3-22-09 Sermon by Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

THE TROUBLE WITH DIMLY LIT RESTAURANTS

     Once upon a time, a young couple brought their newborn son to the pediatrician for his very first checkup.  The doctor looked at the baby and said, “You have got the most beautiful baby!”  The baby’s mother smiled, thanked the doctor, and said, “I’ll bet you say that to all the new parents.”  The doctor said, “Actually, I don’t.  I only say that about those babies that are really cute.”  The woman then asked, “So what do you say to those people whose babies aren’t really cute?”  The doctor replied, “I simply say, ‘He looks just like you!’”

     Isn’t it funny how we question compliments?  If someone says something bad about us, we have a tendency to believe it right away.  But if someone says something good about us, we tend to question it.  We think they have an angle or some ulterior motive.  Why is it that belief  has become such a difficult concept for us?

     I think it’s a consequence of the postmodern era.  We tend to question anything and everything these days.  Insurance companies now require us to get a second opinion from doctors.  And have you noticed how many opinion polls our society gathers anymore?  Facts aside, what seems to be most truthful these days is what most of the people think!  It’s hard to know anymore what we should believe and what we shouldn’t. 

     In the passage we read from the gospel according to John, Jesus seems to be calling for wholehearted belief.  “For God so loved the world,” Jesus says, “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Jesus doesn’t leave much room for second opinions here, does he?  He is clearly calling us to believe in him.  But what does it really mean to believe in Jesus Christ?

     Last week I told you that the Greek word translated “belief” is “pisteuo.”  It means literally, “belief in a special sense, as faith in the Divinity that lays special emphasis on trust in his power and his nearness to help, in addition to being convinced that he exists and that his revelations are true.”  That’s how the Greek lexicon defines the word.  Let’s see if we can make that definition come to life.

     Biblical commentator William Barclay says that belief in Jesus Christ contains three elements: 1) belief that God is our loving Father; 2) belief that Jesus is the Son of God and therefore tells us the truth about God and life; and 3) belief necessarily entails unswerving and unquestioning obedience to Jesus Christ.  Let’s try to take that definition apart.

     To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe with all our hearts that God is as Jesus declares him to be.  It means believing that God loves us, that God cares for us, and that God wants nothing more than to forgive us.  Two thousand years ago, it wasn’t easy for a Jew to believe that.  The Jews of Jesus’ day looked upon God as one who imposed his laws upon them and punished them if those laws were broken.  It was hard for them to not think of God as a judge waiting to exact a penalty; it was hard for them not to think of God as a task-master waiting to pounce.  Jesus revealed God as a Father who wanted nothing more than for his erring children to come back home.  It cost Jesus his life to teach us that.  And perhaps we cannot begin to be Christians until we believe that with all our hearts.

     We are called to believe that God is our loving Father.  We are also called to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore tells us the truth about God and life.  How can we be sure that Jesus knows what he’s talking about?  What guarantee is there that the good news of the gospels is true?  We must simply believe it.  We must believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that in him is the mind of God.  We must believe that Jesus knew God so well, that he was so close to God, and that he was so one with God, that he – and only he – is qualified to tell us the absolute truth about God.

     And finally comes the third element of belief.  We must stake everything on the belief that what Jesus says is true.  Whatever he calls us to do, we must do.  Whatever he commands of us, we must obey.  We must take Jesus at his word.  Even the smallest action in life should be done with unquestioned obedience.

     That’s what it means to believe in Jesus Christ.  But we have to ask to what end, do we not?  Why do we believe in Jesus Christ?  I mean, what’s in it for us?

     Jesus assures us in verses 15 and 16 that those who believe in him may have eternal life.  But you need to listen to this very carefully, because we’re not just talking about heaven here.  The Greek words translated “have eternal life” here are “eckay zoane aioneone.”  “Eckay” means to have or to hold.  “Aioneone” means eternal or without end.  “Zoane” means life, but it means a special kind of life.  The Greek lexicon says that this life is a result of faith in Christ.  But it also says that the follower of Jesus possesses this life even in this world.

     So we’re not just talking about heaven here.  To believe in Jesus Christ is also to possess a special kind of life even in the here and now.  What does that mean?  I think it means this.

     To possess life in Christ is to have a life that envelops every relationship in life with peace.  Let me repeat that.  To possess life in Christ is to have a life that envelops every relationship in life with peace.  It gives us peace with God.  We are no longer cowering before a tyrannical king or seeking to hide from a vindictive judge.  Instead, we are at home with our Father.

     Life in Christ gives us peace with others.  If we have been forgiven, then we must be forgiving.  It enables us to see others as God sees them.  Theoretically, it makes all of us into one great human family joined together in love.

     Life in Christ gives us peace with life.  If God is our Father, then God is working all things together for good.  When we believe God is our Father, we believe our Father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear.  We may not necessarily understand life any better, but at least we will resent it no longer.

     Life in Christ gives us peace with ourselves.  In the last analysis, perhaps we are more afraid of ourselves than of anything else.  We know our own weakness; we know our own temptations; we know our own tasks and the dreads of our lives.  But now we know we are facing those things with God.  It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us.  There is peace founded upon strength in his life.

     Yet perhaps most of all, life in Christ makes us certain that the deepest peace on earth is but a shadow of the ultimate peace to come.  It gives us a hope and a goal to which we travel.  It gives us a life of glorious wonder here, yet at the same time it gives us a life in which the best is yet to come.  To believe in Jesus Christ is to have eternal life.  Yet that life begins with peace in the here and now.

     I think I need to add at this point, however, that that does not mean that we will have a life of luxury and ease.  I don’t care what Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen and their ilk say.  Life in Christ does not mean that there will no longer be suffering in the world, or even in our lives.  As Mother Teresa once put it, “I know God will not give me anything  I cannot handle.  I just wish he didn’t trust me so much!”      

    R. Leslie Holmes addresses this issue in the March-April issue of Preaching magazine.  He writes:

Stories abound of how, after the death of his 11-year-old son Willie, Abraham Lincoln went into severe periods of grief.  In those dark days of early 1862, Lincoln looked often to Presbyterian preacher Phineas D. Gurley, whose church Lincoln attended…for a word of comfort.  In the eulogy for Willie, Gurley preached that when tragedy comes, one must look to “Him who sees the end from the beginning and doeth all things well.”

He also said that when one trusts God, “our sorrows will be sanctified and made a blessing to our souls, and by and by we shall have occasion to say with blended gratitude and rejoicing, “It is good for us that we have been afflicted.”  Dr. Gurley paraphrased Psalm 119:71.  Such was the influence of Gurley’s words that it was reported that after Willie’s service, Lincoln asked Gurley for the words of the eulogy and that they became his life-raft during his intense sorrow.

     Holmes later adds, “…it is amazing to me that there are still some people in the church who have bought into the erroneous notion that Christ always shields his followers from pain and heartbreak.”  I don’t know if I can go along with the idea that, “It is good for me that I was afflicted,” but I do know that Christ shielding his followers from all pain and suffering is an erroneous notion.

     Yet when we have life in Christ, we can be moved with compassion.  The word “compassion” itself comes from the Latin roots “cum” and “passio.”  “Cum” means “with” and “passio” means “to suffer.”  Thus, compassion literally means “to suffer with.”  Our own suffering brings compassion because we know what it means to suffer.  Life in Christ may not save us from all suffering, but we will be able to transform it.

     Life in Christ begins in the here and now.  We’re not just talking about heaven here.  Life in Christ comes to those who believe in him.  Jesus goes on to say that those who believe are not condemned, yet those who do not believe are condemned already.  He adds, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”  Jesus Christ is the light who leads us to life.

     It reminds me of having lunch in a dimly lit restaurant.  Imagine you leave a bright, sunny day to go into a dimly lit restaurant.  You have a hard time seeing at first, don’t you?  You get led to your seat, but then you have a hard time reading the menu.

      Yet after a while, your eyes adjust.  You can read the menu and it doesn’t seem dark at all.  It’s not until you leave the restaurant and step back outside that you realize how dark it really was.  That’s the trouble with dimly lit restaurants.  You don’t realize how dark it really was until you step back out into the light.

     In a way, I think that’s an analogy of our own world.  Things can get so dark – wars and crimes and school shootings, and now even a church shooting – but after a while our eyes adjust.  It’s not until we step into the light of Jesus Christ that we begin to realize how dark our world has become.

     Believe in Jesus Christ and you’ll have life everlasting, beginning in the here and now.  The closer you draw to Christ, the darker you will see our world become.  But maybe that’s a good thing.  After all, we have to see what’s broken before we can try to fix it.  Amen.      

 

3-15-09 Sermon by Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

CALLED TO BE DIFFERENT

     Rick Richardson is a professor at Wheaton College and the author of a book called Evangelism Outside the Box.  He tells the story of a pastor named Dan who realized that his preaching was getting stale.  So, with the support of his pastoral team, he took a part-time job at a nearby Starbucks coffee shop.  And before anyone even thinks to suggest it, I am NOT taking a part-time job at The Pampered Palate!

     So Pastor Dan when to work at the local Starbucks.  Much to his surprise, all 21 people he worked with believed in God.  Not one of them was an atheist.  They were all very positive toward God and toward spirituality.

     Yet Pastor Dan was surprised to discover that while they believed in God and were interested in things “spiritual,” he also discovered that they were NOT interested in Christians, Christianity, or the church.  No one wanted to hear Dan’s proofs for God, his invitations to church, or his ideas about salvation.  Most of them thought they knew what Christianity was all about and had decided they didn’t want it.  They were what some people call “post-Christian.”

     You see, at some point along the journey of their lives, each of them had experienced a breach of trust related to Christianity.  Maybe a Christian friend had been hypocritical or pushy.  Maybe when they were young they had attended church and found it boring or irrelevant.  Maybe they had watched a T.V. evangelist or two and had been completely turned off.  Or, maybe they had experienced a tragedy in their lives and felt that God was distant or uncaring. 

     The people with whom Pastor Dan worked were not interested in the church.  The biggest thing Dan learned was that if Christians are to have meaningful spiritual conversations with these people, the first thing that must be addressed is the issue of integrity.  And we’re going to get to that issue eventually.  But for now, let’s start with the story of Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem.

     In the passage I read from the gospel according to John, Jesus enters the Temple in Jerusalem not long after he turned water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana; also not long after he called his first disciples.  Note that Matthew, Mark and Luke say that Jesus entered the Temple less than a week before his crucifixion, and that he only went to Jerusalem once.  John says he entered the Temple near the beginning of his public ministry, and that he went to Jerusalem no less than six times.  What gives?  Which of the gospels is right and which of the gospels is wrong?

     Perhaps the answer is neither.  Matthew, Mark and Luke tend to emphasize Jesus’ Galilean ministry, while John concentrated more on Jesus’ Jerusalem ministry.  Maybe they’re only looking at things from different points of view.

     What did Jesus do when he entered the Temple in Jerusalem?  You know the story.  He flew into a rage.  He overturned the tables of the money-changers and he drove them out with a whip of cords.  This is a pretty big incident for the gospels to not be of one accord.  Some suggest that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice: once at the beginning of his ministry and once near the end.  Chances are, that’s not the case.  If Jesus had cleansed the Temple at the beginning of his ministry as John suggests, the religious leaders likely would have done him in much sooner.  This incident seems to fit better at the end of Jesus’ ministry than at the beginning.  It’s also been suggested that the author of John died before his manuscript was completed.  Some other author put his notes together and that’s why we have this confusion.  But wouldn’t another author have been familiar with Matthew, Mark and Luke?  Wouldn’t he have known when Jesus did what?

     William Barclay suggests an alternative solution.  He sees John as someone who is more interested in the truth than in the facts.  He isn’t so much concerned with writing a chronological biography of Jesus as he is in revealing Jesus as the Son of God – as the Messiah the people had long awaited.  Perhaps that helps to clear up some confusion.

     So Jesus entered the Temple and flew into a rage.  He upset the tables of the money-changers and he drove them out with a whip of cords.  Why was Jesus so upset?  These people were making a profit at religion’s expense.

     It was the time of the Passover, the greatest of all the Jewish feasts.  Custom dictated that every adult male Jew who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem was expected to be there.  It was the dream of every Jew – regardless of where he lived – to spend at least one Passover in Jerusalem.  Experts say that it’s possible that as many as two million Jews could have been in Jerusalem for the Passover.  Talk about overcrowding!

 

     There was also a tax that every Jew over 19 years of age had to pay.  It was called the Temple tax.  It was paid so that Temple sacrifices and Temple rituals could take place on a daily basis.  In those days, the Temple treasury likely contained the wealth that the Vatican possesses today.

   The Temple tax was one-half shekel.  That amounted to about a day-and-a-half’s wages for a common laborer.  Now all coins were valid, but not all coins could be used to pay the Temple tax.  The Temple tax had to be paid in Galilean shekels or in shekels of the sanctuary.  Other coins were considered unclean.  They might be used to pay ordinary debts, but not one’s debt to God.   

     Here’s where the money-changers came into play.  They sat in the Temple courts and changed foreign currency into sanctuary shekels.  The catch was that they charged people a tidy sum to do so.  They were making a profit at religion’s expense. 

     Besides the money-changers, there were also the sellers of oxen and sheep and doves.  Frequently a visit to the Temple included the offering of a sacrifice.  But the law said that any animal offered as a sacrifice had to be perfect and unblemished.  Temple authorities appointed inspectors to make sure the animals were perfect and unblemished.  They, too, charged a fee.  Naturally, they wouldn’t approve any animal brought in from the outside, so people had to buy their sacrificial animal inside the Temple courts as well.  And that animal might cost 10 to 20 times as much.  It was nothing short of extortion.  That’s what moved Jesus to righteous indignation.

     People were making a profit at religion’s expense.  They were making God inaccessible to the humble and the poor.  Yet the fact of the matter is it was all     perfectly legal.  In fact, it was the way things had been done for generations.  We might even say that it represented the status quo.

     That’s the point that struck me as I thought about this passage last week.  Jesus upsets the status quo.  We can talk all we want about where this story fits in the chronology of Jesus’ ministry.  We can talk all we want about the justification for Jesus’ anger.  We can talk all we want about how wrong it is to make a profit at religion’s expense.  All are valid points and all are worthy of discussion.  But the point I want to talk about is how Jesus upsets the status quo.  The faithful, it seems, are called to be different.

     Deep, deep down, I think everyone knows that.  According to a recent Gallup poll – called the Mood of the Nation poll – 59% of all Americans surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with the moral and ethical climate of our nation.  Only 7% identified themselves as being “very satisfied” with it.  Perhaps we have a problem here.  Listen to this.

     One day, a certain employee received an unusually large paycheck.  It was way more pay that he was supposed to get.  He decided not to say anything about it.  “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” right?  The following week, his paycheck was significantly less than the normal amount, and he immediately confronted his boss.  The supervisor asked, “Why didn’t you say anything when you were overpaid last week?”  Without batting an eye, the employee replied, “Well, I can overlook one mistake…but not two in a row!”

     Does that story typify us?  Are our ethics declining?  According to the American

Religious Identification Survey, our FAITH is declining.  The percentage of people who call themselves Christian has dropped more than 11% since 1990.  This shift was explored in a recent U.S.A. Today article.  Barry Kosmin, one of the authors of the religious survey, said that in 1990 – when the first survey was conducted – many saw God as a “personal hobby,” and that the U.S.A. is a “greenhouse for spiritual sprouts.”  After the latest survey he says, “Today, religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many.”

     Diane Mueller of Austin, Texas grew up a United Methodist.  She says she’s simply, “totally disengaged from the church, and (from) the Bible, too.”  Sunday mornings for her family mean playing in a park, not praying in a pew.

     Dylan Rossi is an ex-Catholic and a native of Massachusetts.  He believes he’s typical among his friends.  He says, “If religion comes up, everyone at the table will start mocking it.  I don’t know anyone religious and hardly anyone spiritual.”

     Yet this one tops them all.  Kendall Harmon is an Episcopal priest in South Carolina.  He says, “A couple came into my office with a yellow pad of their teenage son’s questions.  One of them was, “What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?”  What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?

     Like I said, we’ve got a problem.  Many are falling away from the church.  And look at our own church attendance in the past six months.  I’ll bet it’s down close to 25%.  What’s happening?  And it’s not just us.  I’ve talked to other ministers and they’re facing the very same problem.  God-fearing Christians are quickly becoming a distinct minority.

     Remember that opening story I told you about Pastor Dan at Starbucks?  Many of those people had been turned off by Christians themselves.  It reminded me of a story in Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.  In it he speaks of the Roman Empire and the influence of Ausonius, a poet who rose to wield some political power.  Ausonius once wrote, “Doing the expected is the highest value – and the second highest is like it: receiving the appropriate admiration of one’s peers for doing it.”

     Ausonius was a Christian.  Yet as Cahill described him, “His Christianity (was) a cloak to be donned and removed as needed.”  Did you catch that?  “His Christianity (was) a cloak to be donned and removed as needed.”  Do Christians today have a similar problem?  Many who are disgruntled with the Christian faith today think so.  Many believe there is little difference in the behavior of those who claim to be Christian and the behavior of those who do not.  In the book unChristian, 84% of the young people surveyed claim to know a Christian personally.  Yet get this.  Only 15% see the lifestyles of Christians as being different than anyone else.  Have we forgotten that Jesus upsets the status quo?  Have we forgotten that we are called to be different?

    So what are we to do?  I came across an interesting solution in my devotions last week.  In chapter six of John’s gospel, the story is told of Jesus feeding the 5000.  When he goes off alone to pray, the crowds track him down.  Jesus says to them, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.”  They say to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”  Jesus answers them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

     To do the work of God, we must believe in him whom he has sent.  The Greek word for “believe” here is “pisteuo.”  It means, literally, “belief in a special sense, as faith in the Divinity that lays special emphasis on trust in his power and his nearness to help, in addition to being convinced that he exists and that his revelations are true.”  In other words, we don’t just believe God exists.  We seek to live into his ways and we trust him to guide our very lives.  Christianity is not a cloak to be donned and removed as needed.  It’s more like the air that we breathe.  We suffocate without it.

     A man named Bernard Bailey once said, “When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover (that) they are not it.”  We are called to be different.  If we could only learn to place God at the center of our lives, perhaps that would make all the difference in the world.  Amen.  

3-8-09 Sermon by Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

BELIEVING IS SEEING

     Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  It’s quite a conundrum, is it not?  Chickens hatch from eggs, but eggs are laid by chickens, making it difficult to say which originally gave rise to the other.  Perhaps the question could even spark a debate between those who advocate evolution and those who advocate creationism, but we don’t want to go there.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

     That’s the question that came into my mind as I thought about the passages we read this morning – the passage from Genesis and the passage from Romans.  Both passages refer to the faith of Abraham.  Yet regarding faith, perhaps there is a conundrum that comes to mind as well.  Which of these statements is correct: “Seeing is believing,” or “Believing is seeing?”  Which of those statements defines our world view?  Which of those statements defines our faith view?  Are they the same?  Should they be the same? 

     A therapist by the name of Lynne Forrest believes human nature tends to adhere to the former.  “Seeing is believing,” most of us are wont to say.  Forrest writes in a recent article, “We, of western culture, have grown up in an absolutist world.  We are taught early in life to disregard anything we cannot see or touch.  We are literalists, who tend to dismiss the unseen and unexplained.”  Ah, seeing is believing, most of us tend to say.  Seeing is believing.

     With that thought in mind, let me ask you this.  How many of you here today believe in unidentified flying objects?  Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands.  How many of you here today believe in unidentified flying objects?

     According to recent polls, almost 50% of Americans surveyed do believe in UFOs.    A two-hour primetime special hosted by Peter Jennings back in 2005 explored the UFO phenomenon.  Peter Jennings himself said, “As a journalist, I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible.  After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered – and a great deal not fully explained.”  How’s that for being noncommittal? 

     The documentary itself explored a number of UFO cases.  In October of 1968 at the Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, sixteen airmen on the ground and the crew of an airborne B-52 witnessed a massive unidentified flying object hovering near the base.  In Phoenix, Arizona in March of 1997, hundreds witnessed a huge triangular craft moving slowly over the city.  In southwest Illinois, not far from St. Louis, police officers in five adjoining towns independently reported seeing a giant craft with bright lights moving silently across the sky at a very low altitude in January of 2000.

     Today, if you report a UFO to the U.S. government, you will be informed that the Air Force conducted a 22-year investigation that ended in 1969 and concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security and are of no scientific interest.  But as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists says in the program, “You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings of some object created by…a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology.”

    Are you convinced?  Do you believe in UFOs?  Science has shown us that the universe

is incredibly vast.  It stands to reason that there is intelligent life out there somewhere.  As for me, however, I’ll believe it when I see it.  I guess my natural world view is this: Seeing is believing.

     Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an early 19^th century philosopher and writer.   His philosophy seems to be the opposite of that.  He once wrote, “…the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.  A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no (one) could have dreamed would have come (their) way.”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe seems to be saying that believing is seeing.

     Let’s take a look at Abraham in the passage we read from the book of Genesis.  When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord God appeared to him.  God made a covenant with Abraham that he would be the father of a multitude.  You can’t blame Abraham for doubting God, can you?  Abraham was 99 years old!  His wife, Sarah, was 90 years old!  And now God tells them they’re going to have a baby?  All their lives they’d longed for a child and had been summarily denied.  And now God tells them at their advanced age that they’re going to have a son!

     You know, I’m sneaking up on 50 years of age and my wife will soon be 47.  Just the other day I said to her, “I think we should have another baby!”  If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man now.  My sixteen-year-old daughter thought I was crazy too.  She can barely tolerate the younger brother she has, let alone another baby!

     God promised Abraham that he and Sarah would soon become parents at the age of 99 and 90.  Now perhaps we don’t have to view their ages literally.  Maybe they measured years differently back then.  After all, Genesis tells us that Adam lived to be 930 and Methuselah lived to be 969.  The point is that Abraham and Sarah were past their prime.  The biological necessities of childbirth had passed them by, if you know what I mean.  The real question was, would Abraham and Sarah take God at his word?  Did they truly believe that God could make something out of nothing?

     “Believing is seeing,” God seemed to be saying to them.  Abraham and Sarah chose to believe what God was telling them.  And shortly thereafter, Isaac was born.

     Now let’s jump ahead to the passage I read from Romans.  The Apostle Paul was dealing with the very same story we talked about from Genesis – about Abraham believing the promise of God.  Paul’s letter to the Romans is addressing the house churches in Rome.  There’s a conflict there.  Judaism was well-established in Rome by the time of Paul’s writing.  So was Christianity.  The problem was this.  Wouldn’t the children of Abraham be innately superior to those who were not?  In other words, wouldn’t Jewish converts to Christianity be superior to Gentile converts to Christianity from a genetic point of view, not to mention from a moral point of view?  Some Christians thought they were better than other Christians, and that’s the issue with which Paul was dealing.

     Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with humanity.  Jews were circumcised, Gentiles were not.  Paul points out that the mark of the covenant – the rite of circumcision – came AFTER God made his promise to Abraham.  Therefore, it wasn’t rites or obedience to the law that made Abraham precious in God’s sight.  It was Abraham’s FAITH that made him special in God’s eyes.

     As Paul says in verse 22, “Therefore his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.”  The Greek words for “reckoned to him as righteousness” are, “elogisthay auto ei dikaiosunane.”  They mean literally, “charged to his account as justification.”  What made Abraham precious in God’s eyes?  It was his faith.  His trust in God and his hope in God were charged to his account as justification.  It wasn’t the fact that Abraham was circumcised or that he obeyed the law to the n^th degree.  Abraham was justified because of his faith.

     Abraham trusted that God could do the impossible.  He trusted that God could bless a couple who were well past their prime with a child.  Paul goes on to point out that it’s that kind of faith that will grant us eternal life.  God sent his Son to die for our transgressions, and raised him from the dead for our justification.  In Jesus Christ, God did the impossible.  If we but trust in that promise, God will do the impossible for us as well.  Jew or Gentile, male or female, black or white, liberal or conservative, there are no distinctions.  If we but trust in God, God will raise us from the dead.  It seems as though believing…is seeing.

     Still, a lot of us are caught up in that old world view that seeing is believing.  A lot of us find ourselves in difficult situations and find it hard to trust in God because of what we see going on all around us.  It’s hard to distinguish our personal circumstances and plights from our views and notions about God.  For example, last week on CNN I saw a particularly disheartening story.  A 90-year-old man invested his life savings with a company run by a man named Bernie Madoff.  He invested some 700,000 dollars.  The money is gone.  He’s had to go back to work at a grocery store making 10 dollars an hour.  At age 90, he’s had to go back to work in a grocery store.  How hard must that be for him?  How does one trust in God when one comes face-to-face with such impossible circumstances?

     The present economy has affected a lot of people as well.  Nonprofit agencies are finding themselves “under water” and can’t use the monies bequeathed to them.  How will they get by?  Retired people have lost 30 and 40 and 50% of their investments.  How will they get by?  What happens if they run out of money?  I know my parents are worried.  As my mother said to me just the other day, “You’re young.  You can make it up in time.  We can’t.”  What do you say to people who’ve worked hard all their lives and saved for their retirements when their investments vanish into thin air?  How does one trust in God when one comes face-to-face with such impossible circumstances?

    Then, of course, there are always health situations.  How difficult it must be to become dependent upon others.  How hard it must be when one can no longer get around.  How does one deal with a nursing home when one has been independent all of his or her life?  How does one trust in God when one comes face-to-face with such impossible circumstances?

     Tom Brokaw wrote a book called The Greatest Generation.  He begins his book with

 these words:

When the United States entered World War II, the government turned to ordinary Americans and asked of them extraordinary service, sacrifice and heroics.  Many Americans met those high expectations, and then returned home to lead ordinary lives.

     One such person was a woman named Mary Wilson.  You would probably never know it by looking at her, but she was a recipient of the Silver Star and bore the nick-name, “The Angel of Anzio.”  When the Allies got bogged down in the boot of Italy during World War II, they attempted a daring breakout by launching an amphibious landing on the Anzio beach.  Unfortunately, the Allies got pinned down at the landing site and came dangerously close to being driven back into the sea.

     Mary Wilson was head of the 51 army nurses who went ashore at Anzio.  Things got so bad that bullets zipped through the tent as she assisted in surgery.  When the situation continued to deteriorate, arrangements were made to get all of the nurses out.  Mary Wilson refused to go.  As she related her story many years later, she said, “How could I possibly leave them?  I was a part of them.”

     I truly believe God says a similar thing about us.  “How can I possibly leave them?  I am a part of them.”  As Abraham discovered, God is at his best when we are at our worst.  When issues and circumstances seem most impossible, that’s when God can work most profoundly.  So if you’re at the brink of desperation in your life and feel as though God is nowhere to be found, remember this: God is at his best when we are at our worst.  That’s when we most need to trust in God, and perhaps that’s also when we’ll discover that – when it comes to matters of faith – believing…is seeing.  Amen.  

 

3-1-09 Sermon by Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen

EVANGELISM 101

 

            What comes to mind for you when I say the word “evangelism?”  Does it elicit warm and happy thoughts akin to children playing in a park on a sunny summer’s afternoon?  Or does it elicit feelings of insecurity like when your 10^th grade biology teacher, Mr. Assumssen, walks up to you in the middle of class and says, “Jensen, you’re pretty smart, although I don’t know when!”  Then he holds up a twig and says, “What kind of tree does this twig come from?”  And you say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Assmussen, I just don’t know!”  What comes to mind for you when I say the word “evangelism?”  Chances are, your feeling is more akin to the latter than it is to the former.

            The dictionary defines the word “evangelism” this way.  Evangelism is: 1) the winning or revival of personal commitments to Christ; and 2) militant or crusading zeal.  No wonder the word “evangelism” evokes such pessimistic and distasteful sentiment!

            Perhaps a part of our feelings about the word “evangelism” comes from the negative associations we have with the term “evangelist” – specifically, T.V. evangelists.  We wonder how in the world they can stand up in a pulpit and promise untold heavenly and material blessings if we will but support their ministry.  Then, truth be told, we take a kind of sadistic pleasure in seeing them fall from grace amid some kind of irreverent scandal.

            Evangelism isn’t meant to be a scary word.  I was taught in seminary that the word “evangelism” means “outreach.”  I have a dictionary of Christian theology that defines the word “evangelism” as “mission.”  Personally, I think either term will suffice.  In fact, perhaps the best definition of the word actually embodies both.  Evangelism is outreach, and evangelism is mission.

            I’ve got to admit that – in a way – I admire the evangelism of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons…now known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Of course, they don’t come to my door.  They identify the homes of clergy in a community and they avoid them like the plague.  And I don’t know how you feel about them when they come to your door, but I do admire their dedication.  I don’t agree with them, but I can appreciate their outreach and their mission.  Regardless of how we feel about them, we’ve got to admire their evangelistic zeal.

            I mean, hey…they’ve got us beat, don’t they?  The statistics indicate that the average Presbyterian invites someone to worship with them once every 17 years.  At least we’ve got the Methodists beat.  The average Methodist invites someone to worship with them once every 24 years.  But before we begin to gloat, let me share something else with you.  I recently heard a Presbyterian minister define the Presbyterian evangelist this way.  The Presbyterian evangelist is the one who knocks upon someone’s door.  When they come to answer the door, the Presbyterian evangelist stands on the porch and doesn’t know what to say!  Is that definition true?  And if it is, is it funny…or is it sad?

            Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not going to advocate a new program here where we begin door-to-door evangelism.  We’ll get to Presbyterian evangelism later.  For now, let’s focus on the issue just raised.  Do Presbyterians know what to say?  Can    a Presbyterian articulate his or her faith?  The reason I ask is this.  The mission and outreach of evangelism have never been more important.

            I’ve finally been able to get around to reading that David Kinnaman – Gabe Lyons book from which Mollie Little taught a class here last September.  The title of the book is unChristian.  It is not a book about how to be un-Christian.  In fact, the subtitle of the book tells us what it’s really about.  The subtitle is: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Matters. 

            The new generation they’re talking about is the generation – actually generations – that followed the Baby Boomers.  The last of the so-called Baby Boomers were born in 1964.  The next generation was born between 1965 and 1983.  I’ve always called them the Baby Busters; the book unChristian  just calls them Busters.  Then it talks about the generation after that – the generation born between 1984 and 2002.  The book calls that generation “Mosaics.”  I’d never heard that generation described that way.  A mosaic, of course, is an art form.  It’s also a kind of virus that infects certain plants, but I don’t think that’s quite what they mean. 

            I said a moment ago that the mission and outreach of evangelism have never been more important.  The book unChristian tells us why.  Busters and Mosaics do not have a very positive view of the Christian faith.  Many of them think, and I quote, that “Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind,” and “that Christianity in our society is not what it was meant to be.”  In fact, 38% of them claim to have a bad impression of present-day Christianity.  A woman from Mississippi put it this way:

Christianity has become bloated with blind followers who would rather repeat slogans than actually feel true compassion and care.  Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fear-mongering that has lost its own heart.

 

            Those are pretty strong words, wouldn’t you say?  Why do you suppose she feels that way?  Why do 38% of our young people today have a bad impression of present-day Christianity?  Authors Kinnaman and Lyons make this observation:

One crucial insight kept popping up in our exploration.  In studying thousands of outsiders’ impressions, it is clear that Christians are primarily perceived (by) what they stand against.  We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than for who we are for.

 

            That last line is enlightening.  “We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than who we are for.”  Now in all fairness, there are some things that we do have to oppose as Christians.  We cannot compromise the “Thou shalt nots” in the Ten Commandments, for example.  But note that they did not say, “rather than what we are for.”  They said, “rather than who we are for.”  We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than who we are for.  Who are we for?  We are supposed to be for none other than Jesus Christ, are we not?

            So if Presbyterian evangelists are those who knock on the door, and when the person answers the door, we stand on the porch and don’t know what to say, we’ve got a problem.  We must learn to articulate our faith.  Perhaps even more important, we must learn how to live our faith.

            Let’s take a look at the passage we read from the gospel according to Mark.  I read seven simple verses.  And in those seven simple verses, there are three separate scenes.  The first scene is the baptism of Jesus by John.  The second scene is Jesus being tempted in the wilderness.  The third scene is Jesus beginning his public ministry.  As you will soon see, all three scenes are intimately tied together.  And I want to note that the sequence is of ultimate importance.

            Jesus first was baptized by John.  I don’t have time to go into all the theological ramifications of the sacrament of baptism, so let me just say this.  It was there that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove.  Jesus’ baptism marked his reception of  the Holy Spirit. 

            Then what happened?  The Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness for 40 days.  There he was tempted by Satan, right?  The gospel of Mark doesn’t say a whole lot about Satan and his wiles.  You have to look at Matthew and Luke to see how Satan tempted Jesus.  There you will find, if you take the time to look, that Satan didn’t show up until the END of the 40 days.  Jesus did not spend 40 days being tempted by Satan.  He spent his time in prayer and fasting.  That’s why the Devil proved to be no challenge for him.  Jesus had just spent 40 days in intimate communion with God.

            After dealing with the Devil, Jesus began his public ministry in Galilee.  Perhaps we 

could say he began his evangelism then.  He began his mission and he began his outreach AFTER he had spent 40 days in communion with God…AFTER he had made the proper preparations.

            How can we expect to perform our mission and our outreach without the proper preparations?  Think about it  A tree can grow tall and spread its branches wide, but if it has no root system, how strong will it really be?  It will simply blow over at the first sign of wind.  We, too, must have a root system.  We, too, must make preparations to fulfill our mission.

            How does one make the proper preparations?  One must first be rooted in the word of God.  One must know and understand what the Bible is trying to tell us.  One must also be rooted in prayer.  You should begin and end every day in prayer.  And I’m not talking about a couple of words spoken to God in haste.  I’m talking about taking the time to communicate with God, and to listen for God in your heart.  You can’t do that in 30 seconds.  One must also be rooted in worship.  We often say that worship is for God, not for us.  Certainly that is true, but I think worship is also good for us.  Where else do we confess our sin and receive forgiveness?  Where else do we hear the word of God proclaimed?  Where else do we take an hour out of our lives to focus exclusively on God?

            Jesus was baptized, then Jesus prepared, then Jesus proclaimed the word of God.  I do believe we are called to do the same.  Evangelism is important.  The mission and outreach that we can provide have never been more crucial.  But do we really need to go door-to-door?  Do we really need to invade people’s privacy to fulfill our mission in Christ?  I’m not going to tell you no, but perhaps there is another way as well.

            Those Busters and Mosaics who have such a bad impression of Christianity did not come to their opinions in a vacuum.  They formed their opinions based upon their experience at churches, their interactions with others, and what they heard from their parents growing up.  At the core of this, young people said that they formed their views of Christianity based upon their relationships with Christians.

            A 24-year-old girl named Victoria said, “Everyone in my church gave me advice about how to raise my son, but a lot of the time they seemed to be reminding me that I have no husband – and besides, most of them were not following their own advice.  It made it hard to care what they said when they did not practice what they preached.”

            Perhaps that’s the real secret to modern-day evangelism.  We need to practice what we preach.  I can’t help but think that the more involved we become in our preparation – the more intentionally we strive to grow the roots of our own faith – the more likely that is to happen.  Amen.