By what authority…?

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This is sermon is one of those all or nothing affairs. Its football season, so I’ll use a football analogy. Sometimes you are handing the ball to the running back on a dive play. Its going to get roughly 3 yards and move the chains. Most sermons move the chains. Teaching is moving the chains. Sometimes the dive play opens up and you get a 20 yard scamper. Sometimes in sermons you don’t just teach but can inspire as well. And then there are the go routes. You tell your fastest receiver to go. You hold the ball as long as you can without being sacked, and then you throw it as far down the field as you can hoping that speedy guy runs under it. It is all or nothing with a side possibility of a turnover.

Jesus took his chances. He was always asking ‘who do you say I am?’ It’s an all or nothing question. The specific topic is stewardship. Churches need tithes and offerings to operate. But stewardship is a secondary question. If you haven’t committed to an answer to the authority the church works under, then stewardship is just dues. So stewardship sermons ask that primary question. Who do you say the crucified one is?

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The Kingdom of Heaven is like this…

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The toughest part about grace to me is its timespan. Grace comes daily. Grace comes hourly. As the spiritual goes – “I need thee every hour.” Grace is like manna, you can’t store it up. It falls and you collect it and if you try and hold on it goes bad. You have to go back out and get more. The Christian is being led to trust God for that daily bread. We think that with the law we get certainty or control, but that is really just a mirage. The law is more like the tar-baby. If thrashing around in the goo is control – ok. But it just gets you deeper and dirtier. The cross is the display of the lengths and depths that God will go to, to ensure our daily bread. But that timespan, that living hour to hour, is tough right now in this world – to eyes trained in scarcity and preservation.

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The Civic Religion and the Sure Hope

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As with so much else in America, if you want to cut to the soul or the bone of a matter you need to listen to Lincoln. (And Silent Cal Coolidge, but he didn’t live in exciting times, but his Autobiography and letters are deeply full of wisdom and heart.) But Lincoln instinctively knew the limits and failures of the civic religion. In the Gettysburg address:

…We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…

The civic religion is part of the law. And the law has no power to save, to grant life. The sure hope is in Jesus Christ who grants eternal life which will surely not be snatched away.

So at St. Mark we juxtaposed the Sept. 11 memorials and our Church’s 110th anniversary. The one is good and proper, the other proclaims life and hope.

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Where’s the leader?

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It is not really fair to make fun of the disciples. We are at a great advantage. We know the full story and we have the Spirit. (Yes, Pentecost means something). And I’m sure I’m bulldozing over huge cultural difference, but I just kinda think that human nature never changes. (Without the intervention of the Spirit.) The disciples’ questions may seem thick, but they are usually very logical. When they ask, like today, who is the greatest – they are asking a real question. Maybe not the way we would put it, but even a question that has prophetic background. Elisha asked for a double portion of the Spirit of Elijah. A prophet who is going away leaves a successor. Jesus has predicted his death three times in rapid succession. The disciples are just asking who’s next in line. What is the succession plan? A natural question.

But hierarchies and succession plans and great leaders are not what the church is about. The gospel does not depend upon the leader. Because the gospel is Christ’s. And he is present wherever two or three call in his name. And what does that look like? Keep on eye on the least – the little child. Be watchful; remain faithful. Look for the lost. Seek reconciliation; not just forgiveness but living with your brother who has wronged you. All of these things are how the church lives grace and depend not a whit on who the local leader is. You can choose to live a life guided by grace. (Enabled by the Spirit). The church is the place where that happens. Where ever two people practice grace instead of power – there Christ is.

So easy, yet so hard to do.

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The Milk of Faith

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There are some very simple statements that are rarely expressed that are the seed bed of faith. You get close to them if you look at the world and just say what you see. Do you see millions of atoms randomly moving around? Do you see a tragic beauty? Maybe just beauty? Probably your answer to that sets your course. You presuppositions typically set your logic.

I was converted in a way to our VBS this year. It did a masterful job of talking about some of the unexpressed basic assumptions. Who is God and how does He act in regards to us? What are your gut level thoughts and presuppositions about God? VBS took Psalm 139 as the text. I pays every Christian to bring those basic thoughts to life every now and then. The world and our adversary will try and convince you that you are a fool for thinking something like: God loves you no matter what. But that is what God has revealed about himself in the Bible, in Creation and most clearly in Christ, in the cross. Those simple statements are the simple milk of faith.

[Note – in the podcast the sermon starts about the 5:00 mark]

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