Monday, September 26, 2022

Christ Alone

Scripture Lessons: 1 Kings 3: 5-12 and Romans 9: 1-5 Sermon title: Christ Alone Preached on September 25, 2022 We’re in the middle of a sermon series today. “Christ alone” is the third of the Five Solas of the Reformed Tradition. When I say Reformed Tradition, I’m referring to a religious movement that changed the world about 600 years ago. It started with a monk named Martin Luther who had a bone to pick with the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote down his 95 complaints on a big piece of paper and nailed it to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Why did he nail his complaints to a church door? Because Facebook hadn’t been invented yet, and there was no other place for him to vent his frustration. The church door was the place to make public notifications. If you wanted to make a grand announcement or get something off your chest, you nailed it up there for people to see, which was a bold thing for Luther to do because one of his chief complaints was about the pope. At that time or at any time, you can’t just go around complaining about the pope, yet he believed the Church was forgetting that the pope is just a man and that the priests are equally mortal and, therefore, fallible. That’s part of the reason why, in addition to saying that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, we now look to the third sermon in this series on the five “Solas” or “alones” of the Reformed Tradition: “Christ alone.” To say “Christ alone” leaves no room for confusion: It is Christ who is head of the Church and not the pope, the priest, or the pastor. Some congregations still get confused about that. Plenty of pastors do, too. However, there’s a Lutheran pastor I admire named Nadia Bolz-Weber, who serves at a church in Denver called the House for All Sinners and Saints. When new people come to the church and ask about joining, they hold a class as we do to help educate the new members on what the church is all about and what will be expected of them. The House for All Sinners and Saints is a church like ours. People are attracted to it because it’s warm, welcoming, and a little different from other churches. Many people join that church because they were hurt or rejected by a former church or disappointed by a former pastor. As they join the House for All Sinners and Saints, they’re full of optimism, thinking, “This place is going to be different. This pastor has so much integrity, unlike the last guy who got my mother’s name wrong during her funeral.” In many ways, they’re right. The House for All Sinners and Saints is a different kind of a church. This is a different kind of a church. Just as some restaurants are better than others, so there are different churches, some with more accountability and some with less. Some pastors have more integrity than others; still, all churches are full of flawed human beings, and all pastors are just mortals wearing fancy robes, so the Reverend Nadia Bolz-Weber tells the new members something like this, “Who is good but God alone? You’ve come here, maybe because your last church disappointed you or your last pastor hurt you. I’m so sorry about that. Yet, sooner or later, I’m going to disappoint you. I’m going to say something you don’t like. I’m going to miss an important moment in your life. I’m going to reveal to you that I am human. When that happens, you may be tempted to leave this church as you left your last church, but I ask you to think long and hard before you leave, for in that moment when I disappoint you, you’ll see beyond me to the true reason you’re here.” That’s why the hymn goes: The Church’s one foundation, Is Jesus Christ, her Lord. The Church’s one foundation is not the pastor. The pastor is just a person. When the pastor takes center stage, everything gets messed up, especially the pastor’s ego. The leaders of the Reformed Tradition knew that, which is why today we remember that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for Christ is the head of the Church. The pope, pastor, bishop, and priest are all fallible human beings. When we forget that, people can become monsters, corrupted by power and followed without question. In every area of our lives, when the leader puts himself in the place of God, people suffer. Have you heard about those doctors who suffer from high self-esteem? They don’t listen. They think too highly of themselves. I’ve heard stories of patients being sown back up with surgical equipment still inside of them. I’m willing to bet that a nurse noticed she was missing some sutures as the patient was being sown back together, but she didn’t say anything because the doctor was in the bad habit of not asking and not listening. Therefore, I say that when we remember that Christ alone is the Perfect One, we are all better off because we more freely admit that we make mistakes and need a little help from time to time. The best teachers love students who ask hard questions because it makes them better to have to explain themselves. The greatest presidents know that, so Lincoln surrounded himself with his rivals, not his lackies because all our ideas get better through discussion, questioning, and debate. No human being ever gets it right the first time. Jesus is the Perfect One. The rest of us are still a work in progress. We don’t need to be ashamed of that. In fact, being willing to learn from our mistakes only makes us better. Some say Steve Jobs of Apple knew that. A recent article about him offers powerful advice for every leader of any organization in just five words: Make a lot of mistakes. Mistakes lead to better ideas. Mistakes keep us humble. There’s only one person who ever lived who didn’t make any. I’m not Him. Neither are you. We are all better when we remember that. Still, many people are ashamed of their mistakes. Sometimes we sweep the mistakes of our leaders under the rug, though the Bible is terribly upfront in claiming that Jesus is the only One who’s perfect. The Apostle Paul, who wrote our second Scripture Lesson, was a persecutor of Christians. How do we know about his checkered past? The Bible tells us. The Bible tells us that when the disciple Stephen was stoned, Paul held the coats for those who stoned him. Not only that, but he wasn’t always a dynamic preacher. Like a lot of preachers, he didn’t always know when to end his sermon, so one night in Troas, he preached and preached until midnight. There were lamps in the room where they were meeting. I can imagine someone saying, “Let’s pretend we don’t have any oil, and maybe he’ll give it a rest,” but no one did. A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting by the window, finally fell asleep and fell right out, three stories down. It’s right there in the Bible: Acts chapter 20. Likewise, we read about King David in 1st Kings. He once looked down from his palace porch and saw a woman bathing. He sent for her, she became pregnant, and because her husband was away fighting in David’s army, David sent him to the front lines so that he’d never make it home to find out what had happened while he’d been away. The Bible doesn’t shy away from this horrible story but comes right out with it. It is a warning that decent people can become monsters, for power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Solomon, David’s son, knew that. He knew the story of how his father abused his power, so he prays to God this way as he becomes king in our first Scripture lesson: O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people? He prayed for understanding and wisdom. He asked for these things because he knew that he didn’t have them, and he was able to ask because he wasn’t afraid to reveal his need. He knew he wasn’t perfect and didn’t pretend to be. That’s the beginning of wisdom. That’s the beginning of faith. We are in the right place when we recognize that we need Him. Christ alone. We say we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone because people are people. Christ is Lord. We are not. Even pastors are people. Some of us here have had to learn that lesson the hard way. My office upstairs was Dr. Jim Speed’s office when he was the Senior Pastor here. Back then, when you graduated high school, you had to go up to Dr. Speed’s office to talk about what you planned to do with your life. That was an intimidating meeting, but I went in there thinking he’d be so excited to hear that I was going to Presbyterian College to major in religion, in preparation for becoming a presbyterian minister. When I said it, he looked me in the eye and said, “I hope you’ll take this decision very seriously because being a pastor means being involved in every person’s most important relationship: between them and their God.” Right then, I changed my major to history. I didn’t want all that pressure and responsibility. Worse, while I was a student at Presbyterian College, the pastor who came after Dr. Speed retired got in hot water for preaching sermons he hadn’t written. The word for that is plagiarism. I know that because I had to sign the honor code at Presbyterian College. Plagiarism was an offence that resulted in immediate expulsion. Every freshman at Presbyterian College knew that, so when I heard about my pastor doing it, at first, I was just disappointed. Then, I had a crisis of faith. Why? Because Dr. Speed was right. Every pastor is getting involved in other people’s most important relationship: between them and their God. When the pastor here showed himself to be a human being, something inside of me got all mixed up. The one who had talked to me about forgiveness now needed it himself, and I was in a position, not to hear about forgiveness from him in the pulpit, but to offer it to him. My friends, we wear these fancy robes. We sit in big fancy chairs. When we come to people’s houses, they might dust off their Bibles and put them on the coffee tables acting like they were just having Bible study, but do not forget that what you all hear us talk about, we all are invited to live. We are called to live this Christian faith. One day, I may need you to preach to me. Certainly, the world needs to hear the sermon that Christ has placed on your heart. I want to hear it too, for we are not the only preachers here. I want you to know that we are saved by grace, through faith, in Christ, but more than know it, I want you to live it. Will you do it? This church is a hierarchy only in the sense that Christ is the head of the church. The rest of us are disciples, all called to live the Christian faith together. I want to follow Him beside you. Christ alone. Will you follow Him with me? Are you all in?

Monday, September 19, 2022

Faith Alone

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 20: 7-13 and Romans 6: 1-11 Sermon Title: Faith Alone Preached on September 18, 2022 My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was a wonderful person. I remember her fondly, and she was a character. She worked as a labor and delivery nurse for 50 years and so dedicated herself to her work that she developed no hobbies other than shopping. That meant that when she retired, she spent a ton of time in a home décor place near her house. I think it was called Tomlinson’s. You know the kind place. It was wall-to-wall knickknacks and potpourri. As a kid, every time we went to visit, I’d end up there, and as a 12-year-old boy, a place like that may as well be one of the levels of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. Around the time Sara and I got married, my grandmother purchased a cat from Tomlinson’s. It wasn’t alive or anything. It was decorative. A little cat curled in on itself that she used to decorate the beds in her house, so when Sara and I would visit, the first thing that Sara would do is kick the cat on her bed onto the floor and bury it under the pillows because she was sure the thing was going to come alive at any minute. Sara is smart, perceptive, so it isn’t surprising that she was pretty much right about the cat. It was front page news in the Summerville paper: Tomlinson’s sells stuffed Chinese alley cats to area residents. As soon as my grandmother heard about it, that these decorative cats of hers had, in fact, at one time, been real cats, she rushed over to her favorite store and spoke to the cashier. “Good morning,” she said. And that’s all it took for the cashier to start apologizing: “Mrs. Bivens, we’re so sorry about those cats. We’re just mortified. I hope you can see past this horrible mistake. We’ve already packed up the ones we had left, and we’re ready to ship them back to where they came from.” “So you haven’t sent them back yet,” my grandmother said. “In that case, could you go back there and get me a couple more?” That’s about my favorite story. It’s funny because if you know better, if you know the decorative cats are real cats, you shouldn’t buy any more. If you know better, you shouldn’t. It’s like chitlins. If you know what they are, you shouldn’t eat them, but I do. And it’s like sin. If you’ve been saved from it, forgiven of it, then you shouldn’t anymore, but considering what we know about grace, I believe “should” is an inadequate motivator. Many churches don’t preach grace the way we do here. In some churches, a warning is preached: “Don’t you sin, or Hell awaits.” If Hell awaits, then “should” has a lot of power. In those churches, you do what you should to avoid eternal punishment, but we’re not that kind of a church. We stand on what Paul wrote in Romans chapter 5: Christ has saved us. It’s not our work that’s going to get us into Heaven; it’s what Christ has done for us. Based on this book of Romans, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other heroes of the Reformed Tradition promoted the statement: Grace alone. That’s one of five “solas” we’re focused on in this sermon series. The Five Solas of the Reformed Tradition. Sola is Latin for “alone,” so we say we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone. Last week’s sermon was “grace alone”. As we continue our focus on the five “solas” or “only’s” of the Reformed Tradition, today we focus on “faith alone.” What is there to say about faith? Grace is about what Christ has done to save us. Faith is about how we respond, but what I want to make especially clear about faith is that faith is more than what we should or shouldn’t do. I believe that churches and priests and preachers and Sunday school teachers have a bad habit of overusing the power of should. You might say that the Church has been “should-ing” all over people for generations. We say: You should pray. You should tithe. You should be a good little boy or girl. Only “should” isn’t much of a gift. It’s an obligation. We give people whom we love gifts, not obligations. Why would the God who loves us be any different? God gives faith as a gift, so I say to you today, I don’t pray because I should. I pray because when I start my day with prayer and meditation, I receive a little bit of heaven. We give 10% of my salary back to the church, not because we’re supposed to, but because being generous makes us happy. And I try to be good. I do, but not because I should. I don’t like being told what I should do. The last time we sold a house, we had just had a bathroom renovated. After having the bathroom renovated, before we could sell the house, we had to have a final inspection. One inspector came over and he gave me a punch list of 5 or 6 things I should do, and when he did that, I started not liking him. However, I wanted to pass the inspection, so it didn’t matter what he asked for, and it didn’t matter whether I liked him. Out of a fear of failing, I installed something called a Studor valve and a bunch of other stuff on that bathroom. Well, the inspector came back after I finished, but it was a different inspector this time, and she walked into the bathroom, turned on the water in the sink, made sure the toilet flushed, and we passed. She didn’t even look at my Studor valve. Is God like a home inspector? Is our God some divine authority who enjoys telling us what we should and shouldn’t do? And is God watching who does what, rewarding the saints and punishing the sinners? People think of God that way, yet when Paul asks in Romans chapter 6, our second Scripture lesson for today, “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” what he means is that faith is more than doing what you should. Faith is recognizing that Christ brings us freedom, and sin is too great a burden to bear, so try faith. Some people have. Some people are trying to figure it out. Last Sunday, little Eli Dewar wanted to eat an orange during church. His mom told him he couldn’t. “You can’t eat during church,” that’s not how we do it here she told him. “Then I’ll just eat during the prayer, when everyone has their eyes closed.” Now if no one will know, is it OK to do it? No. If we did whatever we wanted, we’d wind up lost and alone, which is not what God wants for any of us. You might remember that legendary question and answer from the Westminster Shorter Catechism: Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. To enjoy Him. We are saved by grace alone. We live in faith alone because the God who died to save us also shows us the way to abundant life. He tells us how to enjoy the fruits of a faithful life. How to benefit from healthy relationships. How to live filled up by an abiding peace that guilt nor hardship can touch. We forget that God tells us to love one another, not because we should, but because there is no more miserable person than the one who only thinks of himself. You see, sin is its own enslavement. Sin is death enough on its own, and faith? Faith is abundant life. We’re focusing on the five solas of the Reformed Tradition because we want you to know: 1. That you are saved, not by anything that you’ve done, but by what God has done. That’s grace, which we covered last week. 2. That you must grow in righteousness, you must live a faithful life because there is no other way to live. That’s faith, which we’re talking about today. Through Christ alone, is next Sunday, revealed by Scripture alone, Sunday after next, to the glory of God alone after that. Today, it’s faith alone. We live by faith, not out of a place of fear, wondering where we’ll go when we die. We do it because God loves us and shows us how to live by sharing His love. Live a life of faith out of love, not fear. Love is the more profound motivator anyway. Think about it. Think about the Ukrainian army facing the Russians. One side fights for love of country, the other for a paycheck. Who will win? I know who I’d put my money on, for those who fight for love of their homeland will never stop so long as there is breath in their lungs. Likewise, I love my family, not because I should. I love my wife, not because I’m obligated. I love being one of your pastors, not just because you pay me. Because I love this place, I love you people, and I love talking about the Lord who died that we might live. Does God want our obedience or our love? Our resentment or our gratitude? I said before that the Church is in the bad habit of “should-ing” all over people. “You should, you should, you should,” the preachers have said, but that’s only what the preachers have said. God says, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” God’s grace washes all over us. God’s provision is all around us. God leans in so close to hear our prayers, for God treasures us, and so I say this is faith: Live a righteous, loving life, not just because we should or someone told us to, but because love drives us to it. Live a life of faith, and abundant life will be your reward. I told you last Sunday, and I’ll say it again, when it comes to living the Christian faith, “I’m all in.” What about you?

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Grace Alone

Scripture Lessons: Exodus 19: 2-8a and Romans 5: 1-8 Sermon Title: Grace Alone Preached on September 11, 2022 I remember where I was when the planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. It was the day of opening convocation at Presbyterian College. We were just starting to gather outside for the procession, and the two or three students who had cell phones were the only ones who knew anything. Looking up from their phones, they were saying things like, “Another is on the way to the Pentagon.” At the time, I didn’t know what that meant. Today, it makes sense. That day it all sounded impossible, and because being attacked was an impossibility, no one was prepared. No one knew what to do. The opening convocation was cancelled. Most students went back to their dorm rooms to call their parents or watch the news. On every channel were the same images again and again of airplanes hitting the Twin Towers. A dust cloud. First responders running in. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, I walked into Professor Smith’s history class. About half my classmates were in there with me. It was a class on the history of India. Without saying anything, he opened a book of ancient Indian folk stories and read to us, one story after another. He just read stories to us, as though we were back in kindergarten story time. Once an hour had passed, he said something like, “Thank you for letting me read these stories to you. On a day like today, it felt good to read these beautiful stories and to be reminded that, while we humans are capable of inflicting terrible violence on each other, we are also capable of creating beautiful stories.” That’s true. Both of those qualities are true of humans, and they are true at the same time; there’s evidence of both on that same day, for the reality of September 11th is both what those men did after hijacking airplanes and the phone calls people made from the upper floors of the Twin Towers, which were not one last word of hate, but desperate calls to the people they love. Last year at the foot of Kennesaw Mountain, I heard a first responder speak, and in hearing him, I knew that the terrorists didn’t win; that the last word on September 11th is not violence but the sacrificial love that pushed that firefighter to drive into the city even though it was his day off and to climb flight after flight of stairs in the hope of saving someone he didn’t even know. Yes, on the one hand is terrorism, genocide, slavery, racism, greed, and war, yet still, on the other is love, literature, music, kindness, mercy, and grace. Therefore, Martin Luther, the great reformer who started the Protestant Reformation which resulted in the formation of the Presbyterian Church, coined the Latin phrase, “Simul justus et pecator,” or “We are simultaneously sinners and saints.” We are marked both by Adam’s sin and Christ’s perfection. We can do what is right in one moment while doing the wrong that hurts us and our neighbor the next. Therefore, an old man once told his grandson, “There is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.” The boy thought about it and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?” The old man quietly replied, “the one you feed.” What I want you to know this morning is that there is sin in the world. There is also grace. And grace wins. How do I know? I know because Christ died for us and conquered sin. Therefore, the Apostle Paul writes, we have peace with God; and we boast even in our afflictions, for God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Sometimes, you read Paul’s letter and you think to yourself, “That’s a lot of complicated information in a few short phrases,” so let me say it another way: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. You know that song. Knowing where it came from makes it even more powerful. The whole story is in this month’s church newsletter in an article written by Connie Caird. Basically, the story goes that John Newton, then the captain on a ship transporting men and women from West Africa to be sold at auction in the New World, all at once recognized what he was doing. Here he was, a human being, transporting others just like him from freedom into slavery: from their homes to a land where they would be whipped, beaten, and forced to work without pay. When we find ourselves in such a situation, we all look in the mirror and say to ourselves, “Who could love a wretch like me?” Yet then came the whisper of grace, amazing grace. What do you know about grace? We are saved by “grace alone” says one of the five standards of the reformed tradition. When I say “reformed tradition,” you may not know exactly what I mean. “Reformed” is just the word we use to describe the style of Christianity that emerged from Germany about 600 years ago when Martin Luther broke from the Roman Catholic Church and started the Protestant Reformation. Thanks to the printing press, from Germany, his ideas spread throughout Europe, eventually making it to Geneva, Switzerland, where John Calvin started the Presbyterian Church. Calvin’s ideas spread to Scotland, where the Presbyterian Church really took hold. As Scottish Presbyterians immigrated to the United States, there were so many that some in England called the American Revolution “the Presbyterian Revolution.” We, as members of the Presbyterian Church, are a part of the reformed tradition, which comes down to five theological statements: We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, for the Glory of God alone. The next several Sundays are focused on those statements. Today, it’s “grace alone.” What does that mean? It means that when we look in the mirror and can’t imagine ourselves as anything other than a wretch, lost and alone, defined by sin and shortcoming, the love of God is there. It means that while there is sin in the world and in our hearts, there is also beauty. It means that there are two wolves inside us all, but one will triumph over the other by the power of God, for despite our imperfections, in Scripture, God’s love for us is described as the love of a mother hen for her chicks, or as the love of a father for his prodigal son. A preacher you know named Ray Jones told it this way: He was walking his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. She told him again and again, “Daddy, just don’t make me cry. Don’t say anything that will make me cry at my wedding.” He kept his mouth shut through the rehearsal dinner. He didn’t give a toast or anything, but as he walked her down the aisle, he whispered to her, “I love you, and as long as you live, you will never fully know the gift you are to your mother and me.” If God is our Father in Heaven, is God not this kind of a father? The kind whose love for us, in just a few simple words, brings tears to our eyes? What does it mean to be saved by grace alone? It means that whatever you’ve done or not done, wherever you’ve been or not been, no matter how far you’ve strayed or how weak or stubborn you’ve been, your heavenly Father is waiting with open arms to welcome you home. To be saved by grace alone is to remember that the God of the Exodus is still delivering His people from slavery out of profound and powerful love. To be saved by grace alone is to know that the debts incurred by all of our imperfection have already been paid off by a loving Savior who laid down His life to settle our account with His body and blood. It’s grace that we’re talking about this morning. Amazing grace. Do you know what I mean when I say grace? Grace changes us. It replaces our shame with gratitude, and so John Newton got off the ship and dedicated his life to ending slavery. Why? He did that because God had set him free. What else could he possibly do? Likewise, the Apostle Paul told much the same story. To anyone who would listen, he would tell them: I was a persecutor of Christians. When the disciple Stephen was stoned, I was the one holding the coats of those who threw the stones. I neither objected nor protested but encouraged the execution of an innocent man. Still, Christ died for me. That’s grace. Once Paul felt it, that was all he cold talk about. Letter after letter. Sermon after sermon. Everything he wrote can be reduced down to this one statement: Christ died for me. In the same way, I stand before you today as your preacher, who, in 7th grade, was nearly a confirmation class dropout. When I was 16, I could be seen driving the streets of Marietta in a Chevrolet painted checkerboard. I was probably speeding. I don’t know whether I was or not because the speedometer didn’t work, but one day grace got a hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. One day, I felt God’s love, and I didn’t feel it because I deserved it. I felt it because it’s real, and having felt that grace, I knew what I wanted to spend my life doing: not skipping church, but leading one. My question for you today is this: Have you felt it? Have you felt forgiveness? Have you felt God’s unconditional love? Do you know what it is to be down in the pit, sure you would drown in the darkness, only to feel the light of hope break through? We are saved by grace alone, so our wretchedness will not define us. No. Christ died for us. Christ died for you. Christ died for me. We are worth dying for. How will you respond to this good news? As I said before, in the coming weeks, we’ll be thinking about what we believe as reformed Christians: that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, which leads us to live for the glory of God alone. If you’ve felt God’s grace, how has it changed the way you live? I want you to know that God’s grace has changed me, and I’m all in. Are you?