Category Archives: Theology

Extraordinary Savior

Posted on December 25, 2019 by salooper57

“Extraordinary Savior.” “Extraordinary” is, of course, a term of comparison: If there were no ordinary people, there would be no extraordinary ones. That got me to thinking: in order to appreciate the extraordinary savior, I need to understand what an ordinary one is like.

Is there such a thing as an ordinary savior? There is, and (sadly) Jesus is often presented as one. If you spend any time at all on religious broadcasting, you’ll run into the ordinary savior. He saves people from their circumstances – poor health, insufficient income, and troubling emotions. That’s one way of identifying an ordinary savior: he only saves people from, while the extraordinary Savior – the real one – saves people for. Let me give you a few examples.

An ordinary savior saves people from a religionless, churchless existence. He pities those unfortunates who sleep in on Sunday mornings, go out to eat, and travel. He wants to save them from their laziness, gluttony, and wanderlust, though they aren’t looking to be saved. I suspect most people who don’t really know Jesus – they’ve heard about him, of course, but have never joined themselves to him – think of Jesus as this kind of savior: one who loves organ music, 18th century hymns, and those rousing 19th century gospel songs. He doesn’t want people missing out on these good things.

An ordinary savior also saves people from hell; that’s why he came. People were going to hell in a handbasket (or maybe a shopping cart) and he stepped in to save them. The extraordinary savior does that too, but he does more: He saves people for heaven; he saves people for service in his kingdom. It is the repeated promise of the New Testament that Christ is saving us for something important. He has a role in mind for us. He intends for us to reign with him. The ordinary savior just saves from. The extraordinary savior saves for.
Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, From the Pulpit, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What Just Happened? (A Christmas Meditation)

Posted on December 24, 2019 by salooper57

A few months ago, I jumped out of an airplane. After three weeks of weather delays, our group (Jeanette Dembski, Traci Disbro, Brian Ellis, and I) had to wait another four hours for all the other people who, like us, had waited three weeks but, unlike us, didn’t attend church that morning and got to the airfield before we did. I appreciate all of you who came to watch and who waited through the afternoon. I don’t so much appreciate those of you who were taking odds on how likely I was to chicken out.

Finally, after waiting and waiting, Jeanette Dembski and I were aboard the plane. We ascended 14,000 feet in just seven minutes. The door opened. One skydiver after another, including Jeanette, hurled out and into the blue. Then it was my turn. I stuck my feet outside the plane, my heels resting on a four-inch ledge. As we rocked back and forth, my instructor said in my ear, “One…two…three,” and then we were out.

I looked around me and could see for miles. The instructor tapped my shoulders, which meant I could release my grip on the halter and raise my arms. Below me I could see farm fields and roads. There were lakes, lots of lakes, which surprised me. (I hadn’t seen them from the road.) Some had dozens of boats on them, a few leaving white lines, like writing, on the surface of the water. I could see that one of the lakes was too shallow for boating and there were no houses around it. On the roads were Matchbox-like cars that hardly seemed to be moving.

My instructor signaled to me and I looked up – I had been looking down – and there was a photographer, fifteen feet away from me, as if perched in mid-air, taking video. Then he zoomed away, and I went back to surveying the landscape and trying to find the airfield, where we would land. Once again, the photographer flew up, signaled for me to smile, then zipped away. There was so much to take in that the passing of time didn’t really register. Whether a few seconds or a few minutes had passed, it was hard to tell.

As I was taking in the scenery, something suddenly happened – boom! – and I felt like I had been snapped back into the sky. I was shocked by the force of it and didn’t understand what was going on. In the midst of about a thousand visual, audio, and tactile stimuli, a sort of thought emerged: “What just happened?” I really didn’t know.

What happened, of course, was that my chute opened… Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Sermons, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Christmas: Its Prequels and Sequels

Posted on December 23, 2019 by salooper57

You better watch out, you better not cry; Better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is comin’ to town. He’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Santa Claus is comin’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Why Your Christmas Celebration Should Be More Exuberant

Posted on December 21, 2019 by salooper57

The Church has historically celebrated twelve days of Christmas, beginning with the Feast of the Nativity on December 25, and lasting until January 5. The very next day is the Feast of the Epiphany. In the Roman Church, the feast days include the Feast of St. Stephen, of St. John the Apostle, of the Holy Innocents and more.

But consider what has happened in modern times. The celebration of Christmas has been turned upside down and backwards. In the past, Christmas Day began a twelve-day period of feasting, celebration, and worship. Now, Christmas day is the final and, perhaps, only day of celebration. By December 26th, the wrapping paper is discarded, the unwanted presents returned, and people are back to haunting online and brick and mortar stores for bargains. In other words, they’re back to life as usual.

The Christmas celebration ends too soon, but it also begins to soon – just after Halloween. Christmas’s center of gravity has moved from worship to spending, with the result that people worry more and celebrate less. The big questions revolving around Christmas no longer have to do with God but with economic forecasts for the shopping season. Analysts do not know whether the Savior’s birth will save us from sin – they may not even care – but they are hopeful it will save us from an economic downturn. Continue reading →

Posted in Christianity, Christmas, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

An Angel’s Perspective on the Birth of Jesus

Posted on December 20, 2019 by salooper57

You cannot understand our perspective. You do not even understand how the lower animals perceive reality – how could you understand the perceptions of spiritual beings higher than you?

We comprehend things you cannot see or hear or touch or smell. We embody a reality you cannot perceive. Where you see one reason, we distinguish ten thousand, stretched across time and space.

Were you to experience reality as we do for even a moment, your brains would overload. They could not handle the cascade of information that flows through us, a million times more than you can currently process. Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Christmas Surprise: What We Weren’t Expecting for Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2019 by salooper57

By the end of the Old Testament era, many people were impatient for the Creator to fulfill his promise and make right what had gone wrong. When would the serpent’s head be crushed? Where was God’s promised king (things could … Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

That’s What Christmas Is All About

Posted on December 18, 2019 by salooper57

God intended the humans to rule his world but now they were at its mercy. Under God’s rule, they could rule, but the moment they stopped being subject to God, they became subject to fear (Gen. 3:10) and were ruled by desire (Gen. 3:16). The earth that once cooperated with them no longer yielded to their touch. On the very day of their revolt, there began a struggle between man and God, man and earth, and man and man. They were expelled from the garden, and the world began to fall apart. And so did the humans. And, to all appearances, so did God’s plan.

But the Creator is not easily stopped. In fact, he is not stopped at all. Ever. It was his plan that the world fall apart, should the humans turn away from him. It was a safeguard and a mercy. The recalcitrant earth, the relational conflict, the pain and fear and, above all, death were God-designed consequences of man’s rebellion. Why? Because God wanted revenge? No. Because God wants us. Sorrow and failure and struggle are a mercy. His judgments are a kindness. The Creator knows we will not come to him without them. And if we don’t come to him, we cannot come to ourselves, to our rightful place, and to our joy. Only when we have fully come to God, can we fully be ourselves. Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

So This Is Christmas

Posted on December 17, 2019 by salooper57

It was in the Garden, not the stable, that the Creator first became Immanuel (God with us). (“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” Genesis 3:8). The Creator, a being of unimaginable power, who brought into existence the visible universe and, along with it, realities that are not visible (at least to creatures like us) was with humans: with them in ways they could readily perceive and in ways that caused them to flourish. He was Immanuel.
The Creator made the earth to be a place that would beautifully and remarkably sustain biological life. It was perfect. And on the earth, he made a place (Eden) that was supremely suited to a particular kind of biological life: the human. He placed two humans, a man and a woman, in that ideal environment. Continue reading →

Posted in Christmas, Spiritual life, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I AM the Way, and the Truth, and the Life

Posted on December 16, 2019 by salooper57

It’s the evening before Jesus’s execution. The day – the entire week – has been filled with conflict and high drama. Jesus and the Twelve have just eaten the Passover Seder, which was different from any Passover meal they had eaten before.

Following the meal, Jesus says something that shocks and frightens them: he won’t be with them much longer. He is going to leave and they can’t go with him (John 13:33). So Peter asks Jesus where he is going. When Jesus’s answer doesn’t satisfy him, he asks: “Why can’t I go with you?” Though Jesus does not directly answer his question, he makes it clear that he must travel the path that lies ahead alone. Neither Peter nor the rest can accompany him.

It was in this setting that Jesus spoke the now famous words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” But their hearts are troubled. When Jesus says, “You know the way to the place I am going,” Thomas gets frustrated and blurts out: “We don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus’s answer to that question unveils the sixth of the seven great I AM statements in the Gospel of John: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” If these men could understand this, they would be able to keep their hearts untroubled. They would be able to trust God. If we could understand this, we could do the same. Continue reading →

Posted in Sermons, Theology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Wisdom of Humility and the Humility of Wisdom

Posted on December 14, 2019 by salooper57

The great English New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce counseled his readers to avoid being dogmatic about issues. If one is right, he pointed out, dogmatically defending one’s position does not make it any truer nor is it likely to convince others. It usually has the opposite effect. If one’s position is mistaken, being dogmatic can only be harmful.
F. F. Bruce understood that even the brightest of us still “sees through a glass darkly” and only the best of us remembers that fact and holds positions humbly. Only God sees things as they are—and we are not God. Though we can see things truly, we cannot see them wholly. To insist that we do is to make fools of ourselves by making believe that we are equal to God.
As I write this, I am looking over the top of my computer screen, out the window, and across the road at a barren elm. What I see is a vase-shaped, leafless tree, jostled slightly by the wind. Its trunk has a bald spot, where the bark has fallen away. I know that morel mushrooms sometimes grow around dying elms in the Spring. I know that splitting elm for firewood is a lousy job.
Yet there is more about that tree that I don’t know than I do. I do not know how old it is. I do not know how deep its roots are. I do not know its molecular structure. I cannot see its atomic bonds. I don’t know what the squirrels that chase each other through its branches sense when their feet grip its bark. I don’t know the degree to which is contributes to the replenishment of the ozone layer. I know some things about that tree, but I do not know it as God knows it.
Continue reading →

Posted in Theology, Worldview and Culture | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments