Archive for the ‘Salvation’ Category

Easter Sunday 2010

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

By my estimation I have preached 29 Easter sermons.  This year, wishing to be different, I chose to preach on Romans 8.  I alluded to the Easter narrative, but I preached on Romans 8.

Why?  Because everything about this chapter screams “He is risen!”

The truth is, I bet the disciples were suffering that morning.  Certainly the ladies who visited the grave were suffering.  They had come to prepare the body for burial; not to meet a Risen Lord.

When Paul speaks of the spiritual life in Romans 8 he speaks much of suffering. We who are in Christ need not suffer from guilt or fear, for our sins have all been forgiven. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (8:1-4). When we sin as Christians, we need never doubt that we are justified by faith because God’s Spirit dwells within us, bearing witness that we are God’s sons. Further, because the Spirit of God indwells us, He not only leads us to do the will of God, but He empowers our dead bodies to do so (8:5-17) (Diffenbaugh).

But the best thing I like about Romans 8:15 when we are invited to call God “Abba” or “daddy.”  I don’t know about you, but, beyond age 4 or 5, I never called my dad “daddy.” It was not cool.  In fact, I wanted to be extra cool so I tried calling dad “father” but that only got a scowl from my mother.  I compromised and called him “Dad.”  I know my son-in-law, who is really cool, calls me “Jim.”  Coolness not withstanding,  that is too much.  I would like to be called “Dad” or at least “Big Daddy” but Karen refuses to be a “Big Momma” and how can you have a Big Daddy without a Big Momma?  But I digress.

Can you imagine, the pedantic, choleric, ex-Pharisee Paul, who until recently did not even pronounce the name of God—YHWH—now invited the Roman Church to call God “Daddy?”  Imagine the old stuffed shirt Jewish Christians in the congregation praying “Our Daddy, who art in heaven, halloweth be thy name!”  Ha!  It is embarrassing.

8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, 18 but you received the Spirit of adoption, 19 by whom 20 we cry, “Abba, Father.” 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness to 21 our spirit that we are God’s children. 8:17 And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ) 22 – if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him. (Net Bible)

But it is true.  He is our Daddy,  Abba Father.  It is not cool, but it is true.  God the Creator of the universe, is so intimate, so wonderful, so loving, that he invites us to call him Daddy.  Wow!  Now that is an Easter message.

Evoking the Spirit of Isaiah

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

The task ahead of us is to live and evoke the spirit of Isaiah in our community. As the theologian Walter Brueggemann, and others like him, argue, our task is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a conscious­ness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. And increasingly that culture is become inimical to the Gospel. Either way, a community rooted in the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a curiosity and a threat in such a culture. No wonder Isaiah’s argument that one should rely on a faithful, historical God was such a threatening message to His generation. And to ours. Our world does not understand, much less believe in our history. God is not to be trusted because He cannot be quantified. He is not to be controlled. This God makes self-proclaimed kings of the earth uncomfortable. And this God of ours, therefore, has been making kings like Herod, Ahab, and Nero uncomfortable for ages. I remember a simple, powerful Gospel Song that all of us in our 1966 Southern church sang. This was the song of the redeemed. But we scarcely knew it. “Jesus loves the little children. . . red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight.” Since I was still too young to doubt the veracity of my parents and teachers, I actually believed that song. And, when I started living that song it changed my world. And when enough people live that message we will change our world. Our cause will become holy, our witness worthy of the Gospel. There will be opposition. But our song brings hope, life, and salvation. So it is worth it. Be bold and courageous, young people, and sing a new song. Do your best on the SAT to bring glory to Him. And become a light to this new generation!

Lost & Unhappy

Monday, December 7th, 2009

It seems at times that Americans are lost. I am a pastor, and in spite of our hedonistic bravado, I generally find some of my congregation members—who generally are not living a life centered on Jesus Christ—are in fact desperately unhappy. No wonder. This world does not provide what we need. I once thought it did. I can remember being seduced by the august institution, Harvard University. In 1976, I really believed my university chaplain who told the incoming Harvard class, “You are the next history makers of America.” I wanted to believe it. I needed to believe it. My acquaintance and colleague from Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Forrest Church, now pastor in a Unitarian Church in New York City, was fond of saying, “In our faith God is not a given; God is a question . . . God is defined by us. Our views are shaped and changed by our experiences. We create a faith in which we can live and struggle to live up to it . . . compared to love, a distant God had no allure.” Indeed. This thinking has gotten us into quite a mess.

What kind of mess? While I attended seminary, I remember hurrying to the opening ceremony of the academic year held every September at Harvard Memorial Chapel in the Yard. Spying an impressive group of Harvard Professors, decked out in all their academic robes, capes, and histrionic sententiousness, I decided to follow them to Memorial Chapel, a landmark in Harvard Yard. Although I knew one way to go there, they were not going my way, so, I trusted these sagacious gentlemen to show me a better way. Well, we got lost! And I was late! In spite of their august credentials, they did not know the way after all.

One of the most disturbing essays I have ever read is an essay by Thomas Merton entitled “A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann.” “One of the most disturbing facts,” Merton begins, “that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.” The fact is, given our world, we can no longer assume that because a person is “sane” or “adjusted” that he/she is ok. Merton reminds us that such people can be well adjusted even in hell itself! “The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless.”

The central symbol for every twenty-first century Christian must be the cross. At least from the second century onwards, Christians used the cross as their central symbol. I yearn, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did at the end of his life, for the crucified Lord to return again—as the rediscovered center”to the center of the Church and American society. America does not need a new religion; it needs Jesus Christ—crucified and resurrected.

With John Stott, in The Cross of Christ, my prayer is that this new generation, haunted by so many bad memories, so bewitched by technology and social science theories, would again come to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, at the same time, I want us to reclaim the joy of this adventure—so persuasively presented by John Piper in Desiring God. Steering right into the storm, armed with God’s divine presence and teachings, can affect the end results of this spiritual storm we Americans are experiencing.

IT IS TIME! – DAY 3

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Christian home schooling, then, moves backward in time, far back in time, when intellectualism was not separate from religion. It blows the claims of the Enlightenment to bits. Home schooling has brought back stability into the lives of countless millions of America when the majority of Americans are living in a context of clashing realities where (as sociologist Kenneth J. Gergen explains “the very ground of meaning, the foundations and structures of thought, language, and social discourse are up for grabs.” When the very concepts of personhood, spirituality, truth, integrity, and objectivity are all being demolished, breaking up, giving way, home schoolers are doing things the old fashion way: parents stay home and love the kids and in the process lay their lives down for all our futures.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “The lightning illuminates all and then leaves it again in darkness. So faith in God grasps humanity, and we respond in ecstasy. And the darkness is never again the same, . . . but it is still the darkness.”

All of God’s saints—past, present, and future—are flashes of of lightning in the sky. And the darkness is never the same again because the light reveals what life can be in Jesus Christ. “Memory allows possibility,” theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote. We home schooling parents bring memory. Our young people bring possibility. And Jesus Christ remains the Way, the Truth and the Life!

It is time!

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. (John 18:38) Jesus Christ was concerned about the truth. “I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said, “until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matt. 5:18). And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:42). And so forth. For over a hundred times Jesus punctuated his aphorisms with this phrase, “I tell you the truth. . .”

Home schoolers are concerned about the truth.

The pursuit of truth is older even than our Lord’s bodily presence on this earth. Besides the Old Testament dialogues about truth (e.g., Proverbs, et al.), secular philosophers were also discussing truth. For example, the Greek philosopher Plato (a contemporary of Daniel) was discussing truth 500 years before Christ was born. In a long, long, time ago, in a place far, far away, Plato was discussing things like truth, politics, justice, and beauty. To Plato the pursuit of truth was the beginning and ending of all things. Plato was convinced, for instance, that if people knew the truth they would obey the truth. Plato argued that if people knew the right thing to do they would do it. In other words, immorality was nothing mor e than ignorance.

Of course, we who live on the backside of Auschwitz, The Great Leap Forward, and September 11, 2001, know that that is absurd. People are quite capable of knowing the truth and acting immorally. In fact they do it all the time. Sometimes really smart people can make very bad choices.

We all know that “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10b-12) Everyone sins. Smart people also make bad choices. Indeed. Homeschoolers have to be more than smart—we have to be reedeemed! And redemption is not dependent upon what we know; it is dependent upon who we know.

While I was a graduate student at Harvard I lived outside Harvard Yard. New to the area, while I was traveling to class one day, I found myself hopelessly lost. Seeing some august, famous professors traveling at deliberate speed toward their destination I was sure that they knew the way to the Promised Land (i.e., Danforth Hall gate at the Yard). The truth was, I doubted for a few moments – in fact as I followed these capable, sagacious professors I remembered a better way. But, no, what did I know! These were the world’s smartest me n—but I was very late to my history class! They were more lost than I!

I am glad that I know the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton, in his essay “Reflections on Rudolph Eichmann,” shows how very likeable, intelligent, “moral” individuals can do monstrous things. Eichmann, and his henchmen were architects of the Holocaust where 6-8 million Jews were murdered. Merton concludes, “One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.”

We cannot merely be right, home schoolers, we must be saved.