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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Who to Die For
A Sermon delivered on Father's Day, June 15, 2008 to All Saints Anglican Church, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, and based on Romans 5:6-11
In the movie series Band of Brothers, we can see a contrast between two different types of leaders. The first is typified by Captain Sobel, who is the drill instructor for Easy Company, a group of paratroopers being prepared for the assault on Normandy. Captain Sobel’s job is to train his troops to a high level of skill, but he also seems to enjoy tormenting his men – nitpicking at their uniforms and finding contraband in their bunks, which then in turn results in his favorite punishment: running up Currahee mountain behind the barracks. He cancels leave on a whim and seems personally offended by the idea of fun. He’s petty and vindictive, and his men hate him for it.
In contrast to Sobel, we see the rise of Lieutenant Winter through the ranks. This man is a hard worker, competent in leading and fair. He earns the respect of the men through faithful service to them over the months and years.
After two years of training, the troops are finally sent to England. As war game preparation intensifies, Captain Sobel shows himself to be a dithering and incompetent leader. He makes foolish and wrong-headed mistakes, while Lt. Winter accomplishes his team goals and shows himself to be reliable under pressure.
As D-day gets closer, tension within the ranks over the DI increases, and finally a group of NCOs decides to resign their positions and refuses to follow the Sobel into battle. This is basically a revolt with very serious consequences. Most of the men are busted and some are sent off to other assignments. However, the General in charge realizes there is a huge problem in the company. He ‘promotes’ the incompetent and hated Captain Sobel to a position training Chaplains and other non-combatants – Stateside. “The war effort needs you elsewhere” are the terse words that go along with a congratulatory glass of whiskey.
Lieutenant Winter is promoted to Captain and goes on to lead Easy Company in many battles throughout the war.
This is an example of how soldiers shrewdly size up who they will die for and who they won’t. They know their skins depend on their leader and it doesn’t take long to figure out who they will follow.
During the same war, in 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian Kolbe in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982.
With these examples in mind, consider our text today: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6, 7).
Christ died – not for someone who was being unfairly persecuted or for a beloved officer leading his troops into battle, but for sinners, enemies of God, people like me who said, “I hate Christians and I detest Christianity” - people whose sins had sent Jesus to the cross – and glad of it!”
Now this is an amazing thought: There are those of us who were militantly opposed to God – who hated him, Am I the only one here, or did some of you also hate God? Yes, I see that hand.
However, the death of Jesus is not like that of Fr. Maximillian Kolbe – and not like soldiers who are conscripted to fight and die for a country they love. Jesus’ death was a voluntary action on behalf of those who were opposed to Him – dead in their sins, people who could not help themselves. In this passage we can see clearly that, contrary to Benjamin Franklin, God is not the God of those who are able to help themselves in their own strength. Rather God is the God of those who cannot help themselves. “For while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
Now as obvious as it sounds, we could ask, “How many of our sins were still in the future when Christ died for us? - All of them! That means that not only the sins we commit before we become Christians, but also those we commit afterwards are covered by His blood. This is an important point. As a counselor, I frequently talk to people who are struggling with the effects of some sin they have committed. They are struggling to accept forgiveness because their actions seem so bad. It’s as though they say it’s OK for Jesus to die for the sins of everyone else, but not for me. Or: All the sins I committed before I became a Christian were forgiven – but now this one. Especially those who are scrupulous have problems. They have problems letting go and remembering that they are forgiven. All their sins are Forgiven.!
Returning to our text, we can see Paul emphasizing this point – “If the blood of Christ justified us, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Remember, the death of Christ is the Propitiation for our sins It is a gift or sacrifice offered by God that turns away the wrath of God. By the blood of Christ once offered for us, we are reconciled to God. We are declared righteous; the Righteousness of Christ is put on to us. This is a legal, judicial action, done by God, the righteous Judge, to us, on our behalf, for the mere price of our heartfelt belief!
And when we believe in Christ, when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then we receive the Life of God. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, leading us into truth, illuminating God’s truth for us, comforting and convicting us, conforming us into the image of Christ.
Therefore, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation. Because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God - access into His Grace and we also rejoice in the Hope that we carry with us.
Link to Father’s Day
Being that today is Father’s Day; I’d like to bring out four points about True Fatherhood from this text.
One: True Fatherhood takes the Initiative. Salvation is initiated by God the Father. The Father sends the Son to be the Propitiation for our sins. This type of Father is active and seeks out love from us, his children. He sends his only begotten Son to die for us, going to the very greatest lengths for us, so that we don’t have to die but might have eternal life.
Two. True Fatherhood is Just. God the Father does not sweep our sins under the carpet. He doesn’t simply excuse evil. Rather, he deals with our sins justly, providing the sacrifice Lamb to die in our place.
Three: True Fatherhood is Magnanimous. While we were still sinners, God sent Christ to die for us. He Himself took the great part for us. He could have simply wiped us all out, but He didn’t. He decided to exercise Great mercy and save us while we were weak and rebellious.
Finally, True Fatherhood is self-sacrificing. He himself bore our sins…. As I talk to men in my counseling office, they tell me that all the effort they expend in their career is focused around providing for their families. And when men go through divorce – often because they work too much – many times they lose their motivation to work. It’s as though without the mission to provide for the family, and the support system that goes with the family, all the work doesn’t make sense anymore.
Most men understand implicitly that they will work without respite to provide for their families. For the most part men are still not at liberty to pursue the same options that women have regarding work. But the remarkable thing is that there are very few Men’s Liberation marches demanding equal treatment. There’s just no wholesale anger over the expectation that a man will work all his life, often with little recognition.
Perhaps the proof of that is today itself. Father’s Day is usually the day when the phone companies rack up the most charges for collect calls! We move heaven and earth to honor our mothers on their day – and we call our fathers collect. True fathers understand that self-sacrifice is part of the deal.
So today, when you’re trying to honor your father – think about all the things he does without question, and give thanks that a Truly godly father can model the same love shown to us by God the Father, and His son Jesus Christ. AMEN.
In the movie series Band of Brothers, we can see a contrast between two different types of leaders. The first is typified by Captain Sobel, who is the drill instructor for Easy Company, a group of paratroopers being prepared for the assault on Normandy. Captain Sobel’s job is to train his troops to a high level of skill, but he also seems to enjoy tormenting his men – nitpicking at their uniforms and finding contraband in their bunks, which then in turn results in his favorite punishment: running up Currahee mountain behind the barracks. He cancels leave on a whim and seems personally offended by the idea of fun. He’s petty and vindictive, and his men hate him for it.
In contrast to Sobel, we see the rise of Lieutenant Winter through the ranks. This man is a hard worker, competent in leading and fair. He earns the respect of the men through faithful service to them over the months and years.
After two years of training, the troops are finally sent to England. As war game preparation intensifies, Captain Sobel shows himself to be a dithering and incompetent leader. He makes foolish and wrong-headed mistakes, while Lt. Winter accomplishes his team goals and shows himself to be reliable under pressure.
As D-day gets closer, tension within the ranks over the DI increases, and finally a group of NCOs decides to resign their positions and refuses to follow the Sobel into battle. This is basically a revolt with very serious consequences. Most of the men are busted and some are sent off to other assignments. However, the General in charge realizes there is a huge problem in the company. He ‘promotes’ the incompetent and hated Captain Sobel to a position training Chaplains and other non-combatants – Stateside. “The war effort needs you elsewhere” are the terse words that go along with a congratulatory glass of whiskey.
Lieutenant Winter is promoted to Captain and goes on to lead Easy Company in many battles throughout the war.
This is an example of how soldiers shrewdly size up who they will die for and who they won’t. They know their skins depend on their leader and it doesn’t take long to figure out who they will follow.
During the same war, in 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian Kolbe in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982.
With these examples in mind, consider our text today: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6, 7).
Christ died – not for someone who was being unfairly persecuted or for a beloved officer leading his troops into battle, but for sinners, enemies of God, people like me who said, “I hate Christians and I detest Christianity” - people whose sins had sent Jesus to the cross – and glad of it!”
Now this is an amazing thought: There are those of us who were militantly opposed to God – who hated him, Am I the only one here, or did some of you also hate God? Yes, I see that hand.
However, the death of Jesus is not like that of Fr. Maximillian Kolbe – and not like soldiers who are conscripted to fight and die for a country they love. Jesus’ death was a voluntary action on behalf of those who were opposed to Him – dead in their sins, people who could not help themselves. In this passage we can see clearly that, contrary to Benjamin Franklin, God is not the God of those who are able to help themselves in their own strength. Rather God is the God of those who cannot help themselves. “For while we were weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
Now as obvious as it sounds, we could ask, “How many of our sins were still in the future when Christ died for us? - All of them! That means that not only the sins we commit before we become Christians, but also those we commit afterwards are covered by His blood. This is an important point. As a counselor, I frequently talk to people who are struggling with the effects of some sin they have committed. They are struggling to accept forgiveness because their actions seem so bad. It’s as though they say it’s OK for Jesus to die for the sins of everyone else, but not for me. Or: All the sins I committed before I became a Christian were forgiven – but now this one. Especially those who are scrupulous have problems. They have problems letting go and remembering that they are forgiven. All their sins are Forgiven.!
Returning to our text, we can see Paul emphasizing this point – “If the blood of Christ justified us, how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Remember, the death of Christ is the Propitiation for our sins It is a gift or sacrifice offered by God that turns away the wrath of God. By the blood of Christ once offered for us, we are reconciled to God. We are declared righteous; the Righteousness of Christ is put on to us. This is a legal, judicial action, done by God, the righteous Judge, to us, on our behalf, for the mere price of our heartfelt belief!
And when we believe in Christ, when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then we receive the Life of God. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, leading us into truth, illuminating God’s truth for us, comforting and convicting us, conforming us into the image of Christ.
Therefore, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received the reconciliation. Because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God - access into His Grace and we also rejoice in the Hope that we carry with us.
Link to Father’s Day
Being that today is Father’s Day; I’d like to bring out four points about True Fatherhood from this text.
One: True Fatherhood takes the Initiative. Salvation is initiated by God the Father. The Father sends the Son to be the Propitiation for our sins. This type of Father is active and seeks out love from us, his children. He sends his only begotten Son to die for us, going to the very greatest lengths for us, so that we don’t have to die but might have eternal life.
Two. True Fatherhood is Just. God the Father does not sweep our sins under the carpet. He doesn’t simply excuse evil. Rather, he deals with our sins justly, providing the sacrifice Lamb to die in our place.
Three: True Fatherhood is Magnanimous. While we were still sinners, God sent Christ to die for us. He Himself took the great part for us. He could have simply wiped us all out, but He didn’t. He decided to exercise Great mercy and save us while we were weak and rebellious.
Finally, True Fatherhood is self-sacrificing. He himself bore our sins…. As I talk to men in my counseling office, they tell me that all the effort they expend in their career is focused around providing for their families. And when men go through divorce – often because they work too much – many times they lose their motivation to work. It’s as though without the mission to provide for the family, and the support system that goes with the family, all the work doesn’t make sense anymore.
Most men understand implicitly that they will work without respite to provide for their families. For the most part men are still not at liberty to pursue the same options that women have regarding work. But the remarkable thing is that there are very few Men’s Liberation marches demanding equal treatment. There’s just no wholesale anger over the expectation that a man will work all his life, often with little recognition.
Perhaps the proof of that is today itself. Father’s Day is usually the day when the phone companies rack up the most charges for collect calls! We move heaven and earth to honor our mothers on their day – and we call our fathers collect. True fathers understand that self-sacrifice is part of the deal.
So today, when you’re trying to honor your father – think about all the things he does without question, and give thanks that a Truly godly father can model the same love shown to us by God the Father, and His son Jesus Christ. AMEN.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
A sermon based on Romans 3:1-21/28, delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on 6/1/2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
Today we begin a long focused time in the book of Romans. The Lectionary has us camping out in this book until the middle of September, so we will get a nice big chunk and basically be able to give you a broad overview.
Paul appears to have written this letter to the Romans from Corinth, where he was in the midst of collecting money for the poor of Jerusalem. After delivering the money to Jerusalem, he intended to visit Rome, then go on to Spain. However, he was arrested in Jerusalem and his plans changed rather drastically. He did make it to Rome, but this time as a prisoner waiting to appear before Caesar. A woman named “Phoebe, who belonged to the church at Cenchrea near Corinth (16:1) probably carried the letter to Rome.” (Ryrie Study Bible intro to the book of Romans).
Romans has been said to be the clearest, most systematic statement of the Gospel in the whole of the New Testament. It is certainly the most concentrated in terms of doctrine. It’s overall theme is “The Righteousness of God”, the theme verses being found in Chapter 1: 16, 17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
What Manner of God Do We Worship?
In this very first mention of the theme, we see Paul describing God as righteous. What does that mean?
It means that God is Pure - as light is pure, Simple – as Truth is simple, Straight – as a ruler is straight, Just – as a wise and fair judge is just; and Sincere, having no mixture of chaff and grain. God’s righteousness will not allow anything impure to come near it and live.
Only that which is pure in itself can stand before the presence of a Righteous God. And this is what causes us problems as human beings.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have been tainted with the guilt and stain of Sin. This guilt comes to us by way of heredity; we are born into it before we have even done anything, good or bad. All human beings have a ‘Sin-Nature’ – the default setting if you will, that causes every area of our lives to be flawed and inherently imperfect. Even our attempts to be good are flawed by our imperfect motivations: the desire to look good before others, to feel good about ourselves, or to be prideful in some way, etc.
As a result we sin – ‘we miss the mark’. We sin because we are infected with an imperfect nature. Acts of sinfulness are a result of our Sin Nature doing its natural thing. And our reading is very clear about the extent of Sin: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Some people try to be good and fail because the effort itself is doomed by inherent imperfection. Others know enough about the truth to know what God requires; yet choose to do the wrong thing anyway. This willful rebellion against the Truth elicits God’s wrath. (Romans 1: 18: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousenss of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…)
God’s wrath is the antipathy that light has for darkness, truth has for falseness and purity has for impurity. But God’s wrath is not simply an impersonal force – it’s personal. He is personally offended by our sin. After all, He set up human beings in a perfect environment, needing nothing to make our lives more complete – and we went and messed it up – just because we could. I say ‘we’ because we are all present in Adam’s loins as it were. Adam’s sin is every man’s sin. Thus, every human who has ever been born carries with him or her the guilt and stain of sin that inherently alienates us from a just and holy God.
And we know this. We know that God’s wrath needs to be propitiated – or turned away. We know we need to offer Him something to take away His terrible – and justified wrath. Our problem is that we have don’t have anything pure enough or holy enough to offer him. Even if we were to live the life of St. Francis or Clare, St. Benedict or Scholastica, even then our meager acts of goodness would not be enough to appease God.
Indeed the Law of Moses was given precisely so we could see just how impossible it is to please God through trying to observe the law. Verse 20 of Chapter 3 spells it out very starkly: …”For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Bad, Bad news!
Good News
But the Good news is this:
21 … the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
We can become righteous through faith in Christ! Even though all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, yet we are justified ( made righteous) by his grace, as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (v24) 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
There is that word again, ‘Propitiation’. According to Howard Marshall, in his book The Work of Christ ( pg 77) it means ‘to appease an offended person so that he is willing to forgive.’ Marshall goes on to explain that in pagan religious language, the word described attempts to placate angry gods who broke out in judgment against men. To speak in such terms of the sacrifice of Christ might suggest (to some) that God is as capricious as a pagan deity.”
Therefore some Bible translators have said, “Propitiation makes God to seem too much like us, too petty!. Let’s not use that word. Instead let’s use the word ‘expiate’. That word means that sin will be wiped out or canceled so that it no longer stands between the sinner and God. The only problem is that ‘sin’ is not a simple ‘thing’ to be dealt with in a clinical fashion. Sin is a personal affront to God, and it arouses his wrath.
And religion, says Marshall, ‘is not concerned with ‘things’ but with personal relationships between men and their Creator. Only the word ‘propitiation’ will communicate the reality of God’s wrath as a personal reaction to Sin.
But again, the Good News is that God himself has offered Jesus as the Propitiation for sin, taking away the offense. The very same holy and righteous judge who reacts against sin shows us His mercy by giving His own Son as a sacrifice for sin. As a result God is ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.’ (v. 27).
When you place your faith in Christ, you are accepting a gift – a perfect gift that cannot be replicated through attempts to live according to the works of the law. Just as Paul concludes in v. 28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Friends, when you die and go to stand before God, there won’t be any of this happy nonsense that people spout about getting into heaven, “I’m a good person – I haven’t killed anyone – I don’t eat meat – and I use florescent light bulbs”
No! You will stand before an inflexibly pure God whom you have personally offended by your own willfulness and rebellion. Unless you carry with you something more substantial than a green consciousness and good intentions, you will quickly find yourself on the receiving end of God’s wrath.
When you stand before God, you better be wearing the white robe of righteousness that you get from believing in Jesus as the Propitiation of your sin against God the Father. If you don’t’ have it – you better get it – today, before you leave this place. It’s free for the asking; all you have to do is accept it.
For those of us who have received this gift, we better appreciate it! There is nothing more valuable on earth than having had the guilt and stain of our sin removed through believing in Jesus. So, when you come to receive communion, give thanks! Make Eucharist, taking the elements… in remembrance that Christ died for you…. and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving!. Amen.
Today we begin a long focused time in the book of Romans. The Lectionary has us camping out in this book until the middle of September, so we will get a nice big chunk and basically be able to give you a broad overview.
Paul appears to have written this letter to the Romans from Corinth, where he was in the midst of collecting money for the poor of Jerusalem. After delivering the money to Jerusalem, he intended to visit Rome, then go on to Spain. However, he was arrested in Jerusalem and his plans changed rather drastically. He did make it to Rome, but this time as a prisoner waiting to appear before Caesar. A woman named “Phoebe, who belonged to the church at Cenchrea near Corinth (16:1) probably carried the letter to Rome.” (Ryrie Study Bible intro to the book of Romans).
Romans has been said to be the clearest, most systematic statement of the Gospel in the whole of the New Testament. It is certainly the most concentrated in terms of doctrine. It’s overall theme is “The Righteousness of God”, the theme verses being found in Chapter 1: 16, 17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
What Manner of God Do We Worship?
In this very first mention of the theme, we see Paul describing God as righteous. What does that mean?
It means that God is Pure - as light is pure, Simple – as Truth is simple, Straight – as a ruler is straight, Just – as a wise and fair judge is just; and Sincere, having no mixture of chaff and grain. God’s righteousness will not allow anything impure to come near it and live.
Only that which is pure in itself can stand before the presence of a Righteous God. And this is what causes us problems as human beings.
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human beings have been tainted with the guilt and stain of Sin. This guilt comes to us by way of heredity; we are born into it before we have even done anything, good or bad. All human beings have a ‘Sin-Nature’ – the default setting if you will, that causes every area of our lives to be flawed and inherently imperfect. Even our attempts to be good are flawed by our imperfect motivations: the desire to look good before others, to feel good about ourselves, or to be prideful in some way, etc.
As a result we sin – ‘we miss the mark’. We sin because we are infected with an imperfect nature. Acts of sinfulness are a result of our Sin Nature doing its natural thing. And our reading is very clear about the extent of Sin: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
Some people try to be good and fail because the effort itself is doomed by inherent imperfection. Others know enough about the truth to know what God requires; yet choose to do the wrong thing anyway. This willful rebellion against the Truth elicits God’s wrath. (Romans 1: 18: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousenss of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…)
God’s wrath is the antipathy that light has for darkness, truth has for falseness and purity has for impurity. But God’s wrath is not simply an impersonal force – it’s personal. He is personally offended by our sin. After all, He set up human beings in a perfect environment, needing nothing to make our lives more complete – and we went and messed it up – just because we could. I say ‘we’ because we are all present in Adam’s loins as it were. Adam’s sin is every man’s sin. Thus, every human who has ever been born carries with him or her the guilt and stain of sin that inherently alienates us from a just and holy God.
And we know this. We know that God’s wrath needs to be propitiated – or turned away. We know we need to offer Him something to take away His terrible – and justified wrath. Our problem is that we have don’t have anything pure enough or holy enough to offer him. Even if we were to live the life of St. Francis or Clare, St. Benedict or Scholastica, even then our meager acts of goodness would not be enough to appease God.
Indeed the Law of Moses was given precisely so we could see just how impossible it is to please God through trying to observe the law. Verse 20 of Chapter 3 spells it out very starkly: …”For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Bad, Bad news!
Good News
But the Good news is this:
21 … the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
We can become righteous through faith in Christ! Even though all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, yet we are justified ( made righteous) by his grace, as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (v24) 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
There is that word again, ‘Propitiation’. According to Howard Marshall, in his book The Work of Christ ( pg 77) it means ‘to appease an offended person so that he is willing to forgive.’ Marshall goes on to explain that in pagan religious language, the word described attempts to placate angry gods who broke out in judgment against men. To speak in such terms of the sacrifice of Christ might suggest (to some) that God is as capricious as a pagan deity.”
Therefore some Bible translators have said, “Propitiation makes God to seem too much like us, too petty!. Let’s not use that word. Instead let’s use the word ‘expiate’. That word means that sin will be wiped out or canceled so that it no longer stands between the sinner and God. The only problem is that ‘sin’ is not a simple ‘thing’ to be dealt with in a clinical fashion. Sin is a personal affront to God, and it arouses his wrath.
And religion, says Marshall, ‘is not concerned with ‘things’ but with personal relationships between men and their Creator. Only the word ‘propitiation’ will communicate the reality of God’s wrath as a personal reaction to Sin.
But again, the Good News is that God himself has offered Jesus as the Propitiation for sin, taking away the offense. The very same holy and righteous judge who reacts against sin shows us His mercy by giving His own Son as a sacrifice for sin. As a result God is ‘just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.’ (v. 27).
When you place your faith in Christ, you are accepting a gift – a perfect gift that cannot be replicated through attempts to live according to the works of the law. Just as Paul concludes in v. 28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Friends, when you die and go to stand before God, there won’t be any of this happy nonsense that people spout about getting into heaven, “I’m a good person – I haven’t killed anyone – I don’t eat meat – and I use florescent light bulbs”
No! You will stand before an inflexibly pure God whom you have personally offended by your own willfulness and rebellion. Unless you carry with you something more substantial than a green consciousness and good intentions, you will quickly find yourself on the receiving end of God’s wrath.
When you stand before God, you better be wearing the white robe of righteousness that you get from believing in Jesus as the Propitiation of your sin against God the Father. If you don’t’ have it – you better get it – today, before you leave this place. It’s free for the asking; all you have to do is accept it.
For those of us who have received this gift, we better appreciate it! There is nothing more valuable on earth than having had the guilt and stain of our sin removed through believing in Jesus. So, when you come to receive communion, give thanks! Make Eucharist, taking the elements… in remembrance that Christ died for you…. and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving!. Amen.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Dangerous, Interesting Ministry of the Holy Spirit
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on Pentecost Sunday, May 11, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
From our scripture readings today: Acts 2:1-11; I Cor. 12:4-13, and John 20:19-23, it is apparent that the gift of the Holy Spirit is power for ministry and witness. On the day of Pentecost, the spirit comes with such power that it sounds like a mighty rushing wind, giving the disciples the gift of communicating the Gospel in other tongues. Tongues of fire appear over the head of each one, giving us our liturgical color red for this day.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus specifically tells the disciples he is sending them out, just as the Father sent him and he gives them the breath, the wind, of the Spirit to help them and comfort them. Incidentally, this is one of the verses that theologians point to, to explain the so-called ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’. In the Nicene Creed we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and this is the literal description of that procession.
So the ministry of the Spirit is about empowerment for ministry. God knows we need it. What we have been asked to do as Christians is impossible without God’s power. In the first place, the task of going into all the world and making disciples of all nations is too big for human effort alone. In the second place, we are involved in a pitched battle with forces who do not love God and who try to thwart God’s will be neutralizing or even taking us out if possible.
On Friday evening, after we finished building the forms for the concrete at Hope House, Mel Cummings Cindy and a story about how he had had a very close call the day before. He was driving up the steep road that leads from fifth street hill up to the museum and as he was going up the steepest part, a tree fell across the road taking out power lines with it causing the ancient tree to catch on fire immediately. Apparently it was quite the fireworks show – and it all happened only about 20 feet in front of Mel. He told us that he was sobered by the realization that had he been going just a little faster, he could have been killed by this falling tree or electrocuted by the downed power lines.
Now Mel is a very important person to the work of Hope House. I believe that God sent him our way, because he is a man of many skills and someone who has given us the full benefit of his years of building experience – all at a 20% discount! I really think the Spirit led him to us. I really think the Enemy tried to take him out. And I really think that the Spirit protected Mel from death – not only for his family’s sake, but also because we need him for this work that the Lord has called us to do. So the Spirit empowers us for ministry – and I think he protects us for that ministry when he needs to.
Since God has commissioned us to go out and minister to the world, I also think that the Holy Spirit arranges meetings for us. On Friday, same day that we heard Mel’s story, Cindy and I had just pulled up over at Hope House, when a young black man walked by. We greeted him and he stopped and remarked that his niece and dated Donte Ward, that he himself attended St. Jospeph Catholic Church, and that we were doing a good work at the house. He told us his name was Rich.
As he talked with us some more, he also told us that he was from Miami and had moved here recently after having been robbed and shot by a young man who had originally asked him for a dollar on the streets of Miami – in broad daylight! . For the thirty dollars that he had in his pocket, the robber put a .38 in Rich’s mouth and pulled the trigger – propelling the bullet through the side of his cheek. (The scar was still plainly visible.) Rich was also shot in the belly and when he dropped to the ground, the robber shot him twice in the back and attempted to shoot him in the head twice – but these bullets missed him. He went to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami and waited 12 hours without being seen because the staff was too busy treating other gunshot wounds.
Finally in frustration, Rich, dug the bullet out of his belly himself with his pocket knife ( he is a paramedic by training) and dropped the bullet on the nurses desk, saying ‘Thanks for nothing”. He walked out and still carries two bullets in his back! There was more to his story – but believe me, it’s too awful to relate to you here today. The point is, that somehow Rich walked by Hope House at the precise moment we were there to great him.
At one point in his story, he began to cry. We awkwardly tried to console him, and after a minute or two of conversation, he walked off down the street. We started in to work, and all of a sudden, who should appear but Rich, saying that ‘something’ told him to come back and help us – which he did. He picked up a sledge hammer and busted up some concrete before going off down the street.
What was the something that told him to come back? What was it that caused our paths to cross? I believe it was the work of the Spirit.
I don’t claim to understand it and I don’t have any idea whether or not I will ever see Rich again. I only know that as Christians, when we attempt to be directed by, and controlled by the Spirit, all kinds of interesting things happen to us.
We are called to go into the world, taking salvation, healing and reconciliation with us into the midst of the world's pain. Being available to the Holy Spirit as his vehicle is not necessarily comfortable. It might even be dangerous at times. But there’s nothing more exciting or interesting in life either.
I fully expect that in the next week, we are going to see marvelous things take place in the run-up to our Day of Hope on May 17. I’m confident that we will also experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the day, especially at the Memorial service. At the present time, we have some ten different churches cooperating to contribute to this event! That alone is a minor miracle!
I pray for us as a church that God would give us the grace to put ourselves out on a limb for Him. As we do so, I am confident that we will see God do great works in our midst, for truly, God’s power is perfected in weakness, and he gives help to those who realize they are too small to help themselves. Amen.
From our scripture readings today: Acts 2:1-11; I Cor. 12:4-13, and John 20:19-23, it is apparent that the gift of the Holy Spirit is power for ministry and witness. On the day of Pentecost, the spirit comes with such power that it sounds like a mighty rushing wind, giving the disciples the gift of communicating the Gospel in other tongues. Tongues of fire appear over the head of each one, giving us our liturgical color red for this day.
In the Gospel lesson, Jesus specifically tells the disciples he is sending them out, just as the Father sent him and he gives them the breath, the wind, of the Spirit to help them and comfort them. Incidentally, this is one of the verses that theologians point to, to explain the so-called ‘procession of the Holy Spirit’. In the Nicene Creed we say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and this is the literal description of that procession.
So the ministry of the Spirit is about empowerment for ministry. God knows we need it. What we have been asked to do as Christians is impossible without God’s power. In the first place, the task of going into all the world and making disciples of all nations is too big for human effort alone. In the second place, we are involved in a pitched battle with forces who do not love God and who try to thwart God’s will be neutralizing or even taking us out if possible.
On Friday evening, after we finished building the forms for the concrete at Hope House, Mel Cummings Cindy and a story about how he had had a very close call the day before. He was driving up the steep road that leads from fifth street hill up to the museum and as he was going up the steepest part, a tree fell across the road taking out power lines with it causing the ancient tree to catch on fire immediately. Apparently it was quite the fireworks show – and it all happened only about 20 feet in front of Mel. He told us that he was sobered by the realization that had he been going just a little faster, he could have been killed by this falling tree or electrocuted by the downed power lines.
Now Mel is a very important person to the work of Hope House. I believe that God sent him our way, because he is a man of many skills and someone who has given us the full benefit of his years of building experience – all at a 20% discount! I really think the Spirit led him to us. I really think the Enemy tried to take him out. And I really think that the Spirit protected Mel from death – not only for his family’s sake, but also because we need him for this work that the Lord has called us to do. So the Spirit empowers us for ministry – and I think he protects us for that ministry when he needs to.
Since God has commissioned us to go out and minister to the world, I also think that the Holy Spirit arranges meetings for us. On Friday, same day that we heard Mel’s story, Cindy and I had just pulled up over at Hope House, when a young black man walked by. We greeted him and he stopped and remarked that his niece and dated Donte Ward, that he himself attended St. Jospeph Catholic Church, and that we were doing a good work at the house. He told us his name was Rich.
As he talked with us some more, he also told us that he was from Miami and had moved here recently after having been robbed and shot by a young man who had originally asked him for a dollar on the streets of Miami – in broad daylight! . For the thirty dollars that he had in his pocket, the robber put a .38 in Rich’s mouth and pulled the trigger – propelling the bullet through the side of his cheek. (The scar was still plainly visible.) Rich was also shot in the belly and when he dropped to the ground, the robber shot him twice in the back and attempted to shoot him in the head twice – but these bullets missed him. He went to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami and waited 12 hours without being seen because the staff was too busy treating other gunshot wounds.
Finally in frustration, Rich, dug the bullet out of his belly himself with his pocket knife ( he is a paramedic by training) and dropped the bullet on the nurses desk, saying ‘Thanks for nothing”. He walked out and still carries two bullets in his back! There was more to his story – but believe me, it’s too awful to relate to you here today. The point is, that somehow Rich walked by Hope House at the precise moment we were there to great him.
At one point in his story, he began to cry. We awkwardly tried to console him, and after a minute or two of conversation, he walked off down the street. We started in to work, and all of a sudden, who should appear but Rich, saying that ‘something’ told him to come back and help us – which he did. He picked up a sledge hammer and busted up some concrete before going off down the street.
What was the something that told him to come back? What was it that caused our paths to cross? I believe it was the work of the Spirit.
I don’t claim to understand it and I don’t have any idea whether or not I will ever see Rich again. I only know that as Christians, when we attempt to be directed by, and controlled by the Spirit, all kinds of interesting things happen to us.
We are called to go into the world, taking salvation, healing and reconciliation with us into the midst of the world's pain. Being available to the Holy Spirit as his vehicle is not necessarily comfortable. It might even be dangerous at times. But there’s nothing more exciting or interesting in life either.
I fully expect that in the next week, we are going to see marvelous things take place in the run-up to our Day of Hope on May 17. I’m confident that we will also experience the ministry of the Holy Spirit during the day, especially at the Memorial service. At the present time, we have some ten different churches cooperating to contribute to this event! That alone is a minor miracle!
I pray for us as a church that God would give us the grace to put ourselves out on a limb for Him. As we do so, I am confident that we will see God do great works in our midst, for truly, God’s power is perfected in weakness, and he gives help to those who realize they are too small to help themselves. Amen.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
That They All May Be One
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on May 4, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, based on John 17:1-11.
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life,that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "
When Doc Loomis visited with us last week, there was lots of talk about what is happening in the Anglican Communion at this time. After he left, he responded to a couple of questions via email, clarifying some of his statements about current events. He says in part:
A new US Province will ultimately form, and the AMiA will almost certainly be a part of it. The overarching relationship scheme is difficult to predict as many issues must needs be addressed by the (Southern Sponsored) American Anglican groups who desire unity…but the final outcome will likely be ONE new province (in a worldwide communion of provinces) and the AMiA will serve as a Missionary Order within that province. At this moment, we are a Missionary Jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of Rwanda… On a prophetic note: the A[nglican] C[ommunion], as we now understand it, will likely begin the final stages of its inevitable unraveling at GAFCON [Global Anglican Future Conference]. So, whatever forms here will almost certainly not be a part of Canterbury’s lot. So, ECUSA will not be in communion with us then, as they are not now.
Jesus, in his so-called ‘high priestly prayer, prays for unity in the church. He asks that we may be One as He is one with the father. Now that’s a big ticket – being unified. And at first glance, we might think that this prayer has gone unanswered – or that we Christians have been so rebellious that we have thwarted God’s will.
But we must see this in light of God’s overarching will for his people – to be One in the spirit. Whatever else we might think about organizational unity in the church, such unity was lost officially in 1054 with the Great Schism between East and West. But it really began to go south about 200 years prior to that when there grew to be a conflict about who was going to be the head honcho – Rome or Constantinople. The Church of Rome has also had its splits. During one infamous period of time between 1305 and 1376 when there were actually Pairs of Popes – one in Rome and one in Avignon France.
While I’m sure Jesus would have liked nothing better than for us to be organizationally unified, yet the church has been compared rightfully to a family – and we know that families often have trouble with unity amongst themselves. We can see that with Jesus’ own family. He begins his earthly ministry in Capernaum and his family comes to get him and try to drag him back home. They think he has lost his marbles, or come down with a case of delusions of grandeur. Jesus replies to their concerns with the rather caustic response, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Here, I think, we can see something of what it means to be truly unified. We become unified in our faith, in the Spirit, in our dedication to Christ. When people loose that, they are no longer truly unified and whether they attend the same church doesn’t really matter. The spirit of unity has fled. In our own experience we know that even though we belong to a family with a certain name –Counts or Walker or Arbogast or Brown, we often are not really at one or unified with our own family members. Our interests can diverge to such an extent that we can’t imagine how it was we happened to fall into the same genetic sibling group. (Who knows, perhaps we were indeed seeded here by aliens, as Richard Dawkins suggests…).
At any rate, unity does not come about simply because you are part of the same organization. This can be true in the business world, where we work for the same company but are radically different from our fellows in our approach to our jobs. It can perhaps be suggested, that truly great companies are those that have figured out how to be unified under a great leader, a great vision, or a great set of organizational principles. True unity is of the spirit, not necessarily the flesh.
One of the things that Doc spoke about when he was here was the idea that the church is going through a reformation, not realignment. The latter speaks of a rearrangement of something that was already there. You get your car’s wheels re-aligned when they get out of alignment. It’s an adjustment of what it already there. But with a reformation, something different takes place. A reformation is where you take your car in to the shop and they remove the front wheel assembly and rebuild it completely. It’s a fundamental change.
Now during the history of the church, there have been several reformations. The first reformation came in response to the widespread acceptance of Christianity as an official religion of Rome. When whole armies of soldiers were baptized by marching them through rivers on their horses, something fundamental changed about the nature of professing faith. The desert fathers and mothers of Egypt went out to the waste places to practice the true faith and to really meet God. Through their asceticism, they showed the church how to reach the height and depth of true belief and sanctity. St. Benedict took the wisdom and insight of these desert fathers, such as Anthony and Basil, and adapted it to a communal lifestyle. In so doing he created the pattern for the evangelization of Western Europe. He wasn’t starting out to make a reformation; he was only trying to live the gospel in the presence of a few others who were trying to do the same. But his divinely inspired Rule became the blueprint for the next thousand years of Christian growth.
By the time that St. Francis came around in the 1200’s, the church had fallen into corruption and laziness. It was badly in need of a reformation. Jesus conveyed this to Francis when he spoke to Francis from the cross at San Damiano. “Rebuild my church” was the message given to the young Italian. Taking the message literally, Francis proceeded to beg rocks and mortar to rebuild churches that had fallen into disrepair. But soon enough, it became apparent that Jesus was interested in a more profound reformation than just stones and mortar. For within Francis’ lifetime, he had made such a huge impact on ordinary believers, that he single-handedly brought reformation to the Catholic Church of his day. Amazingly enough, Francis inspired true reformation while maintaining complete loyalty to the Pope, whom he saw as God’s true representative on earth. His was not an organizational reformation, but a reformation of the heart. In a sense we can say that what Benedict started, Francis reformed through the same radical spirit of love and devotion to Jesus Christ.
Skipping ahead to the “Reformation” proper of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Church of England, here we have an example of a different type of reformation, one that resulted in unintentional organizational breaks from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was keen to reform the church from within, not to start his own church. And had he lived in Francis’ time instead of his own, it’s possible that he may not have had to split from Rome. But with the prevailing political climate what it was in Europe and with the new technology of the printing press, Luther faced circumstances that Francis could not even have imagined.
As doc related to us, some have said that the first Reformation was about getting the Word into the hands of the people – and this effort was met with such resistance from Rome that organizational unity was broken.
The Church of England, of course, tried to find a middle way, reforming but remaining Catholic in spirit and worship practice. Here too, however, the organizational split between Rome and King Henry might never have come about if Henry hadn’t had difficulty producing an heir and trying to find money for his government. Politics and money have always had an impact on the church. We are, after all, in the world.
Granted, Jesus told us that we should be in the world but not of the world, and some of our problems in the church have come about because the world was too much in the church and some of us couldn’t stand it. This is just as much a part of reformation as politics and money. Some believers are truly zealous for truth and can’t stand the idea of sharing the communion rail with people who openly reject what we believe as Christians: namely: this is eternal life , that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
In our own time, the Apostasy of the Episcopal Church has compelled us to walk away from a church that can no longer be recognized as distinctly Christian. Thus we find ourselves in flight from heresy, but also drawn to something that we can hardly imagine: another Reformation. If indeed the First Reformation was about getting the Bible into the hands of the people, then the second reformation has been prophetically labeled ‘getting the ministry into the hands of the people’
As with any Reformation, one looks back on hundreds of years, not tens of years to assess what has actually come to pass. Five hundred years after the first Book of Common Prayer, historians are still writing books about the first reformation. Thus as we live through these trying and uncertain times, we must remember that all of us here will die before the next crop of historians figure out what our time was really about.
One thing we do know is that the current movement of the Holy Spirit is operating across denominational lines. Denominations are not being erased, but there is a new cooperation across lines, while Churches still affirm their own unique identity. Thus, on Thursday, I participated with the leaders of several other congregations to pray for our nation and our institutions. We were from different groups but there was a spirit of unity present –largely because we had come to know each other over many years. Almost without exception, the people in the room had prayed and worked together many times previously, and have come to love and appreciate each other, while holding on to their own denominational distinctives.
Politically, we live in an era when people are not as dedicated to parties or organizations as they once were. This affects the church negatively in that people don’t grow up Methodist and stay Methodist ‘just because’ they grew up that way. Rather, people affiliate by Affinity with those to whom they feel a soul connection.
And it is in this spirit that we can often find a true spirit of unity with our brothers and sisters from other churches. I have come to respect and appreciate Darrel Buttram from the 10th Avenue Church of God, as a very spiritually sensitive, gifted and passionate preacher. I don’t have the same affinity for his denomination as he does, (and to hear him tell it, he struggles with it himself)…but we have enough in common that we can appear on the same platform together at our upcoming community memorial service.
In a recent pastors’ meeting, Darrel said to me that one of the things that All Saints Anglican Church can really do for our community is to offer Communion again as we did last year. Our understanding of the Lord’s Table is one of the unique gifts that we have to offer our World, and folks from other traditions see and appreciate this. While they may not understand our sacramental view of the Lords’ supper or agree with it, yet there is a respect present. Chuck Lawrence from Christ Temple remarked to me after last year’s Memorial service, that it really was very beautiful.
So again, here is where we find unity, in the spirit of love and mutual respect, based in our love for Jesus Christ. Our true brothers and sisters are those believers who love Jesus and are unafraid to proclaim this love. Given a choice between a Jesus-lovin’ Pentecostal and a Unitarian fish wife who can’t articulate why she goes to a Christian church, I’ll pick the Pentecostal any day!
We are continuing to pray for discernment as a church regarding affiliation with AMIA vs. CANA. We still have some questions to ponder. For instance, here’s docs’ response to the question of Womens’ Ordination:
...whatever happens here, [in America] the AMiA will not support the ordination of women to the presbyterate,[everbody say prez- boo- er- ate] and will not come under the specific authority of leaders who do.
In contrast, here is what the CANA web site says on this issue:
CANA recognizes that there are differing theological positions in the Anglican Communion about women in ordained ministry. CANA acknowledges the integrity of those who understand Holy Scripture to permit the ordination of women to the presbytereate and those who believe the Scripture prohibits women’s ordination. Because of the differing positions, CANA policies regarding the ordination of women will be developed from a biblical and pastoral perspective. CANA is committed to modeling for American Anglicans the possibility of respecting both integrities regarding the ordination of women within one ecclesial body. There has been at least one woman deacon ordained by a CANA bishop and there are several other women clergy who have been licensed. Yet, a CANA congregation which objects to women in the presbytereate will not be expected to endorse or call women clergy to serve in their community.
How will this issue affect our ability to come together as a unified body of orthodox Anglicans? I myself would accept a woman deacon, but not a priest. I cannot in good conscience affiliate with a group that accepts women priests, yet I know that there are orthodox Anglicans who do, and I want to accept them, but not their view on that issue. Beyond this, there is the simple expedient of which group is geographically closest to us and can best support us. Which group most closely matches our personality and mission as a congregation?
If we had the advantage of a hundred years of history upon which to base our decision, perhaps it wouldn’t be so seemingly complex. But we don’t. We have to live through this Reformation and wait to see what it becomes – if we live that long. Therefore, let us seek out those with whom we have unity of Spirit, kindred hearts, and minds set upon similar purposes, and let us boldly move ahead, secure in the knowledge that God has more power to lead us than the Devil has to deceive us. AMEN.
Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life,that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "
When Doc Loomis visited with us last week, there was lots of talk about what is happening in the Anglican Communion at this time. After he left, he responded to a couple of questions via email, clarifying some of his statements about current events. He says in part:
A new US Province will ultimately form, and the AMiA will almost certainly be a part of it. The overarching relationship scheme is difficult to predict as many issues must needs be addressed by the (Southern Sponsored) American Anglican groups who desire unity…but the final outcome will likely be ONE new province (in a worldwide communion of provinces) and the AMiA will serve as a Missionary Order within that province. At this moment, we are a Missionary Jurisdiction of the Anglican Province of Rwanda… On a prophetic note: the A[nglican] C[ommunion], as we now understand it, will likely begin the final stages of its inevitable unraveling at GAFCON [Global Anglican Future Conference]. So, whatever forms here will almost certainly not be a part of Canterbury’s lot. So, ECUSA will not be in communion with us then, as they are not now.
Jesus, in his so-called ‘high priestly prayer, prays for unity in the church. He asks that we may be One as He is one with the father. Now that’s a big ticket – being unified. And at first glance, we might think that this prayer has gone unanswered – or that we Christians have been so rebellious that we have thwarted God’s will.
But we must see this in light of God’s overarching will for his people – to be One in the spirit. Whatever else we might think about organizational unity in the church, such unity was lost officially in 1054 with the Great Schism between East and West. But it really began to go south about 200 years prior to that when there grew to be a conflict about who was going to be the head honcho – Rome or Constantinople. The Church of Rome has also had its splits. During one infamous period of time between 1305 and 1376 when there were actually Pairs of Popes – one in Rome and one in Avignon France.
While I’m sure Jesus would have liked nothing better than for us to be organizationally unified, yet the church has been compared rightfully to a family – and we know that families often have trouble with unity amongst themselves. We can see that with Jesus’ own family. He begins his earthly ministry in Capernaum and his family comes to get him and try to drag him back home. They think he has lost his marbles, or come down with a case of delusions of grandeur. Jesus replies to their concerns with the rather caustic response, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
Here, I think, we can see something of what it means to be truly unified. We become unified in our faith, in the Spirit, in our dedication to Christ. When people loose that, they are no longer truly unified and whether they attend the same church doesn’t really matter. The spirit of unity has fled. In our own experience we know that even though we belong to a family with a certain name –Counts or Walker or Arbogast or Brown, we often are not really at one or unified with our own family members. Our interests can diverge to such an extent that we can’t imagine how it was we happened to fall into the same genetic sibling group. (Who knows, perhaps we were indeed seeded here by aliens, as Richard Dawkins suggests…).
At any rate, unity does not come about simply because you are part of the same organization. This can be true in the business world, where we work for the same company but are radically different from our fellows in our approach to our jobs. It can perhaps be suggested, that truly great companies are those that have figured out how to be unified under a great leader, a great vision, or a great set of organizational principles. True unity is of the spirit, not necessarily the flesh.
One of the things that Doc spoke about when he was here was the idea that the church is going through a reformation, not realignment. The latter speaks of a rearrangement of something that was already there. You get your car’s wheels re-aligned when they get out of alignment. It’s an adjustment of what it already there. But with a reformation, something different takes place. A reformation is where you take your car in to the shop and they remove the front wheel assembly and rebuild it completely. It’s a fundamental change.
Now during the history of the church, there have been several reformations. The first reformation came in response to the widespread acceptance of Christianity as an official religion of Rome. When whole armies of soldiers were baptized by marching them through rivers on their horses, something fundamental changed about the nature of professing faith. The desert fathers and mothers of Egypt went out to the waste places to practice the true faith and to really meet God. Through their asceticism, they showed the church how to reach the height and depth of true belief and sanctity. St. Benedict took the wisdom and insight of these desert fathers, such as Anthony and Basil, and adapted it to a communal lifestyle. In so doing he created the pattern for the evangelization of Western Europe. He wasn’t starting out to make a reformation; he was only trying to live the gospel in the presence of a few others who were trying to do the same. But his divinely inspired Rule became the blueprint for the next thousand years of Christian growth.
By the time that St. Francis came around in the 1200’s, the church had fallen into corruption and laziness. It was badly in need of a reformation. Jesus conveyed this to Francis when he spoke to Francis from the cross at San Damiano. “Rebuild my church” was the message given to the young Italian. Taking the message literally, Francis proceeded to beg rocks and mortar to rebuild churches that had fallen into disrepair. But soon enough, it became apparent that Jesus was interested in a more profound reformation than just stones and mortar. For within Francis’ lifetime, he had made such a huge impact on ordinary believers, that he single-handedly brought reformation to the Catholic Church of his day. Amazingly enough, Francis inspired true reformation while maintaining complete loyalty to the Pope, whom he saw as God’s true representative on earth. His was not an organizational reformation, but a reformation of the heart. In a sense we can say that what Benedict started, Francis reformed through the same radical spirit of love and devotion to Jesus Christ.
Skipping ahead to the “Reformation” proper of Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Church of England, here we have an example of a different type of reformation, one that resulted in unintentional organizational breaks from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was keen to reform the church from within, not to start his own church. And had he lived in Francis’ time instead of his own, it’s possible that he may not have had to split from Rome. But with the prevailing political climate what it was in Europe and with the new technology of the printing press, Luther faced circumstances that Francis could not even have imagined.
As doc related to us, some have said that the first Reformation was about getting the Word into the hands of the people – and this effort was met with such resistance from Rome that organizational unity was broken.
The Church of England, of course, tried to find a middle way, reforming but remaining Catholic in spirit and worship practice. Here too, however, the organizational split between Rome and King Henry might never have come about if Henry hadn’t had difficulty producing an heir and trying to find money for his government. Politics and money have always had an impact on the church. We are, after all, in the world.
Granted, Jesus told us that we should be in the world but not of the world, and some of our problems in the church have come about because the world was too much in the church and some of us couldn’t stand it. This is just as much a part of reformation as politics and money. Some believers are truly zealous for truth and can’t stand the idea of sharing the communion rail with people who openly reject what we believe as Christians: namely: this is eternal life , that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent
In our own time, the Apostasy of the Episcopal Church has compelled us to walk away from a church that can no longer be recognized as distinctly Christian. Thus we find ourselves in flight from heresy, but also drawn to something that we can hardly imagine: another Reformation. If indeed the First Reformation was about getting the Bible into the hands of the people, then the second reformation has been prophetically labeled ‘getting the ministry into the hands of the people’
As with any Reformation, one looks back on hundreds of years, not tens of years to assess what has actually come to pass. Five hundred years after the first Book of Common Prayer, historians are still writing books about the first reformation. Thus as we live through these trying and uncertain times, we must remember that all of us here will die before the next crop of historians figure out what our time was really about.
One thing we do know is that the current movement of the Holy Spirit is operating across denominational lines. Denominations are not being erased, but there is a new cooperation across lines, while Churches still affirm their own unique identity. Thus, on Thursday, I participated with the leaders of several other congregations to pray for our nation and our institutions. We were from different groups but there was a spirit of unity present –largely because we had come to know each other over many years. Almost without exception, the people in the room had prayed and worked together many times previously, and have come to love and appreciate each other, while holding on to their own denominational distinctives.
Politically, we live in an era when people are not as dedicated to parties or organizations as they once were. This affects the church negatively in that people don’t grow up Methodist and stay Methodist ‘just because’ they grew up that way. Rather, people affiliate by Affinity with those to whom they feel a soul connection.
And it is in this spirit that we can often find a true spirit of unity with our brothers and sisters from other churches. I have come to respect and appreciate Darrel Buttram from the 10th Avenue Church of God, as a very spiritually sensitive, gifted and passionate preacher. I don’t have the same affinity for his denomination as he does, (and to hear him tell it, he struggles with it himself)…but we have enough in common that we can appear on the same platform together at our upcoming community memorial service.
In a recent pastors’ meeting, Darrel said to me that one of the things that All Saints Anglican Church can really do for our community is to offer Communion again as we did last year. Our understanding of the Lord’s Table is one of the unique gifts that we have to offer our World, and folks from other traditions see and appreciate this. While they may not understand our sacramental view of the Lords’ supper or agree with it, yet there is a respect present. Chuck Lawrence from Christ Temple remarked to me after last year’s Memorial service, that it really was very beautiful.
So again, here is where we find unity, in the spirit of love and mutual respect, based in our love for Jesus Christ. Our true brothers and sisters are those believers who love Jesus and are unafraid to proclaim this love. Given a choice between a Jesus-lovin’ Pentecostal and a Unitarian fish wife who can’t articulate why she goes to a Christian church, I’ll pick the Pentecostal any day!
We are continuing to pray for discernment as a church regarding affiliation with AMIA vs. CANA. We still have some questions to ponder. For instance, here’s docs’ response to the question of Womens’ Ordination:
...whatever happens here, [in America] the AMiA will not support the ordination of women to the presbyterate,[everbody say prez- boo- er- ate] and will not come under the specific authority of leaders who do.
In contrast, here is what the CANA web site says on this issue:
CANA recognizes that there are differing theological positions in the Anglican Communion about women in ordained ministry. CANA acknowledges the integrity of those who understand Holy Scripture to permit the ordination of women to the presbytereate and those who believe the Scripture prohibits women’s ordination. Because of the differing positions, CANA policies regarding the ordination of women will be developed from a biblical and pastoral perspective. CANA is committed to modeling for American Anglicans the possibility of respecting both integrities regarding the ordination of women within one ecclesial body. There has been at least one woman deacon ordained by a CANA bishop and there are several other women clergy who have been licensed. Yet, a CANA congregation which objects to women in the presbytereate will not be expected to endorse or call women clergy to serve in their community.
How will this issue affect our ability to come together as a unified body of orthodox Anglicans? I myself would accept a woman deacon, but not a priest. I cannot in good conscience affiliate with a group that accepts women priests, yet I know that there are orthodox Anglicans who do, and I want to accept them, but not their view on that issue. Beyond this, there is the simple expedient of which group is geographically closest to us and can best support us. Which group most closely matches our personality and mission as a congregation?
If we had the advantage of a hundred years of history upon which to base our decision, perhaps it wouldn’t be so seemingly complex. But we don’t. We have to live through this Reformation and wait to see what it becomes – if we live that long. Therefore, let us seek out those with whom we have unity of Spirit, kindred hearts, and minds set upon similar purposes, and let us boldly move ahead, secure in the knowledge that God has more power to lead us than the Devil has to deceive us. AMEN.
Friday, May 02, 2008
Prayer for Families
A Prayer composed for the National Day of Prayer, May 1, 2008. Given at the West Virginia State Capitol Rotunda
Holy and Gracious Father, in your infinite love, you created the Family and ordained it to be the institution by which our children are nurtured in safety and first come to know You. We humbly pray you to forgive us for our failure to live up to our high calling to lead godly lives before You, and to reproduce a godly heritage.
We have not been faithful to protect marital bonds. We have pursued our own selfish ambitions to the detriment of our children. We have put the pursuit of material things above the spiritual wellbeing of our loved ones and we have reaped a whirlwind of brokenness and conflict, reproducing failure upon failure.
God be merciful and forgive us and cause your face to shed its light upon us. Give us grace to humble ourselves before You and cry out for strength to live sober and disciplined lives, that our works may find favor in your sight, and that our families may be blessed with fruitfulness.
God turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. God be gracious to all mothers, and especially to those who struggle valiantly to raise their children alone. God remember all long-suffering grandparents who courageously care for their grandchildren. God give us all a spirit of adoption, by which we reach out to care for the orphan and the abandoned, to those who are in danger because of abuse, or who suffer neglect and want because of the careless disregard of the adults around them.
Have mercy on us O Lord, Have mercy, for in you is found forgiveness and You shall redeem us from all our sins, even as we put our hope in You. All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By Him and with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.
Holy and Gracious Father, in your infinite love, you created the Family and ordained it to be the institution by which our children are nurtured in safety and first come to know You. We humbly pray you to forgive us for our failure to live up to our high calling to lead godly lives before You, and to reproduce a godly heritage.
We have not been faithful to protect marital bonds. We have pursued our own selfish ambitions to the detriment of our children. We have put the pursuit of material things above the spiritual wellbeing of our loved ones and we have reaped a whirlwind of brokenness and conflict, reproducing failure upon failure.
God be merciful and forgive us and cause your face to shed its light upon us. Give us grace to humble ourselves before You and cry out for strength to live sober and disciplined lives, that our works may find favor in your sight, and that our families may be blessed with fruitfulness.
God turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. God be gracious to all mothers, and especially to those who struggle valiantly to raise their children alone. God remember all long-suffering grandparents who courageously care for their grandchildren. God give us all a spirit of adoption, by which we reach out to care for the orphan and the abandoned, to those who are in danger because of abuse, or who suffer neglect and want because of the careless disregard of the adults around them.
Have mercy on us O Lord, Have mercy, for in you is found forgiveness and You shall redeem us from all our sins, even as we put our hope in You. All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ. By Him and with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
How Big is Your God?
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on April 13, 2008 at St. Mary's Medical Center Convent Chapel, based on Nehemiah 9:6-15
Fill in the musical blank as I sing:
My dog’s bigger than (your dog).
My Dog’s bigger than (your’s).
My dog’s bigger ‘cause he eats (Kennel Ration).
My dog’s bigger than (your’s).
Remember that from the 60’s? Let’s be a little impertinent and turn this around and ask:
How Big is your God? …
Is your God the One who made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their angelic hosts, the earth and all that is on it? Does your God preserve the sea and all that is in it? Does the host of Heaven bow down and worship your God?
Does your God make Covenants with people and does He keep them forever? Does he perform signs and wonders for His covenant people and lead them through deep waters - set pillars of cloud and fire to guide them through the desert, and then give them food from heaven to eat?
Is your God Gracious and Merciful, slow to anger and abounding in Steadfast Love, keeping faith with his people even when they lose faith and turn to worship other Gods? …
Is He?
Does He lead you beside still waters and restore your soul? Is He with you even in the shadow of Death?
Does He prepare a table before you in the Presence of your enemies? Does he anoint your head with oil and make your cup overflow?
Could you identify the sound of your God’s voice?
If someone was trying to imitate your God and disguised their voice to sound like His, could you tell the difference? Do you trust that voice enough to follow it wherever it leads you?
And would you willingly give up something precious for your God if that thing or person was leading you away from your God?
Would you?
If not, your God is too small and you need a bigger one to follow.
The Big God of Scripture
You need the One found in the pages of Nehemiah and Psalm 23 and John 10 and Acts 7 – a God who is Big enough and powerful enough to command the universe, but One who is loving enough to care for you and to desire a close personal relationship with you.
You need a God that you are willing to die for but One that you are willing to Live for as well - A God that speaks to you personally and a God that demands your allegiance because he made you – a God that is High and Lifted up – but one who stoops to help you in your weakness.
Friends, do you have a God like this?
Discovering the True God of the Bible
In our lesson from Nehemiah today, we pick up the story mid – way through - after Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and reconstructed the walls around the city despite the opposition of the surrounding peoples. A census had been taken of all the returned exiles and on a great day of dedication, the people had stood from early morning to until mid-day as the Book of the Law of Moses was read out in their hearing. They wept when they heard the law, and then they celebrated a Holy Day with feasting.
They constructed booths out of branches and lived in them for seven days while they were listening to the word and its explanation. And on the eighth day they confessed their sins before God and worshipped Him.
The Levite priests (be thankful you didn’t have to read their names today) told the people to Stand up and bless the Lord because His name is exalted above all blessing and praise. He’s a big God and He deserves all the praise we can muster before him.
The people praised God and recounted his actions in history towards them – and they confessed their sins very specifically – for a long time, a quarter of a day.
And then they made a written covenant with this God and sealed their names upon it. They solemnly swore to observe the Law he had given to Moses, to not allow intermarriage with the people of the surrounding areas, to observe the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee, and to bring the firstfruits of their labor to the Lord for the maintenance of the temple worship, saying “We will not neglect the house of our God.” (Neh 10:39).
Because Jerusalem’s walls had been torn down, it wasn’t safe to live there for many years, so after the new wall was completed the peoplecast lots and chose 10 % of the population to live there, while the rest of the people lived in smaller outlying towns. They dedicated the wall they had built and began daily temple worship, offering ‘great sacrifices’ with great joy – all because they were serving a great God.
Nehemiah’s Reforms
And then Nehemiah sets about cleaning house. He separates out from Israel all of foreign descent. No Ammonites or Moabites welcome –because their people did not help the Israelites and hired Balaam to curse them.
But then Nehemiah goes back to Babylon for several years. When he returns, he finds things have fallen apart. He discovers that the corrupt priest Eliashib had created a nice little crib for his homey Tobia in the temple – and he throws them both out on their ears and cleanses the place, returning it to its sacred storehouse function.
He discovers that the Levites had not been given their portion and they had had to go out and work in the fields instead of worshipping God. Nehemiah restores the tithe and the people bring in their first fruits to the Lord.
The observance of the Sabbath had gone by the boards, and he restores it – by force.
And then comes the coup de grace: Nehemiah learns that the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab and that half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, not Hebrew. Listen to how he handles this situation:
“And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God” …that they would not intermarry with the surrounding peoples! (Wow!)
The last thing he does is to chase off the son-in-law of Sanballat, who had caused so much trouble to the people.
And Nehemiah closes his book by asking God to remember him for God because he had cleansed everything foreign.
Now, is your God as big as Nehemiah’s?
For the sake of your God, are you willing to cleanse out of your life anything that displeases God? Are you willing to attempt big huge projects on behalf of your God because you love Him and the Law he has set before you? Are you willing to bring him the first and the best of all you have to offer?
And are you willing to stand up for righteousness and confront God’s people when they stray? ( Can you imagine Nehemiah at General Conference 2003?...!)
Are you? If you are, it’s because you have caught a vision for a God that is High and Lifted up, worthy of honor, much to be feared and obeyed as the absolute, sovereign Creator.
The Rest of the Story….
But this is only half the story about our God. The rest of it (as Paul Harvey says) is that God is a God of love, who desires an intimate relationship with you, the sheep of his hand.
Our Big View of God must include his power and righteousness. Without this we are impoverished as people. But our big view also has to include fact that Jesus died on the cross for us and has wiped away our certificate of debt before God the righteous judge.
This same God has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside of us and to have intimate fellowship with us. When Jesus said, in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me”, he wasn’t talking to non -believers, He was talking to the lukewarm church at Laodicea, trying to reprove and discipline them so that they could enter in to this close, loving relationship with God and eventually share the very throne of God with Him!
God, our God, Loves you and wants to spend time with you! This is the most amazing thing in the Universe! Surely there can be no higher privilege than to Hobnob with the Most High!
So let me challenge and encourage you to do some things:
1) Repent of your obtuseness in the Face of a Holy and Awesome God. He is your maker and he deserves the very best you have to offer, even if you don’t understand Him or what He’s doing in your life.
2) Love Him and spend time with him every day! This Mighty God of ours also cares about each hair on your head. He has an infinite amount of time for you – and for me too. No problem is too small for Him. “Cast your burden upon the Lord – for he will sustain you…” (Ps. 55:22).
3) Don’t fall prey to Benjamin Franklin’s quip that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s cute, but it ain’t right. God emphatically helps those who call upon Him for wisdom and then do what He tells them to do. This is the opposite of self-sufficiency.
4) Give Him yourself – it’s the best and only thing you really have to Give Him.
I’d like to close with this prayer of dedication that we usually pray during our Celtic Eucharist
Prayer of Dedication
Each thing I have received,
from YOU it came.
Each thing for which I hope,
from YOUR love it will come.
Each thing I enjoy,
it is of YOUR Bounty.
So I am giving YOU offering with my
whole thought.
I am giving YOU Love with my
whole heart.
I am giving YOU affection with my
whole devotion.
And I am giving You my soul,
O God of all Gods.
AMEN.
Fill in the musical blank as I sing:
My dog’s bigger than (your dog).
My Dog’s bigger than (your’s).
My dog’s bigger ‘cause he eats (Kennel Ration).
My dog’s bigger than (your’s).
Remember that from the 60’s? Let’s be a little impertinent and turn this around and ask:
How Big is your God? …
Is your God the One who made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their angelic hosts, the earth and all that is on it? Does your God preserve the sea and all that is in it? Does the host of Heaven bow down and worship your God?
Does your God make Covenants with people and does He keep them forever? Does he perform signs and wonders for His covenant people and lead them through deep waters - set pillars of cloud and fire to guide them through the desert, and then give them food from heaven to eat?
Is your God Gracious and Merciful, slow to anger and abounding in Steadfast Love, keeping faith with his people even when they lose faith and turn to worship other Gods? …
Is He?
Does He lead you beside still waters and restore your soul? Is He with you even in the shadow of Death?
Does He prepare a table before you in the Presence of your enemies? Does he anoint your head with oil and make your cup overflow?
Could you identify the sound of your God’s voice?
If someone was trying to imitate your God and disguised their voice to sound like His, could you tell the difference? Do you trust that voice enough to follow it wherever it leads you?
And would you willingly give up something precious for your God if that thing or person was leading you away from your God?
Would you?
If not, your God is too small and you need a bigger one to follow.
The Big God of Scripture
You need the One found in the pages of Nehemiah and Psalm 23 and John 10 and Acts 7 – a God who is Big enough and powerful enough to command the universe, but One who is loving enough to care for you and to desire a close personal relationship with you.
You need a God that you are willing to die for but One that you are willing to Live for as well - A God that speaks to you personally and a God that demands your allegiance because he made you – a God that is High and Lifted up – but one who stoops to help you in your weakness.
Friends, do you have a God like this?
Discovering the True God of the Bible
In our lesson from Nehemiah today, we pick up the story mid – way through - after Nehemiah had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and reconstructed the walls around the city despite the opposition of the surrounding peoples. A census had been taken of all the returned exiles and on a great day of dedication, the people had stood from early morning to until mid-day as the Book of the Law of Moses was read out in their hearing. They wept when they heard the law, and then they celebrated a Holy Day with feasting.
They constructed booths out of branches and lived in them for seven days while they were listening to the word and its explanation. And on the eighth day they confessed their sins before God and worshipped Him.
The Levite priests (be thankful you didn’t have to read their names today) told the people to Stand up and bless the Lord because His name is exalted above all blessing and praise. He’s a big God and He deserves all the praise we can muster before him.
The people praised God and recounted his actions in history towards them – and they confessed their sins very specifically – for a long time, a quarter of a day.
And then they made a written covenant with this God and sealed their names upon it. They solemnly swore to observe the Law he had given to Moses, to not allow intermarriage with the people of the surrounding areas, to observe the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee, and to bring the firstfruits of their labor to the Lord for the maintenance of the temple worship, saying “We will not neglect the house of our God.” (Neh 10:39).
Because Jerusalem’s walls had been torn down, it wasn’t safe to live there for many years, so after the new wall was completed the peoplecast lots and chose 10 % of the population to live there, while the rest of the people lived in smaller outlying towns. They dedicated the wall they had built and began daily temple worship, offering ‘great sacrifices’ with great joy – all because they were serving a great God.
Nehemiah’s Reforms
And then Nehemiah sets about cleaning house. He separates out from Israel all of foreign descent. No Ammonites or Moabites welcome –because their people did not help the Israelites and hired Balaam to curse them.
But then Nehemiah goes back to Babylon for several years. When he returns, he finds things have fallen apart. He discovers that the corrupt priest Eliashib had created a nice little crib for his homey Tobia in the temple – and he throws them both out on their ears and cleanses the place, returning it to its sacred storehouse function.
He discovers that the Levites had not been given their portion and they had had to go out and work in the fields instead of worshipping God. Nehemiah restores the tithe and the people bring in their first fruits to the Lord.
The observance of the Sabbath had gone by the boards, and he restores it – by force.
And then comes the coup de grace: Nehemiah learns that the Jews had married women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab and that half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, not Hebrew. Listen to how he handles this situation:
“And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God” …that they would not intermarry with the surrounding peoples! (Wow!)
The last thing he does is to chase off the son-in-law of Sanballat, who had caused so much trouble to the people.
And Nehemiah closes his book by asking God to remember him for God because he had cleansed everything foreign.
Now, is your God as big as Nehemiah’s?
For the sake of your God, are you willing to cleanse out of your life anything that displeases God? Are you willing to attempt big huge projects on behalf of your God because you love Him and the Law he has set before you? Are you willing to bring him the first and the best of all you have to offer?
And are you willing to stand up for righteousness and confront God’s people when they stray? ( Can you imagine Nehemiah at General Conference 2003?...!)
Are you? If you are, it’s because you have caught a vision for a God that is High and Lifted up, worthy of honor, much to be feared and obeyed as the absolute, sovereign Creator.
The Rest of the Story….
But this is only half the story about our God. The rest of it (as Paul Harvey says) is that God is a God of love, who desires an intimate relationship with you, the sheep of his hand.
Our Big View of God must include his power and righteousness. Without this we are impoverished as people. But our big view also has to include fact that Jesus died on the cross for us and has wiped away our certificate of debt before God the righteous judge.
This same God has sent His Holy Spirit to live inside of us and to have intimate fellowship with us. When Jesus said, in Rev. 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me”, he wasn’t talking to non -believers, He was talking to the lukewarm church at Laodicea, trying to reprove and discipline them so that they could enter in to this close, loving relationship with God and eventually share the very throne of God with Him!
God, our God, Loves you and wants to spend time with you! This is the most amazing thing in the Universe! Surely there can be no higher privilege than to Hobnob with the Most High!
So let me challenge and encourage you to do some things:
1) Repent of your obtuseness in the Face of a Holy and Awesome God. He is your maker and he deserves the very best you have to offer, even if you don’t understand Him or what He’s doing in your life.
2) Love Him and spend time with him every day! This Mighty God of ours also cares about each hair on your head. He has an infinite amount of time for you – and for me too. No problem is too small for Him. “Cast your burden upon the Lord – for he will sustain you…” (Ps. 55:22).
3) Don’t fall prey to Benjamin Franklin’s quip that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s cute, but it ain’t right. God emphatically helps those who call upon Him for wisdom and then do what He tells them to do. This is the opposite of self-sufficiency.
4) Give Him yourself – it’s the best and only thing you really have to Give Him.
I’d like to close with this prayer of dedication that we usually pray during our Celtic Eucharist
Prayer of Dedication
Each thing I have received,
from YOU it came.
Each thing for which I hope,
from YOUR love it will come.
Each thing I enjoy,
it is of YOUR Bounty.
So I am giving YOU offering with my
whole thought.
I am giving YOU Love with my
whole heart.
I am giving YOU affection with my
whole devotion.
And I am giving You my soul,
O God of all Gods.
AMEN.
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