Truly Living Free: Sermon Galatians 5:1 and 13-25

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

About 175 years ago, a skinny young lawyer stood before a group of young men at a school hall in Springfield, Illinois. He was giving a speech to these young people and in his speech the young lawyer made a prophecy; or rather it was a warning not only to the young men present, but also as it turns out to the country as a whole. There were whispers from Washington D.C., Charleston, South Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama. These whispers contained the ideas of succession, division over state’s rights and slavery. The young lawyer said to the group

“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

The young, skinny lawyer’s warning may not have been noticed by those present, but it echoed from many a battlefield 25 years later in places like Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg. The young lawyer would become intimately and inescapable aware of that prophecy that he made that day. He would later become president, his name was Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln tried to warn the people that a nation of free people, truly free people, will live forever and the only fatal wound that could be done to America would have to be self-inflicted. Freedom is not free. We see this saying on signs and on bumper stickers. These words echo true especially in times of war. Our freedom was bought at a price and it is a price we still pay for. Americans paid the price in places like Bunker Hill, Mass. and Yorktown, VA. It was paid in places like Chancellorsville, VA and Antietam, Maryland. It was paid in Amiens, France along many trenches. It was paid in places like Iwo Jima, Normandy, and Bastogne and it will continue to be paid.

There is a flip side to the saying as well. Freedom is not free in the sense that freedom is not something that we live with, but something that we live out. Freedom must be used and responded to. All too often we take our freedoms for granted. We must stop living with freedom and being to live out freedom. We have to cast our vote, many men died defending our right to vote in elections. We should pay our taxes that are due, we don’t like it, but it is our duty as citizens. We have to use our freedom of speech to speak out to our elected officials and to debate the issues of the day in order to make better decisions for tomorrow. Some make the ultimate commitment to freedom by serving in the Armed Forces and we thank all of those for their service. Freedom is something we should live out everyday and thank God for it everyday because as we know full well not all places in the world have the freedoms we enjoy. Freedom demands responsibility. Freedom does not mean we get to do whatever we want, we have to adhere to rules and laws and these do not hinder our freedoms, but give freedom to all people and help us to form a better nation.

We are a free people; we live in a nation founded on freedom. But we are also free as Christians. As follows of Christ we have been set free from sins. This is more than just forgiveness of sins. It is total freedom from our sins, not only are our sins forgiven, but they are also forgotten by God, just like they never even happened. We are set free from the bondage of a life apart from God. We have been made righteous which means that we have become children of God, we have been made holy in the eyes of God, by the grace of Christ. Also according to Paul we are set free from the Law, not that we are not to live by the law, but that we are set free from the judgment of the Law. This is an awesome gift from God, a gift that we cannot even fully understand or fathom. This gift of freedom demands a response from us. This is not a freedom that we can take from granted or stick in the closet for judgment day this is a freedom that we have to live in response to everyday. The question that Paul posed to the Galatians is the same that is before us today, how will you use this gift of freedom?

In our Scripture lesson, Paul is warning the Galatians not to take their new found freedom from granted. He says “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence”. God does not give us a “get of jail free” card that can be used so that we can go out and commit more sins. This is not a license to party with immunity from the Law. Instead this freedom is to be used to become closer to God. That is the response that God wants from us to live our freedom in a relationship with him. . We are given freedom so that we can move away from ourselves and our past ways and toward a future with God. A movement toward God is also a movement toward holiness.

This movement toward God and toward holiness is called Sanctification. John Wesley also called it moving on to Christian perfection and he defined Christian perfection as perfect love of God and neighbor. That is our goal as Christians to have perfect love of God and neighbor, every action we make, every thought we have is for the glory of God and the betterment of God’s people that is Christian perfection. It is a life long process and although no one has ever reached perfection in this life it does not mean that we do not work toward it and strive for it. We are not in this work alone. God is always with us, guiding us with the Holy Spirit. This is a relational work, meaning that we are working toward a deeper and fuller relationship with God and as we do that our relationship with one another grows as well.

Paul continues his advice to the new church in Galatia by explaining the differences between the old life and the new life in Christ. Sanctification is a battle between the old life of the flesh and the new life in the Spirit. We are moving away from earthly desires and toward a holy life in the Spirit. Paul lists the works of the flesh, “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, and carousing”. The thing all these have in common is that they destroy relationships and community. These are individualistic, selfish pursuits. These are the things we did before Christ.

We work to rid ourselves of these things and work in the Spirit and as we work in the Spirit, as we become more holy in our life then we receive the fruits of our work, the fruits of the Spirit, Paul lists those as well, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”. What do all these have in common? The build relationships and community. They build up instead of destroying. These are selfless deeds instead of selfish desires. This is what we are living and working toward. Living in love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity with all our neighbors, all the people we encounter. When we do this a strange and wonderful thing happens? They want to know why we are acting so differently, they’ll want to hear your story.

What does it mean to live free? Despite the name it does not mean a free and easy lifestyle, it requires responsibility. It does not mean we can live out our selfish desires, but instead we are called to become more and more holy, selfless, more Christlike. Whether you call it Sanctification or not it is about living a Christian life in Christian freedom. It is about becoming closer to God and closer to one another. We strive for this life; we work toward being more holy. If we all work a little bit each day, how much can we change in a year, in ten years, in a lifetime? As Christians we must love out our freedom by loving one another as God loves us, as brothers and sisters of Christ, as children of God. Live out your freedom beginning today and reap the fruits of the Spirit.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Greatest Fear: Sermon Luke 8:26-39

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Do you like to be scared? I know that it is a few months left until Halloween, but I think that all of us like to have our spines tingled every now and then with a spooky story. We have our share of spooky places here locally, we have all heard, I am sure, of the tales from the Hanna Ward bridge and not too far from here in Adams, Tennessee the tales of the Bell Witch. These are the kind of stories we hear around a campfire or at home with all the lights off. Hollywood has always found new ways to scare us and it seems in the last few years a new horror movies comes out each week and each one more disturbing and disgusting than the last. The days of Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff are long gone and movie makers today want to shock us with disturbing images, perhaps the world that we live in has become so scary in and of itself that the horror movies of today have to be much more graphic in order to scare us.

There is no doubt about it that fear sells, almost as well as sex does. After 9/11 and the subsequent Anthrax letters sent to NBC and members of Congress some of us were even scared to open the mail. We bought gas masks, duct tape, and rubber gloves and that was just to open the Publisher’s Clearing House envelope. Commercials scare us into buying everything from security systems to pepper spray and handguns. Sometimes it’s good to be a little scared because it prepares us for the harshness that is in the world. We no longer live in a day or time when we can leave our doors unlocked at night. Instead we lock ourselves up tighter than Fort Knox in order to sleep soundly. We are scared of lots of things; vampires, ghosts, goblins, spiders, snakes, rats, other creepy crawly things. But what are we really scared of, the unknown, change, the future these tend to be our biggest fears.

Today’s gospel story is frightening in a sense. Here we have one encounter that Jesus has with a demon-possessed man. We are told that the man is crazed, tormented by demons. He runs around naked and has been banished by the people to the cemetery outside of town. This sounds like Hollywood gold to me. The people tried to tie the man down for his own protection and for theirs, but the demon gave him superhuman strength and he broke free of the chains and run wild. However, the people were not frightened of him; they instead became accustom to his presence.

Jesus asks him his name and the demon replies “Legion” for many demons had entered the man. Now depending on what time in Roman history you are referring to a Roman legion contained anywhere from 4,000 to 16,000 men. So this man had thousands of demons dwelling within him. This would raise the neck hairs of even the strongest man, but the people where not afraid of the many demons.

Jesus commands the demons to come out back to the Abyss, but they beg Jesus to allow them to enter a herd of pigs nearby. Jesus agrees and they go into the pigs and the pigs rush off of the cliff and into the lake to drown. The people come to see the commotion and see the man who had become the town looney, the crazy man was calm and sane sitting at the feet of Jesus and that made the people afraid. They were so afraid that they begged Jesus to depart from them and to never return. The people were afraid of the holy power of Jesus.

The demons and the people of the town were afraid of the same thing, the power of holiness within Jesus. The fear of the demons is understandable. They knew who they were dealing with and called Jesus by title “Son of the Most High God”. They knew they were in trouble and they begged Jesus not to cast them back into Hell, but instead into the pigs, considered unclean by the Jewish people. They wanted to bargain with Jesus but Jesus knew the outcome, that the pigs would drown themselves in demonic madness. Jesus saw the evil in the situation and took a stand against it. We can see why the demons feared the holy power of Jesus.

The people’s reaction, however, is surprising. The feared the change that Jesus had brought to their community even though the change was a positive one. I can imagine the pig herders were a little upset, but is the freedom of one man not worth a couple hundred pigs. However, the people did not seem to care about the man instead they were worried more about the pigs. Jesus had upset the status quo, the normal business of the day, they went about our lives and the crazy possessed man stayed in the graveyard, everybody’s happy right? But Jesus freed the man from the bondage of demonic possession, Jesus saw the evil in the situation and changed it and now the evil was gone, but the people’s fears grew. The people feared Jesus’ holiness.

Why? Why did those people fear the holiness of Jesus? Holiness is powerful, much more powerful than evil. Any time Jesus encountered demons he could command them with a word. There was no fighting or discussion; the demons obeyed Jesus because of the pure power of his holiness. So why fear this power? Holiness by its very nature brings good, so why fear it? Holiness brings change and it was the change that the people feared. They had grown accustom to the evil that surrounded them. The people thought that if they left the evil alone that it would not bother them. Just don’t go near the naked, crazy man and he won’t bother you. Jesus changed what they were accustomed to and the man who was once crazed was now free. What if the demons come back? What if I am next? They were at least contained in a specific space and we knew where they were, but now. They feared the change and the uncertainty that the power of holiness brought, even though it was for the good of all the community. They feared Jesus so much that they begged him to leave and the scariest part of this story is that we often act in the same way as these people did.

So often our society rejects the power of holiness and embraces or at the very least embraces the evil that surrounds us. So often the horrors of the world do not shock us when we watch the news, but it takes a selfish, heroic, and holy act to shock and awe our society. We have become numb to the evil around us, even to the point that we don’t believe it exists. We blame bad childhoods or bad circumstances as the reasons for these horrid acts. It was said that the young man who opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech had mental problems, a bad childhood, etc. This might all be true, however we cannot deny the fact that there was great evil in this man. The horrors of Darfur, Sudan, the killings fields of the Khmer Rouge in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the genocide of the Holocaust these are evil acts and we cannot, we must not deny that they are evil. There are other acts of evil that we might not even notice in our every day lives. Racism, sexism, economic injustice, people without healthcare, the elderly choosing between food and medicine these are acts of evil.

We have to stand up against evil. We cannot fear the power of holiness because we have been called to use it. Jesus referred to his followers (which includes us) as the salt and light of the world. This means that we are called to be beacons in a world filled with darkness. We have been given the power to be holy through the Holy Spirit and with that comes great power. We must not fear this power but use it to speak out against evil in the world. Our parents and grandparents spoke out and acted out against the evils of Hitler and the Third Reich. We have to follow their example. Our denomination has been at the forefront of many battles against social evil. The Methodist Church led the way for the abolition of slavery in the 1800s and many Methodist pastors and laity led the fight for civil rights for all. Now we face evil in our day and time. We must rise to the occasion without fear and use the power that we have been blessed with.

As Jesus found out, speaking and acting against evil does not always earn you praise and reward. As I have said holiness brings change, not only to the world but to ourselves and sometimes change is resisted sometimes angrily. Let us look back to the story. There are two outcomes. One the man is set free, justice is restored, and his life and sanity are restored. The evil is defeat with good and this man has a chance to lead a normal, happy life. He is so changed by his encounter with Jesus that he wants to become a disciple and follow Jesus. Instead, Jesus tells him to stay there and tell all the people what God has done for him. This is a good outcome. One person is saved.

However, there is also a bad outcome. The people of the town are so bothered by the act of holiness that they reject Jesus and ask him to leave and not come back. They are so frightened by Jesus that they reject the man that can save them. They did not understand that their status quo, the life they were accustomed was unjust and harmful to others. They were oblivious to it until Jesus changed it and they reacted harshly to that change. We have to be ready for both outcomes when we act out against evil in the world. We might change one life and have the community around us reject us, but one redeemed and restored person is worth the reaction of anger.

We cannot become accustom to evil and we cannot fear the power of holiness. Instead we must work toward personal and social holiness. It does not happen overnight, it is a lifelong pursuit. John Wesley called this moving on to perfection, you can also call it living life and growing as a Christian. We are the salt and the light of the world and it is up to us to stand up and speak out against evil. And we can make a difference in a broken world, if we let go of our fears and let God work through us.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sometimes We Forget: Luke 7:36-8:3

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

One particular Sunday a church was to receive a new pastor. They did not know who this person was; the pastor did not have a particular reputation so there was both excitement and nervousness. The church members wanted to make a good impression on the new pastor and so they clean the church top to bottom. There were fresh cut flowers everywhere, the men wore their suits and ties and all the ladies had new Sunday dresses. Everything was set up perfectly until…what seemed to be a homeless person walked in the door. To say the man was scruffy was an understatement. His hair was all matted and dirty, he had a dirty beard hanging un-kept from his face. His clothes were stained and torn and he had a particular odor like he hadn’t bathed in a couple of weeks. He man came in to the almost horrid looks from the congregation. He sat down in the back of the church and was received not by a handshake or a hug, but by whispers and dirty looks. “Of all the days a junkie bum could come into our church, what will the new pastor think of us?” The time for church was at hand and the pastor was still no where to be found. The people began to worry and squirm in their seats not only because the pastor was late but also because of this new stranger who sat among them. The hour had come and the bum that had received so many dirty, hateful looks stood up. “Good, maybe he is leaving” someone whispered. But the man walks past the people down the middle of the isle and up to the pulpit. The men of the church were being nudged by their wives to put a stop to this when the man spoke. “My name is Rev. Johnson and I am your new pastor. We have some work to do in this church.”

We often, despite the old saying, judge a book by its cover. It is something that is ingrained into our minds by our society. We cannot help it sometimes. We might see a homeless person, or a group of young men on the street and we lock our car doors and roll up the windows. Thousands of young girls starve themselves and participate in dangerous behavior in order to look like society thinks a young girl should look. People who do not look the way we think is normal receive stares and sometimes given giggles from others. Don’t we also sometimes judge a person by their sins especially when those sins are public in nature? When a person is caught in adultery, when a person is caught embezzling money, or when a person is caught drinking and driving these are public sins. We place judgment on others when we forget about our own private sins in our closet. We have a tendency look at the sins first, before we look at the person.

Our story today is like this. Jesus is invited to the home of Simon, a Pharisee, which might seem strange to us because Jesus and the Pharisees always seem to be at odds with one another. Perhaps Simon had some ulterior motives and was trying to lull Jesus into his confidence, or perhaps Simon was a secret follower of Jesus like Nicodemus. We do not know. Jesus comes into the house with no great welcome. Luke says that Jesus walks in and simply takes his place at the table. As they are eating an unwelcome woman walks into the room and kneels at Jesus’ feet. People begin to whisper to one another. “Do you know who she is? Do you know what she has done? Look at what she is doing to Jesus.” She begins to cry and her tears are so great that they fall to the feet of Jesus and wash the dirt and dust of the road off. She then takes her long black hair and dries Jesus feet. The whispers grow louder and more frequent. She then takes a beautiful alabaster jar and pours the contents onto Jesus’ feet and the fragrance form the oil fills the whole room. Jesus can sense the tension in the room and especially in the face of his host, Simon. “If he was a prophet he would know what kind of a woman this was and what she has done, she is a sinner of the greatest kind.” Although Simon says this to himself Jesus can sense his animosity toward this woman. Jesus looks at Simon and tells him a story. Two men were in debt to the same person one man owed 50 denarii about $1,000 and the other owed 500 or about $10,000. The man forgave both debts. Then Jesus poses a question which debtor loved the man more. Simon answers logically the man with the most debt. Jesus then tells him that this woman loves much because she knows that she has been forgiven much…unlike Simon who had not even offered Jesus the customary foot washing and kiss as a greeting.

What does this story mean for us today? I think the main theme in this story is how our need for forgiveness or more importantly the knowledge of our need for forgiveness affects our attitude. The woman knew she was in need of forgiveness. She did not need anyone to tell her she was a sinner. She knew it. She wanted to change her ways and she knew of this Jesus who could make her right with God. We do not know what her sin was, but we can assume by Simon’s reaction that it was a public sin, something everyone in the community knew about.

When we first come to Christ we know how much we are indebted to God and how much God has forgiven us, just as the man with the large debt. As we move on in our Christian life sometimes we forget. We forget that despite the fact that we are saved by faith through grace we still sin and we are still indebted to God everyday. We forget how much we still need God’s forgiveness. We often prioritize sin and label sin. This sin is not as bad as this sin, not helping the poor is not as bad as committing adultery, telling a lie is not as bad as killing someone. We do this to make ourselves feel better. We say to ourselves “Well, at least I am not doing what she or he is doing.” We belittle others sins that might be more public or more heinous in our eyes. We often pass judgment on others, we act like Simon, and when we think that we are forgiven little, just as Jesus says, we love little. We have to remember that we are in constant need of forgiveness. We all sin, as long as one child dies from hunger we are sinners. As long as millions of people die from diseases that could be treated with the drugs we buy at Walgreens we are sinners. The good news for us remains the same however. God loves use despite our sins and offers a constant flow of grace and love from the cross of Calvary.

This is such good news and this is such wonderful, immeasurable grace that we cannot help but to be as the woman in the story kneeling at the feet of Jesus. She comes to Jesus in pure humility. She opens herself up completely to Jesus, she does not hide anything, and she does not pretend that she is not in need of forgiveness. She does not blame anyone else for her plight, but simply and honestly falls at the feet of her Savior. She is repentant. Her tears of sorrow and guilt fall at the feet of Jesus. Her tears are so great that they wash Jesus’ feet clean of the dirt and dust of the road. She knows that the life she has lived is wrong and she wants to make a new start, a new life, a changed life away from all the negativity of her past. She does not care of what people might say, she does not care that she is not welcome in the house of Simon. Her focus is purely and solely on Jesus. She is also sacrificial. She offers to Jesus an expensive bottle of perfume and pours it on his feet anointing them. This bottle of perfume might have been her only possession. Although we know now that grace through Christ is free, she wants to make an offering to Jesus. Not in exchange for forgiveness but out of humility and repentance.

When we became Christians, it might have been at a tent meeting, a church camp, it might have been at the altar of this very church, wherever it was we came with a humble, repentant, and sacrificial heart just as the woman in this story. As we move on as Christians too often we lose this kind of heart, we forget about our constant need for forgiveness and we forget that how we came to the cross is how we should leave the cross and remain as Christians. Remember the parable of the debtors, one owed $1,000 and the other $10,000 and of course the one who owed more loved the man who forgave the debt more. The debt we owe God is immeasurable, uncountable. God created us just a little lower than himself and we rejected God. God sent his only son so that we could learn from him and we rejected him. He died on a cross and rose again defeating death, hell, and the grave and still we reject him maybe not with our mouths, but with our actions. We are in constant need of forgiveness and God is constant in his ability and willingness to forgive us. We owe so much to God we should be filled with love for God and for one another. We are all in the same boat and we all receive the same grace and love from God and so we should love one another.

We owe God so much that praise should be continually in our hearts and in our mouths. We should praise God joyfully and completely. We should tell others who have not yet found this grace and love. Most of all we should be accepting of all people no matter what their sins might be, just as God was accepting of us. Acceptance and love is what draws people to a church. Love and acceptance is what keeps people coming to church. We work together to move away from sin and toward God. We hold one another accountable, but never with judgment and always with love and grace. We have to embrace togetherness as oppose to competition. That is what the Church is in need of. All the programs and big, beautiful buildings in the world cannot match the power of God’s love in a church and acted out in its members. Let us all remember that our debt is great but God’s grace is far greater.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Where I've Been Can't Compare to Where I'm Going: Sermon Galatians 1:11-24

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Time flies. I see that more clearly now than I did when I was younger. I think sometimes that the older we get the faster time seems to fly by. I mean here we are in June and it seems like only yesterday we were eating Christmas dinner and opening presents. My ten year high school reunion is next year. I know, I know I still a young pup, a spring chicken, and I am not complaining about the fact that ten years has past by, but instead it has caused me sometimes to look back at those years and the person I was then and how different I am now from that young person.

I remember the old times, Bruce Springsteen called them “Glory Days” when we where young and carefree. I didn’t have bills to pay yet, I didn’t have much as far as responsibilities went, the future was wide open and the world was my oyster. We all felt that at some point in our lives. And if someone had told me at age 18 that I was going to be standing in this church preaching a sermon as your pastor I would have laughed in their face. I had my own priorities. I wanted to make lots of money, be a famous radio personality, syndicated all over the country. I wanted to have fancy cars, and big house. I wanted to be able to take luxurious vacations to exotic places. Those were my priorities and my goodness how time changes our priorities.

I have my dreads and worries leading up to this reunion. Not just about my appearance, we all want to look good and not about my financial situation. One worry that I have is their reaction to my answered call to ministry. What would they think about the Reverend Brad Smith? Because when we don’t see people for a while the only thing that we know about them is through our memories. So the people I haven’t seen in a while do not know me now, but remember Brad at age 18 who is completely different than Brad at age 27. The remember the Brad who like to party and have a good time, who was a bit of a class clown, a bit of smart-alack, a person who always had a joke to crack even if it was at the expense of someone else. The old Brad, I like to refer to him as the pre-Jesus Brad, didn’t care much for church, even though God was always there and I never really doubted God’s existence. However, I didn’t have time for God, I felt like I didn’t need God at the time. I had things to do and people see. So the people who remember me in that state might be surprised and even shocked to learn that I am serving as a pastor, going to seminary, and planning a life in service to God and the Church. I have already experienced some of this shock a person might ask what I am doing now and I would reply “I am a pastor” “You’re a what???” “Yeah right.”

So in some ways I see myself as a kindred spirit to Paul. People were shocked to see his transformation as well. Our journeys are not the same, I did not persecute the Church, but the themes are similar. Sometimes our pasts come back to haunt us. Paul of course was born Saul in a region in what is now southern Turkey. He was a devout Jew, knew the laws of Moses by word and by heart. He dotted every “I” and crossed every “T” and he loathed anyone who was not a Jew and fought against anyone who dared to, in his mind, threaten the Jewish faith. He led persecution of the early Church, he was present at the stoning of Stephen. Then there was a trip along the Damascus Road and everything changed. He immediately went our and began to proclaim this new gospel to the people he had at one time loathed the Gentiles.

He ran into problems. When he encountered Christians they either ran away from him or they wanted to kill him. They remembered Saul and haven’t met the new and improved Paul. He was constantly haunted by his past. He was rejected in some cases by both the Jews, who saw him as a traitor and by Christians who still saw him as an enemy of the Church. My past can come up and bite me. What happens if I am appointed to a church that one of my old classmates attends? What if the PPRC chairperson is someone I might have poked fun at? Would they take me seriously knowing all the crazy and wild things I used to do? I have heard Dr Phil say that the only predictor of future behavior is past behavior. People knew of Paul’s past behavior and they used that to predict his future behavior.

Paul had a choice, he could have quit believing that no one would ever listen to him because of his past behavior. This was not his choice. Instead Paul had a solid determination in the midst of his haunted past. This determination came from a radical, personal experience with Christ. He knew and trust without a shadow of a doubt that he was called to proclaim the Good News to the people. He trusted so deeply in his relationship with Christ and in the faith that he had been forgiven, even for the persecution against Christ himself. His relationship with God was so strong that, as he writes to the Galatians, he only seeks the approval of God and Christ and does not care of what others might think, He was willing to take a risk for the Gospel and for God and he care not about the human repercussions. This gave Paul the confidence and the strength to go out to many nations and many people and proclaim the good news.

He did not dilute the Gospel, but was honest and truthful with the people even when the truth hurt. He did not change the Gospel into a self-help seminar or a pathway to prosperity. He made no bones about his feelings nor did he sugarcoat the message. Paul knew that you can serve two masters, God and popularity you have to choose, God’s way or the way of fame and popularity. This does not mean that one has to beat people over the head with their sins and their need for a Savior. This does not mean that one needs to scare people in to conversion by dangling their eternal souls while the flames of Hell lick their heels. The message of the Gospel is love and must be proclaimed in love. God’s message was that he so loved the world that he sent the Son into the world so that that world would be redeemed.

Paul also knew that he could not escape his past what was done was done. He had done horrible things in the name of what he thought was right. He could not change it n nor could he erase it. What he did was embrace and use his past experiences to further the Gospel. He saw, as I do now, how past experiences lead up to present workings. He saw through his hind sight God working in his past leading him up to greater things. I can see how God led me down the path to becoming a pastor and although my journey might be considered unorthodox, it has made me the person who stands before you this morning. Remember how a few weeks ago we talked about God making a good things come out of bad situations. I can see even in the midst of me doing bad things, God leading and strengthening me in the fires of life and the process continues and progresses.

Paul not only embraces his past, but uses it to his advantage and the advantage of the Gospel. He says yes I have done all those things, yes I have made mistakes, yes I was a bad person, but look how the power of Christ has changed me. I am a new person, a new creation, with new priorities, new concerns, and a new agenda. If God can change me imagine what God can do for you. People where able to see a physical, tangible change within a person. This was not a story, but reality. This kind of visible transformation added power and visibility to his preaching. The people could see the kind of change he was preaching about. The most powerful preachers are often the ones who have dealt with very serious, sometimes very evil things in their life. To hear a convicted murderer preaching the gospel within the walls of a prison is powerful. To see a life long drug dealer preaching to teens and young adults about the dangers of the gang lifestyle and the joys of serving Christ is amazing. Our mistakes, our past no matter how dark it is can show how much we have changed, how much God has changed us.

These kinds of transformations demonstrate the power of the love of God through Christ. No person is so bad that to redemptive power of God cannot make them clean. There is no past so dark that God cannot use it to show people the light. This only shows that people can change with God’s help. I can show that with God’s guidance the 18 year old boy my high school classmates knew can grow into an effective pastor. Like Paul said If God can change me God can change anyone. However, you must let God make the change.

We cannot use the fear of our skeletons prevent us from proclaiming the good news to God’s people. We have all made mistakes and we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We cannot hide from our past, we cannot erase it, but instead we must be honest with people and be a living demonstration of the redemptive power of God. We, like Paul have to stand determined and seek only the approval of God not from others. We have to preach the Gospel of love openly and purely, not sugarcoated or diluted. We can use our past experiences as a tool for the future. Because where I’ve been can’t compare to where I’m going.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Wide Angle View: Sermon Romans 5:1-5

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Have you ever been on vacation and see other tourists taking so many pictures that you thought that the camera was actually a part of their face? I know people like that, they spend so much time taking pictures of their vacation that I wonder if they actually enjoy their vacation, and they work so hard to get the perfect shot that they miss the big picture. I was watching a show on the Travel Channel this week about the Earth’s natural wonders and one of those wonders was the aurora borealis or the northern lights. A crew went to Fairbanks, Alaska and shot not only the phenomena itself, but also the thousands of tourists who had braved the cold weather to see it. There was a husband and wife there and the husband had his face stuck behind a camera trying to get that perfect shot and his wife was fussing at him by telling him that by looking through the limited view of the camera he was missing the big picture around him. He was missing the whole experience of the beauty of the northern lights.

Sometimes I think we do this in our faith, we limit our view of God’s grace and we fail to see the whole, big picture that God has in store for us. Justification refers to the reconciliation that we have with God through Christ. We are justified meaning that we are made right; we are forgiven of our sins and brought back into the fold of God through the sacrifice of the cross. Justification is often equated with salvation in the sense that we are forgiven so that we can enter heaven. There are a lot of preachers and evangelists who base their whole ministries on salvation for the afterlife. While I was at school there was a local church that sent young people to the library on Tuesday nights and they would bombard the students as they left with questions like “If you died tonight where would you go?” and “Are you right with God if you were to meet him tonight?” They would hand our gospel tracts and try to get instant conversions outside the library. This always bothered me in different ways. First, asking college kids about their own mortality doesn’t really work. When you are 18 or 19 years old you’re not thinking about death, but living life to the fullest. Secondly, it makes people scared of God, if you don’t do this and this and this then you’re going to hell. And thirdly, it presents the grace of God in a very limited view; Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was only for salvation and nothing more. They were looking at the grace of God through a narrow lens.

Now I am not saying that Calvary is does not include the theme of salvation. That is an important part of justification that is where the story begins and ultimately ends. We are given blessed assurance that we will be united with lost loved ones and dwell in the House of the Lord forever. However, there is so much more that God opens us up to, a wide array of graces are made available to us. This is the view that Paul wants us to have, a wide open view of God’s love.

Paul writes to the church in Rome, the church he started and encourages them to open their minds and their spirits to God’s fullness. Paul spends the first half of the letter telling the church that on their own they are nothing. They are not righteous, they are less that dirt, and they have taken God’s gift of life and squandered it. Paul then turns it around and spends the rest of the letter explaining the joys that we can have in God through Christ despite our sinfulness. Because we believe, because we receive, we can join in the fullness of God’s grace not just salvation, although that is an important part it is not the whole. There is so much more that God has in store for us. Paul speaks about three aspects or parts of God’s grace that we often forget about because we focus so much on the narrow lens.

First there is access to God. “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…” (vv. 1-2) We have access to God through Christ. As we open the door to ourselves for Christ we see that God has always had the door wide open for us we just couldn’t see it. We access God because of the cross and we have the ability to access God through the Holy Spirit. Think of it as a holy telephone connection. The Holy Spirit connects us, toll free and without tax, to God. Through the Holy Spirit we have access to God’s peace that is part of the blessed assurance, but there is so much more.

I have always said that God is relational in nature meaning that God desires a relationship. This relationship is not like the kind one would have with a king, but the kind one would have with a friend. God wants us to talk to him like he is our friend, because he is our friend. Have you every heard a child pray? They talk to God like they were talking to a buddy, openly and honestly. As we grow up we become so formal, we have to assume the position and we are very structured in our prayers. It’s almost like filling out a form at the driver’s license office. Sometimes we talk to God like a technical helpline, we tell God the problem and tell God how we want it fixed. It’s a wonder God doesn’t reply back with “Do you want fries with that order?”

I really don’t think God cares about the structure of our prayers, but the honesty and the openness of our prayers. God wants to converse with us, to talk to us. And the thing about conversation is that it is a two way street. We tell God all our problems but we don’t wait for God’s response. We are to busy for that, we just want it short and sweet. “Here are my problems God, could you have them fixed but next week.” That is the narrow view, but we have to open ourselves up to the fullness of God the access that we have to God. We are so privileged in this that the creator and sustainer of the universe wants to have a personal relationship with us and too often we feel too busy to talk.

Paul also says that we can boast in the Lord. “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Through justification we can boast in the Lord because we share in God’s glory, we have been included as heirs in the glory of God, but not only this but we share in God’s glory even now, every time a person comes to Christ we share in it, when a hungry mouth is fed we share in it, we a homeless person receives shelter we share in that glory. We boast because we covered in the grace and love of God and that God, the being of all beings, the originator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega wants to know us and wants to be our friend. Because of this “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord”.

Paul goes on to say that we also boast in our sufferings and in our troubles. This seems kinda strange, almost ludicrous. We boast not because we have troubles, Paul says but “we also boast in our sufferings” not because of our sufferings. Paul says that we boast because our troubles bring endurance. We become stronger as people, we become wiser because of our troubles. Its like tempered steel. If they want to make a piece of steel super strong they put it in the fire and keep it hot for a certain amount of time and it comes out stronger than it was before. We come out of our troubles stronger than we were. Let us be clear Paul does not say that God brings the troubles. God does provide us with the grace and the strength to get through whatever life might throw at us. As we endure, we build character. We become better people because of our troubles, we learn from our mistakes and we also learn from the mistakes of others. We learn from our past experiences and we learn what paths to take and which ones to avoid. We boast because God is always with us in our troubles. Like the story about the footprints, when there where only one set of footprints it was not that God left us, but it was when God carried us.

This is just a small example of the vastness and the wonders of God’s grace. The question we might be left with is why? Why do we have this access? How do we look beyond the narrow and into the wide view of God? Answer- God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. All that we are and all that we do as Christians is because of God’s love for us. God, out of love, created us special, only a little below himself. When we rejected God, God did not abandon us, but became human himself to teach us a better way. We rejected God again and God’s love was nailed to an old, rugged, cross. God, in his love, rose out of the grave and defeated death and hell and Satan. And it is God’s love that remains with us through the Holy Spirit. It is because of God’s love that we can look into the wide, beauty of God’s grace.

We access God through that love; we can talk to God like friends because of that love. We boast, even in the midst of our troubles because of that love. We do and will continue to share in God’s glory because of that love. We must be willing to open ourselves wide in God’s grace and love. Not through the narrow lens like that of a camera, but through the wide lens of love.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen