village leaders recognize that their lands and waters have become barren and that their communities are dying. Drug abuse, suicide, murder and ecological degradation all flourish and nothing seems to slow down the decay. However, when the people realize that they have turned from God and pursued their own wicked ways, and then repent as a community, God visits them, heals them spiritually and physically – even restoring their lands and healing their waters. Dead Coral reefs begin to grow overnight, polluted rivers are cleansed suddenly, and fish return immediately to places they had abandoned. Again, all of this is God’s response to the people recognizing their sin, repenting, and asking Him to come and be Lord of their community.
The people of Fiji have seen 200 villages in a row transformed when the people began calling out to the Lord en masse. They devoted themselves to prayer – morning and evening for hours at a time, abandoning all else because of their desperation for God.
In every case, the key to transformation was prayer.
I believe that we, the Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church, are also being called to pray for such a revival. That’s what monastics are called to par excellence – to pray continually, seeking union with God in the spirit of humility. In places where monks have sought God with such humility, community transformation has always followed in its wake.
Impact of Order upon church.
Kurt Nielson was pastor of a flagging Episcopal church in Oregon. He went on a pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland and came back very impressed with the Celtic pattern of doing church – in which the monastery was really the spiritual hub of the parish.
“What if,” wondered Nielson, “the focus of the community was not maintenance, but mission and nurturing the passion of pilgrims? …What if, like the traditional Celtic communities which included people of many states of life, there were various opportunities to live a committed and passionate path within the parish bounds…What if we broke through the walls separating church from neighborhood, and from other churches? What if we were to truly be a place where the poor and the most abused could find refuge? What if the future flowed from the gifts of our members, the gifts of which God is so lavish in giving, and we followed those gifts and let those gifts determine our plan?” (Urban Iona, pg. 148).
This is what I think God is calling us to do: To create a Christian community in which All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus find common ground in continual prayer, which becomes the basis for Community Transformation.
The physical location for this would be Hope House, but community members would live close by, and work day jobs but commit themselves to living out the ‘Eighth Day Life’ exemplified by the early church.
Of course, not everyone is called to living in such physical proximity. This will be a sovereign call of God upon certain individuals. But in this vision, the monastic disciplines and lifestyle become the wellspring of spirituality for the local church, while the Third Order folks also receive help and community from church members.
Since this notion of Eighth Day Life is central to this vision, I am proposing that we in All Saints adopt the name for our small groups. Instead of saying All Saints East, West or Central, we would call these “Eighth Day Life Groups” and perhaps adopt a patron – Benedict, Francis, Patrick, Brendan, etc. The object is to equip our members to live the Life themselves and to take it out to others.
For those in the Company of Jesus, I would like to propose that each member seriously ask themselves whether or not God may be calling him or her to relocate to the ‘mother community of the Order, Huntington, WV – always realizing that this is a very special ‘missionary’ calling, only to be considered in the same spirit as one discerns a call to Third Order monasticism.
Regardless of where we live, each member of the Company of Jesus should devote themselves to practicing the monastic disciplines, to pray especially for this Community effort in Huntington, and to be open to forming Eighth Day Life Groups in their own areas and to presenting seminars in local churches based on these ideas.
Tonight, after this service I am going to hand out a packet of information called The Four Practices for Eighth Day Life. This packet was inspired by some work done by Fr. Peter Matthews at St. Patrick’s Anglican Church in Lexington, KY. While the packet is designed to be used as the basis for discipleship at All Saints, it can also be adapted for use by the Company of Jesus, or for any other local church.
Tomorrow, as part of our Morning Prayer, I would like each of us to fill out the Spiritual Plan worksheet in the packet and then eventually review it with myself – or Father Mark. I know we won’t be able to do it all tomorrow, but I would like for us to get a good start on it and to eventually use this process as the basis for our new members and discipleship instruction.
I am very excited about what God will do through this vision and look forward to how individuals will walk it out. I thank God for these new vocations we celebrate tonight and for all that he is doing through All Saints Anglican Church and Hope House.
May God be Glorified. Pray for me, a sinner. Amen.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Eighth Day Life and Mission
Second of three talks given at the ASAC /CoJ retreat
We’ve just finished going through some formative practices of prayer. I want now to give some brief history and show how God has woven the threads of our lives together over the years.
I beg your indulgence as I give you some of my personal background; I’m also going to call on many of you along the way. I hope to tie these threads to our sense of Mission – another of our Four Practices.
I was originally introduced to Benedictine spirituality through Fr. Pete Turner, after he attended A Benedictine Experience retreat d in Washington D.C. Listening to Pete desribe the experience, it occurred to me the Rule of Benedict, which was written to guide the communal life of monks and nuns, could be adapted to create an intensive outpatient counseling program to be housed in a local church! Fr. Pete suggested that I contact David Green, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on the west side of Charleston and talk to him about the idea. We connected and eventually collaborated on the formation of The Eighth Day Life Center, an intense, week-long program of counseling and spiritual direction based on a Benedictine model of prayer and spirituality.
(The notion of the 8th Day comes from the Church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, who said that the day of Christ’s resurrection is a new day of creation.)
Between 1996 and 1998, our team ministered to about 75 “Seekers”, helping them through ‘eight days’ of personal and spiritual healing. Fr. Pete was involved in several of those early classes, and he really became a living icon of St. Benedict to me. The whole 8th Day experience profoundly transformed my own spiritual life and ministry, eventually pointing me towards profession in the Company of Jesus and Holy Orders – directions that were not even on my radar screen up until then.
Fr. Mark and Brenda were attending St. Luke’s at the time and in a little bit we’ll hear how their lives intersected with ours…
My involvement with the 8th Day Life Center ended in 1998, but in
2001, I was introduced by friends to the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a “Continuing” Anglican group of the Convergence, Three Stream type, and began to discern a call to Holy Orders. On the eighth day of the eighth month of 2001, I was ordained Deacon by Bishop Rob Hoyt, in Sparta TN. A year later, I was ordained Priest – not really knowing exactly why, but being certain I was called to the Priesthood.
Through the Diocese of St. Cuthbert, I met Fr. Mark Camp, a former Baptist preacher, who had become a Franciscan member of the Company of Jesus and he put me in touch with Abbot Geoffrey Ames. In July of 2002, I made my profession as a Third Order Benedictine.
At a professional conference in 2003, Mark Goldman approached me about becoming a Benedictine himself.
( Here Mark+ Goldman gave a brief statement about becoming a Benedictine and the four of us beginning to meet on a monthly basis.)
Later we would include Ryan Connor. I’ll have him say something a bit later.
About 2003, my daughter Leah introduced me to David and Carol Ann Frederick and David invited me to a Saturday mens’ meeting.
(Here David told briefly about Mission Tri-State).
It was David who told me about St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and how they had affiliated with the American Anglican Council. Cindy and I started attending St. Andrews in 2003, right after the Gene Robinson vote – and that’s where we met Tom and Cathy and Ron and Clara Norma and Tony.
Fr. Mark Camp became Abbot of the CoJ, after Geoffrey Ames. In 2004, Abbot Mark+ was consecrated Bishop +Mark, and I was elected Abbot of the Company of Jesus. I have continued my day job as a Christian Therapist, and a professional supervisor – and that’s how I met Ryan Connor (here Ryan told briefly his background).
But I’ve also continued in the Benedictine walk, helping new aspirants discern their calling to our order, overseeing the work or our Vocation Directors and leading retreats for the Company of Jesus - which is how I’ve met Vaughn and Darren and Dale and Ed and David.
In 2006, a bunch of us from St. Andrew’s got fed up with what was happening in the Episcopal Church and finally decided to leave. (Tom Proctor really spearheaded our effort to start All Saints Anglican Church. Tom told about contacting Bishop Mark and getting started with the APCGS).
Mark Goldman had recently been ordained a Deacon and I asked him to come alongside and to work with me in planting this new work.
And that‘s how we met Lisa and Bruce and Debbie. ( Lisa told about learning of the new work and coming over from Ashland.)
We officially began on October 1, 2006 with about 18 of us meeting at Barboursville City Hall and then St. Hampton’s for about 14 months.
Back up one month. In September of 2006, the house where four teens had been murdered came up for sale and I felt God impress upon me the need to do something about creating a memorial to the slain teens.
I preached about this one Sunday at All Saints and in November, several of us, including David Frederick et al. began meeting on Friday afternoons to pray that God would make a way for us to buy the house. In February of 2007, for the Lordly sum of $10,000 we bought a cursed and decrepit property and started Hope House, a ministry that has really become synonymous with All Saints Anglican Church in the Tri-State region.
We have continued to pray every Friday afternoon in good Benedictine fashion, and have held two annual Memorial Eucharists for the Victims of Violent Crime. We have been renovating the house with help from the community and have ministered to many walk-in folks from the area while we were working. Our outreach to the area has included picking up trash in a one block area and holding a candlelight Vigil for Murder Victims. We’ve been able to minister directly to each of the families of the four teens, and are now in the process of developing a local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.
A central concept in all this is that we are taking Christ’s “Eighth Day Life” into our community. That includes something we call “Bless Ur Biz” – BUB. (Have Bruce tell about how we went to his business and to the Chevron station).
The concept of Eighth Day Life reaches out to include all facets of life. Christ’s death and resurrection have ushered in a new day of creation and we are taking that Life to the world for its redemption and transformation. Broadly put, this is our mission.
I believe that Hope House presents us in All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus with an opportunity to reach out to the urban Huntington. (Cindy told about her passion for working with the children of the poor. Ron Clay told about his ministry as a Big Brother.)
We want to provide mentoring services at Hope House to help with the fathering process and to encourage stability in the urban community. We have instituted The Neighboring Initiative to help with our administration of Hope House and to act as a platform for our other future outreach ministries, including the annual Steven Ferguson Award for Exemplary fathering and churchmanship.
One of the really exciting things that is happening right now is that Anne Swedberg, one of our Neighboring Initiative Board members is putting together a drama based on interviews with family members and friends of the four teens. She is teaching a class at Marshall University about this technique and her students will do a lot of the actual interviews. Then, students from the Theater department will actually put on the play. The University is behind this project and has also agreed for us to do some fund-raising for Hope House around this play.
Lastly, we continue to be involved in Mission Tri-State. Recently, we participated in a Blessing of the Four Corners of Huntington, asking God for revival. As ministers from Mission Tri-State have gathered to hear from Rhonda Hughey about some of the wonderful things that are happening in places like Fiji, where God is coming in His presence and completely transforming the communities. The “fire and cloud” are descending and whole villages are getting saved and seeing their very land transformed by the Presence of God.
The leaders of the initial village transformations have taken this transformation to some 200 additional villages and have followed a process of gathering the civil leaders, church leaders and laity together and repenting of their sins, and asking God to come and transform their land – and even to dwell tangibly with them. Unlike former brief revivals, this movement is one of habitation – where God comes and stays.
But the process involves the entire community. And this is where we’re going to end this session, because I have more to say about this in our Profession service this evening.
We’ve just finished going through some formative practices of prayer. I want now to give some brief history and show how God has woven the threads of our lives together over the years.
I beg your indulgence as I give you some of my personal background; I’m also going to call on many of you along the way. I hope to tie these threads to our sense of Mission – another of our Four Practices.
I was originally introduced to Benedictine spirituality through Fr. Pete Turner, after he attended A Benedictine Experience retreat d in Washington D.C. Listening to Pete desribe the experience, it occurred to me the Rule of Benedict, which was written to guide the communal life of monks and nuns, could be adapted to create an intensive outpatient counseling program to be housed in a local church! Fr. Pete suggested that I contact David Green, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on the west side of Charleston and talk to him about the idea. We connected and eventually collaborated on the formation of The Eighth Day Life Center, an intense, week-long program of counseling and spiritual direction based on a Benedictine model of prayer and spirituality.
(The notion of the 8th Day comes from the Church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, who said that the day of Christ’s resurrection is a new day of creation.)
Between 1996 and 1998, our team ministered to about 75 “Seekers”, helping them through ‘eight days’ of personal and spiritual healing. Fr. Pete was involved in several of those early classes, and he really became a living icon of St. Benedict to me. The whole 8th Day experience profoundly transformed my own spiritual life and ministry, eventually pointing me towards profession in the Company of Jesus and Holy Orders – directions that were not even on my radar screen up until then.
Fr. Mark and Brenda were attending St. Luke’s at the time and in a little bit we’ll hear how their lives intersected with ours…
My involvement with the 8th Day Life Center ended in 1998, but in
2001, I was introduced by friends to the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a “Continuing” Anglican group of the Convergence, Three Stream type, and began to discern a call to Holy Orders. On the eighth day of the eighth month of 2001, I was ordained Deacon by Bishop Rob Hoyt, in Sparta TN. A year later, I was ordained Priest – not really knowing exactly why, but being certain I was called to the Priesthood.
Through the Diocese of St. Cuthbert, I met Fr. Mark Camp, a former Baptist preacher, who had become a Franciscan member of the Company of Jesus and he put me in touch with Abbot Geoffrey Ames. In July of 2002, I made my profession as a Third Order Benedictine.
At a professional conference in 2003, Mark Goldman approached me about becoming a Benedictine himself.
( Here Mark+ Goldman gave a brief statement about becoming a Benedictine and the four of us beginning to meet on a monthly basis.)
Later we would include Ryan Connor. I’ll have him say something a bit later.
About 2003, my daughter Leah introduced me to David and Carol Ann Frederick and David invited me to a Saturday mens’ meeting.
(Here David told briefly about Mission Tri-State).
It was David who told me about St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and how they had affiliated with the American Anglican Council. Cindy and I started attending St. Andrews in 2003, right after the Gene Robinson vote – and that’s where we met Tom and Cathy and Ron and Clara Norma and Tony.
Fr. Mark Camp became Abbot of the CoJ, after Geoffrey Ames. In 2004, Abbot Mark+ was consecrated Bishop +Mark, and I was elected Abbot of the Company of Jesus. I have continued my day job as a Christian Therapist, and a professional supervisor – and that’s how I met Ryan Connor (here Ryan told briefly his background).
But I’ve also continued in the Benedictine walk, helping new aspirants discern their calling to our order, overseeing the work or our Vocation Directors and leading retreats for the Company of Jesus - which is how I’ve met Vaughn and Darren and Dale and Ed and David.
In 2006, a bunch of us from St. Andrew’s got fed up with what was happening in the Episcopal Church and finally decided to leave. (Tom Proctor really spearheaded our effort to start All Saints Anglican Church. Tom told about contacting Bishop Mark and getting started with the APCGS).
Mark Goldman had recently been ordained a Deacon and I asked him to come alongside and to work with me in planting this new work.
And that‘s how we met Lisa and Bruce and Debbie. ( Lisa told about learning of the new work and coming over from Ashland.)
We officially began on October 1, 2006 with about 18 of us meeting at Barboursville City Hall and then St. Hampton’s for about 14 months.
Back up one month. In September of 2006, the house where four teens had been murdered came up for sale and I felt God impress upon me the need to do something about creating a memorial to the slain teens.
I preached about this one Sunday at All Saints and in November, several of us, including David Frederick et al. began meeting on Friday afternoons to pray that God would make a way for us to buy the house. In February of 2007, for the Lordly sum of $10,000 we bought a cursed and decrepit property and started Hope House, a ministry that has really become synonymous with All Saints Anglican Church in the Tri-State region.
We have continued to pray every Friday afternoon in good Benedictine fashion, and have held two annual Memorial Eucharists for the Victims of Violent Crime. We have been renovating the house with help from the community and have ministered to many walk-in folks from the area while we were working. Our outreach to the area has included picking up trash in a one block area and holding a candlelight Vigil for Murder Victims. We’ve been able to minister directly to each of the families of the four teens, and are now in the process of developing a local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.
A central concept in all this is that we are taking Christ’s “Eighth Day Life” into our community. That includes something we call “Bless Ur Biz” – BUB. (Have Bruce tell about how we went to his business and to the Chevron station).
The concept of Eighth Day Life reaches out to include all facets of life. Christ’s death and resurrection have ushered in a new day of creation and we are taking that Life to the world for its redemption and transformation. Broadly put, this is our mission.
I believe that Hope House presents us in All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus with an opportunity to reach out to the urban Huntington. (Cindy told about her passion for working with the children of the poor. Ron Clay told about his ministry as a Big Brother.)
We want to provide mentoring services at Hope House to help with the fathering process and to encourage stability in the urban community. We have instituted The Neighboring Initiative to help with our administration of Hope House and to act as a platform for our other future outreach ministries, including the annual Steven Ferguson Award for Exemplary fathering and churchmanship.
One of the really exciting things that is happening right now is that Anne Swedberg, one of our Neighboring Initiative Board members is putting together a drama based on interviews with family members and friends of the four teens. She is teaching a class at Marshall University about this technique and her students will do a lot of the actual interviews. Then, students from the Theater department will actually put on the play. The University is behind this project and has also agreed for us to do some fund-raising for Hope House around this play.
Lastly, we continue to be involved in Mission Tri-State. Recently, we participated in a Blessing of the Four Corners of Huntington, asking God for revival. As ministers from Mission Tri-State have gathered to hear from Rhonda Hughey about some of the wonderful things that are happening in places like Fiji, where God is coming in His presence and completely transforming the communities. The “fire and cloud” are descending and whole villages are getting saved and seeing their very land transformed by the Presence of God.
The leaders of the initial village transformations have taken this transformation to some 200 additional villages and have followed a process of gathering the civil leaders, church leaders and laity together and repenting of their sins, and asking God to come and transform their land – and even to dwell tangibly with them. Unlike former brief revivals, this movement is one of habitation – where God comes and stays.
But the process involves the entire community. And this is where we’re going to end this session, because I have more to say about this in our Profession service this evening.
Introduction to Worship & the Four Practices
The introductory talk given to the joint retreat of All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus held October 10-12 at the Davis-Cain Cabin in Lexington, Virginia. First of three talks.
The disciples of Jesus followed him for three years without being Christians. Even though they rubbed shoulders with Jesus and saw him minister healing, miracles and wonderful teaching, they still didn’t quite get it that Jesus was God in the Flesh. True, Peter did have some flashes of insight. And the day of the Transfiguration was really cool, but it wasn’t until Christ was resurrected that they began to get it that Jesus was God.
The thing they were really convinced of was that Jesus was real. He was a real person and he really was God in the flesh - the exact representation of God the Father. There was none of this nonsense about Jesus being a good teacher or a highly moral person – even a spiritual genius – anything but God. No, even the last holdout, Thomas, summed up nicely the attitude of the disciples towards Christ when he said, after looking at Jesus’ wounds up close and personal, “My King and My God.!”
They were all totally sold at that point. They believed: Jesus is God. He died for our sins, he arose from the grave and we have talked to him, touched him, eaten breakfast with him, and seen the reality of his resurrection in the breaking of the bread. Their relationship with him was very personal. As a result their lives were totally transformed.
At his ascension, Jesus told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Spirit that he would send. The disciples devoted themselves to prayer until the Spirit came and empowered them for ministry. After that great and wonderful event in which 3,000 people were added to the kingdom in one day, Acts 2:42 tells us that “they were continually devoting themselves to the apostle’s teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and to prayer.”
Going on in the same passage, we see that there were signs and wonders taking place, the believers were selling their possessions and sharing with one another, taking meals together in each others’ homes, worshipping together in unity at the temple, and rejoicing as the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved. This manner of living can be thought of as ‘Eighth Day Life” – life lived in the New Day of Christ’s resurrection, the Eighth Day of Creation. (Acts 2:43-47).
Theme: Out of this wonderful description of new life in the Spirit, we can discern four basic areas of Christian practice: Worship, Community, Formation and Mission.
This weekend, we will look at these four areas of Christian Discipleship and explore ways of integrating them into our lives – all for the purpose of fulfilling the two Great Commandments: loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. At the end of our time together this weekend, we should be well along the way to creating a spiritual plan for our lives that incorporates these Practices and helps us to grow in our love of God and our neighbor.
We’re also going to explore what it means that we are all here together – members of All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus. In some ways we are like the crowd that was assembled on the Day of Pentecost. We have Kentuckians, West Virginians, (native) Ohioans (me), Pennsylvanians, North Carolinians and Georgians and New Yorkers all in one place –each speaking their own languages , but able to understand each other!
So I’d like for us to imagine that we’ve just been saved on the Day of Pentecost and it’s now the day after. Maybe if we do what they did, we’ll get what they got – namely: a sense of awe, signs and wonders, unity in our community, gladness, joyful praise of God and an increase in the number of believers day by day.
Does anyone here think that sounds good? ….Alright!
So - what do we do? And how?
Worship: Fixed Hour Prayer
One of the things they did was to continue in the prayers. “The prayers” refers to ‘fixed hour prayer. Already at the time of the Apostles, the Jewish people had a tradition of saying standard prayers at certain hours of the Roman day:
Prime, the first hour @ 6:00am
Terce, third @ 9:00am
Sext, sixth @ 12pm
None, ninth @ 3pm
Vespers around 6pm
There was likely also prayers before bed and vigil prayers offered in the middle of the night or very early morning.
Acts 3:1 tells us that Peter and John were going up to the temple for prayer at the ninth hour (3pm). This tradition of fixed hour prayer was based on Ps. 119:164: “Seven times a day do I praise you”… Later, St. Benedict would adopt this pattern of fixed hour prayer and utilize standardized texts for the services. Shortly we will pray Compline together. We get this service pretty much verbatim as Benedict laid it out 1500 years ago.
Also, in the Book of Common Prayer, we have Morning and Evening Prayer services. It’s fair to say that the root of Anglicanism is Benedictine because when Thomas Cranmer compiled the first BCP, he compressed the monastic hours down into these two services, which form natural hinge points for our day. Morning and Evening Prayer are primarily public in nature, as of course, is the Eucharist, while the fixed hour prayer is often done privately.
As we go through our weekend, we will be praying several different types of offices, including Compline, Morning Prayer and the Eucharist, as well as some of the devotions for individual and families. We’re also going to be introduced into the use of the Anglican Rosary and make our way through the Way of the Cross
Adapted from St. Francis.
These times of worship should help us to actually experience ‘the prayers’ first hand. In the process, I hope you will catch a glimpse of a “continuous cascade of prayer” going up before the throne of God as we become aware that as soon as we finish one hour of prayer, someone in the next time zone will be taking up the same prayer. This is one of the ways that we can ‘continually devote ourselves to prayer.” I think it’s fair to say that the members of the Company of Jesus are here because they are drawn increasingly to a life of prayer and that the Prayers sustain them and help them grow in a way that is very daily, and often very humble, but ultimately very powerful. Such prayers virtually formed our Western world and can have a powerful impact on transforming our culture today.
So as we go through the weekend let’s worship as the early Christians might have, and trust the Lord, that if we do what they did we may get what they got. Amen.
Compline followed.
The disciples of Jesus followed him for three years without being Christians. Even though they rubbed shoulders with Jesus and saw him minister healing, miracles and wonderful teaching, they still didn’t quite get it that Jesus was God in the Flesh. True, Peter did have some flashes of insight. And the day of the Transfiguration was really cool, but it wasn’t until Christ was resurrected that they began to get it that Jesus was God.
The thing they were really convinced of was that Jesus was real. He was a real person and he really was God in the flesh - the exact representation of God the Father. There was none of this nonsense about Jesus being a good teacher or a highly moral person – even a spiritual genius – anything but God. No, even the last holdout, Thomas, summed up nicely the attitude of the disciples towards Christ when he said, after looking at Jesus’ wounds up close and personal, “My King and My God.!”
They were all totally sold at that point. They believed: Jesus is God. He died for our sins, he arose from the grave and we have talked to him, touched him, eaten breakfast with him, and seen the reality of his resurrection in the breaking of the bread. Their relationship with him was very personal. As a result their lives were totally transformed.
At his ascension, Jesus told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Spirit that he would send. The disciples devoted themselves to prayer until the Spirit came and empowered them for ministry. After that great and wonderful event in which 3,000 people were added to the kingdom in one day, Acts 2:42 tells us that “they were continually devoting themselves to the apostle’s teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and to prayer.”
Going on in the same passage, we see that there were signs and wonders taking place, the believers were selling their possessions and sharing with one another, taking meals together in each others’ homes, worshipping together in unity at the temple, and rejoicing as the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved. This manner of living can be thought of as ‘Eighth Day Life” – life lived in the New Day of Christ’s resurrection, the Eighth Day of Creation. (Acts 2:43-47).
Theme: Out of this wonderful description of new life in the Spirit, we can discern four basic areas of Christian practice: Worship, Community, Formation and Mission.
This weekend, we will look at these four areas of Christian Discipleship and explore ways of integrating them into our lives – all for the purpose of fulfilling the two Great Commandments: loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. At the end of our time together this weekend, we should be well along the way to creating a spiritual plan for our lives that incorporates these Practices and helps us to grow in our love of God and our neighbor.
We’re also going to explore what it means that we are all here together – members of All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus. In some ways we are like the crowd that was assembled on the Day of Pentecost. We have Kentuckians, West Virginians, (native) Ohioans (me), Pennsylvanians, North Carolinians and Georgians and New Yorkers all in one place –each speaking their own languages , but able to understand each other!
So I’d like for us to imagine that we’ve just been saved on the Day of Pentecost and it’s now the day after. Maybe if we do what they did, we’ll get what they got – namely: a sense of awe, signs and wonders, unity in our community, gladness, joyful praise of God and an increase in the number of believers day by day.
Does anyone here think that sounds good? ….Alright!
So - what do we do? And how?
Worship: Fixed Hour Prayer
One of the things they did was to continue in the prayers. “The prayers” refers to ‘fixed hour prayer. Already at the time of the Apostles, the Jewish people had a tradition of saying standard prayers at certain hours of the Roman day:
Prime, the first hour @ 6:00am
Terce, third @ 9:00am
Sext, sixth @ 12pm
None, ninth @ 3pm
Vespers around 6pm
There was likely also prayers before bed and vigil prayers offered in the middle of the night or very early morning.
Acts 3:1 tells us that Peter and John were going up to the temple for prayer at the ninth hour (3pm). This tradition of fixed hour prayer was based on Ps. 119:164: “Seven times a day do I praise you”… Later, St. Benedict would adopt this pattern of fixed hour prayer and utilize standardized texts for the services. Shortly we will pray Compline together. We get this service pretty much verbatim as Benedict laid it out 1500 years ago.
Also, in the Book of Common Prayer, we have Morning and Evening Prayer services. It’s fair to say that the root of Anglicanism is Benedictine because when Thomas Cranmer compiled the first BCP, he compressed the monastic hours down into these two services, which form natural hinge points for our day. Morning and Evening Prayer are primarily public in nature, as of course, is the Eucharist, while the fixed hour prayer is often done privately.
As we go through our weekend, we will be praying several different types of offices, including Compline, Morning Prayer and the Eucharist, as well as some of the devotions for individual and families. We’re also going to be introduced into the use of the Anglican Rosary and make our way through the Way of the Cross
Adapted from St. Francis.
These times of worship should help us to actually experience ‘the prayers’ first hand. In the process, I hope you will catch a glimpse of a “continuous cascade of prayer” going up before the throne of God as we become aware that as soon as we finish one hour of prayer, someone in the next time zone will be taking up the same prayer. This is one of the ways that we can ‘continually devote ourselves to prayer.” I think it’s fair to say that the members of the Company of Jesus are here because they are drawn increasingly to a life of prayer and that the Prayers sustain them and help them grow in a way that is very daily, and often very humble, but ultimately very powerful. Such prayers virtually formed our Western world and can have a powerful impact on transforming our culture today.
So as we go through the weekend let’s worship as the early Christians might have, and trust the Lord, that if we do what they did we may get what they got. Amen.
Compline followed.
The Vineyard of the Lord
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on October 5, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, based on Psalm 80, Isaiah 5: 1-7, and Matthew 21: 31-46.
Have you ever been hiking in the country and come upon some wild grapes? They look plump and purple, and your taste buds start to taste the sweetness of the grape before it even gets into your mouth. But when you actually try one of those grapes, it’s sour and bitter – and you can’t spit it out fast enough!? If you can relate to this little example you might be able to catch a glimpse of how God feels about his Vineyard sometimes. Today, three of our readings make use of the Vine or Vineyard metaphor:
Ps 80:8: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
Who or What is this Vine? In Isaiah 5:7, Israel is actually named as the Vineyard:
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hostsis the house of Israel,and the men of Judahare his pleasant planting;
In Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus tells a parable about Israel: “There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country..
Compare this language to Isaiah 5: 1,2:
My beloved had a vineyardon a very fertile hill.2 He dug it and cleared it of stones,and planted it with choice vines;he built a watchtower in the midst of it,and hewed out a wine vat in it;and he looked for it to yield grapes,but it yielded wild grapes.
Apart from the actual picture of the Vine and the Vineyard, the theme that I think holds all these passages together is summed up poetically in that last couplet: “…he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.” Because it yielded wild grapes, the Vineyard then experiences loss.
Let’s look at the background of Psalm 80 to begin to see how this works out in Israel’s history:
Background
2 Kings 17:2, ff describes how Hoshea, the son of Elah, began to reign in Samaria over Israel. This is the area where the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh, mentioned in Psalm 80, lived. It was in the far north of Israel’s territory and vulnerable to Assyria. Hoshea reigned nine years – and he “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Because he did evil, Shalmaneser of Assyria forced Hoshea to become his vassal and to pay tribute – ‘protection money’ if you will.
Apparently Hoshea was a player and schemer. He tried to cook up something with the King of Egypt and failed to pay his tribute…so Shalmaneser put Hoshea in prison and made war on Israel for three years, until Samaria was captured and the people were taken away to Assyria in exile in about 722 BC.
Exile Because of Idolatry
The text goes on to tell us explicitly that:
7 … this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt…
These are the same people in Psalm 80:8 :
“You brought a vine out of Egypt;you drove out the nations and planted it.”
God prepared the ground for Israel to flourish - and it actually did take root and begin to grow. It “stretched out its branches to the Sea – the Mediterranean - and its shoots to the River – the Euphrates. Israel was fruitful. But they turned away from the Lord.
II Kings 17:9 tells us that the people worshipped the gods of the peoples they conquered. “They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.”
They engaged in idol worship, the very thing that God told them not to do. And God warned them through prophets to turn back, but they wouldn’t listen. They abandoned the commandments, took up divination and even practiced child sacrifice to Baal.
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only” (II Kings 17:18).
This is what caused the Psalmist’s lament in Ps. 80:4-6:
4 O Lord God of hosts,how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?5 You have fed them with the bread of tearsand given them tears to drink in full measure.6 You make us an object of contention for our neighbors,and our enemies laugh among themselves…
You would think that when the tribe of Judah, to the south, observed all that happened to their northern neighbors, they would have been warned, but no!
II Kings 17:19: Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. 20 And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight. This is the event our Isaiah passage references. Out of these experiences of Israel and Judah, we can state a Life Principle :
God desires for his People to be fruitful, but when his people fail to bear good fruit, they experience disaster.
Isaiah 5:4ffm, God laments:
What more was there to do for my vineyard,that I have not done in it?When I looked for it to yield grapes,why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell youwhat I will do to my vineyard.I will remove its hedge,and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall,and it shall be trampled down.6 I will make it a waste;it shall not be pruned or hoed,and briers and thorns shall grow up;I will also command the cloudsthat they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hostsis the house of Israel,and the men of Judahare his pleasant planting;and he looked for justice,but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness,but behold, an outcry!
God was looking for justice and righteousness, but instead he found bloodshed and outrage. The vineyard of the Lord did not produce good fruit, so it was destroyed.
Now fast forward to Israel in the time of Jesus. You would think that with all this as background the Jewish establishment would understand the importance of being faithful and fruitful – of taking care of the Vineyard of the Lord. But Jesus tells the story of the tenants and prophetically identifies the Jewish leaders as those who kill the Son – who spill blood when they should be producing righteous fruit for the God the Father, the Vineyard owner.
The result, says Jesus is that …” the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” V.43
Mt. 21:45” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.” They got it. They realized that Jesus was impugning their leadership.
Jesus was saying that Israel had failed to bear righteous fruit, and because of it, God was going to take the Kingdom away from them and passed it on to others - the Gentiles. This began formally at the Day of Pentecost, but was marked in tragedy in 70 AD when the Romans invaded Jerusalem and burned the whole city, including the Temple. That was the day the Vineyard was destroyed in earnest.
Now, this is all very bad for the Jewish people, but how, you may ask, does this relate to us today?
Let me just relate it in terms of my own experience. I grew up in a Christian home, but rejected the Gospel decisively when I was about 14. By the time I was 20, I realized I was morally bankrupt. Because I saw nothing larger than Me in my life, I had become arrogant and self-centered. I tried to make Music a god in my life, but found that Music wasn’t big enough to give my life transcendent meaning. I used other people to further my own ends and was cynical about the possibility of Love. I had begun to use alcohol as a vehicle to oblivion. And there was even a time, when I was in my first year of college, that I was suicidal, thinking that there was no good reason on this Earth to keep on going. I was a dead man walking. Multiply this by millions, and you have a picture of a Vineyard that produces wild grapes.
But Thanks be to God, He pursued me until I saw the way out of Death: to simply repent and believe in the God who made me and died for my sins.
I’ve told the story before about how when I prayed for God to forgive me and come into my life, it was literally like someone opened the window and the Wind of God’s Spirit came into the room. I experienced the Reality of God as a Person, and I suddenly realized that it was possible to have a real relationship with Christ.
Over the years, I’ve learned the importance of staying close and connected to God, to walk with him every day, To talk to Him about the things that are important to me, and to listen to Him when He speaks in that Still Small voice. Jesus called it Abiding in the Vine. It’s how we produce good fruit, and literally the difference between Life and Death.
Friends, God’s basic saving message to us is this: Repent of the sin of self-sufficiency and learn to Abide in Him so that you can bear good fruit. It’s not just a message to pagans either. God’s message of repentance is addressed to His own people:
2 Chronicles 7:14: …if my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (the Vineyard, if you like)
It’s not just ‘wicked people’ that need to repent, it’s God’s people! If we ourselves will repent of our practical atheism and faithlessness, God will bring healing into our lives and our land – and we will be a fruitful people, the Vineyard of the Lord.
Jesus is the Vine, and we are the branches. We must ‘abide’ in the Vine, for apart from Him, we can do nothing. (Jn. 15:5).
How do we abide in Him?
1) Call Jesus Lord and walk with Him every day.
2) Worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness. Be faithful in public worship of God.
3) Offer up your life to Him. Everything that you have has come to you from him. Offer everything you have back to Him and let your Tithe of time, treasure and talents be the beginning of your giving.
4) Tend the Vine. Spend time with God in private worship, Bible study and formation practices such as Holy Reading, fasting, etc. Allow yourself to be formed by the Lord through these practices.
5) Finally, Be the body of Christ to each other and the world through loving one another and caring for each other’s needs. Share your faith with others and take the love of Christ to the world.
As we repent and abide, we look also for restoration as a people. Take out your inserts labeled “A Prayer for Restoration” and let’s say this together:
Restore us, O God;let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Turn again, O God of hosts!Look down from heaven, and see;have regard for this vine,the stock that your right hand planted,and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.Then we shall not turn back from you;give us life, and we will call upon your name!
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Amen.
Have you ever been hiking in the country and come upon some wild grapes? They look plump and purple, and your taste buds start to taste the sweetness of the grape before it even gets into your mouth. But when you actually try one of those grapes, it’s sour and bitter – and you can’t spit it out fast enough!? If you can relate to this little example you might be able to catch a glimpse of how God feels about his Vineyard sometimes. Today, three of our readings make use of the Vine or Vineyard metaphor:
Ps 80:8: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
Who or What is this Vine? In Isaiah 5:7, Israel is actually named as the Vineyard:
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hostsis the house of Israel,and the men of Judahare his pleasant planting;
In Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus tells a parable about Israel: “There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country..
Compare this language to Isaiah 5: 1,2:
My beloved had a vineyardon a very fertile hill.2 He dug it and cleared it of stones,and planted it with choice vines;he built a watchtower in the midst of it,and hewed out a wine vat in it;and he looked for it to yield grapes,but it yielded wild grapes.
Apart from the actual picture of the Vine and the Vineyard, the theme that I think holds all these passages together is summed up poetically in that last couplet: “…he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.” Because it yielded wild grapes, the Vineyard then experiences loss.
Let’s look at the background of Psalm 80 to begin to see how this works out in Israel’s history:
Background
2 Kings 17:2, ff describes how Hoshea, the son of Elah, began to reign in Samaria over Israel. This is the area where the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh, mentioned in Psalm 80, lived. It was in the far north of Israel’s territory and vulnerable to Assyria. Hoshea reigned nine years – and he “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” Because he did evil, Shalmaneser of Assyria forced Hoshea to become his vassal and to pay tribute – ‘protection money’ if you will.
Apparently Hoshea was a player and schemer. He tried to cook up something with the King of Egypt and failed to pay his tribute…so Shalmaneser put Hoshea in prison and made war on Israel for three years, until Samaria was captured and the people were taken away to Assyria in exile in about 722 BC.
Exile Because of Idolatry
The text goes on to tell us explicitly that:
7 … this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt…
These are the same people in Psalm 80:8 :
“You brought a vine out of Egypt;you drove out the nations and planted it.”
God prepared the ground for Israel to flourish - and it actually did take root and begin to grow. It “stretched out its branches to the Sea – the Mediterranean - and its shoots to the River – the Euphrates. Israel was fruitful. But they turned away from the Lord.
II Kings 17:9 tells us that the people worshipped the gods of the peoples they conquered. “They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.”
They engaged in idol worship, the very thing that God told them not to do. And God warned them through prophets to turn back, but they wouldn’t listen. They abandoned the commandments, took up divination and even practiced child sacrifice to Baal.
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only” (II Kings 17:18).
This is what caused the Psalmist’s lament in Ps. 80:4-6:
4 O Lord God of hosts,how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?5 You have fed them with the bread of tearsand given them tears to drink in full measure.6 You make us an object of contention for our neighbors,and our enemies laugh among themselves…
You would think that when the tribe of Judah, to the south, observed all that happened to their northern neighbors, they would have been warned, but no!
II Kings 17:19: Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. 20 And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight. This is the event our Isaiah passage references. Out of these experiences of Israel and Judah, we can state a Life Principle :
God desires for his People to be fruitful, but when his people fail to bear good fruit, they experience disaster.
Isaiah 5:4ffm, God laments:
What more was there to do for my vineyard,that I have not done in it?When I looked for it to yield grapes,why did it yield wild grapes?
5 And now I will tell youwhat I will do to my vineyard.I will remove its hedge,and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall,and it shall be trampled down.6 I will make it a waste;it shall not be pruned or hoed,and briers and thorns shall grow up;I will also command the cloudsthat they rain no rain upon it.
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hostsis the house of Israel,and the men of Judahare his pleasant planting;and he looked for justice,but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness,but behold, an outcry!
God was looking for justice and righteousness, but instead he found bloodshed and outrage. The vineyard of the Lord did not produce good fruit, so it was destroyed.
Now fast forward to Israel in the time of Jesus. You would think that with all this as background the Jewish establishment would understand the importance of being faithful and fruitful – of taking care of the Vineyard of the Lord. But Jesus tells the story of the tenants and prophetically identifies the Jewish leaders as those who kill the Son – who spill blood when they should be producing righteous fruit for the God the Father, the Vineyard owner.
The result, says Jesus is that …” the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” V.43
Mt. 21:45” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.” They got it. They realized that Jesus was impugning their leadership.
Jesus was saying that Israel had failed to bear righteous fruit, and because of it, God was going to take the Kingdom away from them and passed it on to others - the Gentiles. This began formally at the Day of Pentecost, but was marked in tragedy in 70 AD when the Romans invaded Jerusalem and burned the whole city, including the Temple. That was the day the Vineyard was destroyed in earnest.
Now, this is all very bad for the Jewish people, but how, you may ask, does this relate to us today?
Let me just relate it in terms of my own experience. I grew up in a Christian home, but rejected the Gospel decisively when I was about 14. By the time I was 20, I realized I was morally bankrupt. Because I saw nothing larger than Me in my life, I had become arrogant and self-centered. I tried to make Music a god in my life, but found that Music wasn’t big enough to give my life transcendent meaning. I used other people to further my own ends and was cynical about the possibility of Love. I had begun to use alcohol as a vehicle to oblivion. And there was even a time, when I was in my first year of college, that I was suicidal, thinking that there was no good reason on this Earth to keep on going. I was a dead man walking. Multiply this by millions, and you have a picture of a Vineyard that produces wild grapes.
But Thanks be to God, He pursued me until I saw the way out of Death: to simply repent and believe in the God who made me and died for my sins.
I’ve told the story before about how when I prayed for God to forgive me and come into my life, it was literally like someone opened the window and the Wind of God’s Spirit came into the room. I experienced the Reality of God as a Person, and I suddenly realized that it was possible to have a real relationship with Christ.
Over the years, I’ve learned the importance of staying close and connected to God, to walk with him every day, To talk to Him about the things that are important to me, and to listen to Him when He speaks in that Still Small voice. Jesus called it Abiding in the Vine. It’s how we produce good fruit, and literally the difference between Life and Death.
Friends, God’s basic saving message to us is this: Repent of the sin of self-sufficiency and learn to Abide in Him so that you can bear good fruit. It’s not just a message to pagans either. God’s message of repentance is addressed to His own people:
2 Chronicles 7:14: …if my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (the Vineyard, if you like)
It’s not just ‘wicked people’ that need to repent, it’s God’s people! If we ourselves will repent of our practical atheism and faithlessness, God will bring healing into our lives and our land – and we will be a fruitful people, the Vineyard of the Lord.
Jesus is the Vine, and we are the branches. We must ‘abide’ in the Vine, for apart from Him, we can do nothing. (Jn. 15:5).
How do we abide in Him?
1) Call Jesus Lord and walk with Him every day.
2) Worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness. Be faithful in public worship of God.
3) Offer up your life to Him. Everything that you have has come to you from him. Offer everything you have back to Him and let your Tithe of time, treasure and talents be the beginning of your giving.
4) Tend the Vine. Spend time with God in private worship, Bible study and formation practices such as Holy Reading, fasting, etc. Allow yourself to be formed by the Lord through these practices.
5) Finally, Be the body of Christ to each other and the world through loving one another and caring for each other’s needs. Share your faith with others and take the love of Christ to the world.
As we repent and abide, we look also for restoration as a people. Take out your inserts labeled “A Prayer for Restoration” and let’s say this together:
Restore us, O God;let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Turn again, O God of hosts!Look down from heaven, and see;have regard for this vine,the stock that your right hand planted,and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.Then we shall not turn back from you;give us life, and we will call upon your name!
Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Amen.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
The Laundry List of Love
A sermon given to All Saints Anglican Church on September 7, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington WV, based on Romans 12:9-21.
Imagine for a moment that you’re the King of Syria in about 825 BC and you’re fighting against Israel. You've been having a rough time of it because even though you have taken extraordinary precautions to keep your war plans secret, every time you make a move against your enemy, your plan fails. You set up an ambush where you think the king of Israel is going to be, and poof, he’s gone. This happens over and over, and pretty soon your intelligence people tell you the enemy has a tactical advantage – a prophet named Elisha who foresees everything you’re going to do!
Naturally, you’re frustrated, so you decide to send your troops out to catch this guy - not just a platoon of commandos, but “horses and chariots and a great army, [sent out] by night [to] surround the city of Dothan, where Elisha was staying.
Early the next morning, Elisha’s servant got up to do his morning chores. He looked out the window and saw this huge army and freaked out. He ran to Elisha and said, “What should we do?! What should we do?!”
Elisha was drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning prophetic dispatches from the angel Gabriel. Cool as a cucumber he looked up and said to his servant:
“Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.”
The LORD opened the eyes of the servant and he saw that “…the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. …when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” [So God obliged] and struck them with blindness … And Elisha said to [the soldiers], “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he led them to Samaria.
As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see.” So the Lord opened their eyes and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “OOH! OOH! Should I kill ‘em, should I kill ‘em?!
“Easy junior, “says Elisha to the King. “Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” So the king prepared …a great feast, and when [his enemies] had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, …they went [home]. And they didn't come [back] … 2 Kings 6:8-23).
Now, what dya think of them apples!
Well, I think it’s very possible that the apostle Paul had this story in mind when he wrote: “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Rom. 9:20)
Actually, this itself is a quote from Proverbs 25:21, 22:
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”
Paul is demonstrating to us that Christianity is Jewish at root. Many times we tend to think that there is this radical disconnect between the message of the Old Testament and the New – that the Old Testament is full of Law and Judgment and the New is all about Love; that they’re two different messages altogether, but try this on for size:
17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev. 19:17)
Sounds familiar doesn't it? That comes in the middle of a chapter that has lots to say about how to treat your neighbor: Don’t lie, cheat or steal. Don’t oppress your neighbor. Treat the workman fairly. Make provision for the disabled. Treat everyone the same. Don’t slander your neighbor…
It’s all the same basic message, consistent across the Testaments. And it can be summed up in the two great commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Pretty simple. In a minute, we’ll see how Paul applies this principle as he gives the Romans pastoral advice.
But to reinforce this idea that the message is the same, I’d like to show you another example – and this has to do with the …
Consistency of God’s Character OT and NT
Exodus 34:6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
Nehemiah 9:17 … But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Psalm 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Psalm 103:8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Psalm 145:8 The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Joel 2:13 … rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
Jonah 4:2 … I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Luke 6:36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
The message about how to act towards your neighbor is the same across the testaments and so is the message about God’s nature! He is the same God, yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:8) – in case we didn't get it: gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Consistency of Love Witnesses to the World (Marks of a Christian)
Now, if God gives us a consistent message of Love towards our neighbors, and if his Nature itself in consistently loving, we ourselves should manifest Love in our behavior – and Paul gives us a long laundry list of things to do. Follow along with me on your handout:
The Laundry List of Love: Romans 12: 9-21
Let love be genuine.
Abhor what is evil;
Hold fast to what is good.
Love one another with brotherly affection.
Outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not be slothful in zeal,
Be fervent in spirit,
Serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope,
Be patient in tribulation,
Be constant in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints
Seek to show hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice,
Weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be haughty
Associate with the lowly.
Never be wise in your own sight.
Repay no one evil for evil,
Give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.
If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If [your enemy] is thirsty, give him something to drink
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
How this witnesses to the world:
The world is sick and tired of charlatans, cheats and failures. Almost every segment of our society has seen major figures succumb to ethical or moral failure: Olympic athletes, corporate finance moguls, politicians, actors and actresses, and yes, even preachers. There is a sort of jaded cynicism that pervades our thinking about anyone in the public eye, about anyone who claims to stand for something.
But I keep on remembering something that David Frederick reported to us about the people he ministered to in the prison: There is no defense against Love!
The world doesn't know what to make of love that reaches out in unexpected ways. Yesterday some of us gathered at Flapjack’s restaurant and prayed for the and the owner. We prayed for the success of the enterprise and we gave them a cross to commemorate our visit. Now, granted these folks weren't our enemies, but they sure were appreciative. Kia, the manager, hung that cross up in a prominent place right away. She let us know she was Roman Catholic, but assured us that she might like to visit some time.
And another interesting thing happened. While we walking over to pray for the owner, a young man caught my attention and said, “Father, I just wanted to say I was sorry for swearing just now…”
Interesting things happen when we walk in love and extend blessing to others.
I’m eager to do a BUB for the Chevron station on Hal Greer and Charleston Avenue, which reopened on Labor Day. I made the acquaintance of Abe, the young man who manages the station, Audley Kilburn and I were doing our Litter-Gittin' rounds the past two Fridays. When we explained that we were from Hope House and that we would like to pray for the success of their business, he was taken back. “I’m a Muslim,” he said, “but we all pray to the same God, and I think it would be cool.”
I think it would be cool too. When we walk in Love interesting things happen. Friends, I encourage you to extend Love to all those around you. I assure you that you will have interesting experiences. You’ll receive back more than you give, and you might just win over you enemy.
May God give us a spirit of boldness and creativity as we reach out to our world in Love. AMEN.
Imagine for a moment that you’re the King of Syria in about 825 BC and you’re fighting against Israel. You've been having a rough time of it because even though you have taken extraordinary precautions to keep your war plans secret, every time you make a move against your enemy, your plan fails. You set up an ambush where you think the king of Israel is going to be, and poof, he’s gone. This happens over and over, and pretty soon your intelligence people tell you the enemy has a tactical advantage – a prophet named Elisha who foresees everything you’re going to do!
Naturally, you’re frustrated, so you decide to send your troops out to catch this guy - not just a platoon of commandos, but “horses and chariots and a great army, [sent out] by night [to] surround the city of Dothan, where Elisha was staying.
Early the next morning, Elisha’s servant got up to do his morning chores. He looked out the window and saw this huge army and freaked out. He ran to Elisha and said, “What should we do?! What should we do?!”
Elisha was drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning prophetic dispatches from the angel Gabriel. Cool as a cucumber he looked up and said to his servant:
“Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.”
The LORD opened the eyes of the servant and he saw that “…the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. …when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” [So God obliged] and struck them with blindness … And Elisha said to [the soldiers], “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he led them to Samaria.
As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they may see.” So the Lord opened their eyes and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “OOH! OOH! Should I kill ‘em, should I kill ‘em?!
“Easy junior, “says Elisha to the King. “Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” So the king prepared …a great feast, and when [his enemies] had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, …they went [home]. And they didn't come [back] … 2 Kings 6:8-23).
Now, what dya think of them apples!
Well, I think it’s very possible that the apostle Paul had this story in mind when he wrote: “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Rom. 9:20)
Actually, this itself is a quote from Proverbs 25:21, 22:
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”
Paul is demonstrating to us that Christianity is Jewish at root. Many times we tend to think that there is this radical disconnect between the message of the Old Testament and the New – that the Old Testament is full of Law and Judgment and the New is all about Love; that they’re two different messages altogether, but try this on for size:
17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev. 19:17)
Sounds familiar doesn't it? That comes in the middle of a chapter that has lots to say about how to treat your neighbor: Don’t lie, cheat or steal. Don’t oppress your neighbor. Treat the workman fairly. Make provision for the disabled. Treat everyone the same. Don’t slander your neighbor…
It’s all the same basic message, consistent across the Testaments. And it can be summed up in the two great commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Pretty simple. In a minute, we’ll see how Paul applies this principle as he gives the Romans pastoral advice.
But to reinforce this idea that the message is the same, I’d like to show you another example – and this has to do with the …
Consistency of God’s Character OT and NT
Exodus 34:6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
Nehemiah 9:17 … But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Psalm 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Psalm 103:8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Psalm 145:8 The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Joel 2:13 … rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
Jonah 4:2 … I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Luke 6:36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
The message about how to act towards your neighbor is the same across the testaments and so is the message about God’s nature! He is the same God, yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:8) – in case we didn't get it: gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Consistency of Love Witnesses to the World (Marks of a Christian)
Now, if God gives us a consistent message of Love towards our neighbors, and if his Nature itself in consistently loving, we ourselves should manifest Love in our behavior – and Paul gives us a long laundry list of things to do. Follow along with me on your handout:
The Laundry List of Love: Romans 12: 9-21
Let love be genuine.
Abhor what is evil;
Hold fast to what is good.
Love one another with brotherly affection.
Outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not be slothful in zeal,
Be fervent in spirit,
Serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope,
Be patient in tribulation,
Be constant in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints
Seek to show hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice,
Weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be haughty
Associate with the lowly.
Never be wise in your own sight.
Repay no one evil for evil,
Give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.
If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If [your enemy] is thirsty, give him something to drink
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
How this witnesses to the world:
The world is sick and tired of charlatans, cheats and failures. Almost every segment of our society has seen major figures succumb to ethical or moral failure: Olympic athletes, corporate finance moguls, politicians, actors and actresses, and yes, even preachers. There is a sort of jaded cynicism that pervades our thinking about anyone in the public eye, about anyone who claims to stand for something.
But I keep on remembering something that David Frederick reported to us about the people he ministered to in the prison: There is no defense against Love!
The world doesn't know what to make of love that reaches out in unexpected ways. Yesterday some of us gathered at Flapjack’s restaurant and prayed for the and the owner. We prayed for the success of the enterprise and we gave them a cross to commemorate our visit. Now, granted these folks weren't our enemies, but they sure were appreciative. Kia, the manager, hung that cross up in a prominent place right away. She let us know she was Roman Catholic, but assured us that she might like to visit some time.
And another interesting thing happened. While we walking over to pray for the owner, a young man caught my attention and said, “Father, I just wanted to say I was sorry for swearing just now…”
Interesting things happen when we walk in love and extend blessing to others.
I’m eager to do a BUB for the Chevron station on Hal Greer and Charleston Avenue, which reopened on Labor Day. I made the acquaintance of Abe, the young man who manages the station, Audley Kilburn and I were doing our Litter-Gittin' rounds the past two Fridays. When we explained that we were from Hope House and that we would like to pray for the success of their business, he was taken back. “I’m a Muslim,” he said, “but we all pray to the same God, and I think it would be cool.”
I think it would be cool too. When we walk in Love interesting things happen. Friends, I encourage you to extend Love to all those around you. I assure you that you will have interesting experiences. You’ll receive back more than you give, and you might just win over you enemy.
May God give us a spirit of boldness and creativity as we reach out to our world in Love. AMEN.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Present Your Bodies
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, on the occassion of the Baptism of Margot Caroline Schoew, based on Romans 12:1-8.
Today, we have the great privilege to perform a Baptism! And I think it’s very nice of the Lord to work it out in such a way that it coincides with our Scripture reading from Romans. What we have is a literal demonstration of what it means to ‘present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice’…
As we will see in a few minutes, the parents and grandparents of Margot Caroline Schoew will come forward and present her for Baptism. This is obviously being done on her behalf, on the faith of her parents. Because they are Christians who acknowledge God as their Creator, Savior and Lord, they want to bring this child into the household of faith – so that Margot may be raised in the Family of God, in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord”.
One of the Key things that happens as we perform a Sacrament is that it creates a family relationship where none existed before. Through Baptism, Margot is being welcomed into the family of God; she will become God’s child in a way that she previously was not. She herself will not likely feel any different, nor will her parent’s love change because of Baptism; that love will remain as deep and as intense as ever. And indeed, Baptism is not meant to change our feelings, so much as it meant to demonstrate our obedience to our Creator and Redeemer God.
Jesus’ Example
When Jesus went to John at the Jordan River, he presented himself to God as a living, Holy Sacrifice – acceptable to His Father. This was evidenced by the voice that thundered from Heaven (Mt.3:17) “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.” The seal of this pleasure was the descent of the Holy Spirit – who came to rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Today we symbolize this very action by the use of Holy Oil to anoint or ‘seal’ the Baptized person in the Holy Spirit and to indicate that a new dimension of familial relationship has been created.
Death and Resurrection
Now the simple medium of Baptism is, of course, water. If we were at the Jordan River we would have some depth of water and we could really see the reality of what Paul means when he says that in Baptism, we go down into the water of death, and are raised to walk in newness of life. (Thankfully we do have some water from the real Jordan to add to our Baptismal font, so it is indeed as if we were in the Jordan…)
In Baptism, we ‘reckon’ or count ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God; dead to the Kingdom of this world and its ‘gift’: Death, but alive to the free gift of God, eternal life, just as Romans 6:23 tells us: “the wages of Sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see, God has beaten the Devil at his own game. The wages of Sin, death, has become the entry, or portal, into Life eternal! Jesus, through his death on the cross, ‘broke Hell wide open’ rising into newness of life. Baptism unites us with him in resurrection, setting us free from the bondage to sin and death.
This is all Objective – outside of ourselves, regardless of how we feel about it. Theologians use the Latin phrase, “ex opera operato” to describe this: It means “by the work done”. In other words, through this outward sign, God does a work of grace inside of us.
Our Response
However, the decision to pursue Baptism is presumed to issue from Faith – faith that God saves us, not water, not priestly actions. And even after Baptism we all still face a daily choice: Will we walk in the newness of life or not? Will we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, our spiritual and reasonable worship of God? Will we live as slaves of righteousness or slaves of sin? When Margot is older, she will be asked to make this choice for herself by going through Confirmation – receiving instruction in the Faith and making a public affirmation that she chooses to walk in this newness of life. This is proper, for God has no grandchildren, and he expects us all to walk with him as His faithful children.
Jesus dramatically demonstrated this expectation when he excoriated the Pharisees for pursuing outward signs without having a living inner faith. In Matthew 12:34 and ff he cries out:
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah…”
This world is schizophrenic. It wants to see a visible sign of God’s reality and yet it is constructed around a sort of atheism that assumes man can exist autonomously apart from God. Man’s desire for autonomy bred death, and we breathe in the stench of death every day, but the World tells us this stench is Life. There is both an implicit and explicit demand from the world system to conform ourselves to it, not to God. This world system tries to convince us we can live and move and have our being in it, not God. This is the first and most seductive temptation we face - the temptation to be Self-Sufficient. But the effort is doomed because, as Meister Eckhart has said, “For God to be is to give being and for man to be is to receive being.”(Quoted in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, by James Finley, pg. 73)
Receiving Gifts from God
In God we live and move and have our being. Our job is to consciously and joyfully receive our being from Him. Our very Life is a gift to be received. And as we receive our lives, or ourselves, from God, we then in turn offer them back to God for His use. In this we find our freedom, the freedom to be what we were created to be.
Now here is another aspect of Life that is symbolized in Baptism: We as a congregation participate in receiving this new life, so full of potential. When a friend of mine had a baby, some years ago, I wrote a little song for her son. One of the lines asked the musical question, “…what’s your purpose in this life to be? Will you travel afar or follow the law?...” etc.
We recognize that Margot carries within herself certain gifts to be discovered. Some of these are evident already; most will become evident over time.
As the Church, the family of God, we want to recognize and receive the gifts that Margot brings to us. As she grows, she and we will discover how her gifts can help to build up the body of Christ. She may grow up to prophecy, or to serve, or to teach, to exhort, to give generously, or to lead in some way; perhaps to do works of mercy, or to serve on a prayer team, just as we will participate in that ministry here today. In any case, her gifts will be for the building up of the Body of Christ, not for her own glorification.
A gift is a gift, something we receive. We all need to keep this in mind in order to have a proper estimation of ourselves. We must not fall prey to the temptation of believing that “I am God’s gift to humanity.” – And yet- we are! The very phrase that we use to indicate pride and arrogance is exactly true. We are God’s gift to one another. As people, and as members of the Body of Christ, we are not just containers of gifts: healing, teaching, miracles, etc. We ourselves are gifts from God to one another, and ultimately for God Himself. This is our great joy – to receive the Gifts of God, and then to offer them back to Him in joyful service.
So today, we receive Margot Caroline Schoew. We acknowledge her as one of God’s children, created in His image, and we present her to God to possess as His own creation. We receive her as a gift from God and we are eager to see all that she will become. We call her sister and acknowledge our responsibility to help her grow into all that God intends for her to be. And we rejoice in the opportunity we have to re-commit ourselves to our God, and to walk in newness of Life to the Glory of God the Father. Amen.
Today, we have the great privilege to perform a Baptism! And I think it’s very nice of the Lord to work it out in such a way that it coincides with our Scripture reading from Romans. What we have is a literal demonstration of what it means to ‘present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice’…
As we will see in a few minutes, the parents and grandparents of Margot Caroline Schoew will come forward and present her for Baptism. This is obviously being done on her behalf, on the faith of her parents. Because they are Christians who acknowledge God as their Creator, Savior and Lord, they want to bring this child into the household of faith – so that Margot may be raised in the Family of God, in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord”.
One of the Key things that happens as we perform a Sacrament is that it creates a family relationship where none existed before. Through Baptism, Margot is being welcomed into the family of God; she will become God’s child in a way that she previously was not. She herself will not likely feel any different, nor will her parent’s love change because of Baptism; that love will remain as deep and as intense as ever. And indeed, Baptism is not meant to change our feelings, so much as it meant to demonstrate our obedience to our Creator and Redeemer God.
Jesus’ Example
When Jesus went to John at the Jordan River, he presented himself to God as a living, Holy Sacrifice – acceptable to His Father. This was evidenced by the voice that thundered from Heaven (Mt.3:17) “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.” The seal of this pleasure was the descent of the Holy Spirit – who came to rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Today we symbolize this very action by the use of Holy Oil to anoint or ‘seal’ the Baptized person in the Holy Spirit and to indicate that a new dimension of familial relationship has been created.
Death and Resurrection
Now the simple medium of Baptism is, of course, water. If we were at the Jordan River we would have some depth of water and we could really see the reality of what Paul means when he says that in Baptism, we go down into the water of death, and are raised to walk in newness of life. (Thankfully we do have some water from the real Jordan to add to our Baptismal font, so it is indeed as if we were in the Jordan…)
In Baptism, we ‘reckon’ or count ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God; dead to the Kingdom of this world and its ‘gift’: Death, but alive to the free gift of God, eternal life, just as Romans 6:23 tells us: “the wages of Sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see, God has beaten the Devil at his own game. The wages of Sin, death, has become the entry, or portal, into Life eternal! Jesus, through his death on the cross, ‘broke Hell wide open’ rising into newness of life. Baptism unites us with him in resurrection, setting us free from the bondage to sin and death.
This is all Objective – outside of ourselves, regardless of how we feel about it. Theologians use the Latin phrase, “ex opera operato” to describe this: It means “by the work done”. In other words, through this outward sign, God does a work of grace inside of us.
Our Response
However, the decision to pursue Baptism is presumed to issue from Faith – faith that God saves us, not water, not priestly actions. And even after Baptism we all still face a daily choice: Will we walk in the newness of life or not? Will we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, our spiritual and reasonable worship of God? Will we live as slaves of righteousness or slaves of sin? When Margot is older, she will be asked to make this choice for herself by going through Confirmation – receiving instruction in the Faith and making a public affirmation that she chooses to walk in this newness of life. This is proper, for God has no grandchildren, and he expects us all to walk with him as His faithful children.
Jesus dramatically demonstrated this expectation when he excoriated the Pharisees for pursuing outward signs without having a living inner faith. In Matthew 12:34 and ff he cries out:
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah…”
This world is schizophrenic. It wants to see a visible sign of God’s reality and yet it is constructed around a sort of atheism that assumes man can exist autonomously apart from God. Man’s desire for autonomy bred death, and we breathe in the stench of death every day, but the World tells us this stench is Life. There is both an implicit and explicit demand from the world system to conform ourselves to it, not to God. This world system tries to convince us we can live and move and have our being in it, not God. This is the first and most seductive temptation we face - the temptation to be Self-Sufficient. But the effort is doomed because, as Meister Eckhart has said, “For God to be is to give being and for man to be is to receive being.”(Quoted in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, by James Finley, pg. 73)
Receiving Gifts from God
In God we live and move and have our being. Our job is to consciously and joyfully receive our being from Him. Our very Life is a gift to be received. And as we receive our lives, or ourselves, from God, we then in turn offer them back to God for His use. In this we find our freedom, the freedom to be what we were created to be.
Now here is another aspect of Life that is symbolized in Baptism: We as a congregation participate in receiving this new life, so full of potential. When a friend of mine had a baby, some years ago, I wrote a little song for her son. One of the lines asked the musical question, “…what’s your purpose in this life to be? Will you travel afar or follow the law?...” etc.
We recognize that Margot carries within herself certain gifts to be discovered. Some of these are evident already; most will become evident over time.
As the Church, the family of God, we want to recognize and receive the gifts that Margot brings to us. As she grows, she and we will discover how her gifts can help to build up the body of Christ. She may grow up to prophecy, or to serve, or to teach, to exhort, to give generously, or to lead in some way; perhaps to do works of mercy, or to serve on a prayer team, just as we will participate in that ministry here today. In any case, her gifts will be for the building up of the Body of Christ, not for her own glorification.
A gift is a gift, something we receive. We all need to keep this in mind in order to have a proper estimation of ourselves. We must not fall prey to the temptation of believing that “I am God’s gift to humanity.” – And yet- we are! The very phrase that we use to indicate pride and arrogance is exactly true. We are God’s gift to one another. As people, and as members of the Body of Christ, we are not just containers of gifts: healing, teaching, miracles, etc. We ourselves are gifts from God to one another, and ultimately for God Himself. This is our great joy – to receive the Gifts of God, and then to offer them back to Him in joyful service.
So today, we receive Margot Caroline Schoew. We acknowledge her as one of God’s children, created in His image, and we present her to God to possess as His own creation. We receive her as a gift from God and we are eager to see all that she will become. We call her sister and acknowledge our responsibility to help her grow into all that God intends for her to be. And we rejoice in the opportunity we have to re-commit ourselves to our God, and to walk in newness of Life to the Glory of God the Father. Amen.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Humility and Br. Andre
A Chapter Talk given to the Company of Jesus on August 24, 2008:
Recently, friends from our church traveled to Montreal, Canada and brought back a book about Brother Andre, The Wonder Man of Mount Royal, written by his friend Fr. Henri-Pual Bergeron, CSC. The back cover informs us that “This book tells the story of a young rural worker who became a Religious and then doorkeeper of Notre Dame College and who spent his entire life spreading the devotion to St. Joseph whom he called ‘his friend’. In 1904…he founded St. Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, living and working there until his death in 1937 at age 91.”
Pilgrims flocked to Br. Andre and thousands received comfort, counsel and healings through his intercession. Always self-effacing, Br. Andre attributed healings and miracles to his patron St. Joseph and to Divine Providence. His method of praying for people often consisted of rubbing an afflicted limb with a medal of St. Joseph and then simply declaring “Stand up now, you are cured.” Sure enough, thousands were healed this way.
Humility seemed to attract this Divine favor. On page 89 of the book, we read that “once and Apostolic Delegate deemed it his duty to give him [Andre] a little sermon on the subject [of humility]; but he was told by the bishop accompanying him: “Do not trouble him, for he would not comprehend your great precepts. Humility is his very life; he lives the virtue.”
‘Another time, a canon was giving the Brother a long exhortation on the dangers of pride. A man who was waiting impatiently to ask a favor interrupted the dissertation: ‘Will you tell me which of you two is Br. Andre? I came from a long distance and I would like to be cured.’ The dignitary, startled at the indignity of being mistaken for a simple lay-Brother, retired, meditating on the vanity of dignities and the silliness of his own sermon.
Br. Andre was indeed a lay-Brother, not a priest. He was not even literate when he entered the service of the College. His health was frail, and he served as porter for many years, literally answering the door and running errands for the students.
But Br. Andre spent hours upon hours praying. Sometimes he wore out his confreres with his praying. And by this manner of life he was able to minister healing to many thousands of pilgrims and build a magnificent place of prayer dedicated to St. Joseph.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my prayer life is nowhere near as intense as Br. Andre’s; neither is my humility. I wish it were, but I’m just not there. But I am inspired, and I do seek to grow in God’s grace. And if Br. Andre could be successful in his devotions and life work, perhaps there is hope for me – and you too.
This is why we devote ourselves to following a rule of life, to increase our holiness and to become progressively more like Jesus.
Recently, friends from our church traveled to Montreal, Canada and brought back a book about Brother Andre, The Wonder Man of Mount Royal, written by his friend Fr. Henri-Pual Bergeron, CSC. The back cover informs us that “This book tells the story of a young rural worker who became a Religious and then doorkeeper of Notre Dame College and who spent his entire life spreading the devotion to St. Joseph whom he called ‘his friend’. In 1904…he founded St. Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, living and working there until his death in 1937 at age 91.”
Pilgrims flocked to Br. Andre and thousands received comfort, counsel and healings through his intercession. Always self-effacing, Br. Andre attributed healings and miracles to his patron St. Joseph and to Divine Providence. His method of praying for people often consisted of rubbing an afflicted limb with a medal of St. Joseph and then simply declaring “Stand up now, you are cured.” Sure enough, thousands were healed this way.
Humility seemed to attract this Divine favor. On page 89 of the book, we read that “once and Apostolic Delegate deemed it his duty to give him [Andre] a little sermon on the subject [of humility]; but he was told by the bishop accompanying him: “Do not trouble him, for he would not comprehend your great precepts. Humility is his very life; he lives the virtue.”
‘Another time, a canon was giving the Brother a long exhortation on the dangers of pride. A man who was waiting impatiently to ask a favor interrupted the dissertation: ‘Will you tell me which of you two is Br. Andre? I came from a long distance and I would like to be cured.’ The dignitary, startled at the indignity of being mistaken for a simple lay-Brother, retired, meditating on the vanity of dignities and the silliness of his own sermon.
Br. Andre was indeed a lay-Brother, not a priest. He was not even literate when he entered the service of the College. His health was frail, and he served as porter for many years, literally answering the door and running errands for the students.
But Br. Andre spent hours upon hours praying. Sometimes he wore out his confreres with his praying. And by this manner of life he was able to minister healing to many thousands of pilgrims and build a magnificent place of prayer dedicated to St. Joseph.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my prayer life is nowhere near as intense as Br. Andre’s; neither is my humility. I wish it were, but I’m just not there. But I am inspired, and I do seek to grow in God’s grace. And if Br. Andre could be successful in his devotions and life work, perhaps there is hope for me – and you too.
This is why we devote ourselves to following a rule of life, to increase our holiness and to become progressively more like Jesus.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
God's Demands
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on August 10, 2008 at teh convent chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, and based on:
Romans 9:1-5 - with reference through chapter 10
9:1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, [1] my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
So far in our study of Romans, we have been looking at Paul’s very closely reasoned exposition of the Righteousness of God. We have seen that the overall theme of the book is found in chapter 1 vv 16 and 17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power (Grk. Dunamis= “dynamite”) 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.”
Paul has traced out for us how we human beings are bound up in sinfulness and cannot produce our own righteousness before God. Faith is shown to be the necessary ingredient to enter into God’s kingdom. Abraham is the paradigm of faith – one who believed God first, and whose faith was ‘reckoned’ to him Righteousness.
Works of the law cannot save us because all they do is highlight how far short we fall. Exercising faith in Christ brings us new life and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, giving us hope and power to live the Christian life. Although we still struggle with sin, the role of the Holy Spirit is to intercede for us and to help us in our struggle.
Finally, we see that God loved us before the world began and has an eternal plan for us to become conformed to the image of Christ, thus providing us with a great sense of security before God. So we have had 8 chapters of Gospel if you will.
Now Paul turns his attention to the Jewish people. The bridge for this new topic seems to be the idea of God’s election. In chapter 8 we have had a long discussion of God’s sovereign choice of those who are in Christ. This seems to lead naturally to the question, “Well, then what of the Jews, God’s ‘Covenant people” who were chosen, but now seem to have been set aside?
Paul’s answer
Paul’s answer is very personal” …” I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” In other words, he knows that his own kinsmen as a whole have not accepted Christ and he worries over them, just as we do over our unsaved relatives and friends. And he responds to an implicit question, “If the Jews have not accepted Christ, and God has set them aside, is there any advantage in being Jewish at all?” The decisive answer is Yes! – and here are the blessings:
The Joy of Being Jewish
First, they are Israelites, sons of Israel – and because of it, to them belong eight specific blessings:
The Adoption: being taken in by God to be his special people.
The Glory: the Shekinah Glory of God, divine splendor.
The Covenants: God’s binding of Himself to his people.
The Giving of the Law: both the ceremonial and the moral law.
The Worship: the ritual of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
The Promises: The Great things God had planned for them.
The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
The Christ: the kinsman redeemer. Messiah born of the Jews.
These blessings are very great indeed!
God’s Sovereign Choice
Yet despite all these blessings God set aside the people of Israel because they didn’t fulfill their mission to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, and they didn’t accept Christ, their kinsman redeemer. At this point, God passes over them, and give the Good News to the Gentiles –by His sovereign choice.
We can identify this as the theme for the next two chapters. The tone shifts from one of confidence in God’s graceful choice, to the sad consequences of God’s sovereign choosing. As I have contemplated these two chapters, I can’t help but think that they are deeply offensive to our contemporary post-modern mindset. Over and over we are reminded that God has chosen some and rejected others. “Jacob I have loved and Esau I hated” (9:13) …”the older will serve the younger” (v.12). Why? Because God chose to do it that way. That’s it. That’s all the explanation we get. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion(9:15). Period. End of sentence. Paul raises the question: Is God not unjust then?
There’s a book being sold right now with the title: “God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. By Bart Ehrman. The title of the book reveals the attitude_ God has a problem. Well, I‘ve got news for Mr. Ehrman; God does not offer explanations to his creatures. There is no court of appeals where God must give an accounting of Himself. Job found this out the hard way.
God uses whom He will for His own purposes. Pharaoh is an example (9:17): God hardened his heart against the Egyptians because he was looking for an opportunity against them.
In our essential narcissism, we are like clay pots who say, “Why did you make me like this?” We can’t understand and we don’t like God’s choices.
Even among the ‘chosen’ people of Israel, not all the physical offspring of Abraham are his chosen spiritual decedents. Way before Christ, there were apostate Jews, people who were born Jews, but did not believe their own heritage and so were not true children of the promise. So much so, that God speaks of choosing a remnant from the people (vv. 27,28) those who did not bow the knee to Baal, even as far back as Isaiah’s time.
God’s overall purpose is to have a people for Himself, culled even from his ‘chosen’ people. And so He chooses freely, sovereignly, and without need for explanation. And even though he chooses, He still expects us to exercise faith in order to become one of His children.
The Jewish people as a group have been set aside for the time being because they didn’t excercie faith and believe in Christ. They tried to do things on their own – to develop a system of religion based on law, not faith. They were trying to be self-made religionists. This is what caused them to be set aside so the gospel could go to the Gentiles.
But not all were set aside. Some believed. God has always maintained a remnant people for himself. This People is composed of those who had the same faith as Abraham , who believe God, who recognize Jesus as Lord. They believe in Him in their hearts, and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord, and they are saved (10:8).
Brothers and sisters, we will never be able to figure out why God chose Jacob over Esau, or why He chose us to be His covenant people. What we can know, however, is that somehow God expects us to believe and that he has given grace to some of us to believe. He knows who belongs to him and who doesn’t - and He’s perfectly justified in choosing whomever He will.
What we need to keep in mind is that God doesn’t kowtow to us. Rather, He demands things from us. One doesn’t trifle with God. All attempts at bargaining with God are foolish babbling.
Our culture desperately needs to hear this message. We constantly operate in a spirit of Hubris, thinking that God owes us something. Bottom line is: He doesn’t. We are indebted to Him and we need to remember it.
This week, as you are going about your daily life, ask yourself the question, “What does the Sovereign God demand of me? What is He calling me to do?”
Respond to this call in Humility and you will be blessed. You will be a person of faith, a true child of Abraham. If you haven’t come to faith, do so quickly. Make the choice to do it. God demands it. Faith is not an optional choice for anyone who wants to live eternally, It’s the only choice.
The people of Israel were set aside for a time. But God seeks to make them jealous by sending the Gospel to the Gentiles. As we will see later, his plan is to eventually bring his ‘chosen people’ back into the fold. He won’t forget them. But he does discipline them for his own purposes.
God loves his chosen ones – the ones who choose to believe in His Christ. Let us pray that God gives us the grace to be faithful. AMEN.
Romans 9:1-5 - with reference through chapter 10
9:1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, [1] my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
So far in our study of Romans, we have been looking at Paul’s very closely reasoned exposition of the Righteousness of God. We have seen that the overall theme of the book is found in chapter 1 vv 16 and 17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power (Grk. Dunamis= “dynamite”) 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.”
Paul has traced out for us how we human beings are bound up in sinfulness and cannot produce our own righteousness before God. Faith is shown to be the necessary ingredient to enter into God’s kingdom. Abraham is the paradigm of faith – one who believed God first, and whose faith was ‘reckoned’ to him Righteousness.
Works of the law cannot save us because all they do is highlight how far short we fall. Exercising faith in Christ brings us new life and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, giving us hope and power to live the Christian life. Although we still struggle with sin, the role of the Holy Spirit is to intercede for us and to help us in our struggle.
Finally, we see that God loved us before the world began and has an eternal plan for us to become conformed to the image of Christ, thus providing us with a great sense of security before God. So we have had 8 chapters of Gospel if you will.
Now Paul turns his attention to the Jewish people. The bridge for this new topic seems to be the idea of God’s election. In chapter 8 we have had a long discussion of God’s sovereign choice of those who are in Christ. This seems to lead naturally to the question, “Well, then what of the Jews, God’s ‘Covenant people” who were chosen, but now seem to have been set aside?
Paul’s answer
Paul’s answer is very personal” …” I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” In other words, he knows that his own kinsmen as a whole have not accepted Christ and he worries over them, just as we do over our unsaved relatives and friends. And he responds to an implicit question, “If the Jews have not accepted Christ, and God has set them aside, is there any advantage in being Jewish at all?” The decisive answer is Yes! – and here are the blessings:
The Joy of Being Jewish
First, they are Israelites, sons of Israel – and because of it, to them belong eight specific blessings:
The Adoption: being taken in by God to be his special people.
The Glory: the Shekinah Glory of God, divine splendor.
The Covenants: God’s binding of Himself to his people.
The Giving of the Law: both the ceremonial and the moral law.
The Worship: the ritual of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
The Promises: The Great things God had planned for them.
The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
The Christ: the kinsman redeemer. Messiah born of the Jews.
These blessings are very great indeed!
God’s Sovereign Choice
Yet despite all these blessings God set aside the people of Israel because they didn’t fulfill their mission to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, and they didn’t accept Christ, their kinsman redeemer. At this point, God passes over them, and give the Good News to the Gentiles –by His sovereign choice.
We can identify this as the theme for the next two chapters. The tone shifts from one of confidence in God’s graceful choice, to the sad consequences of God’s sovereign choosing. As I have contemplated these two chapters, I can’t help but think that they are deeply offensive to our contemporary post-modern mindset. Over and over we are reminded that God has chosen some and rejected others. “Jacob I have loved and Esau I hated” (9:13) …”the older will serve the younger” (v.12). Why? Because God chose to do it that way. That’s it. That’s all the explanation we get. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion(9:15). Period. End of sentence. Paul raises the question: Is God not unjust then?
There’s a book being sold right now with the title: “God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. By Bart Ehrman. The title of the book reveals the attitude_ God has a problem. Well, I‘ve got news for Mr. Ehrman; God does not offer explanations to his creatures. There is no court of appeals where God must give an accounting of Himself. Job found this out the hard way.
God uses whom He will for His own purposes. Pharaoh is an example (9:17): God hardened his heart against the Egyptians because he was looking for an opportunity against them.
In our essential narcissism, we are like clay pots who say, “Why did you make me like this?” We can’t understand and we don’t like God’s choices.
Even among the ‘chosen’ people of Israel, not all the physical offspring of Abraham are his chosen spiritual decedents. Way before Christ, there were apostate Jews, people who were born Jews, but did not believe their own heritage and so were not true children of the promise. So much so, that God speaks of choosing a remnant from the people (vv. 27,28) those who did not bow the knee to Baal, even as far back as Isaiah’s time.
God’s overall purpose is to have a people for Himself, culled even from his ‘chosen’ people. And so He chooses freely, sovereignly, and without need for explanation. And even though he chooses, He still expects us to exercise faith in order to become one of His children.
The Jewish people as a group have been set aside for the time being because they didn’t excercie faith and believe in Christ. They tried to do things on their own – to develop a system of religion based on law, not faith. They were trying to be self-made religionists. This is what caused them to be set aside so the gospel could go to the Gentiles.
But not all were set aside. Some believed. God has always maintained a remnant people for himself. This People is composed of those who had the same faith as Abraham , who believe God, who recognize Jesus as Lord. They believe in Him in their hearts, and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord, and they are saved (10:8).
Brothers and sisters, we will never be able to figure out why God chose Jacob over Esau, or why He chose us to be His covenant people. What we can know, however, is that somehow God expects us to believe and that he has given grace to some of us to believe. He knows who belongs to him and who doesn’t - and He’s perfectly justified in choosing whomever He will.
What we need to keep in mind is that God doesn’t kowtow to us. Rather, He demands things from us. One doesn’t trifle with God. All attempts at bargaining with God are foolish babbling.
Our culture desperately needs to hear this message. We constantly operate in a spirit of Hubris, thinking that God owes us something. Bottom line is: He doesn’t. We are indebted to Him and we need to remember it.
This week, as you are going about your daily life, ask yourself the question, “What does the Sovereign God demand of me? What is He calling me to do?”
Respond to this call in Humility and you will be blessed. You will be a person of faith, a true child of Abraham. If you haven’t come to faith, do so quickly. Make the choice to do it. God demands it. Faith is not an optional choice for anyone who wants to live eternally, It’s the only choice.
The people of Israel were set aside for a time. But God seeks to make them jealous by sending the Gospel to the Gentiles. As we will see later, his plan is to eventually bring his ‘chosen people’ back into the fold. He won’t forget them. But he does discipline them for his own purposes.
God loves his chosen ones – the ones who choose to believe in His Christ. Let us pray that God gives us the grace to be faithful. AMEN.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Begin with the End in Mind
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on August 3 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, and based on Romans 8: 28-39
In 1989 Steven Covey published his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. One of those seven habits was to “Begin with the End in Mind.” Apparently God must have been operating on the same principle when he created human beings. For in Romans 8: 29,30 we read:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son….
God started with the end in mind. He knew us before hand when he said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… (Gen1:26).
Actually, the word foreknew can be understood as “fore loved”. It’s not just that He knew something ahead of time. No. In saying “Let us make man …” it is evident that God had preconceived us in His mind. He loved us before He made us, and designed us to end up like Christ. Again, …”those whom he foreknew he also predestined (designed) to be conformed to the image of his Son”.
He did this, fully aware that there would be this little issue of Sin to overcome. Notice this from 8:30:
…And those whom he predestined he also called, (we are called out of Sin. We are God’s ekklesia, those who have been “called out”)… and those whom he called he also justified,(we are made just or righteous before God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf) and those whom he justified he also glorified.
This last word is especially important because glorification is something that happens in the Resurrection, after death in the “Life after life after death” We are finally glorified when we receive that resurrection body, just like Jesus has. In other words, it hasn’t happened to any of us sitting here – yet.
But because God began with the end in mind, Paul can say that God glorified us – past tense. In God’s mind, the future is a done deal. When he looks at us, he sees the end, and he is pleased by it, just as he said when he finished creating man, “…it was very good (Gen. 1: 31). God said that it was very good because He had also made provision to take care of the freedom/sin problem by providing Christ as the Lamb of God “sacrificed before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13: 8), so that he could write the names of all His own in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 21:27).
Boomerangs
In the great arc of creation, our trajectory is rather like that of a boomerang. We start out in God’s hand, and we are flung out from God through our free choice to Sin, but God calls us back to Himself and He provides a way reconcile us to Himself through Jesus, so that the One who was offended by our freely-chosen separation has now provided the means needed for him to go from Judge of our souls to Lover of our souls. We end up back in God’s loving hand, firmly gripped by his Grace.
Our Security in God.
So in Rom 8:31, Paul can say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” And of course, he is referring to our enemy the devil, the ‘accuser of the brethren” (Rev.12:10), the one who stands before the throne of God throwing up our sins to God and daring Him to accept us. Paul is defiant: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn?” Paul knows that God … did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, (32) and this same son, who has every right not judge us does not – rather He stand at God’s right hand interceding for us (v.34).
The result of this knowledge is great confidence before God, Satan, and the World. We are confident before God, knowing that He has already given us the very best he had to give. …”as a result how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (v.32). We are like the secure child who defies the bully, confident that her father will stand up for her and protect her.
And Satan is the bully, the adversary. He is the one who brings the accusation. He is the one who plays on our fears and insecurities, trying in every way to undermine our faith and to abandon our relationship with God – even I fit were possible to get God to turn away from us because of our wickedness and disobedience.
Then finally, we have the world system, replete with all manner of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine nakedness danger and sword. If our Savior doesn’t judge us and Satan’s accusations cannot sway God against us, then nothing the world has to offer can separate us from the love of Christ, even when it seems that the world beats up on us and leads us like sheep to the slaughter. No, says Paul, in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Now we come to the poetic and passionately eloquent conclusion: “38 For I am sure (convinced) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers (principalities), nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Because God began with the end in mind, there is nothing is nothing that can come between Him and his plan for us.
A word about Height and Depth: (v.39)
Many people today follow their horoscopes in the daily paper. It’s usually right underneath the funnies – and most of us read it in the same spirit we chuckle at the comics. But in the ancient world people were very serious about the stars and their effects upon people’s daily lives. The star you were born under could control your destiny. And the daily movement of the planets was considered auspicious or inauspicious for various activities: starting a business, planting crops etc. Even Jesus’ birth was accompanied by great fanfare and the appearance of a new star.
In the astrologer’s parlance, the term “height” meant the zenith or highest point of a star’s progression through the sky, while the term ‘depth’ referred to the lowest point in the night sky. The star was thought to have greater of lesser impact in your life depending upon its height or depth. Often people lived under great fear of these astrological influences – still do in some cases!
But here Paul is saying, “I don’t’ care what your horoscope says, nothing can separate you from the Love of God!” No doubt this was a very reassuring message to his readers as it should be to us.
Again, the result is that we should have great confidence and reassurance because of God’s great and constant love for us.
An Insane Man?...
During the 19th century, a man was placed in an insane asylum. He was there for many years living out his days in a small cell. Upon his death the attendants set about to clean his room. On the wall these beautiful words were written in pencil:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Whatever insanity this man struggled with, it was not about the love of God. He was entirely sane on that score. The words he had written were the words of a Jewish poem composed in 1050 by Meier Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany and have been translated into at least 18 languages. Later, in 1917, Frederick M Lehman, of Pasadena, California would add two verses and a refrain, giving us the Hymn we know as “The Love of God.
I’d like us to look at the words to this wonderful tribute to God’s love. As we do so, let’s make this a prayer of praise to our Loving God, a tribute to his unimaginably immense Love.
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave his Son to win;
His erring child he reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain:
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song
Refrain
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky
Amen.
In 1989 Steven Covey published his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. One of those seven habits was to “Begin with the End in Mind.” Apparently God must have been operating on the same principle when he created human beings. For in Romans 8: 29,30 we read:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son….
God started with the end in mind. He knew us before hand when he said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… (Gen1:26).
Actually, the word foreknew can be understood as “fore loved”. It’s not just that He knew something ahead of time. No. In saying “Let us make man …” it is evident that God had preconceived us in His mind. He loved us before He made us, and designed us to end up like Christ. Again, …”those whom he foreknew he also predestined (designed) to be conformed to the image of his Son”.
He did this, fully aware that there would be this little issue of Sin to overcome. Notice this from 8:30:
…And those whom he predestined he also called, (we are called out of Sin. We are God’s ekklesia, those who have been “called out”)… and those whom he called he also justified,(we are made just or righteous before God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf) and those whom he justified he also glorified.
This last word is especially important because glorification is something that happens in the Resurrection, after death in the “Life after life after death” We are finally glorified when we receive that resurrection body, just like Jesus has. In other words, it hasn’t happened to any of us sitting here – yet.
But because God began with the end in mind, Paul can say that God glorified us – past tense. In God’s mind, the future is a done deal. When he looks at us, he sees the end, and he is pleased by it, just as he said when he finished creating man, “…it was very good (Gen. 1: 31). God said that it was very good because He had also made provision to take care of the freedom/sin problem by providing Christ as the Lamb of God “sacrificed before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13: 8), so that he could write the names of all His own in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 21:27).
Boomerangs
In the great arc of creation, our trajectory is rather like that of a boomerang. We start out in God’s hand, and we are flung out from God through our free choice to Sin, but God calls us back to Himself and He provides a way reconcile us to Himself through Jesus, so that the One who was offended by our freely-chosen separation has now provided the means needed for him to go from Judge of our souls to Lover of our souls. We end up back in God’s loving hand, firmly gripped by his Grace.
Our Security in God.
So in Rom 8:31, Paul can say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” And of course, he is referring to our enemy the devil, the ‘accuser of the brethren” (Rev.12:10), the one who stands before the throne of God throwing up our sins to God and daring Him to accept us. Paul is defiant: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn?” Paul knows that God … did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, (32) and this same son, who has every right not judge us does not – rather He stand at God’s right hand interceding for us (v.34).
The result of this knowledge is great confidence before God, Satan, and the World. We are confident before God, knowing that He has already given us the very best he had to give. …”as a result how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (v.32). We are like the secure child who defies the bully, confident that her father will stand up for her and protect her.
And Satan is the bully, the adversary. He is the one who brings the accusation. He is the one who plays on our fears and insecurities, trying in every way to undermine our faith and to abandon our relationship with God – even I fit were possible to get God to turn away from us because of our wickedness and disobedience.
Then finally, we have the world system, replete with all manner of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine nakedness danger and sword. If our Savior doesn’t judge us and Satan’s accusations cannot sway God against us, then nothing the world has to offer can separate us from the love of Christ, even when it seems that the world beats up on us and leads us like sheep to the slaughter. No, says Paul, in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Now we come to the poetic and passionately eloquent conclusion: “38 For I am sure (convinced) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers (principalities), nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Because God began with the end in mind, there is nothing is nothing that can come between Him and his plan for us.
A word about Height and Depth: (v.39)
Many people today follow their horoscopes in the daily paper. It’s usually right underneath the funnies – and most of us read it in the same spirit we chuckle at the comics. But in the ancient world people were very serious about the stars and their effects upon people’s daily lives. The star you were born under could control your destiny. And the daily movement of the planets was considered auspicious or inauspicious for various activities: starting a business, planting crops etc. Even Jesus’ birth was accompanied by great fanfare and the appearance of a new star.
In the astrologer’s parlance, the term “height” meant the zenith or highest point of a star’s progression through the sky, while the term ‘depth’ referred to the lowest point in the night sky. The star was thought to have greater of lesser impact in your life depending upon its height or depth. Often people lived under great fear of these astrological influences – still do in some cases!
But here Paul is saying, “I don’t’ care what your horoscope says, nothing can separate you from the Love of God!” No doubt this was a very reassuring message to his readers as it should be to us.
Again, the result is that we should have great confidence and reassurance because of God’s great and constant love for us.
An Insane Man?...
During the 19th century, a man was placed in an insane asylum. He was there for many years living out his days in a small cell. Upon his death the attendants set about to clean his room. On the wall these beautiful words were written in pencil:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Whatever insanity this man struggled with, it was not about the love of God. He was entirely sane on that score. The words he had written were the words of a Jewish poem composed in 1050 by Meier Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany and have been translated into at least 18 languages. Later, in 1917, Frederick M Lehman, of Pasadena, California would add two verses and a refrain, giving us the Hymn we know as “The Love of God.
I’d like us to look at the words to this wonderful tribute to God’s love. As we do so, let’s make this a prayer of praise to our Loving God, a tribute to his unimaginably immense Love.
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave his Son to win;
His erring child he reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
Refrain:
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.
When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song
Refrain
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky
Amen.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Eager Expectation
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.
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 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
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