Palm/Passion Sunday (A)
April 4, 1992
How Odd of God
To Enter That Way
(Matthew 21:8-11)
Today is Palm Sunday, and all over Christendom in hundreds of thousands of churches, Christians are gathering to worship Jesus and reflect on His last entrance into Jerusalem. Palm Sunday gets its name from the branches the children laid in the path of Jesus as He came riding in on a donkey.
Now the donkey itself is an odd touch; if you or I had been directing we would have looked for a chariot, new if possible, old if necessary, or at least a horse! But in fact the donkey is only one of several odd aspects of the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.
Today I want us to use these unusual aspects of the entry to sharpen our understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ coming into that Jerusalem and into the Jerusalem of our hearts. Let us consider the securing of the donkey, the paving of the path with palm branches and garments, and the question of the crowds — “Who is this?”
The Lord Has Need of Them” (v. 3)
The first of these curious incidents is the securing of the donkey. Some folks make a deep mystery of it, feeling that Jesus and His disciples were totally unknown to the donkey’s owner, and that the request was out of the blue. That’s not necessary at all. It is possible that the owner was a follower, perhaps secretly like Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus. He just may not have been expecting Jesus to come by at that time or to make such a request of him.
See the answer the disciples gave to the men who quickly gathered to check out this possible theft of a donkey — the equivalent of our car theft! “The Lord has need of them.” I suppose someone ran quickly and told the owner and, upon hearing, he knew Jesus had sent them. It was sufficient to know that Jesus had need of that lowly little farm animal. There is a profound message here for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. If Jesus needed that little animal, He needs you and me to carry out His work. If He has a plan and a will for that donkey — surely He has one for us. We may not always know the depth nor the end of that will, but we know it is a good will and a good plan.
Coats in the Dust (v. 8)
And so it was that the donkey was brought to Jesus at Bethphage. He mounted it and began the short ride over the Mount of Olives and down into Jerusalem. It was then that the crowds began to cut palm branches and cover the path ahead of the donkey; and those who could find no greenery slipped off their outer robes and flung them into the dust before this One who came riding in on a donkey. Why? These are certainly not the wealthy people of Jerusalem, and most people did not have a robe to spare!
If only you and I could have been among that multitude that day! The disciples could have told us why the people cheered and screamed praises to God until their throats were sore, and why they flung their robes in the dust. Over there, see him? It’s Bartimaeus, the blind man Jesus healed just last week at Jericho, only twenty miles down the road, on the way here. And yonder is Lazarus, tears of joy streaming down his face, and beside him Mary and Martha. And there is the man who was lame for thirty-eight years and lay by the Sheep Pool here in Jerusalem, waiting for an angel to heal him — then Jesus came. No wonder they cry and dance, shout and sing, and throw their branches in the path! This is a day for praise and joy and gratitude and love and hope and admiration and thanksgiving.
Have you and I any less reason to praise and rejoice in God our Saviour? Have we lost the element of praise? There is so much extremism, pessimism, complacency — is there still room for enthusiasm, for shouting, for “Amens,” for tears in our churches? Are there too many Pharisees in our crowds, as in that crowd that day?
Who Is This Man? (vv. 10-11)
The procession came on into Jerusalem, through the beautiful Golden Gate. As the crowd came on into the temple, drawing an even greater throng among the pilgrims gathered from all over Israel for the annual Passover, a question raced through the crowd like jagged lightning in a summer storm: “Who is this man?” And that is the question each of them — and each of us — has to answer.
The Moslems apparently have long thought they know who that man was, and is. For that Golden Gate through which Jesus entered has now been closed for centuries. It is said that it was closed by the Moslems when they overran Jerusalem in the sixth century, in order to keep Jesus from returning. The legends are that they will prevail until Jesus returns through that gate. So they walled it up, and planted a Moslem cemetery directly in front of it, hoping to stop Jesus’ return. In the time of the Crusades the gate was reopened once a year, on Palm Sunday, as the Christians celebrated the coming of Easter.
But who do you say this man is? The crowd said He was Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet. And He was. He was the carpenter, who came into this world and lived like us, among us, in order to understand and save us. But He is more than that. He is the Prophet, Priest, and King. He is the Suffering Servant, the Bringer of Salvation and Healing. He is the Conqueror of death. He is the Lord. (ECD)
Easter Sunday (A)
April 11, 1993
The Astounding Event at the Heart of Faith
(John 20-1-18)
In the Courtauld Gallery in London hangs the master painting by Michelangelo Caravaggio entitled “The Incredulity of St. Thomas.” It depicts the scene in the upper room when Christ appears from the dead to the disciples. Thomas, the one known as the Doubter, is stretching forth his hand to touch the wound in Christ’s side. He cannot believe his Lord is alive again.
And well he can’t! We would all have a similar problem.
I think of my father’s death: the call that came …. the long drive to get there …. the funeral home where his body lay. He looked better in death than he had in life. We shed some tears and stood there for hours as friends came to pay their respects. We went to his room in the nursing home where he had lived the last years of his life, and took his clothes from the drawers and the closet. The room seemed strangely empty without his presence.
We had his graveside service on a sunny morning that turned suddenly cold and blustery as we said the words of the prayers. In the afternoon, I returned to the cemetery and stood by the freshly filled grave. Nothing would have surprised me more than if he had come back that evening and stood in the room where we gathered to talk. Nothing would have effected a greater change in the way I look at life or the way I live from day to day. I would have been as incredulous as Thomas.
Jesus was really dead. The Gospels went to great length to make this clear. He was not in a swoon, later to revive in the tomb. He suffered and bled and died on the cross. When the soldiers came to make sure, one of them pierced His side with a sword. Two of His followers took the body down from the cross, prepared it for burial, and placed it in a tomb, where a stone was rolled to secure the body. The body lay there from Friday evening until Sunday morning — three days by Jewish reckoning. And then suddenly He was alive again!
That is what is so amazing about His resurrection. Suddenly this very dead body, this decomposing body, was alive and appearing to disciples everywhere!
It is our problem today that we don’t really believe it.
We say we believe it.
“I believe … in Jesus Christ … born … suffered … was crucified … The third day He rose again from the dead.”
But we don’t really believe it. We can’t. We don’t know how to believe it. We only half-believe it.
We are simply stuck with a gigantic absurdity at the heart of our faith — an act so audacious and incredible that believing it would stand all our other belief systems on their heads. So we come to church and pretend to believe that Jesus rose up from the dead and then go out to our jobs and homes and everyday lives and remain unconvinced in our hearts.
When we are confronted by the resurrection, this enormous absurdity, we must opt for one of three possibilities:
One, it didn’t happen. It was merely a fiction invented by the early church.
Two, it did happen, and therefore we don’t understand the world we live in as well as we thought we did.
Three, it did happen, but only because there is a Power so great that it can contravene the laws of the world as we know it.
Now, from the viewpoint of those who were closest to Jesus, it did happen. There can be no doubt about that. There are three major pieces of evidence.
First, there was the empty tomb. No fewer than four of the followers saw the empty tomb and reported it.
Second, there were all the appearances of the risen Christ — to Mary in the garden, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, to ten of the disciples in the upper room, to the ten again plus Thomas, to several disciples by the Sea of Galilee, to more than five hundred followers at once, and finally to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul, it seems to me, would be one of the most incontrovertible witnesses, as he had been a sworn enemy of the Christians until Christ appeared to him.
Third, there was the incredible change in the attitudes and behavior of the followers. Before the crucifixion, they acted from cowardice and confusion. After the resurrection, they were transformed into pillars of courage and decisiveness, ready to die for their faith. It was no mere shifting of mood for them to change so dramatically. Something had happened that altered the very nature of their beings.
I said we must opt for one of three possibilities: that it didn’t happen; that it did happen, and therefore the world is different from the world we thought we knew; or that it did happen because a great Power contravened the laws of nature as we know them. Perhaps I was wrong, and we can opt for both the second and the third possibilities. That is, it is probably true that we don’t fully understand the nature of the world we live in and God intervened in an unusual way to rescue His beloved Son from the grave.
Let me unpack that a bit.
It is true that we don’t always understand the world as well as we think we do. Today, we tend to be a lot more skeptical of faith than we are of science, with the result that we are sometimes deluded by science and so-called “scientific evidence.” The truth is that much of science is still a lot of unproven and perhaps even unprovable conjecture — systems of hypotheses that hold together very well within themselves but admit of no real verification from the outside. The most outstanding physicists of our time confess that one little piece of new information, one daring bit of mathematical breakthrough, may totally alter the way we presently understand matter and space.
If we wish to be strictly scientific, we shall never accept a worldview that excludes the evidence that does not fit. Real science, on the contrary, pays closest attention to the information that cannot be fitted neatly into its patterns and theories. So we must beware of being scientific bigots, just as we must beware of being religious bigots.
But suppose our environment is basically submissive to rational patterns, and that we are beginning at last to discern what they are. Does this mean that God cannot behave as God wants to, despite the laws of nature — that God cannot throw away the script and improvise in a totally divine way? After all, the very name “God” implies the freedom to do what God wants, doesn’t it? Is God bound by anything? If so, then God is not God.
The followers of Jesus knew that people do not normally revive after they have died — especially after they have been dead for three days. This is why they were so surprised, so galvanized, by the resurrection. If they had expected it, it would have been otherwise. They would not have run to the tomb on the report of its being empty. They would not have been transformed into pillars of courage and decisiveness. And, when it happened, when they learned that Jesus had risen from the grave, they declared immediately that God had done it.
“This Jesus, whom you crucified,” says the substance of Peter’s speech to the Jews at Pentecost, “Him has God raised up and made to become the Lord and Savior of us all.” There was no doubt in their minds: God had acted in an extraordinary way to restore Christ to the world of the living.
God is God, and, whatever the nature of the world, can do anything the divine will chooses to do. What it all comes down to is that when you say God you say miracle. It’s as simple as that.
I am thinking of a friend of mine and what happened to her several years ago when she was operated on for cancer. The doctors said she was riddled by the disease and would never be well again. She lay in her room at the hospital, half alive and half dead, wanting to get it over with. A woman appeared by her bed and said she was sent to give her a massage. The woman was dressed in foreign dress and wore a turban, unlike the nurses who regularly came into the room. As her hands moved over my friend’s body, my friend began to feel well again. She could not believe how well she felt.
When a nurse came into the room, my friend asked her about the woman in foreign clothing who had given her the wonderful massage. The nurse replied that there was no such person on the staff.
Later, when my friend was speaking at a large gathering of people, she saw the woman in the turban slip into the back of the room and smile at her. But after the meeting she was gone again, and my friend never saw her after that.
I saw my friend only a few months ago. She was beautiful. It had been more than ten years since the strange woman gave her the massage. She has been convinced ever since that the woman was an angel from God.
Maybe it is a fault of ours that we become impervious to miracles in the modern world. Maybe we see so few of them because we don’t expect to see them at all. As it is, they must crash in upon us and convince us against our wills.
The resurrection of Jesus, says poet Chad Walsh, is “a mind-breaker.” “The cross is a heartbreaker; the empty tomb is a mind-breaker.” And both our hearts and our minds need to be broken, especially if we are under any illusion that they can get along without God.
What happens when our hearts and minds are broken by God? Then we have a chance to be joyous.
Not in any little, momentary way, but in a cosmic sense. The people of the resurrection are happy people. They know that God is in charge of the universe, that God will not be put off by history, that eventually all the promises of the prophets shall come to pass and there will be “a new heaven and a new earth.”
Oh, they have their sorrows. They are no more immune to suffering than other people. They may even suffer more. But deep down they are happy, for they have seen the ending of the story and know it is a comedy, not a tragedy. They know that in the end the Lord Jesus will reign over everything. (JRK)
Second Sunday of Easter (A)
April 18, 1993
The Polls Were Wrong
(Acts 2:24)
I refuse to say Christians die. Transferred. Meet their Maker. Passed. Gone home. These words make a lot more sense to me because, like all Christians, “I believe in … the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting” (The Apostles’ Creed).
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t take death to this life lightly. I enjoy this life. And I enjoy people who enjoy this life. And while some are always trying to taint it, God said this life is good. So while I’m not afraid to pass from this life to the next through Jesus, I’m not in any hurry either. I’ve got more things to write. I’ve got more people to tell about Jesus. I’ve got more love to share with my wife, children, family, friends, and you. And I still haven’t had a hole-in-one.
I’m not afraid of being transferred. Because of Jesus, I can say with David Redding, “Anyone who feels sorry for a dead Christian, as though the poor chap were missing something, is himself missing the transfiguring promotion involved” (Getting Through the Night, 1972).
Christians never die. And people never live until they invite Jesus into their hearts. Again, please don’t get me wrong. I don’t take death to this life lightly. And let’s not forget how Jesus reacted when one of His friends passed from this life (John 11). He cried. Though He knew of the eternal reunion His life and resurrection would insure, Jesus still valued and enjoyed this life and the life of his friend so much that He didn’t want to part company even if it would be only a relatively short separation through the eyes of eternity. That’s why it’s appropriate, even expected by our Lord, for our tears to flow when we say a temporary farewell to a friend who goes home. When we cry at a memorial service, it’s our way of affirming the goodness of a life our Lord shared with us in this life. And though we know we will share life again after this life, we miss our resurrected friends. We’ll get together there but we still miss them here.
Death used to be a bigger deal than it is now. If we could have taken a poll before Jesus rose from the dead, there wouldn’t have been too many folks who saw anything beyond the grave. It would have been like those polls in 1948 which said Harry Truman had no chance of being re-elected president. But Truman knew polls can be wrong.
Tom Evans, an old friend of Truman’s, called late on November 21, 1948. “I called him about midnight,” he recollected. “He had just lost New York State to Thomas Dewey, and I knew he had to carry Ohio, Illinois, and California. And when I called him to tell him that, he said, ‘Tom, I’m going back to sleep. Now don’t call me any more. I’m going to carry all three of those states.’ Which he did.” The polls were wrong. And ever since Jesus, Christians have scorned death with Paul, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:51ff).
When the clergy conspired to kill Jesus, and Pilate went along for the ride, the polls predicted defeat for our Lord. One pollster even caught two of His closest campaign workers headed out of town and saying, “But we had hoped that He was the One who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:13ff). The disciples scattered and cowered in the darkest corners of Jerusalem. They denied communion or even acquaintance with Jesus. Their dreams were dashed. Their hero was hung. The campaign was over. And they thought they had lost the election.
The polls were wrong. Jesus rose from the dead. And ever since that unique day of resurrection so long ago, Christians know polls can be wrong. People don’t know everything and people control nothing. When things look bad, Christians know our Lord changes things. When spirits fall, Christians know God’s Holy Spirit brings revival. When things look like they’re dying, Christians know God provides resurrection. Christians know “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1).
A few months ago, chess champion Bobby Fischer made a couple of million dollars on the board in Yugoslavia. He beat Boris Spassky again. And he appeared as weird as ever.
But one of the things that a lot of people don’t know about Fischer is that his favorite hobby is visiting art galleries and museums. A few years ago while on vacation in Europe, he became captivated by one particular painting called Checkmate. For six hours, he stood staring at it.
It was the picture of a chess game. On one side of the board was Satan with a smug and sinister smile on his face. On the other side of the board was a young man with tears running down his face and sweat pouring from his forehead. He was biting his fingernails. Satan was reaching out to make the last move. The young man looked terrified. Apparently, he thought he had lost the game to Satan. Again, the painting was called Checkmate. Satan smiled. The young man was panicked. And as Satan reached out to make the last move, things seemed hopeless for the young man.
After six hours of staring at the painting, Bobby Fischer said, “Bring me a chess board.” He set up the board exactly as it was depicted in the painting. After a few moments, he began to smile. “Young man,” he said, “I wish you could hear me because I have some good news for you. Things aren’t as dark and bleak as they seem to be. I have studied this game for more than six hours, and I have discovered that it’s alright to allow the devil to make his move. Because after he makes his move, I’ve found that there is one more move on the board! Let him make his move. You will be the one who says, ‘Checkmate!’ There is one more move on the board.”
No matter what the polls say or how things appear to be, we always have one more move. Jesus. We have Jesus. And it’s impossible to lose with Jesus on our side.
Hank Aaron was asked if he held his bat with the label up or down. He said, “I never check. I don’t go up to the plate to read. I go up to hit!” After Babe Ruth’s dramatic home run, which came after he pointed his bat to the place where he intended to hit the ball, a reporter asked, “How would you have felt if you hadn’t hit a home run? What if you had made an out?” The Babe replied, “That never even entered my mind.”
As Thomas More stood before the executioner for being more committed to Christ than any king, he said “I remain the king’s good servant but God’s first.” As he reached the gallows as his penalty for serving the Savior instead of Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer turned to a young English lieutenant and said, “The is the end. For me the beginning of life.”
It’s never over for a Christian. Christians never say die. Death doesn’t have the last move. That’s reserved for Jesus. (RRK)
Third Sunday of Easter (A)
April 25, 1993
He’s Alive: So What?
(Luke 24:28-35)
Our family was going on vacation and I was listening to a minister on the car radio. Throughout his sermon he repeated this line, “Jesus is a celestial being with a celestial body.” At the end of the service, he said, “I will be back tomorrow — same time, same place. I want to talk about Jesus is a celestial being with a celestial body’.” Maybe you get the significance. I didn’t get it. I turned to my family and said, “So what?”
Two Sundays ago, we celebrated Easter and sang hymns such as, Up From the Grave He Arose” and He Lives. On this Sunday, I want to ask the question, “So what difference does that make in the living of my life and your life?” It is one thing to affirm something which happened in history but it is another thing to say, “this is the living, moving and having-its-being in the history of my own life.” “Up from the grave He arose.” We believe that but “so what difference does it make to the way you and I live?”
What difference does it make that He came out of the tomb and up from the grave He arose? The story begins with Luke picturing two disciples who are going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a little village about seven miles from Jerusalem. It is Easter Sunday afternoon. These disciples had heard the rumors that Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb but they couldn’t believe He was risen from the dead. They simply did not believe He had come back from the dead. His body may be missing but they thought it was simply the hysteria of a few women. They could not believe for themselves that Jesus was alive.
What is important is not where they were going but what they were trying to get away from in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where the dream had died. They had a dream about Jesus. They had given themselves to Jesus. He was the leader of their lives. They believed in Him. Suddenly everything was dead and they might as well have been dead.
You and I know what it is to exist in life but not to live. Some of us do this at times. We keep on keeping on but life has been drained and squeezed out of us because the dream has died. This is what had happened to these two shuffling along from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They had a dream but the dream had died.
Suddenly a stranger joins them on the journey. We know it’s Jesus. Luke says, “He was Jesus,” but Luke also says, “They didn’t know who it was.” Their eyes were closed to who it was. Isn’t it interesting they didn’t recognize Jesus? I’ve seen people whose dreams have died. Haven’t you? They stare vacantly at life. Their eyes are open but they are not really open. Don’t you know people such as this — they see but they don’t see. Somewhere the dream died in their lives and all of life has been drained out of them.
I saw it one Sunday morning after I had preached. It was Mother’s Day and we had the new parents come with their babies. It was always an exciting time for the congregation. At the conclusion of the service, I went to the back of the church. People were coming by and I noticed a woman who was at the edge of the crowd. When everybody else had gone, she came by, took my hand, and I will never forget what she said: “Pastor, more than anything else I wish I could be a mother.” Since that day, I never preached a Mother’s Day sermon or had a Mother’s Day service when I didn’t remember the eyes of that woman and pray or say something about those who sit in the congregation on Mother’s Day for whom that is the most painful Sunday in all of the year. More than anything else, they would like somebody to call them “mother” but the dream has died.
Do you know those times in your life? There are times of grief, anger and sometimes of frustration. There are times of fear when you move out of a door and know you’ll never be able to come back through that door again to things just as they were. Things have changed. A dream has died.
The travellers asked the stranger to come with them to supper. The stranger takes the bread in His hands, gives thanks and breaks the bread. At that moment they recognized, “This is Jesus.” What was happening? Suddenly the bread in His hands was a reminder to them that life is in His hands.
The dream dies for us when there is no purpose in life, when life makes no sense, when there is nothing beyond ourselves — no one beyond ourselves — on whom we can call. We walk through life seeing but not seeing, staring but not understanding, looking but not really looking into the heart of life. In that moment, it dawned on them — life is in His hands.
Robert McCracken, who was pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, was once asked, “Why do people keep coming to church?” He said, “They keep coming because they hope to hear some word beyond themselves.”
Do you see what was happening here? The dream had died for the two disciples and they could not see. They were staring but not seeing. They were listening but not hearing. Suddenly He took the bread in His hands and they knew in that moment that life was in His hands.
Do you know what the disciples did? They didn’t stay in Emmaus. Luke says, “They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem.” Do you find that intriguing? The disciples go back to where the disappointment had happened, back to where the dream had become a nightmare. They had just come from there, empty, but they go back. It is still Jerusalem but there is a difference.
What difference does it make that He’s risen? They got up, they went back to life as it was but they went back with a faith which changed them.
When Charles de Gaulle was president of France, he and his wife, Yvonne, had a daughter who was severely mentally handicapped. Late in the afternoon, regardless of the affairs of state, Charles de Gaulle would always come home and he and his wife would get on the floor and play with their daughter. Every night, as they went to bed, Yvonne would say to Charles, “I so much wish that she was like the others.” The daughter died. The day of the funeral, everybody had left the graveside except for Yvonne. The grief was so bitter. She sat there by herself. Finally, de Gaulle went to her and put his arm on her arm and said, “Yvonne, did you hear what the minister said today? ‘She is now like the others’.”
This is the kind of world in which you and I live. It is a world where sometimes dreams get broken, nightmares come we never expected. Suddenly in the midst of life, there are those things we never expected to happen.
They got up and they went back to Jerusalem. Things on the outside were the same but something was wonderfully different. “He’s alive. So what?” You and I can leave this place today and live in His presence and His power. (CB)
Fourth Sunday of Easter (A)
May 2, 1993
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
(Acts 2:44)
Jesus expected believers to get along with each other. Jesus expected believers to be bonded together through common faith in Him. He expected the unity of believers to be among the most persuasive witnesses to His saving Lordship. Jesus expected the world to look at His Church and exclaim, “See how they love each other!” Jesus expected the reality of life in the Church to reflect the refrain, “We are one in the Spirit. We are one in the Lord …. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love … Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” That’s what Jesus expected.
Obviously, Jesus never went to a session meeting. Obviously, Jesus never went to a presbytery, synod, or General Assembly meeting. Obviously, Jesus didn’t understand the need for the number of churches to rival the number of saloons in most towns. Obviously, Jesus didn’t realize people could love Him and hate each other at the same time.
“It is the tragic fact,” lamented Barclay, “that it is just that united front that the Church has never shown to men. Faced by the disunity of Christians, the world cannot see the supreme value of the Christian faith.”
It’s a shame how Jesus gets blamed for Christians. It’s a shame how people move in directions away from Jesus because they are so repulsed by the behavior of people who claim Him as Lord. It would be good for us to remind people who are turned off to Jesus because they are turned off by Christians that what is true does not become false because of false witnesses to the truth. But remembering that the only Gospel or word about Jesus some folks will ever hear or see is the Gospel according to you and me, the disunity and divisions and disaffections of His disciples do not assist the growth of the Kingdom.
Unfortunately, the connection between Jesus and today’s church is often just coincidental. I am reminded of the movie version of William H. Armstrong’s Sounder. A black man and his son are strolling by a segregated church. The boy says to his daddy. “I never been in that church.” His daddy replies, That’s O.K., honey. Jesus never been in there neither.” The truth is, as John wrote, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother … cannot love God … Whoever loves God must love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21). And so Luke was right when he wrote about the early Church and the everlasting Church which loves Jesus: “All the believers were together.” If we believe in Jesus, we are bonded together through common faith in Him.
The dedication page of The Master Christian came to mind: “Dedicated to all of those who quarrel in the Name of Christ.” In an address to the World Vision International Council in September 1989, Roberta Hestemes sadly said, “The church of which we are a part is deeply divided. It is a broken church. Like our country and world, the church is divided.
You may have seen Imo Phillips tell this story on his comedy special a few years ago: “I was walking in San Francisco along the Golden Gate Bridge when I saw a man about to jump off. I tried to dissuade him from committing suicide and told him simply that God loved him. A tear came to his eye. I then asked him, ‘Are you a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu, or what?’ He said, ‘I’m a Christian.’ I said, ‘Me, too, small world. Protestant or Catholic?’ He said, ‘Protestant.’ I said. ‘Me, too, what franchise?’ He said, ‘Northern Baptist.’ I said, ‘Well, me too. Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?’ He said, ‘Northern Conservative Baptist.’ I said, ‘Well, call Ripley! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?’ He said, ‘Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist.’ I said, ‘Remarkable! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?’ He said, ‘Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.’ I said, ‘A miracle! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912?’ He said, ‘Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region of 1912.’ I said, ‘Die, Heretic!’ And I pushed him over.”
It’s like the dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist who was approached by her nephew and asked, “What will you do if when you go to heaven, you meet Jesus and He says He’s a Presbyterian?” The old woman replied, “Listen, honey, if I’m in heaven and somebody tells me he’s a Presbyterian, I’ll know it ain’t Jesus.”
I won’t even mention the things that separate us in the local church like carpet color, hymnbook selection, Sunday School materials, what to do with old buildings which have not been used for over a decade, real or fake candles and flowers, where to hang the cradle roll, robed and collared or tabbed or suited priests, the volume of the organ, length of the service, preacher’s kids, calendar, classroom assignments, kitchen, and all of the other things so critical to the rise or fall of the Kingdom. I won’t even mention those things.
But what a witness to the world! If the church can’t get its act together, how will the world ever get its act together? How can a divided church heal a divided world? And what’s the cost of our broken church?
“Gee,” the Beaver asked his dad, “there’s something wrong with just about everything, isn’t there, Dad?” And Ward replied, “Just about, Beav.” The world’s divided. Our country is divided. The church is divided. But it is not our Lord’s fault. He had a better idea: unity through common faith in Him.
I’ve always liked the way e. e. cummings put it, “I am blue. You are yellow. Together we make green. And green is my favorite color.” That may sound a little corny but it’s true because, as Luke wrote about the church then and now, “All the believers were together.” (RRK)
Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)
May 9, 1993
Stephen’s Sermon
(Acts 7:51-60)
When the church appointed the seven, it had far-reaching consequences. It opens the last crisis of the Jerusalem church, it signals the beginning of the great struggle to free the Gospel from the chains of tradition, pride, and prejudice. The early Christians felt themselves to be Jews — Jews who had found the Messiah and all that it meant. And what it meant was beginning to run against the grain of what the average, “off the shelf” Jew thought.
The Jews felt chosen, but in the wrong way. They never grasped, throughout the Old Testament, that they were chosen to serve, to bring all nations to the true God. They felt God had no use for any people but them. They felt, in their worst moments, that the Gentiles were created merely as fuel for the fires of hell; they felt, in their best moments, that the Gentiles were created to be servants of the Jews in the Messianic Age.
Here in Acts 6 we see the early Church selecting as its first deacons seven men who are obviously Greek-speaking Jews, and one is a Gentile convert to Christianity! Of these seven, Stephen sees farther than the rest. He has a vision of the whole world following Christ; he saw the universal nature of the Gospel long before the leaders of the church saw it. And for that vision he will pay with his life; yet as he dies he still sees farther than anybody else around him. In verses 55-56, surrounded by tooth-grinding enemies, he sees the heavens opened and Jesus at the right hand of the Father. That vision stayed with him and sustained him in the hail of stones. Nobody else in the crowd saw his vision — not the murderers with the rocks, not Saul guarding the coats.
Stephen and Jesus
Stephen had a far-reaching vision because he was filled with the Spirit of Jesus (6:5). Luke intends for us to see Stephen as echoing the character of Jesus; both are described as “full of grace and power,” both did “wonders and signs,” both were persecuted, hated, confronted with false witnesses, put on trial, and put to death. Both Jesus and Stephen, in the hour of death, make similar statements about receiving their spirit, and forgiving those who persecute them. Both are granted a sense of triumph: Jesus in His cry, “It is finished”; Stephen in his vision of Jesus. May the life and death of every deacon reflect such a closeness to Jesus!
What the Deacon Preached
Stephen’s sermon — for that is what we have in 7:2-53, rather than a defense — is the beginning of the break of Christianity with Judaism. Stephen uses the history of God’s dealings with the Jews to show how they have rejected both God’s message and God’s messengers. We could entitle his sermon, The Way God Works, and the Way Man Rejects God’s Plan. There are four main divisions to his sermon: God’s plan with Abraham (7:2-8), God’s plan with Joseph (7:9-19), God’s plan with Moses (7:20-42), and the significance of the tabernacle, the tent of testimony of God’s presence with His people (7:43-59).
The section on Abraham shows that God’s plan is greater than any human mind can fathom, for to Abraham was the land promised, yet he never owned more than a graveyard. To Abraham God predicted the bondage in Egypt, and made the promises when Abraham had no son. Abraham tells us that man cannot seek to judge the plan of God; man’s part is to obey.
The section on Joseph is intended to show him as a type of Jesus: betrayed, sold into slavery yet raised up by God. The section on Moses, the patron saint of the Pharisees, shows how this messenger of God was disowned by those he was sent to rescue (v. 35), how he prophesied the rising of a prophet like him (v. 37), and how the children of Israel constantly disobeyed him (v. 39). The section on the tabernacle emphasizes that it was a symbol of the presence of God with His people, and that it was a better symbol than the fixed temple of Solomon. No temple can hold the Lord God who is out leading His people.
Stephen makes three points about the way God works: (1) God calls out His people to follow Him wherever He leads; (2) God has a plan we may not be able to see; and (3) our God is a God of progress and change whose best symbol was the tent of testimony, a portable meeting place of God and His people.
The Response to his Sermon
The response of the Sanhedrin to Stephen’s sermon was strong and negative! Most folks give most preachers at best a bored yawn at the end of the sermon; Stephen had his congregation grinding their teeth and under conviction in their hearts (v. 54). Stephen had apparently already counted the cost, and by the presence of the Holy Spirit Stephen was given a vision of the glory of God, and saw Jesus at the right hand of God. It is worth noting that most references to Jesus in the presence of the Father speak of Him seated at the Father’s right hand (see Romans 8:34; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3, 13; 8:1; 20:23; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22). Here Jesus is seen standing to welcome Stephen.
The Witness of Stephen
In the account of this preaching deacon’s death (vv. 57-60), we see what a powerful witness he was in both life and death. In Luke 12:4, Jesus speaks of the days when men like Stephen will “proclaim from the housetop” what Jesus has been saying. And in light of that, Jesus says, “My friends, do not be afraid of those who can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”
The ultimate fear of mankind is physical death, as Hebrews 2:14 says when it speaks of those who are held hostage all their lives to the devil in fear of death, but are now set free in Jesus. Stephen truly was not afraid of death, and in his faith he bears testimony to the supremacy of the spirital in this world. He died saying, like his Master, “Lord, receive my spirit.”
He bears testimony to the reality of the unseen. Stephen saw the heavens opened, and the glory of the unseen appeared. Stephen and his sense of the unseen was a goad, a prod pushing Paul to Jesus.
And Stephen died bearing witness to the fact that the glory of God is essentially grace. For Stephen, again like his Master, died asking the Father to forgive his enemies. Stephen’s prayer shows his deepest desire for those who hated him, and the depth of his confidence that God both could and would pardon such folks.
May all the deacons you know follow in Stephen’s train. For such are living testimonies to God’s grace and a vessel fit for service for the King. (ECD)
Sixth Sunday of Easter (A)
May 16, 1993
When God Moves In
(John 14:15-23)
Jesus has good news and bad news for the disciples. The bad news is that Jesus is leaving. He’s moving on down the road which leads irrevocably to the cross.
The good news is that the Holy Spirit is on the way. God is moving into their world and their lives in a new, far more intimate way than they have known before. Jesus said that “he [the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Helper] abides with you …”, as an external, objective reality. But now Jesus promised that the Spirit “will be in you.” Subjective, personal experience; the power of God alive within their hearts, and souls, and minds.
He uses this beautiful image in the 23rd verse: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (14:23 NRSV). God is moving in. And that’s good news — I think.
I’d better warn you that when God moves in, something has to give; things begin to change. Paul said: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17 NRSV).
Rolling across the cable channels the other night — it’s a male genetic flaw which makes us want to see what is on all the other channels during the commercials — I paused at a rerun of “The Waltons.” In this particular episode, Mama’s cousin Cora Beth came to visit and took over the whole place. John Boy had to move in with the other kids so she could have his bedroom. In the moment I caught, he was complaining to Grandma, “Have you seen what she did to my bedroom? I can barely recognize my own face in the mirror!”
That’s how it is when the Spirit of God moves in. The evidence of the Gospel, the witness of Christian people throughout history, is that when God moves in, things begin to change. We begin to think, to act, to relate to other people in a whole new way — a way which looks like the way of Jesus. We begin to see the world around us from a whole new perspective; we begin seeing it through the eyes of Jesus. We begin to see ourselves reflected in the mirror of the love of God, and sometimes we can hardly recognize the person we’re comparing to the person we are becoming. When the Spirit of God moves in, things begin to change.
There’s another thing you need to know: when God moves in, God brings the whole family with Him.
Recent events in our nation have uncorked the cauldron of racism which boils just beneath the surface of our society. It’s probably a good time to pull an old movie off the video shelf. I think it won the Academy Award when it first came out. Do you remember “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”?
Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn play an intelligent, affluent, sophisticated couple — folks a lot like us — who are surprised to discover that the well-educated, articulate doctor their daughter brings home to dinner and intends to marry is Black. The point of the movie was, in effect, the daughter saying, “You love me, you get him in the bargain.”
And that’s how it is when God moves in: He brings along all the other people He loves. How many times have I said it? To be “born again” means that we are born into a family, with brothers and sisters in Christ whom we did not choose, but who are given to us in the love of God. I didn’t choose to be born with a twin brother. There were times when I wished he wasn’t there. But he was given to me with the gift of life. When you are born into the family of God, you cannot choose your relatives. They all come in the bargain, all of those folks for whom Christ died.
It’s as simple and as difficult as this: when the love of God, the God who gave His Son because He loved the whole world, becomes a reality in your life, you’d better be ready to start loving that world, too.
At the end of the New Testament, in the closing paragraphs of the Revelation, the living Christ, the ever-present Lord, the always-present-tense Jesus, offers an invitation to us which fulfills the promise He made at the Last Supper. Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and live with them.”
Jesus promised it to His first disciples, and He promises it to you: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (14:23 NRSV). (JAH)
Ascension (A)
May 23, 1993
Batteries Not Included
(Ephesians 1:15-23)
Is the power on? I can still preach without it. We can still worship without the power. We can still get around without it, but we will get along better with it. We will function as we should function if it is on. You will hear as you are supposed to hear and you will be able to read the hymns in the hymnbook, if it is on.
We could have functioned without it. I suppose I could have shouted louder, or maybe brought in a portable pulpit and placed it in the center aisle. Without the power, the organ would not work, so we could have brought in a piano. We would have been in the dark, so we would try to sing some hymn that you know, for you would sing it in the dark. Things would have happened without the power, but they would not have happened as they should have. We would have to make adjustments and compromises, and in the final analysis, it would have been less than the best. We need the power.
Life is like that. Many people are living without power. They are going through life the best they can with no power. They are alive and functioning, but not as alive as they could be, and not functioning as well as they should be. They might even say, “I’m doing fine. Leave me alone. Life was meant to be like this.” If they have never been turned on to power, they don’t know anything else and, hence, they may even feel satisfied.
Did you ever buy one of those toys that moves by itself, because it is powered by a battery? You push a button and it moves, or runs, or cries. Very often you get it home, assume that it is ready to go, and then you read the small print, “batteries not included.” Now, if you gave it to a child as a present, it could still be played with. You could cuddle it, or play house, or push it. It is still able to be used as a toy, and some children may think that is enough. But if you pointed out that by inserting the batteries you could still do all that you now are doing with the toy, plus it would walk and talk and cry like a real baby, there would be an additional degree of zest in playing with the toy. Life is like that. Sam Shoemaker wrote years ago that “I am perfectly sure that spiritual power is as available to us as electricity. It is about us all the time, waiting to be appropriated. The air is filled with it.”
The gift of life does not come with batteries. That’s the small print on the package. You have to decide to add power. You can live life without power — many millions are — or you can decide to connect your life to power and become all that you were meant to become. Paul talks about the power that is available to us in our Scripture lesson and especially in our text from Ephesians. “How very great is His power at work in us who believe.”
I like the use of superlatives in relation to the Christian faith. Paul doesn’t just say, “How great is His power …” He says, “How very great is His power …” Other translators say, “How tremendous,” “How surpassingly great” and “What transcendent greatness.” In this day of “Super Bowls” and “Super Savers,” Paul is saying that it is super great. There can be more to life than first meets the eye.
This is the good news of the gospel. Life does not have to be boring. It does not have to be routine and humdrum. It can be exciting, for we never know what the Spirit of God is up to. He is surprising us all the time. God has given you not just life, but life abundant! Life in superlatives!
For some people, power and people with power are always bad guys. Not so in the Bible. Luke tells us that people “were astonished at Jesus’ doctrine, for His word was with power” (4:32). Acts tells us that Jesus said to His disciples (to you and me) that “you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you …” (1:8). The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth that “the kingdom of God is not in word but in power” (4:19). Again, he wrote to Timothy that “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power …” (2 Timothy 1:7). The presence of biblical power is a very desirable thing, a good thing, for it makes us function the way we are supposed to operate. It authenticates our existence and adds zest to our lives.
Not everybody has biblical power — only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. This source is available to His followers, not to those who follow another. This is power to those who believe, spiritual power.
He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercy
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed and the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure;
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.
(Annie Johnson Flint)
We can have that kind of power now in our Christian living. Power to God’s people who believe in Him. The power of the Holy Spirit is there for the believing. “He giveth and giveth and giveth again.”
William Borden grew up in a highly privileged family, graduated from Yale University and then went out to serve God and his fellow man in Egypt. While still young, he fell ill and died. On his gravestone in Cairo are these words, “Apart from Christ there is no explanation of such a life.”
Batteries are not included in life. You have to take the initiative and accept what God has already given you in Jesus Christ. You can do all things through Christ, who empowers you. (CTH)
Pentecost (A)
May 30, 1993
The Spirit and Power of Faith
(Acts 2:2-4)
A cameo picture of the early church’s vitality is found in the Book of Acts, where Luke describes what happened to Jesus’ followers shortly after His ascension. They were gathered in one place, apparently to observe a major event of the Jewish liturgical calendar, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. What happened is best told in Luke’s own words (Acts 2:2-4).
It was a dramatic experience, one that galvanized them and changed their lives.
What is the background of this strange and powerful Spirit? Is it God Himself at work? Is it the Spirit of Jesus, which He promised to send among the disciples when He left them?
We cannot pretend to have all the answers, as if we were reading the contents label on a box of cereal. But the Bible gives us certain hints.
To begin with, the Spirit is mentioned in the opening verses of the Scriptures, about the creation of the earth (Gen. 1:1-2).
The Spirit is identified as the creative power of God. I have always liked the way the King James Version of the Bible translates this: the Spirit “brooded upon the face of the deep.” Brooding suggests something seminal and gestative, such as the reflective time through which an artist passes on the way to the act of creation.
In male/female terminology, it is possible to identify this creative side of God with what Carl Jung called the anima, the female principle inside every male that is his reproductive and nurturing aspect.
The early Christians interpreted what happened to them at Pentecost — the tongues of fire and speaking in tongues — as a sign that God’s Spirit had been poured out, and that theirs was the age of the coming of the kingdom prophesied by Joel. As people will do, we have fastened upon the particular forms of manifestation, especially the tongues-speaking, and continue to look for the Spirit in this guise. But these were probably only temporary forms the Spirit assumed. The important thing was the irruption of divine Spirit in the midst of their observance of Pentecost.
There are many evidences, throughout the New Testament, of the early Christian understanding that God’s Spirit was then among them. Mark says that when Jesus was baptized, “He saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove” (Mark 1:10). Luke reports that when Jesus addressed the elders in the synagogue in Nazareth, he announced, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Paul writes frequently of being “in the Spirit” or “led by the Spirit.” They were all convinced that the Spirit promised by Joel had come — that God was in their midst, creating a new heaven and a new earth.
Eduard Thurneysen, a friend of Karl Barth, has described the Spirit this way:
The Holy Spirit is indeed no other than God himself approaching us and grasping us; he is our God, the God acting with us and in us through his Word and choosing us to be his children. God is the Creator and Father over us; in his Son he is also with us, and in the Holy Spirit he is in us, in order to open our eyes and ears so that we learn to recognize, love, and fear him as our Father in his being with us in the Son. (A Theology of Pastoral Care, pp. 185-186).
All of this is to say that Christians who have not learned to experience God as the Spirit are still in a preliminary state of faith. They do not yet know the confidence of faith, for they lack the sense that God is truly with them at all times. They are little acquainted with the true fellowship of faith, for they have not felt the Spirit’s binding them together with others in the faith, both those they know and those who belong to the wider, ecumenical fellowship of believers. And they are missing the power of faith, for they have not experienced God’s moving in and through them to correct human situations, heal the sick, or improve the world.
My favorite recollection of the power of faith is of a story I read many years ago as a boy, in S. D. Gordon’s book, Quiet Talks on Prayer. It was about D. L. Moody, the shoe clerk who became a great evangelist for Christ, and the time he visited a small church in Great Britain.
When he got up to speak in the morning service, Moody said, he faced the coldest, most apathetic congregation he had ever seen, and he was glad when the experience was over. He dreaded going back to speak again that evening; but unfortunately his presence had been advertised and he kept his word. That evening, though, was a totally different experience. As he preached, he noticed a little warmth in the crowd. Then there was more warmth. Finally, there was so much warmth that a revival broke out, and, though Moody was engaged to be somewhere else the next day, he promised to come back in a few days and continue to preach there, so that the promise of that wonderful evening could be fulfilled.
When he returned to the church, Moody learned what had really happened on that unusual Sunday. There was an elderly woman in the congregation who could no longer attend church but spent her days in a wheelchair. When she had first read about D. L. Moody and his great gifts as an evangelist, she began to pray that he would one day come to visit her little church. Then, when a relative came home from church that Sunday morning and told her that the preacher had been D. L. Moody from America, she had foregone her lunch to go into her bedroom and pray all afternoon. She had besought God to send His Spirit upon the congregation and fill it with a desire for repentance and new life in Christ.
What happened that remarkable evening, said Moody, was not his doing. It was the work of that little woman in her wheelchair, and of the powerful Spirit of God that swept over the congregation, changing hearts and calling the entire church to new spiritual adventures.
Maybe it is this power that average Christians are afraid of, so that we are reluctant to pray for the Spirit’s presence. Everybody feels uneasy about taking hold of a firehose when a powerful blast of water is about to be sent through it. But it is our failure to pray for the Spirit, and to live in the Spirit, that accounts for the terrible blight upon our churches today.
It isn’t any wonder that people don’t know what “I believe in the Holy Spirit” means, or that they can talk about it from only an intellectual or philosophical point of view. The Spirit is God among us, and only the person who has experienced God among us truly comprehends what this means. (JRK)
Sermon briefs in this issue are provided by: Earl C. Davis, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Memphis, TN; John R. Killinger, Distinguished Professor of Religion & Culture, Samford University, Birmingham, AL; Robert R. Kopp, Pastor, Logans Ferry Presbyterian Church, New Kensington, PA; Chuck Bugg, Bates Professor of Christian Preaching, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, KY; John A. Huffman, Pastor, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, CA; C. Thomas Hilton, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Pompano Beach, FL.