The Anglican Priest

Sermon delivered by Fr. Eric Kouns on the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 22, 2012, at St. Augustine’s Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Jonah 3.1-5, 10; Psalm 62.6-14; 1 Corinthians 7.29-31; Mark 1.14-20.

In the Name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In His wisdom, God has given us four separate accounts of the earthly life and ministry of Jesus. They are similar enough that we know it’s the same story. But they are different enough, in terms of their perspectives and their emphases, so that the picture they paint of Jesus, in the aggregate, is far more detailed and nuanced than it would be if we had only one historical record.

The Gospel of Matthew is built around five sermons or “discourses” that Jesus preached over the course His ministry. Matthew has interwoven a record of Jesus’ travels and some of His miracles among those sermons, connecting them together so that the story moves along from beginning to end in a flowing, if more formal narrative.

Mark’s Gospel focuses more on what Jesus did than what He said, or preached, or taught. Mark, we believe, relied mainly on Peter for an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus… and his Gospel reflects the spontaneous and impulsive character for which Peter is well-known. Mark’s Gospel is far less formal than Matthew’s, but it gives a greater sense of immediacy and activity.

Luke, the only Gentile among the Gospel writers, emphasizes the human nature of Jesus, the son of Mary. And in the Gospel of John, the writer wants us to understand that the human Jesus was also divine, and that before He was born in Bethlehem, He was “with God and was God.”

Today’s Gospel reading is from the first chapter of Mark. The passage begins…

Now… Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  (Mark 1:14)

Isn’t it interesting that Mark, who records very little of the teaching of Jesus, preferring to concentrate on his actions—his miracles and works of power—nevertheless begins his account of Jesus’ ministry—after briefly mentioning the baptism and temptation—with a reference to something Jesus said.

According to Mark, these are the very first words spoken by Jesus in his public ministry.  With these words, Jesus set the tone of his ministry for the next three years.  And almost everybody now agrees that the kingdom of God was the single most important theme in all of Jesus’s preaching and teaching.

First century Jews were looking for a king.  It had been 500 years since they had been an independent nation with their own king.  The Hebrew scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, promised that one day a king would come, a descendant of King David, and he would restore Israel to the position among the nations which she had enjoyed before she was conquered and subjugated first by Babylonia, then by Medo-Persia, then Greece, and now… at the time Jesus lived and the Gospels were written… by Rome.

Since the Jews viewed themselves as the people of God and their king as the representative of God, the restoration of the kingdom of Israel was, to their way of thinking, the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth.  And they were ready for it.  They were tired of being trodden down and walked over.  They were ready for somebody anointed by God (and that is precisely what the word “messiah” means) to come on the scene and overthrow their oppressors so that their king could be seated on his throne once again.  They were ready for some pomp and pageantry.  They were tired of waiting.

Onto this stage steps Jesus.  Claiming to be the king which the prophets had promised.  Having the temerity, the audacity, to announce that the kingdom had come, that he was, in fact, the king and, on top of everything, to dare to call this announcement “good news.”

And it was good news, because Jesus was talking, not about a political power, but about a personal relationship with God.  His kingdom, He would later say, is “not of this world.”

When he spoke about the kingdom of God, he meant the control and authority which God wants to exercise within and among all of those who surrender their lives to Him.

To Jews who were looking for a Messiah who would lead a revolution to overthrow Rome and a King who would exercise political power from the Throne of David, what Jesus was saying was anything but “good news.”  It was crazy talk, and they would have none of it.

Jesus knew this.  That’s why, according to the account by Mark in today’s Gospel reading…

(He) came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  (Mark 1:14)

Now I would almost lay odds that when you hear the word “repent” you think of something we do in relation to our sins. “Repentance,” for most people, means to acknowledge our sins, express guilt or remorse because of them, and then vow never to act in that way again. And that is an appropriate attitude toward sin. But it’s not what the word “repent” means. Especially not in this context. There is nothing about sins in today’s text. So it must mean something else.

And it does. Our English word “repent” is based on a Latin root… the same root from which we get the word “pensive” (which means “to be thoughtful”)… with a pre-fix (“re-”) which means “again”… as in re-open, re-visit, re-vive. So, the word “repent” literally means “to think again.”

That meaning is even clearer in the original Greek text where the word metanoia means, first and foremost, to “change your mind.”

In essence, Jesus was saying to His hearers, “You’ve got to change your mind about the kingdom of God; you’re looking at it all wrong. The kingdom has drawn near, but you can’t see it because you’re looking the wrong way. You’re expecting the wrong thing.”

The Jewish religious community of Jesus’ day thought they had a handle on the coming kingdom.  They were quite sure that, when it at last arrived, they would certainly recognize it, not least of all because it would be led by… well, a king!

And Jesus said, in effect, “You’re right.  The coming kingdom will have a king… and you’re looking at him!”  And the Jewish religious leaders didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  They knew what a king looked like, and a Galilean carpenter’s son with a retinue of fishermen, tax collectors, and other ragamuffins was surely not it.

In the little book titled Mission in Christ’s Way, Lesslie Newbigin (d. 1996), long-time missionary to India, wrote about the true meaning of “repentance”:

I remember once visiting a village in the Madras diocese. There was no road into the village; you reached it by crossing a river, and you could do this either on the south side of the village or on the north. The congregation had decided that I would come by the southern route, and they had prepared a welcome such as only an Indian village can prepare. There was music and fireworks and garlands and fruit and silumbum (the performance of a South Indian martial art done on ceremonial occasions)—everything you can imagine. Unfortunately I entered the village at the north end and found only a few goats and chickens. Crisis! I had to disappear while word was sent to the assembled congregation, and the entire village did a sort of U-turn so as to face the other way. Then I duly reappeared.

This is what metanoia means… You have to be, as Paul says, transformed by the renewing of your mind. You have to go through a mental revolution; otherwise the kingdom of God will be totally hidden from you.”  (pp. 2-3)

The kingdom of God, as Jesus introduced it, was not accompanied by pomp and pageantry.  Nobody played God Save the King when he entered a room.  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, you may recall, didn’t feel threatened at all when the Jewish religious establishment accused Jesus of claiming to be a king.

Not even his own disciples knew exactly what he meant when used “king & kingdom” language.  They wanted to believe him when he told them he was the promised king, but he made it so difficult.  One day he would talk about establishing the kingdom and the next day he would talk about going to Jerusalem where he expected to be put to death.  They were confused and frustrated.  They just wanted to sit him down and ask him, in no uncertain terms, “Which is it, Jesus?  Did you come to set up a kingdom or did you come to die on a cross?”  And if they had done that, you know what his answer would have been?  It would have been, “Yes.”

But in order to understand that, they had to “change their minds” about what they expected a kingdom to be and to look like. They had to “repent and believe the good news.”

We are in the season known as Epiphany(tide). The word “epiphany” means “a sudden intuitive realization.” During this season we reflect on the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem where, when they saw the Christ child, they had a “sudden intuitive realization” that this was Israel’s king.

During Epiphany we also recall the baptism of Jesus, that moment where, as He stood in the Jordan, the heavens opened, the Spirit of God descended on Jesus like a dove, and the voice of the Father called to Him… “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well-pleased.”

Nearly thirty-two years ago, while I was a student at Wheaton Grad School near Chicago, I had an “epiphany”… a moment of “sudden intuitive realization.”  Owing to a variety of influences that converged on my life in 1980, I became convinced that the most important theme in the Bible was not grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, or salvation.  It was the Kingdom of God.

Over the next three decades I explored and examined that theme and that conclusion from every conceivable angle.  I am even more convinced today than I was then.  The most important theme in all of Scripture is the Kingdom of God.  Everything else, as vital and essential as it may seem, finds its place somewhere in relation to the central theme, the unifying motif, of the Kingdom.

I read the Old Testament, with its creation narrative and its historical record of the people of Israel, through the lens of the Kingdom.  I interpret and apply the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles from the perspective of the Kingdom.  My view of life after death and of the ultimate future purpose of God for our human bodies and for the earth is shaped by my belief that those ideas can be understood only in relation to the Kingdom of God.  Salvation is the way of entry into the Kingdom.  Love is the controlling principle for life in the Kingdom.  Even my political views are shaped and influenced by Jesus’ words in the Lord’s prayer:  “Father,… may Your Kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Nowhere does this principle have more practical application than in relation to the church.  I still believe that the best description of the purpose for the church in the world is that put forward by George Eldon Ladd more than a generation ago:  the church is the agent of the Kingdom of God.

The church is where the distinctives of the Kingdom are supposed to be cultivated, where we learn how to live by Kingdom values in the face of the pressure—which comes from the world, the flesh, and the devil—to succumb to the influence of the prevailing culture.  The place where we encourage one another to hang tough, be consistent, don’t surrender, don’t lose heart.

The church is the place where we embrace and comfort and bandage and console those who are battered and bruised from their confrontation with a hostile culture—a culture under the control of a power opposed to God and intent on frustrating every attempt on the part of the citizens of the Kingdom to live according to the priorities and directives of the King.

The church is supposed to be a living example of the gospel of the Kingdom.  As Lesslie Newbigin has written:

The church is not an end in itself.  “Church growth” is not an end in itself.  The church is only true to its calling when it is a sign, an instrument, and a foretaste of the Kingdom.

The New Testament does not contain a constitution or a set of bylaws for the way Kingdom citizens should live,  but it is not difficult to surmise such a pattern for behavior.  Kingdom citizens should emulate the character of the King.  The cultivation and development of Christlike character traits is called spiritual formation, and it is the most important work in which the church can be involved.  It includes public worship, personal devotion, and self-sacrificing service.  And it takes a church, the community of the King, to be the context, the fertile environment, in which spiritual formation can flourish.

The truth about the Kingdom of God can resolve all manner of church conflicts—simply follow the course that most consistently models the values of the Kingdom and the character of the King.  It can provide guidance in political issues and matters of public policy—support the candidates and policies which are most likely to produce a society which reflects Kingdom values.

It was the truth about the comprehensive nature of the Kingdom of God which ultimately drew me to the liturgical tradition which I now embrace in Anglicanism.  Many of my friends in the free church tradition, where I lived and worked for thirty-five years, feel uncomfortable with what they perceive as “pomp and pageantry” in some forms and expressions of liturgical worship.  For me, those outward expressions—the bowing, the kneeling, the incense, the kissing of the altar—all remind me that I serve the King of Kings, and one day I will have opportunity to acknowledge His very presence in similar acts of honor and worship.  Until then, they bring a little of heaven to earth, and instill a level of reverence in public worship which never fails to lift my spirit and transport me  spiritually into the presence of the King.

Chris Seay (“see”) is a church planter, pastor, and author of a number of books, including one called The Gospel According to Jesus. I conclude this morning with a short story from that book.

Seay writes…

One week I was preaching in our church about the kingdom that is coming, and on his way out a young man grabbed me. He said, “Pastor, that kingdom is already here.  I used to come to this very neighborhood every Sunday. I came down here to a bar called Emo’s, and I’d start every Sunday night with a drop of ecstasy on my tongue and wash it down with Bacardi’s. That’s what I did, Sunday after Sunday.

Now I come to this worship service instead, and I finish the service with the body of Christ on my tongue, and I wash it down with the blood of Christ. This is the kingdom of God.”

Chris Seay adds…

This man is experiencing the Kingdom. He lives in its presence. We may not recognize it (even as the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ day did not); we may not often see it, but it is right here. We need to get past the mundane existence of religion and get a taste of the Kingdom.”

In the Name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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From the archives. Sermon delivered the third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 24, 2010.

Lectionary texts: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The last few weeks we have been looking at the theme of God’s people living in exile, an exile that our sin and rebellion has created, and what God has done and is doing about it. We have seen that through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, God has begun the climax of his salvation story, of ending our exile permanently. We have also seen that God’s promise to end our exile permanently will be consummated in his Second Coming. We know that in the interim, God has poured out his Holy Spirit on us to help us walk in faith as we await our final redemption, the end to our exile.

Today I want to look at another gift God has given us beside the Holy Spirit to help us live faithful lives and transform us into his very image as we await his Second Coming. That, of course, is his Word contained in Scripture. In today’s OT and Gospel lessons we have a stark contrast of how to read and not to read the Bible, and I want to look at these two cases with you today to see how they can help us in our own reading of God’s Word.

Many of us do not read the Bible regularly for a variety of reasons. Some of us do not seem to be able to find the time. Others of us are reluctant to read it because we are afraid we will not understand what we read and are embarrassed to ask someone to help us. Still others of us have not made reading the Bible a habit and so when we do have time to read, we don’t think to do so. Some of us are reluctant to read it because we don’t want our friends and family to think we are some kind of “holy roller” or religious nut.

But Scripture itself tells us that it is not good for us to neglect God’s word, either in the form of Scripture or in Jesus himself. The Apostles reminded the early Jerusalem church that it was not good for them to neglect the Word of God to wait on tables and they consequently appointed deacons for this task so that they would have time to pursue God’s word (Acts 6:2-4).

Paul tells the Colossians that he was commissioned to be an Apostle, in part, to make God’s word fully known to others (Colossians 1:25). He tells the Ephesians to put on the whole armor of God to help them live holy lives. Scripture was part of that armor and Paul likened it to the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). Paul reminds the Thessalonians that God’s Word is not the work of humans but really is God’s Word, that it is at work in them (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Likewise, the writer of Hebrews reminds us that the Word of God is a two-edged sword, living and active in believers, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12); it is not a collection of dead letters and stories that we can read and casually discard. And the writer of Revelation reminds us about the cost that can come with reading God’s Word. John tells us that he himself suffered exile and was given a vision of the redeemed martyrs who had been murdered because of their testimony about Jesus and the Word of God (Revelation 1:9; 20:4).

All of this reminds us that as Christians we are supposed to be reading our Bibles regularly because Scripture is God’s Word and God’s Word is living and active. It convicts us, encourages us, guides us, comforts us. It helps us live through our exile as we await our final redemption. It has the power to transform us by giving us knowledge of Christ so that we can learn how to be like him. In doing so we are enabled to live the kind of holy lives we are called to live. As we have seen before, living holy lives does not mean we live mistake-free lives, but rather the kind of lives that imitate Christ. The extent to which we can live holy lives, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is the extent to which our exile here on earth will be ended.

So how should we be reading our Bibles? Today’s OT lesson gives us a positive example while our Gospel lesson gives us a negative one. In the example from Nehemiah, we see a humbled and chastened people who recognize their utter need for and dependence on God. They have returned from their Babylonian captivity and have just completed rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls and Temple. They are still surrounded by many enemies who wish to destroy them (apparently some things never change), which makes them feel even more insecure, but they are also in the midst of a religious revival. All of this seems to have increased their awareness of their precarious position, which in turn created an increased sense of dependence on God and made them ready to hear his word.

This points us to the prerequisite for reading Scripture—humility. For God’s Word to be active in us, we must first acknowledge that he is Creator and we are not, that his Word has the power to change us. Like the people in Nehemiah’s day, we must acknowledge that we are a people in exile and we are responsible for our exile. We must acknowledge that we are utterly dependent on the Living God and without him we would have and be nothing. We see this sense of humility reflected in the people’s willingness to hear the Law read as part of worshiping God. We needn’t get too hung up about the particular mode of worship that Nehemiah describes. The important point is to read God’s Word with humility.

But approaching Scripture with a sense of humility is not always easy for us, is it? Especially when things are going really well in our lives. It is precisely at those times that we are tempted to delude ourselves into thinking we are the master of our affairs and don’t really need God. But life has a way of smacking us right in the face and reminding us otherwise, doesn’t it?

Nehemiah tells us next that all the people gathered together, anyone who was able to understand God’s word, which would include children and adults. This reminds us that the Bible is best read together because it helps prevent misunderstanding and misinterpretation and allows us to ask each other questions. Notice that Nehemiah tells us that not only did Ezra read the law but that there were Levites there to help the people understand God’s law and to make sense of it. We do not read Scripture for its own sake but to make sense of it so that it can guide, comfort, and convict us. Are you reading your Bibles as a family? Parents, are you helping your children understand God’s Word and make sense of it? Are you reading your Bibles in the context of small groups to do likewise?

But what if you do not feel qualified to interpret Scripture so that others can understand it and make sense of it? Nehemiah is not telling us that experts need to be present to read the Bible successfully. Rather, he points us to the need for us to have some kind of authoritative help when we read God’s Word. For example, if you are reading the Bible as a family, this might mean you have a reliable study Bible on hand, like the NIV or TNIV study Bibles. If you are studying the Bible as a small group, the lesson from Nehemiah is for you to have structure and a reliable leader’s guide, study guide, and other resources to help you gain understanding from Scripture or to help answer your questions. As Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle lesson, each of us is a member of Christ’s Body and he expects each of us to use the gifts with which he blesses us, no matter how modest we think they are, to help build up his Body. When we refuse to participate in group or family Bible study because we do not think we have adequate knowledge, we are essentially calling Paul (and by extension, God) a liar.

Finally from Nehemiah we see that when we read Scripture together and with a sense of humility, we gain a sense of relief from our exile. Why is that? After all, our sins remain as does the messiness our life situations. It certainly did for Nehemiah and his people. As Ezra read the Law and the Levites interpreted it, surely God’s people would have realized that their sins had led to their exile because exile was God’s ultimate curse on them.

Despite this, Nehemiah reminds us that when we read Scripture we are to read it with a sense of joy. Why? Because Scripture is essentially Good News. Yes, it reminds us of our brokenness and the fact that we are still a people living in exile. It also often convicts us of our own sinfulness. But the story contained in Scripture is a story of a God who is faithful and who is in the process of rescuing his broken people through the person of Jesus Christ. As Paul reminds Timothy, even if we are faithless, Christ remains faithful (2 Timothy 2:13), and as Ezra reminded his people, the joy of the Lord is our strength. For you see, we are never really ready to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ until we acknowledge the bad news of our hopeless condition without him. But when we acknowledge our helplessness and hopelessness, God’s promises burst upon us with glorious Good News. God knows our situation and has acted decisively on our behalf, despite who we are, to end our exile.

And so in Nehemiah, we have seen three essential ingredients for reading Scripture: (1) we are to read it with humility; (2) we are to read it together, as families, in small groups, and in the broader worshiping community; and (3) we are to read it to understand it and make sense of it. All of this will allow the Spirit to work in us and help us gain a sense of joy for all that God has done and is doing for us in our lives. And as Nehemiah points out, we, in turn, are to share that Good News with others.

Turning now to today’s Gospel lesson, we have a lesson in how not to read the Bible. As we listen to Luke describe the scene at Nazareth, we can see some of the ingredients for reading the Bible successfully. We see Scripture being read together in the synagogue. We see an authoritative person (God himself) interpreting Scripture to help the people understand and make sense of it. What we do not have, however, is a sense of humility on the part of the listeners.

Luke tells us that Jesus read from Isaiah. The specific passage was from Isaiah 61:1-2. Any good Jew listening to this passage would have recognized this to be a messianic passage. We see Jesus then apply Isaiah’s words to himself. What Luke does not tell us, however, is that Jesus left out the second half of verse two that talked about God’s vengeance, and his audience would have also recognized that. In effect Jesus was telling the people at Nazareth that he was the promised Messiah but that his First Coming was not a time for judgment but was rather for a time of hope and comfort. In himself, he seems to be saying, God was going to rescue his people in exile. He was reinterpreting Scripture to increase their understanding.

The crowd at the synagogue was amazed at his gracious words and at his interpretation of Scripture. Our lesson ends here today but we must take a sneak peek at next week’s lesson for us to understand where humility was lacking. Luke goes on to tell us that while the crowd was amazed at Jesus’ gracious words, they also began to question his authority. After all, they’d seen him grow up as a boy and they knew his parents. This made them wonder how he could possibly be Messiah. Familiarity apparently bred contempt in Jesus’ day as it still does in our own.

Moreover, they had their own preconceived notions about who and what Messiah should be like. Then when Jesus told them that it was Gentiles rather than Jews who would enjoy God’s grace and blessing, they were furious. You see, they thought they knew this young upstart punk from their hometown. They thought they knew better than God what God’s intentions were for his people and what kind of Messiah he would give them. All this made them furious with Jesus and they tried to kill him. Their sense of pride and self-righteousness blinded them to God’s truth and prevented them from receiving his promised blessing and grace through his Messiah.

Let me be crystal-clear about this. This is not an anti-Jewish polemic nor am I singling them out for special consideration. Their pride was no different from our pride. As Augustine said, “[We] love truth when it enlightens [us], but hate truth when it accuses [us].” That applies to us today as well because we too sometimes want “gracious words” (Luke 4:22) but don’t want to face the truth that is contained in God’s Word (see, e.g., John 1:17).

How often do we read our Bibles, together or as individuals, with some preconceived notion of what it should say or mean to us? How often do we try to reinterpret it to say something that it does not? Every time we do, we, like the crowd at the Nazareth synagogue, will fail to receive God’s blessing because we put ourselves above God and over his text by our sinful pride.

We see the stark contrast in both lessons, don’t we? Nehemiah and his people read Scripture with humility and understanding, and were strengthened and made joyful by God. We too can find that same strength and joy when we read Scripture with humility and understanding. By contrast, the people of Nazareth were in no mood to have their preconceived notions violated and this led them to attempt to murder God himself. Likewise, when we set our preconceived notions over God’s Word, we further alienate ourselves from him and exacerbate our exile.

We have seen that God intends us to read Scripture together and with understanding so that through his Holy Spirit he can use his Word to build us up and help strengthen us during our time of exile. Allow God to use his Word to help you in your time of exile while you await your final redemption. He has given himself for us in a terrible and costly act and has promised to return again in great power and glory to put a permanent end to our exile. As we await his return, we remember that he has blessed us with the gift of his Holy Spirit and his very Word contained in Scripture to help remind us of our hope and joy, and to help transform us into his very image. That, folks, is good news, now and for all eternity. Will you accept his gracious gifts? I pray you will.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

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An excellent reflection on people’s perception of the Church. Stanton’s statement about the Bible calling the church a whore is both wrong and unfortunate. God does not call Christ’s Church a whore. God calls Israel a whore because she was faithless and failed to live up to her calling as God’s called-out people to bring God’s healing love to his good but broken world. That is why God came to us in Christ–to be the true representative of God’s people, Israel, and to accomplish its mission.

Sadly, the Church is also unfaithful at times because we too are as broken as anybody else. But (and this is critical if anyone is to understand the nature of the Church) we are made clean by Christ’s blood shed for us on the cross. That doesn’t excuse our brokenness or means that God is happy with our behavior all the time. Rather Christ’s blood redeems his Church and explains why it is not a whore in God’s sight. That notwithstanding, the overall gist of Stanton’s article is spot-on. From Christianity Today online.

If you want Jesus, you have to take him for who He was. You can’t re-construct a stripped down, organic anti-corporate version of what you think He should be. Jesus’ gospel is a scandal to all of us, the hipsters and the geezers. It’s different than your fabulous pair of pre-worn skinny jeans.

James tells us about religion, that there is some religion that God is quite big on.

So it’s not a question of Jesus and religion or Jesus minus religion. It’s Jesus and what kind of religion. And this is a bit of the problem with the “Just give me Jesus” and the “Jesus Plus Nothing” approach to faith. We’d like to make it all that simple. Jesus never did. He just didn’t. He gives His church certain trappings for good reason.

Does the system of religion (of belief and practice) take you regularly to Christ, compelling you to cast yourselves before him in adoration and upon him in desperation? Or does it give you a false sense of your own self-sufficiency and superiority based on the system itself because it fits with your sense of right?

One is what each of us need. The other is rooted in the original and devastating sin of pride. So no, religion is not the problem. Our rewriting the script is.

Read and reflect on it all.

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Today begins a week of prayer for Christian unity (January 18-15). It is a worthwhile endeavor and I encourage any who care about Christ and his Church to make this a priority in your prayers this week.

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
our only Savior, the Prince of Peace:
give us grace seriously to lay to heart
the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions.

Take away all hatred and prejudice,
and whatever else may hinder us
from godly union and concord;
that, as there is but one body and one Spirit,
one hope of our calling,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of us all,
so we may henceforth be all of one heart and of one soul,
united in one holy bond of peace, of faith and charity,
and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–From Common Worship Daily Prayer, 315

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Precisely. That’s why we need to rediscover the biblical teaching about new creation.

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Our mission statement at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church is pretty simple: Changed by God to make a difference for God. We Christians can do that in many ways, most importantly in the context of our daily lives.

From Christianity Today online.

And Christians should be invested in local politics for several reasons. Most importantly, we can live out our call to love neighbor by paying attention to the work of local governing authorities and making sure that they are [pursuing] the common good. Second, the smaller the unit of government, the more significant our individual contributions become. A few concerned activists can attend a school board or city council meeting and help influence the decision-making.

This interview of political scientist, Amy Black, gets it exactly right, I think, and serves as an example of how God can use politics to allow his changed people to reflect God’s glory in the world.

Read and reflect on it all. Is God calling you to do this work as part of your discipleship?

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A thought-provoking article from Mr. Litfin. What do you think?

From Christianity Today online.

What’s going on here? Could it be that our delight in the security of our standing before God—that is, that all who have “put on” Christ (Gal. 3:27) stand fully accepted in him—has blinded us to a different issue: the acceptability of ourworship offerings? It would be the cheapest of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” to suppose that because we are secure in Christ, whatever we bring to God in worship, however inferior or mediocre, pleases him (Eph. 5:10).

Not just anything will do when we come before God. He is still honored by what is holy, what is our best, what is sacrificial. The kingdom to which we have come, says the writer to the Hebrews, requires us to “offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe,” because “our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (Heb. 12:28–29, emphasis added). A blasé, casual attitude toward worship may indicate that we have failed to grasp this important point, a sign of our being more conformed to this world” than so transformed in our minds that by testing we are able to discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2, emphasis added).

Read it all.

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Another excellent piece from Mr. Galli. Check it out.

From Christianity Today online:

I find it interesting that when we conservatives defend the “authority of the Bible” or “biblical values,” we usually are trying to get other Christians to submit to some doctrine (like the Virgin Birth or substitutionary atonement) or some ethic (like forbidding extra-marital sex or R-rated movies). We use the Bible as leverage to get others to submit.

Let me be clear. I believe in the Virgin Birth, in substitutionary atonement, that sex should be reserved for marriage between a man and a woman, and so forth. I’m on board with the classic orthodox doctrines and ethics because I believe they are taught by or inferred from the Bible, which I recognize as divinely inspired revelation.

But I don’t believe the Bible is fundamentally a moral power tool. The Bible is not a law book as much as it is a gift book, not so much about living right as about being right with God because of what he has done for us in Jesus Christ.

To be sure, the Bible is in part given for “reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” But the goal is not to get people to toe the line but, as Paul puts it, that we all “may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, ESV). It seems to me that if such instruction is to lead to “good work,” it will need to be grounded in the forgiveness of God, in the gracious death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only then will our work be grounded in love, and only then will it will produce the fruit of the Spirit. Otherwise the instruction will turn into mere law.

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Sermon delivered on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 15, 2012 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: 1 Samuel 1.3-20; Psalm 139.1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6.12-20; John 1.43-51.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Given our epistle lesson this morning with its emphasis on avoiding sexual immorality, I see that you are all eyeing me warily, wondering if that is the main text on which I will preach. Yes it is, but you can relax. I am not going to lecture you on the evils of premarital or extramarital sex. Growing up in the 60s and 70s and being steeped in the “enlightened” thinking of that era that encouraged us to do our own thing and free ourselves from all those outdated, arbitrary, and old-fashioned rules and mores about sexual deportment, I used to hate hearing the occasional sermon on passages like today’s epistle lesson because most of the time it sounded to me like Paul was obsessed with sex and wanted to rain on my parade, so to speak, so that I wouldn’t have any fun. So I said to myself, “Why not pass on the favor to St. Augustine’s?” Seriously, I couldn’t have been more wrong about Paul (and Scripture in general), and I hope you will agree after hearing what I have to say. This morning I want us to look at what today’s texts point to beyond the issue at hand. Specifically I want to continue to develop the themes of baptism in the Spirit and new creation that we started to look at last week to see what we can learn about being  faithful disciples of Jesus.

In this morning’s OT lesson, we are told that the word of God was rare in the days of Eli. It’s important for us to remember that the story of Eli and Samuel occurred in a dark period of Israel’s history known as the period of the Judges. I don’t have time to go into why this period was so dark but the book of Judges sums up the problem quite nicely. It ends with this rather stark verse: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 21.25). In other words, everyone had the freedom to do their own thing.

And we get the implications of this because it seems that increasingly we too are living in an age where we have no king (I’m thinking of Jesus, not our elected leaders) and everyone does as they see fit. This gets to be more than a little worrisome because there seems to be a direct correlation between people doing their own thing and the diminishing availability of the word of God. Why is this? We remember Jesus’ sobering words that it is out of the human heart all kinds of evil come (cf. Mark 7.20-22) so we realize that doing our own thing may not be the healthiest thing for us to do, especially if we see the word of the God becoming increasingly rare in our own lives or society. We remember Paul’s warning that one way God’s judgment manifests itself is for God to give us up to our own evil desires (cf. Romans 1.18-32) so that we see an acceleration of moral decay. This is exactly what seems to have happened to Eli in today’s OT lesson. He had been so busy doing his own thing that it dulled his ability to hear God’s voice so that it took him three times to realize that young Samuel was hearing God call to him.

If we are at all interested in taking our relationship with God seriously and if we care at all about other people, not to mention ourselves, we had better pay attention to what is going on here. As the creation narratives of Genesis remind us, God created us in his own image, not so that we would be free to do our own thing, especially given the human race’s track record, but to be wise stewards of God’s creation and to reflect God’s glory into the world by how we live our lives. Of course we humans didn’t get that memo and decided we would rather play God and reflect our own glory into the world instead of God’s, and it has been going downhill ever since.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, thanks be to God, and this brings us to today’s epistle lesson because Paul is reminding the Corinthians and us about the Good News we have. The presenting issue is sex but Paul is really schooling the Corinthians on what it means to be good stewards of God’s gifts and the hope that we all have as Christians. Before we look at what Paul says, we need to put this passage in its proper context. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul has just taken the church to the woodshed, admonishing them for allowing one of their members to carry on a sexual relationship with his stepmother, apparently all in the name of Christian freedom. And in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul goes on to talk about the proper context for sexual activity, which of course is marriage. Sandwiched in between is today’s text where Paul helps us get our minds right about the proper use of both our bodies and the freedom we have in Christ.

In today’s lesson Paul uses the ancient teaching technique known as the diatribe in which Paul cites the opinion of an imaginary interlocutor and then refutes or qualifies it. In doing so, we notice two critical points he is making. First, Paul takes on the mistaken notion that true freedom means doing anything you want, doing your own thing. Not so, says Paul, because not everything is beneficial for either the individual or the group. For example, if you want to tear apart a church, just encourage the minister to have an affair with one of his or her parishioners and see what happens. Freedom does not mean license to do what we please. We see Paul saying something similar in his letter to the Romans. “What then?” Paul asks. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace might increase (i.e., so that we give God more chances to forgive us)? Certainly not! How can we who have died to sin go on living in it” (cf. Romans 6.1-13)? No, if we are going to be in union with Christ, we have to crucify our sinful desires (cf. Luke 9.23) so that we can become like him and Paul is reminding us about that here and in Romans (and elsewhere).

Second, in using the analogy about food and the stomach and God destroying both, Paul takes on the classic pagan disdain for the doctrine of the bodily resurrection and demolishes it. We all know this argument because it is used in its several variations by many in our own culture today. It goes something like this. What we do with our bodies is of no consequence because when we die, we are through with our bodies forever. That means we are free to eat what we want, have sex when and with whomever we want, and generally do anything to our body that we want. Sadly this is the kind of thinking that can also result when Christians teach that a disembodied eternity is the end game. This is also where we get the rather bizarre notion of “victimless crimes” like prostitution, etc. At the root of this line of thinking is the old gnostic heresy that our body and other created things are not important while “spiritual” things are.

“Not so!” cries Paul. “Don’t you know that your body is not yours, but God’s? Don’t you know that your bodies were bought at a terrible price so that your alienation and hostility toward God could be ended forever? Don’t you know that your body houses God’s Spirit who lives in you? Don’t you know that God intends to redeem you by raising your mortal body from the dead and equipping you with a new one that is fitted to live in the promised new creation that Jesus’ resurrection announced? In other words, Paul is telling us that our body is important and that we have a future and a hope in God’s new creation because of Jesus’ death and resurrection [read 1 Corinthians 15.42-44, 51-58]. Paul is also reminding us that we have God’s Spirit living in us, the very Spirit we saw last week that we receive at our baptism, to help us become the human beings God created us to be, humans that have God’s image restored in us so that we reflect God’s goodness and glory into the world just the way God intended, i.e., the way of Jesus.

If all this is true, then as Paul reminds us here, why would we want to defile our bodies and the Spirit living in us by having sex outside of marriage, the only context God intended for us to have sex when he created us (cf. Genesis 2.24)? Think about it in this way. Most of us would be horrified to open a messy home to a visitor or to purposely offend him while he is visiting. So we take the time and effort to get our houses ready for our friends to visit and we do the things while they are visiting that bring honor and happiness to everybody involved. If we understand how to do these things on a human level, why would we who believe that we have been bought with the price of Christ’s blood want to do the things that would offend or hinder the Holy Spirit living in us, the very seal of God’s promise to us that he has redeemed us in Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 1.21-23)? It just doesn’t make sense. Living faithfully with the Spirit living in us is hard enough as it is. Trying to live faithfully without the Spirit living in us is impossible.

But we will miss the deeper meaning Paul has in mind here if we get fixated on sex or read passages like this as list of Christian dos and don’ts to be properly moral (or immoral). What Paul has in mind here is the greater truth of God’s promised new creation that is ours in Christ. That is why our body and what we do with it (or don’t do with it) matters. We see this truth clearly illustrated in today’s psalm and implicitly in today’s gospel lesson when Jesus essentially tells his new followers that he (and by implication his body) is going to be the new Temple where God dwells and heaven and earth intersect. Elsewhere in Scripture, we see the body’s importance illustrated powerfully in the Incarnation of Jesus. Think about it. The body must be important because God took on our body to save us and restore our relationship with him! The body’s welfare is surely one of the reasons the gospels focus on the healing and feeding miracles of Jesus. The body is important! That is also why bodily resurrection matters because God promises to redeem our fallen and mortal bodies by giving us new resurrection ones. The body is important! We miss this entirely if we focus on what Paul is saying about sex and ignore what Paul tells us here and elsewhere about the fact that God has bought our bodies with a price and has big plans for them. This, BTW, is why Christians have traditionally buried their dead and do not believe in defiling dead bodies in any way, let alone live ones. We believe the body has a future, not in its present condition but in God’s new creation.

When, by the help of the Spirit living in us, we understand this, it will fundamentally change how we read the Bible and see our world. Paul is telling us that while rules matter, we need to think about why we do what we do (or refrain from doing). Putting to death our sinful nature depends on us thinking about and reflecting on what urges and behaviors need to stay and which ones need to go. When we keep the end game of new creation in mind with its goal of a fully restored humanity that reflects the glory of God in his promised new creation, it gives us a framework to help us better assist the Spirit as he shapes us gradually into the image of Christ so that we can become like him. This is surely what Paul has in mind when he tells us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Philippians. 2.12-13).

This knowledge will also help us fight the increasingly prevalent form of gnosticism that is enjoying popularity in our culture by proclaiming the radical love that God has for the totality of creation and made manifest in Jesus Christ. Our culture increasingly wants to consign religion and faith to the “spiritual realm” so that we are focusing more on how to get to heaven than on how to allow God to use us as agents of his healing love and new creation right here and now. If we focus on “spiritual things” or a privatized spirituality, we are much less likely to be a nuisance to the powers and principalities of this world who encourage us to do our own thing, and all in the name of a freedom that kills because it leads us to activities that dehumanize us and inhibit the Spirit’s presence in us. But when we get that our body and all of God’s creation is good and that God has acted decisively on our behalf in the death of Jesus, it changes our focus and makes us look around at God’s good but fallen world. We will be concerned about not only our body but others’ bodies, and not necessarily in a sexual manner. So for example, hunger and injustice and all other kinds of dehumanizing activities will become increasingly intolerable for us as well as a false morality in the name of freedom that can lead only to death.

And on a more personal level, when we understand that the body has a future and is important to God, it will help us deal better with our own bodily sufferings and infirmities and that of our loved ones. When I watched my mother actively die over a three day period, I kept reminding myself, with the Spirit’s help, that this wasn’t the end game for her and that made all the difference in the world. Don’t misunderstand. Watching her die was painful beyond description. But in the midst of death and grief there was the hope of life and new creation. Just as in today’s OT lesson, God’s lamp did not go out for me and neither will it for you if you pay attention to it. Don’t let anyone or anything rob you of the hope that is ours in Jesus.

But to have that hope, you need to do your homework. You need to wrestle with the whole of Scripture and think and reflect deeply on these issues, both as individuals and together as Christ’s body. Otherwise, you can be assured that the powers and principalities will move to cut you off from your very source of life, God’s Spirit living in you. If they succeed, you will be more inclined to do as you see fit, which will not bode well for any of us. But when, by God’s grace, you are blessed with the faith and knowledge of what God has done for you in Jesus and stand firm in the promise of new creation by the power of the Spirit, you will be ready to be the human God created you to be and you really will have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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