“Blessed Be the Names”

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 16: 1-16

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   November 23, 2014

“Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.” (Rom 16:16 NAU)

Who can get excited about reading a list of names?

Preachers have been warned to stay away preaching on lists of names, even when they appear in the Bible.    Preachers shouldn’t take names, read names, nor make roll calls in churches.   If you think about cutting the church roll, even if they don’t come to church, don’t even think about it!   If you’re a preacher or a deacon, just say to yourself:  “Blessed be the Names!”  

In one church I actually suggested at least looking down the large list of names on the church roll that consisted of over 1,000 members; over 5 times our average attendance.  They had relocated out of the inner city.  They left their building behind, but they were sure to take that large list of names on the roll that nobody knew.  “Well, we used to know them,” they said.  “They moved to Florida.”  “They moved West.”  “Nobody’s seen or heard from them in years”.   I suggested we might contact them and see if they had joined another church or were deceased.  Then we could cut some of the names.  “Somebody might get mad, if we call them!  The deacons listened to what I had to say, but nobody got excited.  It was just a list of names.

Then, one day we needed to build a new building.  We had a consultant come in to help us raise the money.  He was going to charge us a simple and fair fee, based upon all the members we had on the roll.   You should have seen how fast they were calling the names on that list.  “Blessed be!  The names!

 STRANGE SOUNDING NAMES

Remember how they called the roll of names at school, and sometimes even in Sunday School?  It always came at the beginning of the class or the day, but here Paul calls out the names at the end, and the names are really strange sounding   These names are hard to read and hard to pronounce, just like the first one, “Phoebe.”   “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae….”  It’s hard to say whether it was official, but she was at the top of Paul’s list.    

There are other strange names on Paul’s list, like Prisca and Aquila.  One sounds like a soft drink and the other like an ink pen.  In other parts of the Bible they are known as “Pricilla and Aquila”, but Paul knows them personally.  He puts her name first.   Then comes another married couple, whom Paul ‘strangely’ calls them both ‘apostles’.   To call a woman an ‘apostle’ was so strange that some Bible translators changed her name to a man’s name, Junias, but her real name was Junia, as in petunia.   These are just some of the ‘strange names’ on Paul’s list, but to Paul they weren’t strange at all.  He ‘commends’ them and ‘greets’ them as friends, co-workers, and brothers and sisters in the Lord.   It doesn’t matter whether they were men or women; Paul treats them like his equals, and all equals to each other, honoring their work in the Lord.  Without hesitation or even a hint of discrimination (common for that world and ours),  Paul makes all their names blessed because, “In Christ, there is no male or female…Jew or Greek, but all are the same in Christ.”

Back to Phoebe.   Perhaps she was at the top of Paul’s list, because she was carrying the letter back to Rome on a business trip, for she was a prominent lady.   How Paul ‘commended her’ reminds me of a recent documentary by Ken Burns on the Roosevelt’s.  It was primarily about the President’s, Teddy and FDR, but when it ended, the most celebrated Roosevelt, was the one named Eleanor.   A lot of people didn’t like Eleanor, because she was a strong woman.   She had to be.  When she was small, her mother told her that she was ugly and looked old.   She never had any self-confidence, even though she was the niece of Teddy Roosevelt, and she was a Roosevelt herself, her husband’s 5^th cousin.  

When they were married, Franklin Roosevelt admired her, but he never loved her.  They were political partners, good friends, but they were never really husband and wife.  But she kept going, and she learned to be the best political partner and advocate for her husband, even after he was stricken with polio.   She didn’t give up, and in the end, she was the last Roosevelt standing.  While Teddy and FDR are remembered as great presidents for the United States, Eleanor is remembered what she did for the world.   After, her husband death, she was set free and she was called to work for the United Nations, where she eventually wrote the Universal Bill of Human Rights, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of any man or woman.  

“I commend to your our sister….Phoebe, and Eleanor, and others….   When you read something like this, you mustn’t dare see them as just names on a list.     Could your name could be on a list like that?    You don’t have to be famous.   In fact, I wouldn’t remember any of these ‘names’ in the Bible.  They are so ‘strange’, hard to pronounce.   They might not even be on Paul’s list either, if they weren’t also on God’s list.   You could be on that list, too!  BLESSED BE THESE NAMES!

DON’T CALL IT A LIST

“When you read this list,” says the preacher Fred Craddock (who gave me the idea for this sermon), “Don’t just call it a list.  It’s not ‘just’ a list.   Even lists of names can get interesting.   Dr. Craddock, in his home spun way, tells of going to court on jury duty down in Georgia, where he retired.  He recalled about 250 names being read from a list and some of them were interesting. 

        “There were two Bill Johnson’s on the list; one was black and the other white.”  

        Then they came to read the name of “Mrs. Clark” and a male voice answered, ‘here!’  

The clerk of court looked up suspiciously, and said again but this time in the form of a question.

         “Mrs. Clark?” 

        “Here”, the male voice answered.  

        The Clerk was sharper, “Mrs. Clark?” 

        “Well, the male voice answered, “I thought the letter was for me.”

        The Clerk said,  “We summoned Mrs. Clark.”

        “Well,”  he said,  “I’m here.  Can I do it?  She doesn’t have any interest in this sort of thing?

The Clerk said, “Mr. Clark, how do you know?  She doesn’t even know she been summoned.”  (As told by Fred Craddock in sermon, “When the Roll Is Called Down Here”, as printed at the website: http://notgreener.blogspot.com/2011/12/when-roll-is-called-down-here.html).

That was an interesting list.   

When I was in college, I recall many interesting names I’d never heard before.   Gardner-Webb had many New Jersey names like Krushinski, Linderman, Query, Saknini, and Naser.  Ali Naser, from Iran, was my roommate for a semester.   We were from different worlds.

Tom Query had a weird name, but he was a great guy.  He was a very talented Christian magician who captured our undivided attention with his tricks.  He said they were really sleight of hand, not magic, since magic was forbidden in the Bible.  He sure could get our attention, and then he would preach a sermon.  Once he took my class ring and made it disappear by rolling it on the back of his hand, he said.  But I never saw it.  It was magic to me.

One of my best new buddies was Nageel Fuad Sakhnin.  He was from Nazareth.  How appropriate was it to be studying at a Christian college getting to know a guy from Jesus’ hometown.  That made an impression on me.   We became great ping-pong buddies and I never ever beat him, not even once.  I used to be pretty good at ping-pong, too.   But when I played him I had to stand 10 to 15 feet from the table just to return his serves.   He taught me a lot.  He taught me that something ‘good could still come out of Nazareth’.   I wonder where Nageel is today.  A Baptist pastor in Nazaeth has his name, but it was too dangerous to show his picture.  I’ll just have to settle for blessing the name.

When I think about people that Paul knew, people who partners with him in faith, I wouldn’t call these just a ‘list’ of names either.   I feel the same way about ‘names’ when I walk through a cemetery at my home church, or at other churches with cemeteries, were I’ve been pastor.   I’ll never forget how at my first church,  while I was preparing for the evening worship service, I noticed an older fellow walking around in the cemetery, so I went out to invite him in.  

        “We would love to have you come in and worship with us.”

        He paused a moment, then answered:  “Preacher, when you get as old as I am, you’ve got more friends out here, than you do in there!”

        He’s right.   These are not just names.    Blessed be the names!

NAMES WRITTEN IN HEAVEN

Think about what Jesus once said when announced to his disciples that he in the coming of God’s kingdom, he had seen “Satan, falling like lightening from Heaven.”  Immediately after this, he said,  “But rejoice not because the demons are subject to you, but rejoice because your name is written in heaven!”    Now, you will want to be on that list!  

I know that you have your own list of names that may not be anyone else’s list, but they are on yours and they are on God’s.  Someone you loved.  Someone who loved you.   One of the things that made Prisca and Aquilla so special to Paul was how, he said, ‘they risked their necks out for him’ (16.4).  You just don’t forget people like that.

 I recall how my Aunt Katie went to the beach with us one year.  Her husband, my dad’s brother Roy, had just died from complications from an accident.   She had to raise her two sons alone, Ronnie and Bruce.    Katie was such a wonderful, kind, caring person.  When I was real small, she took me to the beach to play in the water.    She said I went under the waves, but she quickly pulled me back up.  It was the first time I’d ever been under water.  When we got back to the house and mom asked how things went, I said:  “I’m OK, but Katie let me drown.”    Really, she saved my neck, and I didn’t know it.   Blessed be the Names!

Folks, names like these are not boring at all.  They are people, Paul’s people, real people, my people, your people, our people.  They are people who lived, who loved, who served, who cared, and who died in Christ.  Their names are anything but mere names in a list. Don’t call it a list.  Don’t read over it without a prayer.   Because of their names, your name might one day appear there.   Blessed be the Names!

I can imagine you know some names who should be there.  They are on your list.  When I think of all the names of people I’ve known, people who risked their necks for me,  people who stuck out there necks with me, and people who cared for me, when I didn’t even know how to care about life itself.   When I think about people like that, I remember someone who said,  “My mother is gone.   I didn’t visit her like I should.  I didn’t think of all she’d done.  I didn’t even realize what all she did do, when she was here with me.  But now I know.  And now that she is gone, I’d give everything I own, all the money I have in the bank, just to have one more moment, one more minute, maybe even an hour, to tell her what I should have told her all along.  Blessed be the Names!  Don’t ever call it a list.

There is one more name we need to notice, to remind us of how we all get on that list, we must never call, just a list.  His name comes in verse 5, where Paul says,  “Greet Epaenetus, who was the first convert in Asia for Christ”  (16.5).    Now that’s certainly someone to remember.  That’s certainly not just any name.  The first person who gave their life to Jesus in the larger, Gentile world, is more than a milestone, they are still a living, loving, caring and compassionate witness.  Did you notice how Paul still calls them, “My Beloved”?

I know a little of what Paul felt about Epaenetus.   When I worked as a missionary, conversions were hard to come by.   We saw a sizeable core group of youth develop, as they met in our homes and finally at the church.  We watched movies together, ate meals together, went on bike rides together.  We weren’t just a group, we were becoming a family. 

When several years later, I had to leave Germany,  they gave us a farewell party.  They presented me with a framed picture of their faces, and they gave me a T-Shirt.  They had printed a picture of us all together and then they signed all their names.  Those aren’t just names ---Burckhardt, Torsten, Olaf, Jackie, Katie, Anna, Alexandra, Marko and Frank.   Pronounced in their language, they might sound strange to you, but there family to me---blessed be the names.

BLESSED BE, EVEN MORE NAMES

I could go on.  But you get the picture.  When we read these names, they aren’t just names.   There are 36 names on Paul’s list, 423 in the New Testament, and 3,237 in the entire Bible. Those are a lot of names.   We can only recall a few at a time—Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Jesus, Peter James and John, and Paul.   Sometimes even thy are hard to remember, like the guy on the street who was asked to name Jesus’ closest disciples and answered:  Paul, John, George and Ringo.   Who were they?  How many where they?  There could be more.    Let me explain as I tell you one more story, from the master storyteller, Fred Craddock.

Before he married Nettie, the young preacher Fred Craddock, moved down to a little village on Watts Barr Lake between Chattanooga and Knoxville.    He said, “It was the custom in that church at Easter to have a baptismal service, and it was held in Watts Barr Lake at sundown on Easter evening.  Out on a sand bar, he stood with the candidates for baptism. After they were immersed, the candidates moved out of the water, changed clothes in little booths constructed of hanging blankets, then went to the fire in the center. Last of all, the young preacher went over, changed clothes, and went to the fire where the little congregation was gathered, singing and cooking supper.

Once we were all around the fire, Glen Hickey—it was always Glen—introduced the new people. He gave their names, where they lived and worked. Then the rest formed a circle around them while they stayed warm at the fire.

The next part of the ritual was that each person around the circle gave her or his name and said,

"My name is____, and if you ever need somebody to do washing and ironing, call on me."

"My name is____, and if you ever need anybody to chop wood, call on me."

"My name is____, and if you ever need anybody to baby-sit, call on me."

"My name is____, and if you ever need anybody to repair your house, call on me."

"My name is____, and if you ever need anybody to sit with the sick, call on me."

"My name is____, and if you ever need a car to go to town, call on me."

And around the circle they went. Then they all ate and had a square dance.   They were disciples, not Baptists.   Finally at the appointed time, Percy Miller, with thumbs in his bibbed overalls, would stand up and say, "It's time to go." Everybody would then leave.

After his first experience of this ritual, “Percy Miller saw me standing there, still,” Craddock said. “ He looked at me and said, "Craddock, folks don't ever get any closer than this."

Do you know what they call a ritual like that,  “THEY CALL IT CHURCH”  Blessed be the Names.

"I thank my God for all my remembrance of you."  That what Paul says elsewhere.  Why don’t you go home and write that down and add a name to it.   Then write another name, and another name, and another.  Keep the list, keep in in your Bible, because, it's not just a list. In fact, the next time you move, or when you go to hospital, or when you feel alone, hold on to that list.  Even if you have to leave and lose everything else,  Craddock says,  your car, your driver’s license, your furniture, your land, and everything else.  Whatever you do and wherever you go, take that list with you (As quoted and embellished from link above).

There’s just one more thing, that I will add to Fred Craddock’s list you shouldn’t just call a list.  Make sure that your name is on somebody’s list, and of all things,  make sure you are on God’s list.  

May God bless your name, because of His name, and blessed be all the names!   Amen.

"Life Together”

                             

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 15: 1-7

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   November 16th, 2014

“A young Rabbi found a serious problem in his congregation.  During the Friday service, half of the congregation stood for the prayers and half remained seated, and each side shouted at the other, insisting that theirs was the true tradition.  Nothing the Rabbi said or did moved toward solving the impasse.  Finally, in desperation, the young rabbi sought out the synagogue’s 99 year-old founder.  He met the old rabbi in the nursing home and poured out his troubles.  “So tell me,” he pleaded, “was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?”  “No,” answered the old rabbi.  “Ah,” responded the younger man, “then it was the tradition to sit during the prayers?”  “No,”answered the old rabbi.  “Well,” the young rabbi responded, “what we have is complete chaos! Half of the people stand and shout, and the other half sit and scream.”   “Ah,” said the old man, “that was the tradition.”¹

CAN WE ACCEPT ONE ANOTHER at church, even when we see things differently?  In his letter to the Roman Church, the apostle Paul raises this 25 thousand dollar question.  In fact, Paul does not pose this as a question, but gives a word of instruction so that church might truly happens. He says: “Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you.”  (Romans 15:7)²  

When Paul first raised this issue, the situation was not all bad.  The church was growing.   Due to Paul’s persistent evangelistic efforts among Gentiles, an influx of outsiders, that is pagans, were coming to church.  Surprisingly, Paul found less resistance among them than among the more traditional Jewish sectors.  This was good news.

Now comes the bad news.  As Gentile converts came into the churches, they certainly brought new opportunities, but they also brought baggage from their own culture as non- Jews.  For one thing, Gentile Christians weren’t raised in the strict Kosher traditions of Judaism.  Gentiles enjoyed pork and other meats and saw nothing insulting about their diets.   Gentile Christians also saw nothing wrong with reinterpreting the 4^th commandment, moving worship from Sabbath to Sunday.  This was much more convenient for their work schedules and it was a good way to commemorate the Resurrection, which took place on Sunday morning.   As innocent as those differences seem to us today, these “strange ways” of the Gentile Christians caused great disruption among early congregations.

I recall in one of my previous pastorates how the church council decided we needed to reach out to people who lived in mobile homes in our area.  Several of our members owned mobile home parks and had sincere concerns for the spiritual condition of their tenants.  Everything went well until I, actually lead one lady to Christ and brought her to church.  To see this woman, sitting in the pew with them, with all of her personal problems and emotional baggage unnerved us.  We saw that she had been converted to Christ, but she was still far from being “one of us”.    Its one thing to talk about winning the world to Christ, but it’s quite another thing when the world actually shows up.   It’s one thing to send missionaries out, but it’s something different when the mission is in your own church community.  Although differences among Christians have changed through the years, the challenge of accepting one another is very much the same.  

This is why Paul’s word to the church is timeless: If you want to be a church that brings a witness to Christ and is not a stumbling block to him, then you must master the logic of accepting each other just like Christ has accepted you.  Paul says that this is the only way God will be glorified (15:7).  It is the only way that we all can join together with “one voice, giving praise and glory to God.” (15:6). 

Of course, THIS IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE, ISN’T IT?  We know what the biblical word is, but we wonder: isn’t there is a limit to what we should and should not accept?  Besides, we live in a day of decaying morals with a downward spiral of human civility.  People seem too accepting and over tolerant.  Aren’t we prone to believe that this kind of permissive attitude got us into our moral mess anyway?   Sometimes religious conservatives warn : “Beware of the slippery slope.”  They capitalized on this logic, telling us that all one has to do is compromise on one point, accept one person we shouldn’t or one proposition we shouldn’t, and we are already sliding off into the bottomless chasm of no return.  Such dramatic, fear-based rhetoric, leads only to an increased climate of suspicion, conflict and division, not reconciliation.  

Of course, being Christian does not mean that since Jesus accepts us we ought to accept anything and everything that is called Christian.  Being Christian does mean that some things are not Christian.  Reinhold Niebuhr, after realizing what tolerance of the Nazis did to Germany, said prophetically: “God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a Kingdom without judgement, through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”   Certainly and especially in our kind of slippery world, the logic of acceptance cannot mean that we are to be accepting of anything and everything.             

Unfortunately, this is as far as many go. We go just far enough to define what we think God can or can’t accept, majoring on what we are against, rather than remembering what we are for.  In this day of moral decline, culture wars, and political polarization, many are wondering if we in the church can offer any help in overcoming our cultural confusion, our human prejudice and our political divisiveness, instead of adding to it.  Do we have a word beyond defining who is right and what is wrong?  What kind of world can we expect when we, even we in the church, find it easier to draw lines between us, rather than draw circles around us?  Would our line-drawn-world really be a more perfect world?    

Naturally, when something threatens us, we defensively focus on what is right about us and what is wrong about others.  That is human nature.  But PAUL CHALLENGES US TO go a step further-- to go to the level of a HIGHER LOGIC of accepting, a logic based not upon human nature, but upon the divine nature revealed in Jesus Christ.  Paul wants us to move to this more personal and more constructive level human relationships.  Let’s quickly review what this means.

First, in Romans 14:1, Paul’s logic of acceptance says, “Accept Christians who are weak in faith, and DON’T ARGUE with them about what they think is right or wrong.”   How many friends are made with arguments?  How many people are won to your position when you prove them wrong and prove yourself correct?  Whether the issue is food, style of worship, day of worship, music, or moral lifestyle, Paul says, that when we underline or accentuate our differences we are doing unnecessary harm to our spiritual fellowship.  

Furthermore, we should be RELUCTANT TO PROVE OURSELVES BETTER than others.  “Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God,” Paul says (14:10).   Here is the ultimate reason not to press every issue within our fellowship: Nothing is finally settled by us, but will only be settled by God at his judgment. What logic is there in condemning or putting down each other when the Bible says, “there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1)?   I once asked my Father why he was such a quiet man; never gossiping or putting down anyone.  He answered: “Son, have you not read that the Bible says we will give an account of every idle word we speak?”  In that moment I wondered what God would say about my stupid question.

The next part of Paul’s logic of acceptance is most profound.  In Romans 14:20 he tells the church: “Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat.”  At the heart of Paul’s logic, we are reminded that when we there are differences of religious “taste” or viewpoints among believers, we must make sure we don’t tear up the main thing we all want by attempting to get rid of the lesser thing that offends some of us now.  Let me ask: how many have ruined a sweater by pulling at single loose thread?  Is fixing that thread worth all the damage it might do, if we pull carelessly.   How many have pulled up a tender plant when attempting pull up a stubborn weed?  “Let the weeds and wheat grow together,” Jesus says.   The Kingdom of God does not come by fixing all the little things, but the Kingdom of God comes as we all work toward the big things that are the same for us all: living the goodness we know, keeping the peace with each other, and living out of the joy of the Spirit (14:17). We must make sure we keep the main thing the main thing, for God’s concern is for the attitude of our faith; not the exactitude of it.  Our aim in explaining our differences should be ‘clarity’ not ‘victory, as Bill Hull has rightly said.

The final word in Paul’s logic of acceptance in found in 15:1,2: “We must be considerate of the doubts and fears of others...We should please others.”   Fellowship doesn’t happen when we live for ourselves.  Consideration of others needs and sensitivities, especially those of the “weaker sibling”, is what finally creates the atmosphere of Christian fellowship.   Who is the weaker sibling?   At some time or other, it will be any of us. This does not mean we will are always able to accommodate the weaker ones around us, but it does mean that we should always try.  At least at church, it is should be the Spirit that counts the most.  

Do you see the implications for us?  Whereas it is natural and needful to point out what we can or can’t accept, Paul’s logic of acceptance urges us to go a step further. He tells us to dwell upon who we should accept because God has accepted us. If we want to glorify God in the church, we will go beyond arguing over what is right or wrong and become a people working together toward acceptance in Christ. 

In a scene from the movie Ironweed, the characters played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep stumble across an old Eskimo woman lying in the snow, probably drunk.  Besotted themselves, the two debate what they should do about her.  “Is she drunk or bum?” asks Nicholson.  “Just a bum.  Been one all her life.”  “And before that?”  “She was a whore in Alaska.”  “She hasn’t been a whore all her life. Before that?”  “I dunno.  Just a kid, I guess.”  “Well, a little kid’s something.  It’s not a bum and it’s not a whore.  It’s something.  Let’s take her in.”³  The two vagrants finally saw this Eskimo as God sees us all: “They are someone. I’ll take them in.”  

Maybe the example’s a bit extreme, but you get the message: “Accept each other, as Jesus Christ accepted you.”   This is how all Christian fellowship begins and ends.  Amen.

_________________________

¹ Barbara Lemmel, in Christian Century Magazine, January 6-13, 1999, p. 15.

² All Biblical quotes from the New Living Translation, (Wheaton Illinois, Tyndale House Publishers, 1996)

³ As told by Philip Yancy in, What’s So Amazing About Grace, (Grand Rapids, Michagin: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997, p. 280.

“Wearing Jesus”

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 12: 9-21; 14:  10-14

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   November 9th, 2014

“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ…. (Rom 13:14 NAU).  

Once a young preaching student asked his professor, "How many points should a sermon have?"   The professor answered immediately back,  "At least one."

Young preachers have a lot to learn, and great preachers are always learning.  It's really no different for any of us.  We must all be 'lifelong learners” if we want to stay engaged with life.  I’ve been ‘learning’ how to be a Christian all my life.  I’m still learning, and I hope you are too.

When I began my ministry there was much discussion about a new piece of Christian jewelry that was very popular in youth groups at that time.  You probably remember those WWJD bracelets, necklesses, T-shirts and other paraphernalia, coming out of the youth Jesus movement.   The idea originated in book written years before (1896) entitled "In His Steps", where the question was first asked,  "What would Jesus Do?"  The point of the book and the jewelry was that if you really want to live as a Christian, you must ask yourself in every situation you encounter, "What would Jesus Do?" and then try to live accordingly.   It all sounds good, until we realize what Jesus did do, and how he died?  Can we do that?

An even better image for living the Christian life, comes at the conclusion of Romans 13.  The apostle Paul had his own take on what it means to live the Christian life.  He said it is like putting on new clothes.  This is what he means when he makes this grand conclusion to all he has been saying in Romans 13: ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ'  (Rm. 13:14).   Sounds simple, but look closer.  Paul pictures wearing Jesus to be like putting on one single set of clothes to wear on all kinds of different occasions.  That's certainly not easy, is it?  Try to do that?  Try to wear the same clothes everywhere you go?   It could almost be comical.   We are used to putting on different clothes for differing moments of our lives, aren't we?  You shouldn't wear your pajamas to school like I did once in the first grade, forgetting to take them off before I put on my trousers.  That was embarrassing to me, even I made sure no one else saw it and got back home.  You also shouldn't wear your blue jeans to a funeral and you know better than to wear a three piece suit to do yard work.   It's certainly not advisable to wear jeans while swimming.  When you get all wet, weighed down and drown.  

How can Paul suggest something like this?   Everybody knows we’re supposed to make the clothes fit the occasion, not the other way around?   But if I understand Paul correctly, he’s saying that if we want to be a follower of Jesus, we must wear Jesus in every moment and each situation of our lives.  Let's see how he wants us to do that?

WEARING JESUS IN CHURCH

The first place is the most obvious.  We need to "wear Jesus" at church.  That's easy, right?  Well, not always.  Sometimes the hardest place to be like Jesus is at church.  

Let me start out positively.   Church is where I grew up.  Some of the most wonderful people in my life I knew at church.   When as a child, we left the city to return to the country,  I was homesick, so some of the people made sure I came back for Christmas to get my presents.  People at church supported and loved me, just because I grew up there, and even when my sermons were terrible, and sometimes still are.   Over all, there is no place in the world like a body of believers, who believe in hope, faith and love?   

But let me also be frank and clear.  Some of the angriest, meanest people I've ever met, I’ve also known at church.  I've seen people get so mad at each other, even neighbors, friends, brothers and sisters, would not speak to each other.  And many have left the church for good, because of something that happens, or because of people they've met at church.  Recall the church lady on Saturday night live?  She's fictitious, but her course demeanor is how many view church. 

Not long a book very critical of church came out saying that though churches are in decline, faith is not.  One person even suggested that people still like Jesus, but not the church.  While there are many good churches, the growing trend is away, rather than toward church.   One of the most respected evangelical Christians, Philip Yancey might give us an idea why?  He tells of how a prostitute came to a downtown street mission in Chicago.  Everything was falling apart for her.  She was homeless, sick, and unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter.  She had even been "renting out" her daughter---two years old!   She made more money on her daughter in an hour than she could earn on her own in a whole night.  Her story was hard to bear and it made the mission work legally liable.   It was hard to know what to say to her.  Finally, the mission worker asked her if she'd ever thought about going to church for help.   Pure, naive shock went across her face.  "Church!"  she cried.  "Why would I ever go there?  I am already feeling terrible about myself.  They just make me feel worse."

While there were many things that had gone wrong in life of that woman, one thing she got right is her critique of church in the eyes of the world.  Most people see the church as a place that makes them feel worse; worse about themselves, worse about the world, worse, even about religion and faith, especially when Christians don't, as the song says, "know we are Christians by our love", which begins with how we treat and love each other.

Can we change the negative impressions toward church in the world around us?  It's not easy to undo the damage that's been done, but Paul shows us the right place to start; not with changing the world but with changing ourselves.  "Don't think more highly of yourself that you ought to think...." (12:3)  Get off that high horse!  Faith works differently for different people!  We who are many, are still to be one body! (5)  We have gifts differing....(6)  Let love be without hypocrisy!  (9).   In this passage, Paul says some very foundational things about being like Jesus at church.  When we get along with each other at church, and when we practice living what we say we believe at church, and when we put on and wear Jesus here first in church, we will then have occasions to wear Jesus elsewhere.  For, if we don't wear Jesus here, in this dedicated place, where Jesus in worshipped, how can we wear Jesus anywhere else? 

I’ve done a lot of funerals over the years of ministry.  Some of them came at the end of a long struggle with illness and were like a relief.   Others, were tragic, difficult, and pushed everyone near the edge….   What is most tragic is not that someone dies, but that someone dies alone, or without hope.   What I mean by dying alone is not dying alone without someone close by.  That’s bad enough.  I mean dying alone without any kind of word of hope.  

The love we all need most is the love of God that promises us hope, no matter what we go through in life.  For most all of us, that promise of hope comes, not through one person, and not through mere written words—even the words of the Bible---the good book.  But the Word of God and the word of hope and promise are channeled to us through the living and loving body of Christ, we call the church.    Even as imperfect as we are,  when we at least “try” to love each other (even when we might not like each other) and when we come together in genuine love for God, despite our differences, despite our conflicts, and despite our shortcomings,  something still happens in a fellowship of believers who strive to be a spiritual family of  faith, hope, and love, which happens nowhere else.    When love is expressed in a living, breathing, caring and loving body, that love can accompany us from the cradle to the grave and it can and will sustain us and sustain our hope.   “Wearing Jesus”  here at church, first of all, we give faith, hope and love---to those who are growing, to those who are going, we might say.   As Paul told the Ephesians:  “as each part (of the church body) is working properly, (it) promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love (Eph 4:16 NRS).

WEARING JESUS BEFORE THE WORLD

After Paul speaks of ‘wearing Jesus’ in what should be a very safe environment (v. 10),  he then moves on to a more hostile environment.   Now, Paul speaks strangely of  even 'blessing those who persecute you' (v. 14), and more specifically that we should 'never pay back evil for evil to anyone' (v. 17).   Of course this is ‘dangerous’, and of course it can be like ‘bearing a cross’ that might cost you.   Wearing Jesus in the world is never promised to be easy.    Why would anyone want to ‘wear Jesus’ like this?   We wear Jesus before the world, even the aggressive, harmful and hurting world, because we are to 'to respect what is right in the sight of everyone' (17b), and we are to 'be at peace with all' (v. 18)  and we 'never seek revenge' (v. 19) because, as Christians, we are to ‘leave room’ (NAU) or ‘ give place’ (KJV) for God.  

It easier to be negative when the world turns negative around us.  But when only react negatively, we are not wearing Jesus in the world.  To wear Jesus means that we respond to evil with positive things,  plus signs like the cross; like feeding our enemies,  quenching the thirst, and doing good for even for people we don't like (and don't like us).  Instead of being 'overcome by evil', we can only 'overcome evil with good' (v. 20-21).  

We know that we live in an increasingly secular, non-religious society that is becoming less appreciative of Christian faith in particular, and less tolerant of religion in general.  We've all are seeing less religion in public life; less in schools, less in court rooms, less respect or understanding of faith.   Ironically,  statistics show that Christianity is holding its own among the educated and urban,  but it is sliding more quickly in rural areas, and among those with less education.  Some of  this negativity toward God might be in response to job loss and struggling economics, and part of it is also in the reaction of public fears to growing religious radicalism and fundamentalism; in both Islam and in Christianity.   It has caused silent atheists to become even more outspoken against all religious belief.

I lived in Europe for several years, and saw how the land of great Cathedrals and Churches are now mostly museums.  What were once “Christian nations” have now become places where people are less religious, and very few, even among those who preferred Christianity, had anything to do with an organized church.   The same seems to be happening in America, and there seems to be no way back.  How do we wear Jesus in a world where more and more have little or no understanding?

I’ll never forgotten how a communist man, who had always been against the church, was still in shock after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, but out of curiosity, he walked into a church service for the first time in his life.  He had always thought church was stupid, senseless and meaningless.  After the service had concluded--- after he had experienced the preaching of the Word for the first time, and after he had experienced the fellowship of believers for the first time, and after he had sense the power of the Holy Spirit for the very first time, he then stood up and testified before them:   “I just want you all to know, that I have found something so positive here among you and so life affirming, that I want to become one with you and I don’t want to hate anymore.   Who could can resist being changed when believers and unbelievers, simply stop to make room for God and the transformation of a soul.

In Lewis' Carroll's children's classic, Alice In Wonderland, the White Queen makes a wonderful statement to Alice, when she explains how she "tries to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  “Count them Alice,"  she says.  Well,  Paul says that is exactly how we wear Jesus before the world.  We must try 'impossible things',  or at least what the world (and even some Christians) think is impossible.   We must these ‘impossible things’ an even greater priority than breakfast.   Can't you name these impossible things in this text:  "Bless those who persecute you....",   "weep with those who weep....", "don't be haughty in mind'....,   "associate with the lowly".... "don't be wise in your own estimation,"  "never pay back evil for evil",  "never take revenge,    "  feed and give drink to your enemy"....   That's already 8 impossible things.  Could you imagine how much easier it would be for the world to believe in God when they could see us wearing Jesus by doing 'impossible things' that only those who believe in Jesus would ever dare to do?   Think of how ‘inspiring’ it is when people forgive, even forgive the most unthinkable.    By doing such 'impossible things' we wear Jesus in the world and we make ‘room’ or ‘place’ for God to work.

WEARING JESUS IN OUR NATION

Finally, it had to happen.  In  Roman 13, wearing Jesus gets political.   We know that  mixing political opinions with religious viewpoints is as dangerous as dynamite.   But there is even a good use for dynamite, if we train ourselves in how to use it properly.  

Paul tells us how to ‘wear Jesus’ in our nation by being “in subjection to the governing authorities....' (Rm. 13.1).   For us, in a two-party system, this means that when Republicans are in the majority, we are to be subject to the republicans and we to respect and work with them.  When the Democrats are in the majority, we are to be subject to the democrats as we respect and work with them.   Now, that's certainly making, bearing a cross, isn’t it?  How do you do this, especially when you  believe they are in the wrong?

What we need to understand is that Paul was not talking about a Christian government, nor was he talking about a Government that was even supportive of the Christian faith.   Paul was talking about Roman Christians being subject to pagan Roman laws, because the Christian faith has bigger fish to fry.   Do you recall what Paul told the Galatians, when he told them to cultivate the 'fruit of the Spirit' which included love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.... and so on (Gal. 5.22)?  These spiritual 'fruit' are Christian priorities.   They are line items you would never see on the political agenda of any worldly government.   Even our great American government only speaks about providing  'justice for all',  and never has any kind of specific goal to show 'love for all'.  

As Christians, who are to wear Jesus in our nation, it is not learning how to wave a flag as much as it is about is about keeping faith while we respect the flag.   Remember how once Paul revealed the Christian agenda when he spoke about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and so on, and then said:  'against these there is no law' (Gal. 5.23).  I would only also add that for these, that is for Jesus and his love, kindness, peace, patience, and kindness there is no government law that can really ‘promote’ them either.   The law of government can punish you when you do wrong, but it can’t encourage you to do right.    Christians are respect the government’s law so we can promote Christ’s higher laws and commands---namely Jesus’ new ‘law’ that we love one another.  

As long as a government gives us freedom to keep God’s law, we should respect and be 'subject' to it.  We should wear Jesus by being good citizens, as Paul writes:  "Do what is good and you will have praise from the (authorities)!"  (Rm. 13.3)....  "Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor...." (Rm. 13.6).   But wearing Jesus by being good citizens goes beyond being democrat or a republican, or for that matter, even being an American.  

Most of you recall the mountain preacher who told his church members, that if they were not voting republican, they needed to find another church.   Fortunately, at least from what I heard, that church found another preacher instead.   One of the quickest ways to stop wearing Jesus is to start wearing a particular political party and saying that only that can be right.   Just wait, one day they will be wrong.  Even if they get it right today, tomorrow things will be different, and they probably won't be able to change when situations change.   This is why Jesus must be bigger than any one political viewpoint.  Jesus has his own politics and it’s the kind of politics is beyond any political party and should involve both, as they both submit to the truth of God. 

We all know that in Europe, the German church once became confused and followed Hitler and the German state, even when it was going against the laws of God.   People mistakenly thought that Hitler spoke for God, and they became confused about what they should'render to God' and what they should 'render to Government'.    I also hope we never have to choose between the two; and I hope our children don't either.   For now, in country where faith and freedom are still valued,  being “ subject to the authorities” does not mean we have to wear the nation in our churches, but as Christians, it does mean that we must wear Jesus as we live in this nation.  

WEARING JESUS AS A NEIGHBOR

Paul's last word about wearing Jesus concerns one of the most important questions Jesus ever was asked by anyone: "Who is My Neighbor?"  In that gospel story a Lawyer came to Jesus asking a very religious question (how do I have eternal life) but Jesus gave him a very practical answer that loving God means loving your neighbor.   When the lawyer then asked, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus then gave him a very human, heartwrenching story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:37).   From that story we discover even an expert in the law had trouble figuring out how to love his neighbor.

This is still our greatest human problem, which Scripture puts in front of us again when John writes: "How can we love God, whom we haven't seen, when we don't love our brother, whom we do see" (1 Jn. 4.10)?   How can we love  any of those around us, whether they be 'brother', 'sister' or 'neighbor'?    Agreeing that this is the question a Christian must answer, Paul adds:  "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who love his neighbor has fulfilled the law."( Rom. 13.8).   Do you realize that the only thing we owe everyone can be the hardest thing of all to do?  How is it possible to love our neighbor when we live ways that keep us from even getting to know our neighbors?

Eric Lomax, was an British army officer in WWII, who was captured and spent time in a Japanese prison camp.   I don't think any neighbor would be harder to love than the one who has tortured and tried to kill us.  That was the problem Lomax had.  He was unmercifully tortured by his enemy, and one particular Japanese guard.  After the war was over, he still had nightmares about the ordeal and was unable to forgive, wanting to go back and confront the Japanese man who submitted him to torture.   Possessed by hate, Lomax finally went back and to find, face and kill that Japanese.   He found the man, put him in a cage, just like the man had done to him.  While he was ready to take the knife and kill him,  and began to see this man humbled and shaking in fear,  something inside of him told hi, that if he killed this Japanese, the hate would never stop.   Instead, he let his enemy out of the cage, and they became close friends, and the hate and hurt was healed in them both.  

What did Lomax realize?  He realize that if he did not pay the debt being able to choose love, over hate, he would always be empty.  Only by paying the debt of ‘love’, even the strange debt of loving our enemies, can we pay a cost that gives us more than we could ever imagine.  This is why we must wear Jesus; in the church, in the world, in our nation, and also before our neighbor, even when that neighbor happens to be an enemy.  Only by ‘putting on the LORD Jesus Christ’ will we fulfill the law of love that has the power to redeem us all.   Amen.

Proving God's Will

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 12: 1-5

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   Nov. 2, 2014  (Homecoming at Flat Rock)

“Therefore I urge you, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.   And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

 (Rom 12:1-2 NAU)

How can you know the will of God for your life?   That was a big question for teens and college students, when I was one myself.  I guess it should be, since when we are young we are still trying to figure out who we are and what we should do with our lives.   When we get older, the question is not so much who am I or what do I do, but why have things turned out the way they have, or why did God allow this to happen to me?   Interestingly, the whole question and concern about what is or isn’t the will of God always looks a lot like us.

In the year before the end of World War II, a lot of people, especially in Europe, where full of questions about “The Will of God”.   This prompted a great and gifted preacher of that time,  Leslie Weatherhead to preach about it which became the title of one of the most popular books ever written, which seeks to answer the question: What is The Will of God.   Pastor Weatherhead said that God’s will is so great, that we can’t understand in one way, but in several ways: God’s will includes God’s intentional Will (the things God’s wants to have happen),  God’s circumstantial will (the things God allows to happen) and God’s ultimate will (the things that God will accomplish, no matter what happens).   Those messages helped a lot of people to rise above the terrible things that were happening in England and in Europe, and the terminology still helps Christians today gain a greater perspective on what can’t be, what might be, and what must be, the will of God.  

The most important lesson I received from Weatherhead is that everything that happens in this world is not God’s will, nor is it what God wants to have happen.  God’s will is that which we must still pray for and what we must still partner with God to bring about, so that Christ’s prayer is finally answered and God’s will is “done on earth as it is in heaven”.    As things are right now, God’s will sometimes look much more like a wish or a dream, than a reality.  One day God’s dream will come true, but that day has not yet come.

When Paul wrote his great theological letter to the Romans, the first part of it was written to talk about the gospel and how it fit into the will and wish of God that all people be saved.  This is the wish of God and the will of God, but it is not yet the reality.   God wants it to be so, and Paul is preaching it as if it will be so, and he has been trying to lay out all the plans God has for the salvation of everyone, through the righteousness that has been revealed in Christ Jesus.  Paul has experienced this righteousness himself, through God’s love and grace and he wants to take that message to the world.   Paul knows that this is God’s will for him, but what about God’s will for us?   Where do we come in?

GOD’S WILL MUST BE PROVED RATHER THAN KNOWN

The first thing Paul says about God’s will for us and our own lives, is that this is ‘will’ that must be ‘proved’ rather than ‘known’.   In other words, you can’t know God’s will before you try it and are doing and proving it.  You don’t read, study, pray and discover God’s will like some magic truth that is hidden away in a hat like a rabbit to be revealed, but God’s truth has already been revealed and now we ‘prove’ the will of God by giving our lives to the truth God has revealed, so you can serve and become a ‘living sacrifice’ for what is good, acceptable, reasonable and perfect.

           

When I was praying about which college or university to attend, I did not wait around for some answer to be written in the sky, but I put my application into two schools where I felt I could study and learn.  I was trying to prove God’s will by doing, rather than knowing.  After I sent the applications in, I received an immediate answer from one school, but I did not receive any  letter of acceptance from the other.  So I acted upon the letter I received from Gardner-Webb and went to college there.  But how did I really prove this was God’s will for me?  It wasn’t until 6 months later, when I was already studying, already settled in, and already making new friends, that I received a letter from the other school, wondering why I did not show up.  It appears that somehow the acceptance letter got lost in the mail. 

But it wasn’t just the ‘lost letter’ that proved the will of God, but God’s will was finally proved by my willingness study at this school, stay in school and graduate.  Once, the Will of God was tested, as I was learning difficult truths to accept, and thought about transferring to the other school.   In talking to my Father, who wanted me to go to the other school, he advised me, against his wishes, believing it would be best for me to ‘finish what and where I started.”  This again was a moment when God’s will was proved, so that now my will was being joined with God’s will to do what needed to be done.  When I look back upon those days of formation and learning,  I now realize that I could have decided to go to either school and it could have turned out to be within the ‘will of God’.   

God’s will is not like picking up one of those ‘ducks’ at the County Fair and winning a prize, but it is more getting in the pond with the ducks and to start swimming toward the goal that is opening up for us, as we desire God’s dream.   The place where we begin to know God’s will is to will God’s will so much that we start doing the kinds of things that will prove God’s will to us.   In my situation, as well as in yours, finding God’s will is more than deciding or determining the specifics for our lives (where to study or what to do, who to marry, or what kind of work we should do), but it is more generally about the way we should live as we go toward the things we’ve decided and who we become, as we dive into our living and live our lives being led by the Spirit, not simply going our own way. 

GOD’S WILL IS ABOUT HOW YOU LIVE (and Die) 

“The problem with a living sacrifice” Chuck Swindoll once said, ‘is that a living sacrifice keeps trying to crawl off the altar.”  What’s makes God’s will difficult for most of us, is not that we don’t know what God wants or wishes of us, but it is that it is hard to follow and live the call and command God has on our lives.  Jesus calls us to a ‘cross’.  He said that when we ‘take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him, this is when we are doing the will of God.  It is that kind of ‘hard’ decision making, which require deciding for good in a bad world, suffering for righteousness sake, and going and doing what we don’t necessary enjoy or want to do, this is what we know to be ‘hard’ about the Will of God. 

But why do you think God’s will is ‘hard’ like that?  Why is it easier to keep ‘crawling’ off the altar, to think that Jesus paid it all, so that we don’t have to pay a dime, than it is to keep giving our lives to God as a ‘living sacrifice’?   The answer ‘why’ is much easier to understand, than it is to do, isn’t it?  It is hard to do God’s will because it is not ‘our will’.   It is hard to do God’s will because sometimes it hurts.   It is hard to do God’s will because the world does not go with us and most of the time, to follow Jesus means we have to go it alone, or we have to go against the grain, or we find ourselves swimming against the currents of this world.   Why would we ever want to do something like this, and why would God make ‘his will’ so hard, like a cross to bear? 

Haven’t you wondered the same thing about other things in life?  Why does cake taste so good, is hard to resist, and can hurt us, if we eat too much of it?  Why do the things we like to do come easy, and not the things we have to do?  In other words, why can’t we make a living having fun, rather than going to work?   Why is the world the way it is, which challenges, tests, dares or defiles us?  Why is it easier to go downhill than uphill?  Does that sound silly to ask?  We all know what physics tells us, but this does not tell us why physics are the way they are and why life demands something from us. 

Everything that means anything requires something of us that is hard.  Life will kill us one way or another, but if we don’t resist and work against the negatives of the world and life, it’s very hard to end up in the positive column; either being positive in spirit, or having more days to live and more meaning and joy in life.  Life always puts demands upon us before it will bless us.  Like Jacob we have to wrestle against God, before he will bless us.   We will always have some kind of limp, before we really learn how to live.   It is through the struggle and the limp that life shows us exactly why some kinds of living are good for us, but other ways of living are not, and to learn this kind of lesson and to life it can even be hard, as hard as it is rewarding.   

When you think about it, the reason Jesus calls us to a way of life that ‘bears a cross’  and calls us to be ‘disciples’ is not really so strange when you understand the reality of what life is, what life really means, and how life must be approached, so that we can live with purpose, meaning, and joy.  Life is not a picnic, but that does not mean we can’t go on one from time to time.  But if we are always living only to go on picnics, or we are always living to be entertained, or if we are only living for what we want, then life will run out of the positive energy we need to keep on living, to keep on loving, and to keep on pressing “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God that in Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3.14, NRSV) which God has established for us.  We need to live for a purpose and for a dream beyond our own will and wishes.  If we don’t, we become shortsighted, narrow minded, thoughtless, and our living becomes short-lived and empty of hope.  But when we make our lives an ‘altar’ where God can teach, use and transform us, then are living toward the dream that remains forever in God.

One more thing to note is that it is not as much ‘what’ we do, but ‘how’ we do it and ‘why’ ( or who) we do it for, that matters.   As Brother Lawrence, the monk from the Middle Ages once learned, you can even make a life of washing dishes to be important, if you are doing it for the good of others and you are doing it for holy purpose of God.   It just doesn’t take doing big things for big reasons to prove God’s will, but even doing small things for the right reasons is the way to know God’s presence and to discover what God wants in our lives and in the world.  This is why Paul says, that we ‘prove’ the will of God by ‘presenting our bodies’ for serving and worship, rather than giving us any more specifics.  There may be no specifics, other than to have us live our lives toward that which is acceptable, good and perfect which will prove out in God’s future.  This does not mean we have to be perfect, but we should live to do things that aim us toward God’s perfection for good.  

GOD’S WILL IS ABOUT WHO YOU CAN BECOME (Not Who You Are)

This brings us to the final part of ‘proving’ God’s will, rather than ‘knowing it’.  We prove God’s will not by finding it out, discovering a secret, or seeing a sign, but we prove God’s will by becoming who we can be as we live for good and for God. 

What God will wants for us is much more than to show us a path to take, a decision to make, or judgment to conclude.  God’s will may include any of these, but it is always much, much more than finding out something; it is more like doing what we already know we should do, and becoming who we never dreamed we could be.

Fleming Rutledge tells the story about walking in the cemetery when she visits her hometown of Franklin, Virginia, which at that time was a segregated as any other.  One of the burial plots contained the grave of a young man, and beside him his mother and father.   That young man was tragically killed when he was struck by a another car, which happened to be full of intoxicated black youths.  When she walks there she remembers the mother, who revealed to her as much as anyone else in her young, impressionable years, what it means to ‘be’ as well as what it means to ‘will’ and want to do God’s will.   Rutledge says she never has forgotten “how the dead young man’s mother, some weeks after the accident, sat in my parent’s living room having tea with my mother.  This woman was like most women in her town, churchgoing, deeply devout, Bible-reading and brought up from infancy to be a segregationalist…..”   Amazingly, she said this: “I don’t know why I don’t hate those drunken colored people.  I don’t know why.  I just don’t.” 

Do you understand what God wants the most?  It is already made clear what God wills.  God does not want us to be ‘conformed to this world’ but to be ‘transformed’ by the ‘renewing of our minds’ so that we become more Christ-like, more trusting, more loving, more servant oriented, working and doing the good we all know we should do, until we become what we know we should and can become.   

There is no real hidden mystery to God’s will.  Everything has been revealed already, except the great ‘mystery’ of the life and people we can be.  When we, as God's people give our lives to the dream of God, we discover and become the will of God.  The only great mystery left, Paul told young Timothy, is the ‘mystery of godliness’ (1 Tim. 3.16).   This is the Will of God we have to prove.  When we let God’s dream shape us, change us, and renew our thinking and our living, we are right on course, headed in the right direction God wills for us.  Are you going that way?   To go that way, you must first live that way.  This is what God wills and reveals.   Amen .