Pass it on to the Next Generation

Posted on March 27, 2021 by salooper57

I sit in the same chair each morning, a cup of coffee on the table next to me, the Book of Common Prayer on the chair arm, and a Bible in my lap. I spend a considerable time reading, thinking, and praying.

Whenever I look up, I see a plaque opposite me on the wall. It is an odd decoration. Affixed to the plaque, which cost a couple of dollars, is a tin can bounded on either end by hose clamps. Right below the can are the words, “My God shall supply all your needs,” taken from the fourth chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

I placed it there, where I will see it every day, as a helpful reminder of how God has taken care of my family in the past and an encouragement to trust God in the future. But I had another reason for putting it there: I wanted to use it to help our grandchildren learn what God is like.

Our grandchildren are still young. But I expect that one of these days our oldest, now six years old, will say: “Grandpa, why is there a can on the wall in your study?” And I will say, “I don’t think you’re ready for that story yet. I’ll tell you when you are older.” And each time they see the tin can mounted on the wall, it will arouse their curiosity about the story behind it.

Someday I will tell them the story. The can reminds me of a time when I was pastoring in a mission-like church in a rustbelt city. When I was sent there, the average Sunday attendance was 19. Three months after we arrived, the biggest giver in the church died. Then began years of financial struggle. There were times when we had no money and no groceries.

One day, the pipe between the catalytic converter and the muffler on my old Buick rusted through, and I had no money to pay for repairs. So, I rescued a tin can from the trash, cut it lengthwise into a metal sleeve, then clamped the sleeve around both ends of the broken pipe. To my surprise, it worked.

I was driving downtown a week or two later and stopped at the post office. When I went to get out of the car, the driver’s side door would not open. I slid over and tried the passenger door. It would not open either. It was like a scene in a comedy as I climbed over the bench seat – in jacket and tie – to escape out the back door.

Later, on my way back to the church, my makeshift repair burned through, the pipe dropped to the pavement, and the car roared so loudly it could be heard for blocks. In frustration I cried to God: “I need a new car!”

That evening, five people came to our home in two cars. They left in one, after they had given us the other. The interesting thing is that we never told anyone about any of our financial needs—except God, who had already taken care of our needs in many remarkable ways.

I want to tell that story to my grandchildren. More than that, I want to impart to them a knowledge of God’s goodness and a confidence in his care. In the words of the ancient psalm, I desire to “declare [God’s] power to the next generation, [his] might to all who are to come.”

It is incumbent upon us to relate what we know about God to the next generation. One of the best ways to do this is through stories. Years of pastoral work have taught me that people have stories that are important for them to share. Teaching children doctrine is necessary, but without stories, they will have no hooks on which to hang their doctrines.

It is good to find creative ways to share the stories that display, as the psalmist put it, “the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done … so the next generation would know them.” Such stories are among the richest treasures we can give the next generation.

(First published by Gannett.)

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A Three-Point Sermon (in Nine Words)

Posted on March 24, 2021 by salooper57

In Romans 12:12, the Apostle Paul writes: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” There is a wonderful three-point sermon in those nine words.[1] Point one: there is a great future ahead of us, so be joyful in hope. Point two: there are great difficulties surrounding us, so be patient in affliction. And point three: there is a great God above us, so be faithful in prayer.

Though each point in this nine-word sermon is important, I want to focus on the final one: “faithful in prayer.” This is one way that our commitment to each other works itself out: we pray for each other. We pray for each other when we are alone. We pray for each other when we are together. And we are hopeful in our prayers, even in the worst of times.

We pray with hope because we know who is listening. This kind of hope does not come in the absence of affliction but in the midst of it. The affliction is real and painful, but it is not permanent. We know that and so we are hopeful.

The Greek word translated as “affliction” has the idea of something that puts pressure on us, that squeezes us. Money troubles, relationship troubles, health troubles all squeeze us. They leave us feeling like the walls are closing in and there’s no way out.

When our people (that is, the people of Jesus, especially those in our own church family) are going through tough times, our commitment to them expresses itself in prayer. We pray earnestly and repeatedly. And if ideas come to us as we pray, we act on them in hope. When our friend’s hope is lagging, we hope for them.

The phrase “faithful in prayer” means something like, “always on call for…” We are on call 24-7 to pray for each other. One of the most loving – and love-engendering – things we can do is to pour out our heart in prayer for another person.

[1] Ten words in the NIV but nine words in Greek.

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Climate Change in a Desert of Disrespect

Posted on March 22, 2021 by salooper57

St. Paul wrote: “Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10). This was written to people living in a rigidly hierarchical society. They were forced to honor those people above them on the social ladder but taught not to honor those below them. But things were different in the church. Masters honored slaves, merchants honored peasants, and everyone honored everyone.

That seemed baffling – and dangerous – to the outside world. If you were a citizen, you didn’t honor slaves. And if you were an equestrian, you didn’t honor citizens. So imagine being a wealthy equestrian sitting in a church service for the very first time. The speaker is obviously a slave. “Well, that’s weird,” you think. But when the friend who invited you and shares your social rank stands to praise the slave and honor him for his wisdom, you are appalled.

The social order can’t hold if this kind of thing continues. Slaves will disrespect their masters. Citizens will be telling senators what to do. The whole thing will come crashing down.

Outside the church, people rationed respect (and still do). Inside the church, there was an abundance of it. James Dunn translates this phrase, “Showing the way to one another in respect.” In other words, in the church we are not to wait for others to show respect. We are to go first.

Now, wait a minute! Why should I go first? I’ll show you respect … as soon as you show it to me. I’ve heard husbands say, “As soon as she starts showing me some respect, I’ll start being more loving.” I’ve heard parents say, “My kids aren’t getting anything from me until they start showing me the respect I deserve.”

We think that honor is a zero sum game: giving it to someone else diminishes our own. How will we ever go first when that is what we think? But going first is just what Paul expects us to do.

We’re all saying: “You first!” “No. You first.” And instead of a climate where people thrive, we have a desert of dishonor, where people wither. And going first becomes more difficult by the day.

Paul understood this dynamic perfectly—and issued the instruction anyway. It is because society is a desert of disrespect that showing honor to one another is so important. He urges us to take the lead, to go first. He dares us to walk point.

But how can we honor people who do not honor us? Harder yet, how can we honor people who dishonor us? If we give honor without receiving it, won’t it diminish our supply – and our souls need this stuff. Only if we see how God has honored us, we’ll be able to take the lead in honoring others.

The noun rendered “honor” in this verse is sometimes translated differently. It is rendered “price.” To honor a thing is to set a high price on it. To dishonor a thing is to set a low price on it, that is, to treat it as if it has no value. The connection between “price” and “honor” shines through in Matthew 27:9.

In telling the story of the blood money the Sandhedrin paid Judas to betray Jesus, St. Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah: “They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel…” In Greek that reads, “They took the thirty silver coins, the price of the one whose price the sons of Israel priced.” But it could be translated, “the honor of the one whose honor the sons of Israel honored” – or, rather, dishonored at the insulting price of thirty pieces of silver.

When you honor something, you set a price on it; you value it at a certain amount. Jesus was dishonored by Judas and the sons of Israel when they set so low a price on his life.

Now here is what we need to understand. We are rich in honor because God set so high a price on our lives: “For,” St. Peter says, “you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious [that is the adjective form of the same word] blood of Christ…” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Whether others honor us or not, God himself has bestowed on us the spectacular honor of ransoming us at the highest price ever paid. We need to remember who we are – the highly honored, dearly bought children of God. If we keep that in mind, we can honor others whether or not they honor us.

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The Case of the Displaced Yard Signs: How We Gather Evidence Is Important

Posted on March 20, 2021 by salooper57
Photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash

In our already splintered America, the last thing we needed was something else to divide us, but that is what we got. Solar power has come to our rural neighborhood. Or rather, solar power wants to come to our neighborhood.

Some of us in the neighborhood want solar power and some of us do not. More precisely, some of us want it and some of us want very much not to have it. Signs have appeared up and down our road, most opposing the massive solar farm but others supporting it.

My wife and I take a two-mile walk each morning along our country roads, so we walk by many signs. On a recent walk, I noticed that the signs opposing solar power were all standing where they had been placed, but more than half of the pro-solar signs were lying on the ground. It appeared that there was some mischief at work.

But then I remembered the strong winds we’d had. Perhaps it was the wind that knocked the signs down. But why, reason countered, would it knock down only the pro-solar signs and leave the rest standing?

I could imagine teenage boys from families that rail against solar paneled farm fields, driving down the road late at night, plucking up the opposition’s signs. That would explain why more than half of the pro-solar signs were down while all the anti-solar signs remained standing.

I was sure I had found the solution to the mystery. But, as in almost every Agatha Christie novel I have ever read, there was something I had overlooked. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wire-framed base on one of the pro-solar signs was squared at the bottom. That is, rather than two wire stakes pushed deeply into the ground, the wire was bent at 90-degree angles to form a box-like bottom.

I have never seen a yard sign constructed like this. My guess is that a provider attached the signboard to the wrong end of the frame, placing it over the wire stakes that were meant to be pushed into the ground. That would explain why only these signs were upended by the strong winds of the past week.

This may or may not be the solution to the mystery. There could easily be other details I have overlooked. This is always the situation, not only in the case of the displaced yard signs but in all of life’s mysteries.

Evidence gathering is therefore of great importance. But it is possible to gather only the evidence that reinforces a view already held and disregard all the rest. This has certainly happened in America’s politics and in its response to the pandemic. The fact that search engines like Google prioritize results based on previous searches only exacerbates the problem.

Gathering evidence to learn the truth rather than to reinforce a position requires humility, which is why pride militates against real learning and therefore against truth. Humility is the key to learning, which may explain why children are so much better at it than adults.

It is not only politics and pandemics that require careful, humble thinking. So do relationships. Relationships are often derailed by assumptions that become convictions based on faulty evidence. How many friendships have floundered and marriages failed because one person looked, and of course found, evidence to support a flawed conclusion.

This is also true in matters of faith. I have spent my adult life studying the Bible. After decades of insight and even delight, one of the most important things I have learned is that there is much more to learn. Professor N. T. Wright, one of the world’s best known biblical scholars, routinely tells his students, “Ten percent of what I am about to tell you is wrong. I just don’t know which ten percent that is.” That kind of attitude – treasuring what we have learned yet eager to learn more – is crucial. Research conducted by the Canadian Bible Society reveals that, for many people, Bible reading only reinforces already-held positions. Something more is needed: an inquiring mind, a humble attitude, conversations with others and, most importantly, a willingness to act on what one learns.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Spiritual Formation: Anything but Boring

Posted on March 19, 2021 by salooper57

God, according to the Bible, intends to conform humans to the image of his Son. We might think it would be boring to have a world full of people who were all the same, even if they were like Jesus. But that is to think wrongly. If everyone were like me, the world would be a boring place. In becoming like me, so many of the things that make people interesting would be lost. But in becoming like Jesus, nothing that is good is lost. Boring? It’s just the opposite. The world goes from black and white to living color – colors we have not yet imagined – as we become like Christ.

But wait a minute. If I become like Jesus – so different from what I am now – won’t I cease to be me? No. It is quite the opposite. The more I become like Jesus, the more I become myself. In fact, I can only be me to the degree that I become like him. If I refuse to be like him, I will inevitably lose myself and everything that makes me me.

Here is a mystery. If you become more like Jesus and I become more like Jesus (which, remember is God’s plan), we won’t become more like each other in a way that makes one of us superfluous. Instead, as each of us becomes more like Christ, our uniqueness becomes more apparent, not less. The good but undeveloped possibilities within each of us spring to life. Every one of us is designed to express some glory of the Infinite Christ more delightfully than anyone else can.

The more I become like Jesus, the more clearly I see Jesus in you in ways that are totally unlike me – see them and bless God for them with gratitude overflowing in my heart.

Maybe this sounds like something you want. I must warn you that wanting it is not enough. You must decide that you will have it. You must pursue it with such determination that if something gets in your way, you will move it out of your way. If something weakens your desire, you will forsake it. If something is an obstacle, you will get rid of it. This is not a hobby; it is a life.

There are many methods, biblical and extrabiblical, that Christians have employed in becoming Christlike. However, even the best methods, used profitably for more than a thousand years, will fail if we are trusting in the method rather than Christ himself.

Further, all the methods in the world won’t help if the intention is lacking. Before God Almighty, we must choose to become like Christ. And the sooner we choose, the better.

That’s because we are already being formed—either into Christlikeness or into something else. We were being formed when we were born, are being formed right now, and will continue to be formed until we die. The question is: Into what are we being formed? What shall we be when the shape we are now taking is complete? Our nature is hardening into its true shape, whether that shape is Christlike or not.

Imagine I want to make Jell-O for my grandkids. I have several different molds into which I intend to pour the liquid Jell-O while it is still warm. One looks like a pine tree, one like a star, another like a heart. But once the Jell-O has hardened, it’s too late to pour it into the mold. It will retain its shape, the shape of whatever originally surrounded it. The only way to reshape it then is by cutting it and discarding the parts that don’t fit or by exposing it to some serious heat.

Some kind of formation is already taking place in you and me. God intends it to be into the image of his Son and he will make it so. How much better to be poured into the mold early rather than shaped later by knife or by flame. But the person committed to Christlikeness – the person who has seen – chooses to be so shaped, whatever the means.

Do you so choose?

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What Is God Up To?

Posted on March 18, 2021 by salooper57

Romans 8:28 is one of the Bible best-loved verses. “All things work together for good to those who love God…” And yet things frequently don’t seem to work together for good. For example, let’s say you have been saving up for a better car for the last 18 months. The one you have now is unreliable and you finally have enough money to replace it. But before you do, you incur unexpected bills that wipe out all the money you’ve saved and then some. How does that work for good?

And that is nothing compared to what some people experience. How does a cancer diagnosis work for good? A tragic accident? How about a tsunami? The death of a child? The deaths of tens of thousands of children in war and famine? In what sense are any of these things good?

The answer is, they are not and the Bible never says they are. In fact, it says quite the opposite. These things are not good but God is. He is so wise, so capable, and powerful that he can make even bad things like these serve his people’s good.

But in what sense do such things work for our good? Verse 29 provides the only answer to that question that makes any sense. Let’s read the promise in verse 28 again and then look for the answer in verse 29: “…all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

Conforming us to the image of Christ is the good that all things must serve. God will use anything and everything – even bad things – to conform people to the image of his Son. This is what God calls good: People that look, think, feel, and act like Jesus.

If that is not what we call good, if we choose some other good – whether comfort, power, popularity, or wealth – all things will not work for our good. But they cannot help but work for us when the good we’ve chosen is the good that God desires: conformation to the image of his Son.

Shaping millions, perhaps billions, of people so that they are like Jesus has been God’s purpose from the start. A Jesus-shaped humanity is what he calls – and has always called – good.

God does not just want this good for us but for everyone. What’s more, he intends this good to spill over to the rest of creation. This was Paul’s point earlier in the chapter when he wrote (verses 19 and 21): “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. … that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” The good of all creation – whether animate or inanimate, rocks, trees, dogs, horses, elephants, chimps, people, all – awaits the revelation of the sons of God; that is, awaits the conformation of humans to the image of Christ.

This has been the plan since the very beginning. Even before Adam was created, God was determined to shape humanity into the image. “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).

In ancient times leaders would place images of themselves throughout their kingdoms. (They do it today, too, in countries all over the world, including ours – just think back to the election, when pictures of Joe Biden and Donald Trump were everywhere.) Ancient leaders used those images to remind people of who was in charge and who cared for them.

When God created the earth, his plan was to place his image – humans – everywhere, a sign that he rules the world. But humans were not just signs, placed like billboards throughout the land. They were to be God’s living images, ruling creation (Genesis 1: 28) as his representatives, with his love and wisdom flowing through them to bless all creation. Everywhere one looked, or so it was intended, one would find the image of the gracious and benevolent king acting with grace and benevolence towards his creation.

To be made in God’s image was our glory. It conferred on us unspeakable dignity and delegated to us enormous responsibility. Adam’s sin (and ours) derailed that and the loss has been incalculable. God’s image was defaced and, from certain perspectives, unrecognizable. Yet, from his perspective, God sees it still, fractured thought it is.

The Bible teaches that humans were formed in God’s image, then deformed by sin. But now, through Christ, we can be reformed into the image – the living, working image – of God.

The second of the Ten Commandments forbids the making of idols or images (“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”) The word Paul uses in Romans 8:28 is the same one the Greek translation of the Old Testament used in the second Commandment. This explains why such images were banned: Because God had already authorized an official image of himself: humans. Idolatry both distorts the perception of God and degrades the position of humans, relinquishes their authority to non-human, non-image bearing things.

Humans abandoned God’s plan to shape humanity into the blessed image; God did not. He is still intent on having millions – perhaps even billions – of images of himself blessing and delighting all creation. He is making that happen by conforming those who love him to the image of his Son.

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Committed to Christlikeness

Posted on March 16, 2021 by salooper57

This sermon is from Romans 8:28-30, and treats the Christian’s commitment to becoming Christlike.

Committed to Christlikeness (Listening time:25:29)
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Is God an Angry Person?

Posted on March 13, 2021 by salooper57

Is God an angry person? Someone might object that even to ask the question is to denigrate the God whom the Bible declares “is love.” Further, is it not misleading to speak of God as a person? The Bible plainly states that “God is not human.” To refer to the Deity as a “person,” someone might argue, is to use overly human terms.

This second objection needs to be answered before the first can be addressed. Christian theology, unlike pantheism, understands God to be a person; in fact, to be “the” person. Humans, unlike some other created beings, are persons precisely because they were made “in the image of God” with the intention that they should in some sense become like God.

If God is then a person – albeit more than a person – one might further ask if he is an angry person. Indeed, this is precisely what many of the new atheists have asserted about the Christian God. Richard Dawkins, for example, described God as “the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser…” He goes on like this with ten more contemptuously descriptive terms.

Before such a verbal onslaught, many of us cry, “Foul.” Dawkins descriptions ignore most of the biblical revelation and misrepresent what is left. The accusation of “bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser,” for example, is leveled because of the conquest of Canaan. There is much I do not understand about the conquest and that even causes me to shudder. However, to say the conquest is about ethnicity is simply false.

Further, the directive to conquer Canaan is given in just two of the Bible’s 1189 chapters. What about the rest? And what about the fact that God himself, throughout the Bible, commands his people to love the foreigners who live among them? To fail to reconcile these seeming contradictions – or even acknowledge them – is to play from a stacked deck.

In its other 1187 chapters, the Bible’s descriptions of God’s love tower over what it has to say about his anger. The Bible, for example, never states that “God is wrath,” but does state categorically that “God is love.” Further, the Bible affirms that God loves the world and all he has made: humans, animals, and inanimate creation.

It is patently false to describe God as an angry person, as if anger is one of his essential characteristics. We’ve all known some very loving person to express anger, but to describe him or her as an angry person would be a parody of the truth.

God is not an angry person—but that is not to say that God never expresses anger. The Bible is exceedingly clear that he does. The mistake we make is to treat God’s love as the antithesis of his anger. Love and anger are two sides of one reality; or, better yet, God’s anger is his loving response to the evil that threatens the beloved.

The idea that love and anger can be reconciled – in fact, that anger is a necessary and appropriate expression of love – is easy to understand. Imagine that a father who loves his daughter discovers that a con artist is playing on her affections in an attempt to rob her of her money. Will his love for his daughter not find expression in anger toward her abuser?

The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, who once scorned the wrath of God, changed his mind after seeing the terrible atrocities that were committed against the people of his homeland. He wrote, “I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God … I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”

To think that God is not angry at abuse, harassment, bigotry, indifference, murder, and self-serving lies is to think that God does not love the abused, the harassed, and the oppressed. God is always loving. He is angry only when the objects of his love are abused and injured by themselves or by others.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Committed to Christ

Posted on March 11, 2021 by salooper57

This sermon is the first of a four-part series titled, What We Are All About.

Approximately 25 minutes

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“Woke” Culture and a Righteousness of Our Own

Posted on March 9, 2021 by salooper57

In our day as in Paul’s, people try to establish a righteousness of their own. In fact, we live in what might be the most self-righteous moment in western history. So much of the impetus behind the “woke” movement is derived from the desire to be “in”. To say I am “woke” is to say I am on the inside, others are on the outside, and I am therefore more righteous than they are.

But “wokeness” is only the latest of a myriad of ways for people to establish a righteousness of their own. I belong to the right political party (the one on the right, of course) – which means I am righteous. I drink fair-trade coffee, watch PBS, and recycle—I am clearly righteous. I go to church every Sunday and I never (well, hardly ever; at least not very often) fail to give a tithe—I am righteous.

To think this way is to assume that we have the authority to claim our own right standing, to place ourselves inside the people of God. That authority is not ours. We can no more place ourselves inside the people of God than we can place ourselves in Harvard’s student body or declare ourselves a United States Marine.

Imagine going to the Marine Corps base at Twentynine Palms. Somehow you get on base, find a uniform, put it on, and report for duty. It wouldn’t be long before your were tossed out on your ear. You can’t make yourself a Marine – you don’t have the authority. You have to be accepted. And even if you are accepted, your acceptance is conditional upon your profession of the oath of enlistment. Only then will you have the standing of a Marine.

So it is with the people of God. You cannot force your way in. You must be accepted. We talk a lot about accepting Jesus, but the biblical emphasis lies the other way around: with God accepting you. We speak of accepting Jesus into our hearts. The Bible speaks of God accepting us into his kingdom. Why should we not accept Jesus? He is perfect. Anyone in their right minds would want Jesus in their heart. But we are not perfect. We are rebels, sinners, and disingenuous frauds. It’s clear why we would want Jesus. It’s not clear why he should want us in his kingdom.

But he does. Wants us so much that God in Christ took our flesh on himself and died in pursuit of us. Tozer gave us a helpful book that describes The Pursuit of God but God gave us a more helpful book that describes his Pursuit of People.

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