Give Me Chapter and Verse: A Brief History

Posted on May 16, 2020 by salooper57

My wife and I went to Turkey a few years ago on a tour of the seven ancient cities mentioned in chapters two and three of the Book of Revelation. In many of the places we traveled, we saw engravings dating back nearly two millennium and written in Greek. Since I know some Koine Greek, I was eager to read these signs.

It was more difficult than I expected, partly because the Greek sometimes differed from the Koine I know, but largely because (as I anticipated) the Greek letters were all capitals and there was no spacing between words. Students of biblical Greek usually learn the language as it is printed today, with lower-case letters and with spaces between words and sentences.

Try reading the following well-known Bible verse in English: JUDGENOTLESTYOUBEJUDGED. You were probably able to read this and may recognize it as something spoken by Jesus and recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. But imagine what work it would be to locate and read a particular passage if the entire Bible ran together like this.

We take our Bibles for granted, but navigating the text was not always as easy as it is now. Translating the original language into English was, of course, an enormous task, but even after it was translated, and word spacing was introduced, and upper and lower cases were used, it was still much more difficult to find a text than it is today. That is because the books of the Bible were not divided into chapters for more than a millennium or into verses for more than 1500 years.

Imagine owning a Bible without any verse or chapter breaks. You’re at church and the pastor says, “Today, we’re looking at the most famous passage in the Bible,” so you hurry to locate the part about God so loving the world that he gave his only begotten Son. But there would be no John 3:16, so you would need to scan for key words like “so,” “loved,” “begotten,” and more. Good luck with that.

It was the thirteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton who came up with the brilliant idea of placing chapter divisions in the text, although it took a hundred-and-fifty years before a Bible was published using them. In 1448, Rabbi Nathan divided the Old Testament into verses, but it was not until 1555 that Robert Estienne divided the New Testament into the numbered verses we now know.

Yet chapter and verse divisions, while an enormous help in locating texts, can also be problematic. Because the original writers did not use them – who numbers the sentences in a letter and divides them into chapters? – we cannot always be sure that an author intended to conclude a thought at the end of a verse or to move on to another subject at the end of a chapter.

Taking the chapter breaks (and even verse breaks) as authoritative can lead to interpretive failures. For example, St. Paul’s famous paean to love in 1 Corinthians 13 is often removed from its context as if it were a stand-alone text. This happens frequently at weddings.

What is wrong with reading 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding? Nothing. I’ve done it myself many times. However, if we remove it from the church’s corporate life and worship and read it only at weddings, we will think of it as a song about marital devotion. But 1 Corinthians 13 was written to a church, not a married couple—a church that was plagued by infighting and power struggles. Knowing that opens the text to us as we read.

Another example (there are many) is the story of the meeting between Jesus and the well-known teacher Nicodemus. The current chapter division begins the story with the introduction of Nicodemus, but it would be better to divide the chapters three verses earlier. Those three verses set the stage for Rabbi Nicodemus entrance and help us make sense of Jesus’s interaction with him.

The moral here is not that we should throw out chapter and verse numbers – we’d all be lost. The moral is that we had better read before and after the numbers to be sure we understand the context.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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A Life That Means Something (MS.)

Posted on May 13, 2020 by salooper57

(Deuteronomy 6:4-9) Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  (NIV)

I just want my life to mean something. Ever feel like that? People usually young adults who are just setting out but sometimes middle-aged adults who feel like they have been missing out – have said that kind of thing to me.

I’ve watched as they try to give their life meaning through their experiences, as if having a meaningful experience would make them meaningful. They volunteer at a food pantry, or go on a mission trip, or enroll in Teach for America. Other people try to add something exciting to life, like jumping out of an airplane (for example). And some take on strenuous, test-your-limits pursuits – they join the Marine Corps or go in for an extreme fitness regimen.

Then they wait for meaning to come pouring into their lives. It’s as if they think of their life as an empty vessel which, when they tap into the right thing, will be filled with meaning.

From my observations, the person who says, “I want my life to mean something” is proceeding from a false position; a wrong assumption. His or her life already means something. Everyone’s life means something because God meant them – he made them for a purpose. But that meaning is, at least in part, a significant– sign-ificant – meaning; the kind of meaning a sign possesses.

Signs come in all shapes and sizes and are made from all kinds of materials. The thing that makes a sign meaningful is not inherent in the sign itself. It’s meaning always comes from something outside itself. The important thing about a sign is not its size or shape or the font in which it is written but that thing beyond the sign to which it points. Take a highway sign that reads: Chicago 160. What gives that sign meaning is a place called Chicago, which is 160 miles away.

Now, it is entirely possible to misinterpret the meaning of a sign, including the sign that is our life. Someone from Canada might misinterpret the Chicago sign because they assume it means Chicago is 160 kilometers away. Still, she knows the meaning is not in the sign itself but in the thing to which it points. It is sign-ificant.

People’s lives are also meaningful in that way. They are significant because they are signs; they point somewhere. They’re not meaningful because they get filled up with experiences but because they point to something bigger than their experience, just as Chicago is bigger than the sign that points to it.

So, what is the bigger thing to which your life points? What is the meaning of your life?

Sometimes our lives get twisted around in such a way that they no longer point in the right direction. Sin is one of the things that cause this. We’re still carrying the information about God, but when people look down the trajectory of our lives, they don’t see him.

Sometimes we get knocked down by one of life’s storms or by a collision with some steamrolling reality like divorce, or disease, or trouble. God is still written across our life, but we’ve been knocked down like a road sign struck by a car and we are no longer pointing in any discernable direction.

Your life is a sign. To where does it point? A few years ago, the Barna Group compiled extensive data from a broad survey of American Christian families. They found that the three things parents are most likely to say about themselves are: 1) they are busy; 2) they are stressed; and 3) they are in debt.

Furthermore, most of these parents report being only marginally satisfied with their lives, their marriages, and their jobs. The thing they say they are satisfied with is their parenting skills and their children’s development. Interestingly, they say other people’s parenting skills and other people’s children are unsatisfactory.

So, think about this: Where does a person’s life (whether a parent or not, doesn’t matter) who is busy, stressed, and indebted point? To what does the life of the self-satisfied / others-dissatisfied person point?

God designed us to be signs, exquisitely made and beautifully detailed, that point to him. Genesis tells us that God made humans in his own image. He made them billboards with his image imprinted on them, pointing people to him and to the rich life he makes possible.

Last week in Deuteronomy 6, Hal showed us the God of love who desires to be loved by us. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This, the most familiar passage in the Bible for more than a millennium, quoted by Jesus himself as the Bible’s most important command, helps us understand what a flourishing life looks like and how it points to God.

A person who is coming to love God with heart and soul and strength is not just a sign, but a lighted sign, clear and bright, and easy to read. But in the absence of love, the sign that is our life is like a digital display without electricity.

Loving God does help other people but it is also good for us. There are benefits. The first, verse 1, is a family that belongs to God for generations. (How great is that!) The second benefit, verse 2, is that we enjoy long life. I like that translation because it brings out the idea that God doesn’t want us merely to endure life but to enjoy it. The third benefit, verse 3, is that things go well for us. (But note: “well” does not mean easy. It means we will be spiritually healthy and sound.) And finally, same verse, that we increase greatly. That is, we flourish.

Now, how does this happen? It does not happen – we need to get this right – because we compel ourselves or our family to obey a bunch of rules. Outward rules can give expression to inward love, but they cannot take its place. In fact, outward rules without inward love inevitably backfires. A family (or school or church) that has the rules but doesn’t have the love will produce either hypocritical Christians or hypercritical Christians and, either way, their lives will point in the wrong direction.

I know some people who write God’s word, including his commands, on note cards that they place all over their homes – often so their family will see them. I think that is a great idea but I caution you that if you put God’s commands in your home but not in your heart, you’ll only make things worse. God is not interested in forging a people who abide by the rules but in forming a people who abide in his love. The way God designed us, his commands only get into a heart when it opens to his love.

This passage teaches us to keep God before our minds as we go through everyday life. That is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and is a key to spiritual growth. It is what David, the man after God’s own heart, learned to do. He said, “I have set the Lord always before me” (Psalm 16:8). Some people set the media always before them, and you can be sure they will become a certain kind of person because of it. Someone else sets the NYSE always before him. He will become a certain kind of person because of it. Other people have set their wish list always before them—or their regrets list. It will shape them into a certain kind of person.

Moses wanted God’s people to keep the Lord always before them and so be shaped by him – be, as St. Paul put it, “renewed in knowledge according to the image of [our] Creator” (Colossians 3:10). The act of setting the Lord before us must become a regular and ongoing practice. But to do that we need some kind of framework, and that is just what this passage gives us.

Notice the repeated use of the word “when” in verse 7: “…when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” No one will succeed in setting the Lord before him or her who does so intermittently. Every Sunday from 11:00 to 12:00 is a start, but it is not enough. The church can be a help to you and your family in doing this, but the church cannot do it for you.

Moses mentions four key times for bringing God and his ways before you and your family. It we can make a habit of doing this, it will go a long way to helping us flourish. The first is when you sit at home. But when does anyone have time to sit at home? When they eat. Mealtimes are ready-made for this. If you make only one change in your schedule, this might be the one to make: eat meals together. Recent research suggests that it makes a huge difference in a family’s life. If you are alone, find extended family – not necessarily biological either – to eat with on a regular basis.

In a study conducted in 2018 of practicing Christians adults and teens, 68 percent of families say they eat dinner together every day or two, which means they are together for dinner more often than for any other household routine.[1] Meals can provide a time to talk about the Lord, his ways, and our experiences of him. At first, this may seem forced, but it will become natural over time and, when it does, it will become powerful!

Consider making the dinner table a device-free zone. But instead of ordering your kids to give up their phones, talk it over in advance. Tell them what you’re thinking. Even if you negotiate one mealtime a week without devices and with conversation, that is a great start.

You can talk about a movie you saw and together think through what it implies about the world and about God. Talk about experiences you had growing up. Share something you’re praying for. You don’t need to force God into your conversation. If he has already entered your heart, he’ll enter your conversations. Make the most of mealtimes.

Moses mentions a second critical time in verse 7: travel time – “when you are on the road.” For example, when you leave the worship service you can make it a habit to talk about what you heard in the sermon or in Sunday School or about a song we sang. If you have kids, ask them what they did in Kid’s Min or talk to them about what they are doing in Youth Group.

The next important time is bedtime. You can bring God before your mind by reading an evening psalm. This is something the church around the world has done for hundreds of years. Find the common lectionary online and you’ll find an evening psalm for each day of the week, all year long.

When our kids were young, we read good books at bedtime almost every night. We started when they were infants, read them picture books when they were toddlers, went on to chapter books when they got a little older, and even 500-page books as they got older still. We read The Chronicles of Narnia, for instance – and now our son and daughter-in-law are reading The Chronicles to their kids.

The fourth important time is in the morning – “…when you get up.” Our home was a whirl of activity every morning. I was obsessed with punctuality; my kids were not; and that led to some pretty tense mornings. To be frank, I failed on this one (as well as many others). I failed but God did not.

Before or kids got up, Karen and I would rise, hide ourselves away with a cup of coffee, and set the Lord before us in prayer and Bible reading. That is a habit for us that is many decades in the making, and it has been life-altering. It became a sign to our kids and helped them begin their own daily devotional times.

These kinds of practices become signs to you who are yourself a sign to others. They point you and, if you have family at home, your family to God. If they are framed by love for God (that is verse 5) and contain meaningful content (that is verse 7), they will help you and your family. Moses actually suggests you make literal signs in verses 8 and 9 and put them where you can’t miss them: “…on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

I must warn you, though, of a danger inherent in this. If we mistake the sign for the thing to which it points, we will hurt ourselves and our families. We can be all about family dinners and reading at bedtime and having conversations in the car, but if those things become an end in themselves, we are stopping at the sign rather than going on to the God to whom it points. That’s like driving to the sign that says, “Chicago 160,” patting ourselves on the back, and then returning home.

That may sound ridiculous to you, but it happens all the time in the spiritual life. People congratulate themselves on Bible reading and feel like they’ve arrived. They memorize verses as if it were somehow meritorious. Because they have a daily quiet time, they think themselves spiritual when they are really only predictable.

This kind of thing happened again and again among God’s people. God gave them circumcision for a sign (Genesis 17). He gave them Passover for a sign (Exodus 13). He gave them the Sabbath for a sign (Exodus 31). But people gathered around the signs, celebrated them, and forgot where they pointed. They’d confused the sign for the destination, and everything became about the sign.

Those were the people who were furious because the Apostle Paul didn’t agree that circumcision was all-important. When he said things like, “…neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value,” they flew into a rage and called him a heretic.

It happened with the Sabbath. When Jesus dared to say the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, people wanted to kill him. No, they insisted, man was made for the Sabbath. Sabbath was everything. They had mistaken the sign for the reality.

We mustn’t allow that to happen to us and our families. If it does, the result is predictable. The first generation will use the sign – say, church attendance – to point them to God. The second generation will keep the sign – they’ll still go to church. It may even be important to them and they will feel superior to people who don’t go. They’ll keep the sign but forget where it points. Then it will grieve their hearts when the third generation pulls up the sign and throws it away. The problem comes from thinking that doing certain kinds of things somehow takes the place of being certain kinds of people – people who love God and live in his love.

Let me suggest a couple of things we can do to put what we’ve heard into practice. First, ask God to reveal to you where your life is currently pointing. Be honest with him and with yourself. Is your life pointing to him or to retirement? Does your life say that God is great of that possession are better? Remember, your friends, your children, and your grandchildren are reading the sign that is your life. You need to know where it is pointing.

Another thing you can do: incorporate the four critical times of the day into a plan for spiritual growth and flourishing. What do you now do at mealtimes? What small changes could you make to bring God into your thoughts? Perhaps you could start simply by giving thanks before meals. Maybe you make the dinner table a device-free zone and have conversations instead. Is there a way to bring God before your mind during travel times? Can you listen to a good podcast or sermon, or to Christian music? Can you use the time to pray for friends and family? What about first thing in the morning and last thing before bed? Read a psalm? Pray?

Don’t try to do everything but do try something. Experiment. But remember: the goal is not to do the right things but to become the right people – people who, with heart and mind and strength love the God who so loved them that he gave his only begotten son.

(Preached May 10, 2020 at Lockwood Community Church, Coldwater, MI.)

[1] From Barna Group, in Don Everts, The Spiritually Vibrant Home, IVP.

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A Life That Means Something: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Posted on May 10, 2020 by salooper57

Join Lockwood Community Church’s May 10th service, premiering at 11:00, at this link: https://youtu.be/GqIfTXx03no

Today’s message, from Deuteronomy, helps us understand the kind of life God wants for his children – a life that matter; a flourishing life.

The manuscript will be posted later in the week. God’s peace be with you!

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So Much for June Cleaver: Mother’s Day 2020

Posted on May 9, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

I once thought of Mother’s Day as an innocuous, greeting card kind of holiday. Who wouldn’t want to celebrate moms? Just the fact that she went through labor giving birth to us is cause enough to say thanks. She fed us countless meals, clothed us, put cold washcloths on our foreheads when we had a fever, and laid awake at night when we were out late as teenagers. Everybody ought to celebrate moms.

Then I got to know people – not one but many – who had a mom that did not always see that they were fed, whose five-year-old had to pick out her own clothes and get her own breakfast. Moms who either were not home to put cold washcloths on foreheads or were not sober. Moms who didn’t give their teenagers a thought, except when they were angry.

Then there are the women who ached to be a mom but were not able. Mother’s Day is an annual reminder of what they were denied. Not everyone wants to celebrate moms.

Even moms might not feel like celebrating Mother’s Day. If celebrating requires energy, mom may need to decline. Energy, like bandwidth, is in limited supply. If mom uses too much, she may start buffering and then freeze up altogether.

Debbie Farmer’s description of how motherhood changes one’s perspective was eye-opening to me. “Before children,” she says, “I was thankful for fresh, organic vegetables. After children: I am thankful for microwaveable macaroni and cheese – without which my children would be surviving on about three bites of cereal and their own spit.

“Before children: I was thankful for the opportunity to obtain a college education and have a higher quality of life than my ancestors. After children: I am thankful to finish a complete thought without being interrupted.

“Before children: I was thankful for holistic medicine and natural herbs. After children: I am thankful for pediatric cough syrup guaranteed to cause drowsiness in young children. I was thankful for the opportunity to vacation in exotic foreign countries so I could experience a different way of life in a new culture. I am thankful to have time to make it all the way down the driveway to get the mail.

“Before children I was thankful for the Moosewood Vegetarian cookbook. After children I am thankful for the butterball turkey hotline. I was thankful for a warm, cozy home to share with my loved ones. I am thankful for the lock on the bathroom door. I was thankful for material objects like custom furniture, a nice car and trendy clothes. I am thankful when the baby spits up and misses my good shoes.”

So much for June Cleaver.

It seems to me, looking from the outside, that one of the difficult things about motherhood is that there are no standard gauges by which a mom can determine whether she is doing a good job. Even the mom – no, especially the mom – who cooks countless meals, puts cold washcloths on fevered foreheads, and lays awake at night worrying about her kids, wonders if she is doing it right. The latest clash between the kids, the clutter everywhere, and the recurring feeling that she is on her own, all seem to declare her a failure.

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

These are a few of the reasons people wish to ignore Mother’s Day. They are also the reasons we should not. Yes, not every mother is a good mom and not every woman who would be a great mom will get the opportunity. These are sad truths but they are not a reason to ignore our own moms who have poured their lives and love into us.

Perhaps moms don’t need their families to glorify motherhood in the abstract once a year on the second Sunday in May. Perhaps what they need is a family that acknowledges their effort, requites their love, and expresses gratitude not just for the innumerable sacrifices they have made but for the fact that they never bothered to count them.

Published by Gatehouse Media

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The logical – and theological – problem with Red Letter Christians

Posted on May 6, 2020 by salooper57

ABC published this article by Joel Looper on May 5th. It is thought-provoking and I wanted to share it with you.

Joel Looper (PhD from University of Aberdeen) is the author of the forthcoming book, A Protestantism without Reformation: What Dietrich Bonhoeffer Saw in America, published by Baylor University Press.

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Good News for Today

Posted on May 2, 2020 by salooper57

The humorist and actor Robert Benchely once wrote, “There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.”

Benchely then drew the droll conclusion that “Both classes are extremely unpleasant to meet socially, leaving practically no one in the world whom one cares very much to know.”

Benchley’s characterization of the world is funny because he, by dividing people in such a way, has unwittingly placed himself in the first of the two classes, among those one cares very little to know. But, of course, there was nothing unwitting about it, which is what makes his remark so witty.

With his self-deprecating humor, Benchely was taking on a serious subject: the human proclivity to exclude people who differ from us. If we can classify someone, put them into a box and label them, it becomes easier to discount them. They are, after all, just liberals … or conservatives … or whites … or blacks … or Mexicans … or …

In recent years, some politicians have used this human inclination to “otherize” people to their advantage. It has become part and parcel of the political playbook. It is, however, nothing new.

In societies with clear-cut class divisions, both ancient and modern, otherizing people was embedded in the culture itself. People were Rajanyas or Shudras, aristocrats or laborers, the educated or the ignorant. Societies have always had their untouchables as well as their unreachables.

It was clearly so in first century Palestine, when Jesus emerged on the scene. Otherizing people was a way of life. People were not only divided into a caste-like structure with landowners, priests, merchants, artisans, peasants, and slaves but also into the categories of “clean” and “unclean.”

For one prominent group, the Pharisees, avoiding “unclean” people was a way of life. Their very name means “Separated Ones.” They otherized people with intention, determination and, sometimes, brutality. Their reasons for doing so were ostensibly religious, but in practice it was also a powerful tool for guarding their own social status.

Jesus, however, didn’t play the game. He was constantly upsetting the otherizers’ applecart and mixing everyone up. This made him suspect in the eyes of the influencers, as it always does when people deny or defy an established social class system. One can hear the consternation in the Pharisees’ voices when they said, “This man welcomes sinners” – read “unclean people” – “and eats with them.”

Or this, from a prominent community member: “If this man [Jesus] were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is…” In the eyes of such people, Jesus was a trouble-maker and a rabble-rouser, with no respect for cultural norms.

They were not altogether wrong. If Jesus wasn’t a rabble-rouser, he was at least a people-raiser. And there were some cultural norms he clearly did not respect. He did, however, respect people, like the woman whose presence at a social gathering so offended Jesus’s host.

Jesus and his followers quickly became known for their disregard of the social standing codes. They met with untouchables, the (by societal standards) irreligious, women, whom Jesus counted among his closest friends and followers, and even with some Gentiles! From the perspective of the establishment, Jesus had “chosen them over us,” which was simply unforgiveable.

The good news Jesus spoke and modeled was of a God who is radically inclusive, a God who “receives sinners.” He does not treat people differently, based on their race or gender or standing but gladly welcomes all who will come to him. Jesus modeled this very clearly, announcing: “…the one who comes to me I will never send away” (John 6:37).

For people who had been sent away so often, who had been taught that God didn’t want anything to do with them, this was good news. It is good news that the church of Jesus must announce and live today. Whenever the church joins in otherizing people, it denies in practice the gospel it proclaims, but if it welcomes “the other,” it incarnates the good news in a way people can understand – just as Jesus did.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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A Mind for What Matters: Philippians 4:1-9

Posted on April 29, 2020 by salooper57

(Read A Mind for What Matters below or listen to the sermon on YouTube. The sermon begins at 29:52 and listening time is approximately 25:00. In this passage, St. Paul points the way for working through bleak times, times of conflict, and anxiety.)

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable– if anything is excellent or praiseworthy– think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me– put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  (Philippians 4:4-9 NIV)

This is the final sermon in a brief survey of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. We have been focusing on what this letter can teach us about the impact our thinking – our mindfulness, as people like to say nowadays (a term I think Paul would have commandeered) – has on our outlook, moods, and actions.

The instructions to be followed in this short passage are demanding, some might even say impossible. But the promises held out to those who follow them are almost outstanding. The thing for us to remember is that the ability to obey the instructions and gain the promises is dependent upon –we come back to it again – the way we use (or misuse) our minds.

Let’s start with the promises (or, really, the two-part promise). The first part of the promise is (verse 7): Given that we live a certain way, the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds. Paul is using a word picture he knows will connect with his readers. Philippi was a Roman colony and a garrison city. There were retired Roman soldiers everywhere (including, probably, the church), as well as a large population of soldiers on active duty.

The word “guard” evokes a picture of soldiers guarding the garrison or some other high-value asset. The promise is that God’s peace, like a special forces unit, will guard a person’s heart (the control center, where decisions are made) and mind (the information center where conscious life takes place). When God’s peace guards us we are actively protected from bad decisions and unhealthy thinking.

The phrase “the peace of God” is found only here in the entire Bible. This is not just an inward peace – the kind one gets after a couple of drinks or a sleeping pill. This is the very tranquility of God (G.B. Caird), “the calm serenity that characterizes God’s very nature.”[1] God’s peace is more than the absence of fear. It is the presence of contentment, wholeness, and the certainty of wellbeing. It will guard our hearts and minds when we live a certain way.

But the promise goes even further. While in verse 7 the promise is that God’s peace will guard our hearts and minds, in verse 9, “God himself, the God of peace (of contentment, wholeness, and wellbeing) will be with us.” We will not only have the peace of God guarding us; we will have the God of peace accompanying us.

That’s the promise. But what about those demanding instructions? We’ll look at three of them, given in the context of a pressing, real-time problem. However, we’ll start with verse 1 to prepare us for what is coming.

In verse 1, Paul tells his friends, “This is how you should stand firm in the Lord.” “This” refers back to what he had just written, which was something like this: I want you to imitate me and the people in the church who live like me.

What was it about Paul that the Philippians needed to imitate in order to stand firm? It was his determination to keep “pressing on” (something which he states twice). His eyes are set on the mark and he won’t stop until he reaches it. He will become what God has called him to be and he won’t let anything stop him.

The way to stand firm, paradoxically, is to keep moving … toward Christ. The Christian life is like riding a bicycle. The only way stay upright is to stay in motion. Have you ever tried to balance a bike on two wheels while standing still? It’s not long before you’re not standing at all. So with us. When we stop pursuing Christ, we lose our balance and fall, usually hurting ourselves and the people around us. Want to stand firm? Keep moving.

Now, with that as background, we’re ready to look at the instructions Paul gives. As we do, we need to keep the promises that go with them in mind: the protection of the peace of God and the presence of God of peace. The first instruction, given previously and now repeated, is to rejoice always.

Really, Paul? Rejoice always? You have no idea what you’re asking. Working from home amidst a thousand interruptions. The kids are out of control. Can’t find toilet paper. Didn’t get my economic impact payment from the IRS, which I need to pay the mortgage. Will probably lose my job, which means no insurance. And you want me to rejoice?

To which Paul (from a dank, dark prison cell, where he has been quarantined for a long time, separated from friends and family, and waiting to hear the outcome of his trial, which might be death by beheading) answers, Of course! “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And in case you missed it the first two times I said it, “I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).

Many people, hearing this, simply brush it aside as unrealistic and unfeasible. When you’re having marriage problems, when you can’t stomach your boss, when your hopes have been dashed yet again, when you’re sick, and tired, and in debt, how can Paul – how can God – expect you to rejoice? It’s impossible!

Yes, absolutely. It is impossible … for some people, but not for us – if our minds are undergoing a process of renewal. If our thinking hasn’t changed since we became a follower of Jesus; if we are still haunted by the same fears; if the same kinds of thoughts run through our minds all day that run through the minds of people who don’t belong to Jesus, rejoicing will be unrealistic and unfeasible.

But, if we are being “renewed in the spirit of [our] minds” (Ephesians 4:23); if we are being changed (transformed) by the renewing of [our] minds (Romans 12:2), then rejoicing will not only be possible, it will be occurring. This is what we’ve seen throughout this letter. How we think determines how we feel and how we act. Our minds are critical to our success in the Christian life. Some things that not only seem impossible but are impossible – rejoicing when we are deeply troubled, for example – become possible as our minds are renewed.

We need to appreciate how humans think. There are, of course, different parts of the brain – that amazing instrument the mind uses – which perform different functions in the collection and storage of information. When the mind uses that information, it does so (in large part) by storying. Humans use stories to categorize and contextualize information – information that would be practically useless without the God-given ability to make stories. Storying is an essential part of what it means to be human. When God “formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …” (Genesis 2:7), he became a living storyteller.

The way we process marriage problems and bad bosses and recurring disappointments is through stories. That means if we categorize and contextualize information – including marriage problems and bad bosses – using the wrong stories, we will go wrong. Rejoicing will be simply impossible.

Here’s an illustration. A jet crash-lands on an island in the South Pacific. The survivors scramble off the plane and wade ashore. And then someone shouts, “There are blankets, clothing, and food in the cargo hold!” As soon as the significance of that dawns on people, everyone tries to get to get to the provisions first, afraid of not getting their share. People are stuffing bread and pretzels and meat in their shirts and trying to get ashore without their fellow castaways knowing they have provisions. Everyone is afraid of starving.

Disgusted by the riot on the beach, a husband and wife decide to explore the island. What they find just over the first hill surprises them: there are cows and chickens everywhere – must have been brought by a shipwrecked vessel a decade ago or more. There are fruit trees and pineapples – the valley is filled with them. There are even cases of dried food rations that must have been left behind when those first castaways were rescued.

Instead of trying to stuff a chicken and a pineapple into their shirts, they return to the beach shouting the good news to everyone and sharing the things they’ve brought back. Why the difference? The one group is telling themselves a story of deprivation and hunger while the other is telling themselves a story of provision and plenty.

Now, one of the things to notice is that the panic the people on the beach felt was real even though the story they told themselves was false. That’s how the stories we tell ourselves work. They affect the way we act and feel and think. But it is even more than that: the stories are the way we think, at least in large part.

During the Covid-19 crisis, the story many people are telling themselves is one of calamity, loss, and death. How do you think that will affect the way they feel and act? You already know: feelings of anxiety, sleeplessness, anger, accompanied by panic buying, hoarding, and arguments.

But when we came to Christ, our story got written into his story, which is not one of calamity, loss, and death but of love, and courage, and glory. That doesn’t mean we won’t have troubles – just read the laundry list of St. Paul’s hardships in 2 Corinthians 12 – but it does mean that whatever is happening in our part of the story is being written into a bigger, better, story. It’s the best story ever, by the best author ever, with the best ending ever.

When we not only know that in the abstract but story that in our thinking, we will be able to rejoice during Covid-19, during marriage problems, and crummy jobs, with pain-filled bodies. I am not saying it is automatic; it’s not. I am saying it will happen as we are renewed in our minds.

So the instruction to rejoice always – seemingly impossible on the surface of it – is entirely doable when our minds are being renewed. The next instruction (verse 5) is to “Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

Before we talk about how to do that, we need to think about what it means. The word translated “gentleness” by the NIV is not the word usually translated that way. A prominent Greek lexicon claims this word is almost untranslatable. People have tried with words like “gentleness,” “moderation,” “magnanimity,” but the ground this word covers is just too big for any one English word. In other places in Scripture it occurs alongside words like, “peaceable” (Titus 3:2), “open to reason,” and “rich in mercy” (James 3:17). It is a word that is used to describe Jesus by both Paul and by Jesus himself.

This “gentleness” (for lack of a better word) is displayed whenever a person doesn’t push to get his way because it is his way. It evident when a person doesn’t stand on her rights but, to help someone else, is willing to forego what she could rightfully claim for herself.

Karen and I were talking to our neighbor a couple of days ago (while practicing social distancing!), and she was telling us about all the meanness and raging self-importance one finds right now on social media. That is the opposite of gentleness. We can blame the Covid-19 crisis – the unemployment, forced quarantine, and the stress – for our lack of gentleness, but it didn’t create it. It only brought out what was there all along.

There is a way not only to act gently but to be gentle but it (once again) requires us to undergo the process of being renewed in our minds. We are not going to act like Jesus until we start thinking like Jesus, and we will never think like him unless we are being renewed in our minds. And that means we need to be renewed in the stories we tell ourselves. We need to think in God’s story.

The belligerent people on social media are thinking in stories – stories of disrespect, misuse, irrecoverable loss. It’s just not God’s story. Whenever our story diverges from God’s story, we start believing we must be in control and, usually, that we need to be the hero. But when our story runs with God’s story, we know he is in control and Jesus is the hero. And he is not far off somewhere. He is near.

That’s why Paul adds in verse 5: “The Lord is near.” When that’s what we think, when we story the Lord’s nearness in our thoughts – his protection, his love for us, his determination to make everything right – then we won’t need to be in control and we won’t get angry when things don’t go our way. We can be gentle and forego our rights, confidant that the Lord will make things right.

This is what Paul wants Euodia and Syntyche, his friends from Philippi, to think and do. These women (verse 2), who had fought for the gospel at Paul’s side, were now fighting with each other. They were not living in gentleness. When they stopped pressing on toward Christ, they started fighting with each other. Without a doubt, they were each telling themselves a story but it was the wrong story, one in which Jesus was not near.

The next instruction seems the most impossible of all: “Do not be anxious about anything.” How often I have violated that command! I bet you have too. The word translated “be anxious” here is comprised of two roots, the first means “part” or “section” and the second has to do with “memory” or “stored thoughts”. Worry sections off our minds and – here is the thing – it shuts out God. It removes him from our story.

The way to deal with worry is to bring God back into our story or, better yet, bring ourselves into his story. His story is about love and restoration, about power and patience, and above all, about Jesus. It’s the story of Jesus, who did not stand on his rights but gave them up and suffered and died for us. And he was able to do that because he knew he was in God’s story, knew that God would raise him to life and to his throne.

How do I bring myself into God’s story? To begin with, we pray. In Greek, verse 6 has this kind of rhythm: “In nothing worry, but in everything pray…” Whereas worry sections us off – social distances us – from God, prayer connects us to him.

In prayer, we re-story our lives with God at the center of the story, which is where he really is. We re-story our lives with Jesus, who is ever so near, as the hero. Instead of demanding he do something, we make known our needs to him and expect him to do something – because we know what story we’re in! Instead of worrying about ourselves we present ourselves to be part of God’s story.

But we’ll never accomplish this while we are filling our minds with the anger, fear, and greed that characterize society at large. No, we must– Paul tells us – think about what is true, what is noble, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely, what is admirable – about things that are excellent or praiseworthy.

You’re more likely to find those things in the Bible than on social media, which means that if you are spending more time on social media than the Bible you are at risk for resentment, pettiness, and worry. There are, of course, other things that worthy of our thinking and meet many of the criteria Paul lays out. There are also things that feed our anger, nurture our fears, and inspire our greed. We are responsible for what we let into our minds.

One final thing: the renewal of our minds doesn’t happen as we sit in our La-Z-Boy thinking. In fact, it’s impossible to continue thinking rightly unless we’re acting accordingly. So Paul adds, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice” (Philippians 4:9). Our well-intentioned thoughts will fade into oblivion, like Lewis Carrol’s Cheshire Cat, unless we act on them. To pray right, to think right, and to act right is the key to experiencing the peace of God and living with the God of peace.

[1] Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin: Word Biblical Commentary: Philippians. ©Thomas Nelson, 2003. p. 246

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Everyone Is a Storyteller: What’s Your Story?

Posted on April 25, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

Every grasping, hoarding, angry person is telling themselves a story. So is every generous, sacrificial, compassionate person – but they are different stories.

The middle school Spanish teacher is a storyteller. So is the foundry worker and the clerk at the gas station. The theologian is a storyteller, as is the banker, the automaker, and the spy. Even the middle school Spanish student is a storyteller.

The stories we tell frame our understanding of the world and explain our experiences. Much of our thinking is done in stories. History is an exercise in storytelling. So is philosophy. So is science.

This is not some abstract truth. It is a daily experience. If you find a ten-dollar bill lying in the driveway, your brain automatically generates a story, or more than one. The bill slipped out of your pocket when you got out of the car to get the mail. Alternately, it fell out of the mailman’s pocket when he got out of his jeep to bring a package to the door. The story you tell yourself helps you know what to do with the ten dollars.

Some people are bad storytellers. The stories they tell are disjointed, illogical, and incoherent. (And, usually, people whose stories are incoherent have lives that are also incoherent). Other people are great storytellers. Their stories are taut, consistent, and plausible. They are not, however, necessarily true.

People who are followers of Jesus think in stories just like everyone else. We need to be good storytellers with coherent stories. We also need to tell stories that are true.

Consider what this implies. If we are to follow St. Paul’s instruction to be renewed in our minds, then the stories we tell ourselves need to be brought into line with the story God is telling through creation and redemption. Our stories must fit his story.

The human story has been diverging from God’s story since Adam. Go to the academy, for example, and listen to the stories being told, like this one from an Ivy League professor of biological sciences. “Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.”

The philosopher Dallas Willard said of this professor’s conclusions: “Logically viewed, this statement is simply laughable.” And Willard is right. Evolutionary biology does not research issues such as the meaning of life or the human state following death, nor is it capable of doing so. The professor’s claims sound much more like the dénouement of a story than the deductions of a science.

The stories we tell ourselves influence how we live, how we relate, and how we feel. If, in the story I tell myself, life has no meaning, that will affect all kinds of things: what I do with my money, how I think about my spouse, how I feel when someone hurts me, and what I do when I cannot acquire desired things by socially acceptable means.

If, in the story I tell myself, there is not enough to go around, I will behave and feel in predictably self-centered ways. We have seen this play out in real time during the Covid-19 crisis. Some people have deprived others by buying more toilet paper, disinfectants, and foodstuffs than they need. Other people have bought more than they need in order to give such things away. Both are operating within a story.

In the beautiful and coherent story Jesus told, a loving God knows what his children need and has promised to take care of them, freeing them from worry and releasing them to be generous with others. It is a story we need to tell ourselves again and again. It is a story I believe to be true.

Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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There Is Love: Our Astonishing Hope (1 Cor. 15)

Posted on April 23, 2020 by salooper57

(1 Corinthians 15:19-28) If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.  (NIV)

I think it was Dr. Johnson who said, “Men live in hope, die in despair.”

I first heard that quote in college—not in an English lit class but in the Student Union, where I was playing ping-pong with my college roommate and dear friend George Ashok Kumar Taupu (Dr.) Das. He’s the one who taught me how to play and, looking back, I’m amazed at his patience. In our first games, he beat me 21-3 or 21-4 and, even then, I only scored points when he stopped paying attention.

But after months of playing almost daily, I had become competitive. He was still beating me every game, but by this time the score was 21-10, then 21-14, then 21-18 – and he was paying attention. I could see that he was trying.

It was during one of these contests – sometimes tied, sometimes the lead changing by a point or two – that the finish line came in sight for me. I could taste victory. The game nearly over – just a couple of more points – and I might finally win. But George buckled down, shut me down, and handed me yet another defeat.

I must have said something about how I almost had him or how I would get him next time. And that’s when our other great friend, our resident genius John Erdel, who was sitting there, idly watching the game, gave me his deadpan look and said: “Men live in hope, die in despair.”

“Men live in hope, die in despair.” What a dismal view of life. What a demoralizing view of death. Anyone who actually believed that could never live in hope – could only live in despair and die in despair. But the resurrection of Jesus means that we can live in hope, die in hope, and be raised in glory. The death and resurrection of Jesus is both the biggest thing that has ever happened in the world and the biggest thing that has ever happened to you, whether you know it or not. The resurrection is our assurance that hope will abandon us in the end.

As we saw last week – and if you missed that sermon, you should go to www.lockwoodchurch.org/media and listen to it online – our story is not that we will fly off to heaven after we die to live eternally as disembodied spirits. That’s Plato, not Jesus. Our story is that God has come to earth in Jesus and is, even at this moment, working out his plan for us and for the world.

From that story, which is our story, comes a transforming hope that will change the way we think, the way we feel, and the things we do. What happened to and through Jesus then can change us now, change us for the better. Let’s drill down into this passage and see why that is true.

Paul writes in verse 22: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” and later quotes the prophet Hosea (verse 54), “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” The resurrection of Jesus means that death’s reign of terror is coming to an end. Death has tyrannized our race since the time of Adam and Eve. The fear of death is a constant throughout history and around the globe. The fear of death lies behind, and feeds, all other fears. Life without it is almost unimaginable.

Susan Sontag, the atheist writer and filmmaker, was 71 when she died from cancer. The doctors and nurses tried to talk to her about death and help her prepare, but Sontag would not listen. The thought of death terrified her. She fought to keep it at bay. It was too terrible. She must not die.  

She thought of this world as a foul tomb, filled with the stench of decaying corpses, yet she didn’t dare leave it. “She thought herself unhappy,” her son said, yet she “wanted to live, unhappy, for as long as she possibly could.” Even though life was a nightmare, she was terrified of waking up.

Susan Sontag did not have the hope of the resurrection. But we who believe in Jesus, in whom his life is already present by the Holy Spirit, can face death courageously and even joyfully. The author of Hebrews writes: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

Contrast Susan Sontag’s fear with the courage of my good friend and colleague, our former Children’s Ministry Director, Amy Snapp. Amy has been battling cancer. Like Sontag, she improved and the cancer was in remission. Now it has come back.

I spoke to her yesterday. She is not hiding from the future. She told me: “I’m good. Ready to go. I’m not afraid.” Amy says she expects dying to be an adventure, like Lucy going into – and through – the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia.

When Amy mentioned Narnia, it brought to mind my favorite passage, which comes at the very end of book 7. The Lion Aslan, the Christ figure, says to the children: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”

(Now I am quoting.) “Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’

‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream has ended; this is morning.’

And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus, gives his people hope in the face of death. In 1973, during the reign of Idi Amin, the Butcher of Uganda, the people of Kabale were ordered to come to the stadium to witness the execution of three men. Bishop Kivengere asked for, and was granted, permission to speak to the men before they died. He approached them from behind and was surprised by what he saw when they turned around. Their faces were radiant. They smiled. One of them said, “Bishop, thank you for coming … I wanted to tell you: Heaven is now open, and there is nothing between me and my God. Please tell my wife and children that I am going to be with Jesus.”

The bishop thought the firing squad needed to hear that, so he translated their remarks into the soldiers’ own language. It left the firing squad so flummoxed that they forgot to pull the masks down over the Christians’ faces before executing them. The condemned men were looking toward the people in the stands and waving, handcuffs and all, and the people waved back. Then shots were fired, and the three were with Jesus.

The next Sunday, the bishop preached in the hometown of one of the three men. As he spoke, the huge crowd that had gathered erupted into a song of praise to Jesus![1] This is what the hope of the resurrection can do for us. It can free us from the fear of death.

In the resurrection, Christ cut death down to size. Through Christ, we can rise above our fear of death. The great English poet George Herbert said, “Death used to be an executioner, but the gospel” – he’s referring to the death and resurrection of Jesus – “has made him just a gardener.” When those who are planted with Jesus come up, they will be glorious as he is glorious.

But our hope is far greater than the hope that we will somehow survive death. The resurrection gives us reason to believe that we will be – that nothing can stop us from being – fulfilled, completed, perfected. Paul puts it this way: “The body that is sown” – gardener imagery again! – “is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power…” (vv. 42-43). And verses 52-53: “we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.”

Susan Sontag got it wrong. Earth is not a grave but a garden. This – weakness, sickness, inability, depression, aging, loss – is no more the whole story than the kernel is the whole stalk of corn or the acorn is the towering oak. God’s plan for humanity is not pain and suffering but joy and glory. It is not weakness but power. It is not sadness but joy. It is not the shame we know so well but a glory that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor human mind imagined. (1 Cor. 2:9).

You, if you share resurrection life through faith in Jesus, will be happier than you can now conceive, stronger than you can now believe, and overflowing with the energy of love. The promises seem too good to believe and would be too good to believe, if we hadn’t already tasted this life, experienced this power, known this love.

Listen: the resurrection is the promise, the evidence, that the long and tortuous project known familiarly as Shayne Looper – substitute your own name, if you have Jesus and he has you – will one day be finished and it will be good. It will be very good. It will finally all make sense, when even Shayne Looper is crowned with glory and full of joy, bringing glory and joy to God himself and glory and joy to all the rest of us. This – nothing less, and certainly far more – is what it awaits the people of God.

But the hope of the resurrection is more than the hope – as great as it is – that we as individuals will be fulfilled. It is that all things in heaven and on earth will be made right, made good, made glorious. The resurrection means that God’s plan is unstoppable, and that heaven will make right every earthly wrong.

Sometimes that is hard to believe. I have seen things. I have stood in the ER with a family that hardly dared to breath as the doctor performed CPR on their son and brother, whose body lay before them, torn by a hideous gunshot wound. The doctor gave up. Too many times I’ve sat with families – sometimes a young dad and mom, the mom holding her child in her arms – when a nurse unplugged life support.

I’ve cried with too many people whose image of themselves was shattered like glass by the terrible abuse they suffered as children. You’ve known them too. We not only know them; we are them: the sufferers, the abused, the wronged, the fearful, the damaged. So what if the future holds inconceivable glory? The past holds unutterable pain. Even if we someday attain joy, will we not always be haunted by the suffering?

The plain answer is no. C. S. Lewis put it this way: We “say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”[2]

Listen to these words of hope from the throne of God. “‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new!’”  

The singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson put it to words like this.

“After the last tear falls, after the last secret’s told
After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone
After the last child starves and the last girl walks the boulevard
After the last year that’s just too hard

There is love…

Cause after the last plan fails, after the last siren wails
After the last young husband sails off to join the war
After the last, ‘This marriage is over’
After the last young girl’s innocence is stolen
After the last years of silence that won’t let a heart open

There is love
Love, love, love

And in the end, the end is oceans and oceans of love and love again
We’ll see how the tears that have fallen
Were caught in the palms of the Giver of love and the Lover of all
And we’ll look back on these tears as old tales

‘Cause after the last tear falls there is love.

There is love because, after the last tear falls, there is God.

Our hopes are audacious. They are stupendous. Our hopes are unparalleled and unrivaled. The Marxist hoped for a better world. The Christian hopes for a perfect one: a new heaven and new earth, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). The hope of the most enthusiastic Marxist fades to nothing in the shining hope of the resurrection, the way a candle fades before the noonday sun.

Our hope is not just that our sins – worse than we remember and more than we can count – will not be held against us, though because of Jesus, they will not! Our hope is not just that our pains will be forgotten, swallowed up in bliss. Our hope is not just that our shame will be buried with us when we die and be left in the grave when we rise. Our hope is not just that evil and injustice will be destroyed, never to return. Our hope is that God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

This hope is not like the Buddhist hope of Nirvana, in which the delusion of selfhood is finally extinguished and there is only the Unity. No, when God is all in all, we will still be us. Better than that: we will have become us for the first time, more ourselves than ever before, made to be with God and to be filled with God.

You see, what lies at the foundation of all existence is not subatomic particles or the so-called four fundamental forces. What lies at the foundation of all existence is the fundamental relationship: the overflowing, joyous relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And what rests at the pinnacle of all existence is relationship: the overflowing, joyous relationship of Father, Son, Holy Spirit and, by the triumph of grace, us.

This long story of bullets and wars, of marriages ended and innocence stolen, is different than you thought and better than you’ve dreamed. It is the story of the perfectly joyful, perfectly beautiful, perfectly perfect Trinity making perfectly joyful, perfectly beautiful, perfectly perfect beings of us and inviting us to join their party. Emptiness is not our future, but fullness, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

Because of the joyful love of the Triune God, this is our destiny. This awaits us. And it has been made possible, made real, by the loving sacrifice and glorious resurrection of our man in heaven, who is also “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

This is why the resurrection matters. This is why we celebrate. This is why we hope. Amen.

(If you prefer to watch and listen to this sermon, you can find it on Youtube. The sermon starts at 25:17.)

[1] Colin Chapman, The Case for Christianity

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce ©1946. HarperCollins Edition 2001. p. 69.

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There Is Love: The Hope of the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:19-28)

Posted on April 19, 2020 by salooper57

What are the implications of St. Paul’s teaching (and that of the entire biblical witness) on the resurrection? That is what this audaciously hopeful sermon explores. I invite you to join for the premier at 11:00 this morning or to watch later. Since this is a worship service, there is about 20 minutes of worship prior to the sermon.

A joyous and blessed hope to you during this challenging time!

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