Note: the video begins with a dramatic reading of John 9 and concludes with the Lord’s Supper, with the words of institution; the sermon begins around 5:56.
The lectionary this morning brings us to John 9, in a season when we are looking at God’s word through the lens of calling and mission. Left to my own devices I would probably never have put these two things together; but I was not left to my own devices. It’s a great gift to have good colleagues, and this year I’ve been pondering the words of one of the wise pastors I know. Those words were in the back of my mind as I began preparing this message, and they quickly became my guide to see John 9 from a new angle. Let me show you:
[play sermon snippet, Emily Cash, VSF, 1/29/23]
When we talk about the ways God calls us to be and do what he wills, we have to face the fact that his calling is rarely obvious or explicitly spelled out. Given that reality, there are two profoundly important truths in Emily’s words.Read more→
The calling to preach the word of God is a series of opportunities to get yourself into trouble. On the one hand, there is the recurring invitation from the Spirit of God to, as the late Representative John Lewis put it, “get into good trouble”; on the other, there are myriad chances to put your foot in your mouth and start chewing on your ankle. This is one reason why the wise preacher goes forth only with much prayer, in a spirit of dependence. Let’s pray.
As many of you know, we came to Indiana from Colorado, where I pastored a church in a small mountain resort community. The church was pretty thin on the ground in the county, but I had a few colleagues whom I really appreciated. One was Doug Stevenson, a New Zealander who had come to the US a few years before to pastor an independent congregation out in Kremmling, in the western part of the county. One day, somewhat pensively, Doug told our pastors’ group his daughter was coming to visit from New Zealand. He and his wife Ethel were eager to see her, but there was a complicating factor: she was bringing her girlfriend along. Unsure how to respond to the situation, he had reached out to a friend for guidance. His friend listened, then told Doug to put a double bed in his daughter’s room, set everything up as nicely as he could, and leave chocolates on the pillows. “Make your daughter welcome,” was the message, which meant making her girlfriend welcome too.
I learned at Regent to take hospitality seriously, both from the way the Regent community valued it and from my introduction to the work of Dr. Kenneth Bailey, who taught me the great importance of hospitality in the world in which Jesus lived; but I still saw it primarily in practical terms, as one of the small graces in which and by which we’re called to live. That conversation with Doug widened my perspective, because his friend wasn’t talking about hospitality as a practical response to human need but as a theological response to the human condition.Read more→
The perception of Christians in Western culture these days is growing increasingly negative, in large part because we are seen as focused on telling other people what to do and what not to do. Regrettably, that view has some truth to it. Regrettably, but not surprisingly; after all, we don’t cease to be sinners just because we start going to church. Even the most Christlike people I have ever known were simul iustus et peccator, in Luther’s phrase, simultaneously saint and sinner. The redeeming work of Jesus in our lives by the power of his Holy Spirit is the deepest reality of our hearts, but the reality of the sin in our hearts is very deep as well.
One of the effects of our sin is a proclivity to read our Bibles the wrong way ’round.Read more→
Does it seem to you that Western culture is growing increasingly merciless and unforgiving? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you think the opposite is true, given the rate at which behaviors traditionally understood as wrong are being normalized—but that has nothing to do with mercy or forgiveness. Actually, that trend underscores my point; given the increasingly pharisaical tenor of Western society, true toleration of behavior is disappearing into polarization, leaving only approval and anathematization as options.
I wrote that five and a half years ago; if anything, I think it’s truer now than when I wrote it. Contemporary Western culture has rejected Christianity as legalistic in the service of a harsher legalism. It has condemned the historic Christian faith for believing in sin, and in the process has lost the understanding of grace. As it has rushed to caricature and demonize the Puritans, it has become puritanical in the worst sense of the word (a sense which, ironically, would not actually apply to the historical Puritans).
If you’re going by the standard lists, no, of course not—it’s not on any of them—but I think there’s a case to be made.
As always, it’s important to begin by defining your terms. First, spiritual disciplines are not law but grace, not requirement but gift. They are not things we do because we have to or to get some sort of response from God, they are things we have been set free to do because of what God has done for us and is doing in us.
Second, a mystery is not a secret God is unwilling to tell or something too obscure or difficult for us to understand, nor is it something we have to figure out. When the Bible talks about mystery, it means something we can’t figure out on our own. It’s something too big to be seen by the unaided eye, fully comprehended by the human mind, or defined and circumscribed by the human capacity for reason.Read more→
Desiree Brown, “Church Attendance Is Not a Remedy for Church Hurt” Sadly, admitting that “of course we’re all sinners” in general is almost always a bid to avoid admitting that we are these specific sinners.
Torrie Sorge, “Shine Your Light” God created you, and me, and each of us, fitted for the purpose and plan for which he prepared us. Last I checked, he doesn’t make mistakes.
One of my daughters was walking around the other day wearing a shirt declaring, “Truth is a person.” It is of course a riff on John 14:6, where Jesus declares, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.” It’s also a profoundly important statement, especially to our scientistic, propositionalist culture.
And yes, I did mean scientistic, not “scientific”—that our culture is shaped by the belief, summarized well by the physicist Ian Hutchinson, that “science, modeled on the natural sciences, is the only source of real knowledge.” One problem with scientism as a philosophy (there are several) is that it produces a conflation of truth with fact. Not only does this lead people to assume that “truth” and “opinion” are opposed categories (when the actual divide is between fact and opinion), it also encourages the belief that “truth” is merely a matter of asserting correct propositions. As long as you have the right words in the right order, you’re speaking the truth.
This understanding of truth is inarguably correct in math and the hard sciences, in which a formula is equally correct regardless of who writes it, to whom, under what conditions, in what mood. The further you get from the purity of mathematics, however, the more tenuous that understanding becomes; in speaking of the realities of the human heart, it collapses entirely. Read more→
