I was in Vancouver, British Columbia when the attack happened. Someone casually remarked, as I left the train, that a plane had run into the World Trade Center. I ran to the office building and tried several news websites. No luck - they were jammed with traffic. I called my sister, who manned a news desk in Salt Lake City, Utah. She told me we were under attack.
Someone set up a large screen TV in the conference room. There was a palatable sense of helplessness among all Americans and Canadians in that conference room who watched the second tower fall, live, on CNN.
I remember feeling that I should be back in my country. We were supposed to launch our project that day. Instead, the launch was canceled and the project delayed.
Copyright © 2007 by Christopher D. Drew
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Six-Month-O-Versary
Today marks our sixth month of marriage! Sara and I both feel extremely blessed to be married, and we look forward to the next six months, six years, and six decades together! Whoo hoo! Thanks be to God for the blessing of marriage. And thanks, dear Father in Heaven, for the blessing you gave me in Sara, my beloved.
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Being Shaped
© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew
Sermon Focus: God’s sovereignty is absolute and extends into earthly history. Nations may rise or fall as the Creator/Potter sees fit. Israel is no exception to this rule, and all nations are called to repentance so that disaster might be averted. Our Jeremiah pericope also gives us a sense of hope, because the Creator/Potter can, if it His will, restore what has spoiled and give it new life.
Sermon Function: To teach listeners about God’s sovereignty, and how it extends to us even in times of social or personal chaos, or, as with Mother Theresa, when God seems utterly absent from us; and to inform listeners that God’s active grace in our lives doesn’t ipso facto mean we enjoy a wonderful ecstasy of union with God in this lifetime – our faithful discipleship and obedience to Christ are spiritual conditions of new life and commitment, which are themselves “fruits of the Spirit” and grace from God.
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Monday, September 03, 2007
Repairing the Leak
© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew
Sermon Focus: God accuses all the people of Israel of forsaking Him and turning to “things that do not profit,” like the worship of idols. They turned away from the “fountain of living water” and have constructed cisterns for saving up water themselves. But these cisterns are cracked and can hold no water.
Our lives are cracked cisterns, and we routinely worship other idols. Having just talked about God’s call, how can we stay faithful to that call, and faithful to the God who issues that call?
Sermon Function: To teach listeners that our ability to stay faithful is limited because of our fallen nature. We must look to Jesus Christ as the salve to which we can sustain our call and remain faithful to God.
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Introduction
We are in week two of a six-week series on the writings of the prophet Jeremiah. For you trivia buffs out there, Jeremiah is in fact the largest book in the bible. Last week, we dealt specifically with the concept of call, using Jeremiah’s call by God to be a prophet as one example of being called into ministry of Jesus Christ. This week, Jeremiah speaks to the nations, revealing God’s prosecution of Israel for its forgetfulness and idolatry, which includes that false idol where we think we can save ourselves.
Listen now to God’s word.
[Read Scripture - Jeremiah 2:4-13]
Introductory Illustration
I will hazard a guess this morning that almost all of you have heard about the horrible situation of NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who pled guilty this week to federal charges related to his participation in a dog-fighting ring. He pled guilty and was told that he would receive his sentence later this year. After entering his guilty plea, Vick took to the steps of the courthouse and made a statement to the press. I’d like to read portions of this statement to you now, because it’s largely a good statement and because it also contains a link to today’s reading from Jeremiah.
Here is Michael Vick:
"First, I want to apologize … for all the things that - I've done and that I have allowed to happen … I was not honest and forthright in our discussions, and … I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself to say the least.
“I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts and … what I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up.”
“I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Michael Vick the person, not the football player.”
“I take full responsibility for my actions. … [N]ot for one second will I sit right here and point the finger and try to blame anybody else for my actions or what I've done.”
“I'm totally responsible, and those things just didn't have to happen. I feel like we all make mistakes. It's just I made a mistake in using bad judgment and making bad decisions. And you know, those things … just can't happen.”
“Dog fighting is a terrible thing, and I did reject it.”
“I'm upset with myself, and … through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God. And I think that's the right thing to do as of right now.”
“Like I said, for this - for this entire situation I never pointed the finger at anybody else, I accepted responsibility for my actions of what I did and now I have to pay the consequences for it. But in a sense, I think it will help … me as a person. I got a lot to think about in the next year or so. I offer my deepest apologies to everybody out in there in the world who was affected by this whole situation. And if I'm more disappointed with myself than anything it's because of all the young people, young kids that I've let down, who look at Michael Vick as a role model. And to have to go through this and put myself in this situation, you know, I hope that every young kid out there in the world watching this interview right now who's been following the case will use me as an example to using better judgment and making better decisions.”
“Once again, I offer my deepest apologies to everyone. And I will redeem myself. I have to.”1
Now to me, this sounds like a man who is truly contrite, and concerned about something more than just his multimillion dollar salary or superstar fame. I give him the benefit of the doubt, because he admitted guilt in federal court, and because he took personally responsibility for the crime he committed. He also took responsibility for lying to his teammates and friends.
Vick also committed himself to be a better disciple of Jesus Christ, something, frankly, I hope that I might be able to do, along with you. In general, then, I appreciated Vick’s statement. It is my deep hope that his words were sincere.
While I appreciated Vick’s statement, he is not the object of this sermon. God is. And several things in Vick’s statement that ought to draw attention to our own behavior and the nature of human society. We are a broken people. And both kids and adults frequently look to mega-wealthy superstars as “role models.” I don’t want to dwell on Vick himself, but on some of the things his statement highlights about our culture, including making idols of role models and fame, how persistent sinful behavior can lead to embarrassment and destruction. How can we, with our broken cisterns, find redemption?
Idols and “Role Models”
Although many times we don’t even realize we do it, we are constantly making idols out of things and people, “role models,” to whom we pay homage. I saw a program on one of the “home and garden” cable channels devoted to how much money a couple could get for their house. The process of selling a home is, in the wider scheme of things, a somewhat banal process. People buy and sell homes all the time. But this is a program devoted to elevating a real estate transaction into a life altering struggle of biblical proportions because, you see, if the couple in question can’t get the big bucks they expect, then they won’t be able to “move up” to that next mansion they have their eyes on.
We make idols out of what we “own” or think we own, we make idols out of professional athletes, supermodels, cars, food, addictive substances, booze, and we even make idols out of ourselves. We do this when we start believing all the hype about how we are better people than we really are. We begin to get tempted, as some athletes and politicians are tempted, to think that somehow we become exempt from the consequences of our unrepentant sin. To be clear, here, I’m not just picking on Michael Vick – I’m addressing all of us here who profess to be Christian and who might be tempted to lord it over those who struggle with matters of faith. But Vick himself touches on the idolatry of our culture because he senses that people hold in him high regard for no other reason than his stellar athletic abilities.
Jeremiah writes:
“Thus says the LORD: ‘What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?” (Jer 2:5 NRSV). Going after the worthless things will take us down the road of worthlessness. Goings after what is worthless means that we aren’t good stewards of the precious gift of life we have received from God.
Jeremiah was speaking to “all the families of Israel” in an attempt to refocus their attention to the God that saved them from slavery.
We are called to do the same thing, by rejecting the idols of our culture that keep us from recognizing Almighty God and from hearing how He is calling us into the world He is preparing for the fullness of his coming Kingdom.
Sin and Destruction
I mentioned earlier that we can become wrapped up in our sin to the point where we lose our way. This kind of thing does not just happen to the celebrities in our culture. Frankly, the problem is endemic to our humanity. Sin is a true, multicultural phenomenon. No one is exempt from its temptation. And our refusal to repent and turn away from sin can actually make us, as Jeremiah writes, “worthless.” We know, from the testimony of scripture and the testimony of our own stories that something is awry. In the rebellion of humanity that had is source in Adam and Eve, we are the “people [who] have changed their glory,” their glory, “for something that does not profit” (Jer 2:11 NRSV).
Who does such a crazy thing? We all do. The same temptations that cause one person, for example, to exchange the healthy income and fame associated with extraordinary athletic ability and sell it out to pursue a few extra bucks on the side in cruel sport? Or to risk the wrath of a family in pursuit of cheap, meaningless sexual escapades? Or maybe succumbing to the temptation to cheat “just a little bit” on our income taxes. It seems that human beings have the incessant need to cheapen human life, to commoditize it, to relevatize it in ways that are so seditious that they can become a subtle form of slavery to that which is worthless. It honestly makes no sense, which is one of the reason Paul complained in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Jeremiah’s revelation of God’s words, written thousands of years ago, still rings true today. In our text, the Israelites stand accused of turning against God. Prophets were prophesying by Baal, that ancient idol of the Canaanites. What idols we prophesy by? Is it prosperity? Do-it-yourself redemption? So many things that they are difficult to enumerate. We need only reflect on our own lives for a few moments before the truth of the matter becomes uncomfortable.
“Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit” (Jer 2:11 NRSV).
Jesus Christ and Redemption
The situation can feel oppressive and hopeless. The situation that Jeremiah addresses in our text, the rebelliousness of Israel, is so severe that all of the heavens are called in as witnesses:
“Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:12-13 NRSV).
Jeremiah’s wording and the imagery are very rich here. Israel has forsaken the Lord, the very fountain of living water. Instead, the people have hewn cisterns out of the rock to try and save life-giving water themselves. I had the privilege of seeing one ancient cistern on the mountaintop fortress of Masada in Israel. As I recall, the cisterns at Masada were designed to hold tens of thousands of gallons of water. The cisterns, coupled with the large from which occupied the largest portion of the Masada stronghold, were designed to make that place impregnable. Despite all of the preparations, however, Masada did ultimately fall. For Israel and for Jeremiah, the cisterns they have dug out are cracked, useless, and can hold no water.
This is a call to return to the Lord, the very fountain of life. We, too, are called by Christ to do the same thing. Do you remember the story of the Samaritan woman at the well? Jesus asks her for a drink of water, and she responds:
“’How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans)”
“Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water’” (John 4:10 NRSV).
The message of the Gospel this week is very straightforward. We are called to turn away from our dependence on whatever well or cistern we’ve dug for ourselves in which we think we can safely place our trust– maybe it’s that big bank account or 401k, perhaps it’s something else. The reason is this: Eternity is at sake. Faithfulness to God is at stake. The things of this world will pass away. The old maxim “you can’t take it with you” is still in effect!
I am always amused when I read headlines like this one: “Among people who pursue habit or behavior X, the death rate increases by 25%.” What baloney! The last time I checked the death rate, my friends, continues to be 100%. No one is exempt, and that stark fact should inform all of our life decisions, and should heavily influence the degree to which we remain faithful to God’s call to us in Jesus Christ.
Leave those cracked cisterns behind. Don’t fall in the trap of dependence on those earthly things that we leave behind. Cleave to the source of living water – Jesus Christ. Trust in Him, the source of all heavenly treasures.
Conclusion
If I had one bit nit to pick to Michael Vick’s statement, it is this four-word statement: “I will redeem myself.” There’s no need for that, Mr. Vick. Someone already accomplished that task for you and for me and for all of you. The price of Israel’s disobedience at the time Jeremiah was writing, and our own disobedience and idol-mongering, has been paid-in-full. What we need to do is reject sin and cling to the One who calls us into ministry as Head of the Church – the One who calls us to the font of our baptism, and who calls us to eat and drink with him at the table.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.
1Transcription from the Associated Press. ↩
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Monday, August 27, 2007
Since Before You Were Born
© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew
Sermon Focus: God speaks to Jeremiah and calls him into service as a messenger of God to the nations of the world. Jeremiah is told, when speaking the words of God, that nations and kingdoms will fall. And yet, hope remains, because God will also speak words through Jeremiah that will build and plant.
Sermon Function: To teach listeners about call, prophecy, and ministry. What does God want us to do this day? How can we know? What should we do? We must ask these questions if we are to remain faithful to this text.
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Introduction
Well, another journey, and another return. I’m happy to be back. So is Sara. This time, we were attending the wedding of a very close friend of mine who now lives in Seattle, Washington. I was asked to be a “reader” at his catholic marriage rite. It was a fulfilling experience, and very interesting, particularly since I was asked to read various selections from the book of Sirach. Sirach is an apocryphal book that is part of the Roman Catholic scripture canon, but is not accepted as such by any Reformed Protestant denomination, including ours. It was fun to be included, but it’s even more fun to be back home with you all.
Today’s sermon scripture passage is taken from the Old Testament. We’ll be reading from the book of the prophet Jeremiah. We’ll be reading about his call by God to be a prophet to the nations. How are we to interpret this today, in the midst of cultural strife when many who claim God’s mantle will seemingly extinguish thousands of lives without a second thought? We are challenged in this era to interpret this text in a way that is both genuine and somehow connective with our contemporary situation. That’s what we’ll begin exploring today and continuing on for the next several weeks.
Let’s listen now to God’s word.
[Read Scripture - Jeremiah 1:4-10]
Experiencing God’s Call
As many of you know, I’m still in the candidacy process in the Presbyterian Church (USA). This means that I’m on track for ordination, but must still pass some trials prior to being certified to receive a call.
Along this churchly path to ordained ministry, I’ve been asked hundreds of times, literally, to describe my “faith journey” and my “sense of call.” These terms are used interchangeably. When coming from friends and colleagues outside of the Church, these questions about “faith journey” and “sense of call” really boil down to something like “What happened to you? Is there something wrong with you?” Et cetera.
As you might imagine, when one gets asked the same questions repeatedly, stock responses are developed to ease the storytelling tasks. This is not without some precedent. After all, I am called, and you are called “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15 NRSV). For me, that hope is Jesus Christ, the one who for our sake was crucified and was resurrected by God.
In my case, I first came to understand that God was calling me to the ministry when I was a senior in high school. A women in our church, who didn’t know of my developing call, told me after one Sunday service that she had been watching me, and had been struck my the notion that I might one day consider becoming a pastor in the church. Then, after a short 17-year stint, God finally moved me to Austin, Texas for seminary, and to begin the church discernment process.
“The Call” wasn’t something I heard in my mind, but something clearly distinguishable in my soul. It bubbled up gradually, and took me through a career as a consultant prior to taking me to Austin and seminary and marriage. Now it has taken me here. Call is something tangible, but not something necessarily measurable. This is why many scientists cannot understand people of faith. You cannot measure out call using quantitative techniques. Similarly, as C.S. Lewis noticed, you cannot make claims about things like miracles that are, by definition, something not scientifically verifiable. Science depends on repeatability to define and defend theories of reality. And repeatability requires measurement. For experiences that don’t fit that narrow profile, we are left with the necessity of making philosophical and theological statements about our experience. This is why faith is not something empirically assessable, despite what legions of scientists and post-post modern atheists would prefer. Call is like that.
Many seminarians are familiar with a saying by Presbyterian Pastor Fredrick Buechner that is oft-repeated in school orientations and classrooms. Here it is: “[Call] is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” I like that definition. The world of Israel certainly needed Jeremiah’s call to prophetic mission. Israel had, at the beginning of Jeremiah’s life, achieved a temporary liberation from the rule of the Assyrians. But another kingdom was on the rise, that of Babylon. Jeremiah’s call sets the stage for what is to follow in his book, which is among other things a recounting of life before, during, and after the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. The political life of Israel was at stake, and Jeremiah’s call to prophecy is recognized now as an important word of warning in the face of dominating political power from a foreign nation. But for Israel, more is at stake. For Israel, the political is invariably wrapped up with the religious, because the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, divided since of the time of King Solomon, only came into existence by virtue of the word God had previously spoke when he called Moses to lead his people from the slavery of Egypt. The forthcoming destruction of Israel was, therefore, much more than a political catastrophe. It represented a theological catastrophe as well.
These first few verses of Jeremiah’s call story say something to us, too. What is that? Let’s listen again:
“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations’” (Jer 1:4-5 NRSV).
God knows us through eternity rather than through the boundaries of time as we understand time. God knows us first, and calls us into service according to our spiritual gifts. The verbs “knew,” “consecrated,” and “appointed” are all in the perfect tense. The perfect tense defines an action has being fully completed from the time of the action through the remainder of history. This means that God absolutely knew, consecrated, and appointed Jeremiah fully and completely, with lasting eternal effect. God’s knowledge of us is certain, full, and complete. In Jeremiah’s case, the call was so profound has to be articulated as speech. In the example I gave you from my own life, the call was subtler, bubbling up from within. God’s call, then, can come in a variety of ways.
Have there ever been times in your life when you might have sensed God’s call? Perhaps a nudge you felt to take on a particular task for the church, or to attend to a fellow Christian in need? Pay heed to these things, because they will tell you about how God is actively working in your life.
God Calls People
The next thing this passage tells us is that God calls people. This is self-evident in our text, but it bears repeating. The reason is this: That God would call God’s creatures into ministry is stunning.
I was recently listening to a sermon by another Presbyterian Pastor, Reverend Vic Pentz. He told he congregation about a book he was reading by Karl Barth, a famous and renowned theologian in the reformed, protestant tradition. Karl Barth’s theological magnum opus is entitled Church Dogmatics. You would need almost three feet of shelf space to accommodate the entire work. But Barth helpfully penned a much smaller compendium of lectures on his theology called Dogmatics in Outline (and I can commend the work to you as well). Pentz quotes Barth several times, but one thought in particular jumped out at me as I was preparing this sermon. We consider it fascinating, marvelous, and wonderful that we have a God that is so tremendous, all-knowing, and wise and full of love. But what is really fascinating, wonderful, and marvelous is that God sees fit to create us! God didn’t need to do that. But God did. And the beautiful truth contained in the story of Jeremiah’s call is that God called Jeremiah, and that God continues to call men and women into service in the kingdom of God, whose head is Jesus Christ.
And in fact, in Jesus Christ we also get the full picture of the type of people God calls. Jeremiah is a member of what was likely one of the priestly tribes of Judah. Jesus calls everyone: Fishermen, tax collectors, and the like. Some of the folks God calls would have struck the ancient listener as odd. For Jesus to call a tax collector during the Roman occupation of Jerusalem was very odd indeed – even scandalous. But God calls. God called the Virgin Mary to bear the Son of God. God called Joseph into a special kind of fatherhood. God calls people into every form of ministry, prophecy, and discipleship. God has called this congregation into existence. God calls us into new and exciting ministries of prayer and service. God calls visitors to this church to discipleship, and I’m excited to think that one or more of you might be being called by God this very moment into not just another phase of life, but to new baptized life in Jesus Christ. God continues to move in this church. God has ordained that the church begin searching for a new pastor. God is calling us to exercise good stewardship over this church and its resources, so that the call of the new pastor might be successfully realized.
God is calling, but what ought we to do in response? What do we do when we don’t feel like we’re the right choice? Or somehow unworthy? Or scared and fearful of what might happen next?
God Is With Us!
Jeremiah felt some of this, I think. Jeremiah’s initial response to God’s call is similar to that of Moses. He asserts that he is “only a boy” and that he “[does] not know how to speak.”
Our attempt to disqualify ourselves from God’s services says some interesting things about us. One the one hand, it suggests that our faith in God’s sovereignty is somehow insufficient. We convince ourselves that God is somehow mistaken if he calls us to do something. Believe me, I’ve made this amusing mistake multiple times. We try to set aside God’s will all the time, particularly if it looks like it might trump our best laid plans for living a successful life.
On the other hand, our attempts to disqualify ourselves from God’s service might also be a reflection of a keen awareness of unworthiness and sinfulness. But it might also be the result of an overwrought or even a sense of condemnation that is unwarranted. There are really, then, two significant ways we sin we attempt to dodge God when he calls us. In the first case, when we try to disqualify ourselves from God’s service because we think God might be mistaken, that’s the sin of pride is asserting itself on our life. In the second case, when we disqualify ourselves from God’s service because we feel completely valueless, we commit the sin of thinking too lowly of ourselves. We are created beings, as the writer of Genesis tell us, in the image of God. Therefore, we are creatures cared for by the One who, as he did with Jeremiah, forms us in the womb as a potter forms a beautiful vase. The potter knows his creation intimately. He knows every nook and cranny, and he knows what will become of the creation because he is the one who represents true creativity and has the imagination and the power to bring his vision into what we understand as reality.
The call from God really does come to people like you and me. As the Creator, God knows our limits. And by living lives of honest repentance, we are able to respond to God’s call because of the very assurance of God’s presence with us. God declares to Jeremiah:
“Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.” (Jer 1:8 NRSV). Do not be afraid. We ought to trust God to put the words we need in our mouths, and to take the actions we need to move ahead and advance the cause of Jesus Christ.
Final Words
In the last two verses of our text today, Jeremiah finds that God’s very words have been put in his mouth, and that he is appointed “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer 1:10 NRSV). Our own calls may not appear to be so profound as to impact the life of nations and kingdoms, but they can be critically important in the live of this congregation and its members and this community of Portland Texas. What injustices in our lives must be plucked up, pulled down, destroyed, and/or overthrown? A violent temper? Addiction to pornography? Abuse of drugs? Forgetting the lonely? Is there anything in your life that needs to be overthrown and tossed out? Hasty judgment, perhaps? Corrosive anger? Unconfessed sin? Broken family relationships?
The final words of Jeremiah are words of hope. What are you and I called to build and to plant? Is it to pray for others and for our enemies? Might God be calling you to join the prayer quilt ministry of the church? Perhaps God wants you to consider seminary education and ordained ministry? Perhaps God wants you to participate in reviving people through Mission 911 in Corpus Christi? Maybe you’re called to help educate the youth or the adults in our church? Or is God calling you to mend a broken relationship? Or perhaps God is moving in your heart right now to consider baptism and the commitments of faith in Jesus Christ and discipleship. God’s call is frequently something more than any of us could imagine. I think that’s very exciting, and I pray that you might experience this same excitement in your own life, for the sake of the Joy we have in Jesus Christ, to whom we give all glory and honor.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.
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Monday, August 13, 2007
Lift Up Your Heads
© 2007 by Christopher D. Drew
Sermon Focus: Paul exhorts his listeners to lift up their heads and keep their eyes on Christ, and to completely reject the ways of the world along with its idolatrous and destructive distractions.
Sermon Function: To exhort listeners to put their own earthy distractions to death, and to keep their eyes on the prize – shared glory with Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
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Introduction
It is good to be back here with you in Portland! Sara and I missed you very much.
I’m happy to tell you that my 20-year high school reunion was tremendously entertaining and fulfilling. Sara and I were fortune to be able to visit with some friends I had not seen for quite some time back in my hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah. I can report to you that many of my former classmates looked the same, some people looked substantially different. Some had suffered extreme physical, emotional, or financial hardships. Others had experienced tremendous worldly success. What struck me most about the visit was how absolutely nice everyone was. There were moments when I deliberately decided to walk through the crowds to see what might happen. What I found out was this: People who I had not considered to be close friends or even casual acquaintances would stop me to see how I had been all these years later. It was a gratifying and happy time for all.
You will also be interested to know that I won an award during the reunion entertainment program. I won the award for the “most radical change in vocation.” Imagine that!
The only regret I experienced as a result of attending the reunion was this – that I wasn’t able to speak with the many classmates who were unable to attend. I also regretted not seeing many friends who decided that they would not attend.
One good high school friend who decided not to attend lives in Colorado but was, in fact, in Salt Lake City at the time of the reunion. I will call him George. George was a good friend, very funny and very intelligent, but not a particularly good student. I found out, only last weekend, that he did not actually graduate with us. He later earned a graduate equivalency degree, or GED.
I do not know exactly why he decided to stay away, but I can speculate about the reasons, because I knew George very well, and know of some of the circumstances of his life that likely kept him away. The basic reason he didn’t attend was this: He is preoccupied with some heavy things in the past that have scarred him. This isn’t an uncommon thing, is it? In fact, I continue to be amazed at the degree to which the deeds of our pasts adversely impact our ability to mature in our faith lives and in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Holy Scripture is amazing. The Word of God speaks to us each day and the word is fresh. Today’s Word deals directly with some of the issues I’ve just mentioned. Paul’s words today speak about leaving the old life behind and clinging to Christ.
Let’s listen to God’s Word as it comes to us today.
[Read Scripture - Colossians 3:1-11]
Opening Discussion – Paul’s Exhortations
Friends, it is in this part of Paul’s letter that we get a bunch of Greek verbs in the imperative case. Imperatives mark verbs that implore or exhort the listener to do something. In our text today, almost every paragraph has one or more imperative forms of verbs, verbs like: “Seek,” “set your minds” or “think;” “put to death;” “get rid of;” and “do not lie.” Paul is here exhorting his readers to exemplify a certain kind of moral behavior and character befitting new life in Christ. This is a fairly standard method for Paul to communicate the gospel message. He begins his letters with terrific expositions on faith and grace before moving to his exhortations to live exemplary lives in the faith. Paul believes, as many of us believe, that living resurrection lives means that nothing from the old life remains.
Illustration – George, The Associate Principle, and the Reunion
But for many of us, leaving the old life behind is very difficult. I mentioned to you my friend, George, who didn’t make the class reunion. One of the reasons people don’t make their reunions is they are, frankly, embarrassed or angry about something that happened high school, or upset by misfortune in life, or are dissatisfied with their lot in life and unwilling to be seen in comparison with that other classmate who made it big.
George is a smart guy, and very talented.1 An adopted child, George was raised in a happy middle-class home. His parents were successful and loving. In high school, however, George was happier with hanging out and playing the saxophone than with studying for the next math exam. He was happier entertaining students by playing the piano at assemblies rather than applying himself to a tricky chemistry equation.
As graduation day approached, George realized that he actually wanted to graduate! He wanted to make things right. He made an appointment to speak with one of the associate principles at our high school. During the meeting, George told the associate principle that he wanted to graduate, and that he wanted some help figuring out how he could make this happen. The administrator looked at George. Here’s what he said:
“George, I think you’re a loser, and that you’re always going to be a loser. Maybe you should just drop out.”
That was the end of the discussion. George went home and told his father about the exchange. His father, understandably upset, made his own appointment with the associate principle. The two met, and the father told the associate principal that he felt his words had crossed the line. In response, the associate principle told the father this:
“I still think your son is a loser. Not only that, but I think you’re a loser too.”
George didn’t graduate with the class, but to his credit he secured a GED not to long thereafter.
I think you might agree that the associate principle’s approach was unproductive. He took what little hope my friend had and dashed it on the rocks of academic malarkey. What’s worse is that this “loser” thinking can plague even the most stalwart person. Words like these, coming from figures of authority, can completely waylay the young person who is struggling with their own identity. For the persons without faith in Jesus Christ, words like these can become a sort of pre-death, leaving someone rudderless and without passion for life. Words have meaning, and words can hurt. We should never forget that. The words of the principle tell us something about his character.
We Are a Hidden Treasure
Our actions and words also have implications because they tell others about what we really genuinely believe. In fact, they reveal much about our theology, what we believe about God.
Paul understands this keenly. And it is because of situations like the one George experienced that we should pay particular attention to these words. The stakes are big for Paul, and they ought to be for us.
Paul writes, “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col 3:1-4 NRSV).
If we genuinely believe that we have been raised with Christ, and are earnest about our desire to follow him, then our lives will be hidden with Christ in God. We will do what we do, remaining hidden away [in obscurity from the world, and we will be content with this state]. The word translated here as “hidden” carries several other meanings as well, including being hidden like a treasure, something very valuable to the one doing the hiding. You have things of value, too, things like wedding rings, important legal papers, and the like. They are treated with particular concern, and are covered over and protected. We have been given an inestimable gift in Christ, and if we live in him and allow him to live in us, we will remain in his guardianship, protected until we share in Christ’s glory when he is fully revealed.
If We Are Like a Treasure, Remain Uncorrupted
If we have been transformed in Christ, and remain hidden with him like a treasure, then should we not take care that this treasure, this gift from God, to be cared for and maintained?
Paul writes that we should “put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)” (Col 3:5 NRSV). The Greek word for “put to death” is Νεκρώσατε (nekro-sate) is one of those imperative verbs I talked about a bit earlier. It is a heavily stylized word that really means what our translators have in the text. Paul isn’t saying “please refrain from these things, thank you.” No. He says “put them to death.”
I like how Eugene Peterson paraphrases this same passage:
“[This] means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God” (Col 3:5-8 MSG). Doing these things subjects us to judgment. “On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient” (Col 3:6 NRSV). We should take Paul’s warning seriously, and reflect how we turn against God with our ill informed, frequently selfish desires. These are marks of living the old life, before acknowledging the death, resurrection, and eternal lordship of Jesus Christ. For some, this list might looks different. Maybe someone’s way of death is marked by alcoholism or some other kind of addiction. Perhaps some other form of social violence continues to pull at you, drawing you away from God and into the bowels of the earth. Perhaps it is one of the other things Paul mentions: Uncontrollable anger, or wrath, or malice, slander, or abusive language. Maybe it’s a mixture of all of these things together, mixed together into a morose cocktail of deceit that tells the rebellious teenager, for example, that they are a loser, and always will be a loser.
This text says to us today that if we truly are disciples of Christ, then our lives had better reflect that reality. If we are truly filled with Christ, and if we truly live in him, then there really should be any space in the room left over for the things of the world. This is not easy, which is why we have the gift of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit. This narrow road of discipleship might mean that we have to physically detach ourselves from unhealthy things. Jesus himself uses very specific language about detaching ourselves from the things that separate us from God. Jesus said, according to Matthew 5:29-30, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt 5:29-30 NRSV).
Lift Up Your Heads
But how? How do we do this? For many, it seems the road is awfully hard, difficult, filled with pothole of disease and illness and death. The way ahead can be confusing and discouraging. Many, like my friend George, suffer for years, even decades, having been harmed by circumstances of life which have made it all the more difficult to detach ourselves from the sinful ways that, for all that they do to separate us from God, nonetheless maintain their attractiveness because they are at least familiar to us.
Well, the first thing we ought to do is pray. And we should pray whenever and wherever we can, that we might be delivered from the earthy, deathly way that separate us from Jesus Christ. And we should pray whenever and wherever we can, that others – friends, loved ones, AND enemies – might be delivered from the earthly, deathly things that keep them from knowing Christ.
Next, acknowledging that we’re frail and prone to sin, we need to seek out others to help us along the journey. If addiction is the problem, acknowledge the problem, understand that you can’t fix the problem by yourself, and get help. If anger is the problem, acknowledge the problem, and put it to death by making amends with whatever or whomever you are angry.
If depression and loneliness are problems, don’t keep it bottled up, but share this with a trusted friend, so that you might know that you are not alone, and that you have advocates motivated by the love of the Holy Spirit to help you.
The church, at its best, should be the vehicle that can provide the help. And friends, I view it as one of the key, essential ingredients of proper church living to live into that vision that enables us to be the vehicle of action for others. If people need help overcoming sin and death, then we should do whatever we can to help those people, regardless of their personal circumstances. Paul concludes this section of the letter in very similar fashion to what were heard when we talked about his letter to the Galatians -- “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col 3:11 NRSV). That means that we must learn how we be a body of forgiveness and healing, so that we can be beacons of the light of Christ in a world filled with darkness.
Conclusion
It is the usual practice among many of us, including myself, to bow our heads during prayer. But if we are earnestly seeking Christ, it is beneficial to look where we are going. Friends, I exhort you, lift up your heads! Look to the one who died and who rose for your sake. And when you pray, ask to get to know Him better. And ask that your neighbor might be healed. And while you’re at it, I ask you a special favor. Pray for that assistant principle in our story, the one who hurt George so badly. And pray for George, that he, too, might lift up his head and live fully into the resurrection life given to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.
1The circumstances recounted here are from a story I heard at my 20-year high school reunion. ↩
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Friday, August 10, 2007
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NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'
NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'
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Introduction
We are currently in the middle of a series based in Jeremiah, one of the Major Prophets in the Old Testament. So far, we’ve talked about God’s call and the variety of forms that call might take as we seek to be better disciples of Jesus. Last week, we spoke about the dangers of unrepentant sin, and how Jesus Christ is our sole hope for eternal salvation. This week, the subject in question is God’s divine sovereignty. How does God move in the world? How do we relate to his totally “other” God we worship? These are some of the questions posed in our reading of the today’s scripture.
Let’s listen now to God’s word.
[Read Scripture - Jeremiah 18:1-11]
Introductory Illustration
This is a big weekend in four smaller American cities that are gearing up for a big time world premier film event. They are: Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and tiny Luverne, Minnesota.
Many of you know by now that Luverne is my wife’s hometown. Her parents still live there. And the entire city if revving up for the big event. Sara’s father, Bill, will be singing in the Luverne Men’s Chorus. The city’s classic, old-style Palace movie theater is being cleaned up and renovated. They will be singing a medley of military branch tunes for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard veterans in the town, and those who will be visiting specifically for this big event. Period automobiles and military equipment will be displayed. The filmmaker will be there, and I suppose one or more of the celebrity types who signed on to this project will likely attend this big premier in the small town of Luverne, Minnesota, home of the beloved red cardinals football team.
The movie in question is a documentary film by Ken Burns called The War. It’s a multiple-episode film produced for PBS, and it will air on most local PBS affiliates on September 23rd, just later this month.
Military veterans will have the opportunity to be the first to see portions of the finished project at the Palace Theater. A few clips are available at the PBS website set up specifically for this project. The War is about World War II. Burns spent time in each of the cities I mentioned, working to get local perspectives on the war and it’s impact on the local communities these men left behind to serve in far away places in Europe and Asia.
My own grandfather was in World War II, and he spoke very infrequently about his experience. I remember sitting with my grandfather to discuss his experience for an interview project I had to complete for class. He spoke somberly and seriously about his time in the pacific theatre. He mentioned specifically watching from his supply ship, the U.S.S. LaPorte, as a kamikaze pilot flew his plane into the ship adjacent to his. I recorded the interview using the now-ancient cassette tape recorder. I have no idea where that tape went.
Having seen just a smattering of the clips available at the PBS website, I’m struck with how much we miss when we don’t share our stories with one another. It is the stories of a place and a country that give life and meaning to what we see today. It is the rich imagery of eyewitnesses to history that tell us what it means to be human creatures, frail, fallen, yet created in the image of the Creator, and love by the creator.
The founders of this nation would speak frequently of the actions of divine providence. There was among most of them a sense that the divine will was playing out right before their eyes. I sense that the men and women who served this nation so ably in World War II shared a similar sensibility – that in the middle of tragedy and death there was also a sense of awe at the magnitude of what the nation was called to do. It wasn’t pretty. War is a horrible thing. But there was some sense of unity, of common purpose, even amidst the human moral failures involved with warfare.
And while all this is going on, nations rise and fall. And amidst social, political, and personal chaos of our lives, God is there. Sometime God’s presence isn’t immediately discerned or understood, and we have to result to history to see His fingerprints on the works of the world, including our own lives. For my own part, I discern that World War II was itself brought about by forces that far and away transcend our own. Disasters occur as a natural extension of what war is. But nations can also rise up from war, and new, just kingdoms are put in place by Almighty God, as He, in his sovereignty, sees fit. And this should give us some cause for hope – that when things are at their worst and when nations fall, we can have the assurance that, even through we may not immediately or instantly understand what his happening, God is in fact present with us.
Jeremiah’s Context – War and the Destruction of Israel and the Temple
In today’s scripture text, Jeremiah is giving us a picture of God’s work in the world amidst the destruction of his own nation, Israel, the expulsion of its best and brightest to faraway Babylon and Egypt, and the annihilation of the Temple.
In the aftermath of all this turmoil in a nation chosen by God to be a beacon of light to all the nations, Jeremiah has a vision of a potter:The Hebrew noun translated as “wheel” in our text has a dual ending, meaning that there is actually two wheels here. One larger wheel would have been found under the worktable, and the potter would spin this wheel with his foot. This larger wheel would propel the smaller wheel upon which the potter would shape his creation by hand.
My brother-in-law, Ken, who many of you met last week, is an accomplished pottery expert. His works have been sold across the country, and I’m proud to say that Sara and I enjoy a few of his pieces in our apartment. I have seen how he is able to transform mere clay into works of extraordinary beauty. Sometimes, however, things get off track and you need to start over. Even expert potters do this at times because sometimes the clay just isn’t cooperative.
One of the reasons we get into trouble in our faith lives is that we’re tempted to take on the roles of both clay and potter. We want to proclaim faith and still cling to the mistaken notion that we should, as a result of our faith, still have some control over how we are ultimately shaped by our creator. There is, in fact, only one potter – Almighty God, and through faith we received the grace of being shaped into something beautiful, something that can bear fruit in the world.
The Problem – We Rebel in the Potter’s Hand
This text speaks to us specifically about God’s sovereignty. And the images used by Jeremiah show us how we ought to be – a people capable of being shaped into something magnificent. But that temptation to take on both roles is persistent, isn’t it? Don’t we believe that we know best how we ought to be shaped, both individually and as a nation? And don’t we sometimes think that God might somehow be mistaken, and that his designed shape for us might be different, maybe even radically different from what we think we’ve been created to be? In fact, this very book of the Bible, Jeremiah, speaks to this condition. When God challenges Jeremiah to speak God’s words to the people of Israel, what does Jeremiah say? He said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (Jer 1:6 NRSV). We can’t really be called to sell our possessions for the benefit of the poor in our community, can we? We can’t really be called to quit a job for the sake of our family or loved one, could we? We can’t really be called into ministry of the church as an officer, could we?
Do you remember what Jesus said to the rich young man in the Gospel of Mark?These “can’t bes” are infused into our vocabulary all the time. They are the Great Dodge, the attempt to take on the role of Potter, to shape ourselves into our own image, rather than into the fullness of what we are called to be, which is the imago Dei, the very Image of God.
And our society seems eager to respond to the notion that we are able to control all the aspects of our lives. That is one of the main reasons why we fail to cope well when things don’t go our way. Personal failure and sin, rather than being viewed as an opportunity to be reshaped into something better, is instead looked at as an unredeemable condition. In order to get around that, we develop fancy coping mechanisms to scapegoat the problem, to make it the responsibility and fault of someone else or something else.
God the Potter is Sovereign
But God is sovereign, and God is capable of doing whatever God wants. God says to Jeremiah:For Almighty God, the fate of the nations, entire nations, are as the simple compound of clay that sits before the wheel of the Potter. In this passage, we might be tempted to say that God’s will can be arbitrary, or that world wars, sin, and idolatry point to an uncontrolled chaos. But that really isn’t the case. God’s will for His creation is steadfast and sure. The question is, for us, whether our response to God’s grace is in accordance with His will. And you can be sure that God’s will will prevail. In fact, this text makes it clear: God’s will will prevail, and in his wisdom he already knows, as he knows us in the womb, what we will chose. This is built into the plan, my friends. The clay can prove resistant to the shaping of the potter’s hand. When this happens, the clay is simply mashed up and reset on the wheel, to be shaped into something else the potter finds useful.
There is warning here, brothers and sisters. We are called to be obedient to God’s will. We have rebelled against it. We exist, in fact, in a more or less permanent state of sinful rebellion. And that persistent rebellion and sin can lead, as we discovered last week, to disaster:Repent and follow me, says God. This is a message strikingly similar to Jesus’ first sermon in the Gospel of Mark, which goes like this:Christ’s first call to us is to repent, to turn away from our desire to be both potter and clay, to turn away from everything that detracts from the nobility of having been created in the image of the Creator.
Hope for Israel, Hope for Us, Hope for the World
When we do this, we can cling to the hope that God won’t leave the work unfinished.
That hope is reflected in verse four of our text. "The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him" (Jer 18:4 NRSV).
We are not without hope that God work a wonderful thing in our lives. Jesus Christ is the single best example of that hope. It is a resurrection hope that shines brightly from the work Christ accomplished on the Cross. “’Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?’ says the LORD” (Jer 18:6 NRSV). Can I not do with you, O house of First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas, just as this potter has done? Can I not do with you, faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, as this potter has done?
The answer is “Yes!” And we can shout out this answer even in our fallen condition, because Jesus Christ makes it possible. We can say “Yes!” by repenting, and turning away from the sins that separate us from God. We can say “Yes!” to the future of this church. We can say “Yes!” to responsibility supporting its mission and it’s search for a new pastor. We can say “Yes!” to the missional responsibilities incumbent upon faithful communities of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And we can say “Yes!” to Jesus’ call to be transformed into a new, magnificent, resurrected creatures, first formed into a human being from the simple dust of the earth, just as the simple clay is transformed by the potter into something beautiful, something that can literally bear fruit, something more than we can possibly imagine, even in the midst of World Wars, and even in the midst of our doubts.
Final Illustration
Mother Theresa wrote a long series of letters to her spiritual director. These letters have recently been compiled for publication, and they reveal that Theresa suffered from decades-long periods of spiritual darkness, times when it seemed God was absent from her life.
Skeptics and our ever-popular atheists like Christopher Hitchens responded in an almost triumphant fashion. Hitchens wrote a lengthy piece to more or less welcome Mother Theresa into the atheist fold.
Isn’t it interesting that the Roman Catholic Church, then, is so incredibly anxious to release these Theresa’s letters to the public? It is interesting, but not very surprising. What these letters reveal is just how human Theresa was. And that is what Catholics look for in a Saint. You see, my friends, the fruits of the spirit are not always what we think they should be. In fact, they usually are not what we expect. The peddlers of religious ecstasy would have you believe otherwise. There must be some feeling we have, some knowledge of spiritual unity, in order for our lives of faith to be real.
But that is not how we will be judged. We are not judged by how authentic our religious feelings are, or by achieving a certain level of spiritual transcendence. We are instead judged on our faithfulness and obedience. The fruits of the Spirit are not linked to individual self-satisfaction, but on faithful discipleship. And the challenge for us today is this: We are called to be like pliant clay, obedient to the will of the Potter, just as Jesus Christ was obedient unto death for the sake of those sinners to whom He ministered.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Given at First Presbyterian Church, Portland, Texas.