“By This Gospel You Are Saved”.

Easter sermon based upon 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Easter Sunrise, April, 21 2019

In his book, Contexualizing the Gospel Brian Harbor reminded us that in the ancient world, many Messiahs came and went, but who today recalls their names? 

Do you remember Simon Bar Giora?   In 69 AD he rallied Palestinian Jews to march against Rome.  40K soldiers responded.  They called him Messiah, Christ.  They marched.  Even coins with his name have been unearthed, saying “Redemption of Zion”.  He lost.  Rome burned Jerusalem. Jews were scattered in Diaspora.

Do you remember Simon Bar Kochba?  In 135 AD this other Simon was called by Jews in Palestine the Christ, Messiah.  People had high hopes.  They rallied behind him.  But Rome dashed in and put him to death.  Who remembers Simon Bar Kochba, except scholars?

Finally, go back to 30 AD.  Certain Jews experienced a very different kind of Christ.  He was a compassionate preacher, healer, and also a prophet, who exposed the evils of his own world, but taught people to love anyway.  But those evils rallied against him, and put him to death.  But instead of dispersing his followers, they began to grow, preach, and teach that he was the true Messiah—the true Christ.  But he was a very different kind of Christ.  Today, he has followers on every continent of the world, who say that this Messiah is their Christ.  “He came unto his own, and his own rejected him; but as many as received him, became sons and daughters of God too.”

Today, on Easter Sunday morning, while all these other Messiah’s are long forgotten, we come here not only simply to remember, what happen differently to this one called Jesus of Nazareth, but we come here not to remember him, but we come here because the hope of Jesus as the Christ , our Savior is alive in us.  This hope has been passed down to us, just like it was passed down to Paul the apostle, when he said, to the Corinthians: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4 NIV).  Paul goes on to say that this Jesus, who was ‘raised’ then appeared to Peter, one of his disciples, and to the other disciples as well, and finally he appeared as many as 500 others, many of whom were still living as Paul writes.

What is most amazing about Paul’s message, is that this Messiah, this Christ, and this Jesus of Nazareth would have been forgotten too, just like all the other would-be-Messiahs, had it not been for Easter morning.  Easter morning makes everything look different.  Before Easter, on Friday, everything went dark.  During the late Thursday evening, Jesus was arrested, then falsely tried and convicted of blaspheming God.  Then, during the early morning, he appeared before the Roman governor, who wanted to release him, but the crowd cried out against him.  Then, by 9 am, Jesus was crucified between two thieves, just like thousands of other people were in those days.  Who remembers any of them?  Can you name a single one of those thousands of people the Romans executed as a criminal?

So, here’s what I want help us understand today.  Easter, because those 500 or people experienced it, caused them to see everything differently.  They not only established a spiritual community based on the Easter hope which they had, with the help of the Holy Spirit, their hope became the Christian faith, and for us, the churches that still live in that hope of everything Jesus taught, lived, and arose to pass on to us. Because of this Easter experience, we join them in the kind of faith that both sees life, and also lives life, differently because of Easter.   

What I want us to consider why does Easter matter?  What difference does Easter still make?

WE SEE GOD DIFFERENTLY.   People believed in God before Easter, but after Easter God is understood in a whole different way.  

Before Easter, God was a distant; perceived to be removed from our human struggles and suffering with sin and death.  He was a God who really didn’t understand.  But now, because of Easter, we know that God understands.  Jesus called God Abba, Father, and Jesus instructs us call him Father too.   And as God’s Son, taking upon himself human flesh, in Jesus, God suffers death just like we do to reconcile us to him. 

While God did not remove death from this world, God comes to transform death and he promises us that nothing will ‘separate us from the love of Jesus Christ….neither death nor life…. Nothing!

Perhaps the most important difference in our human understanding of God, through Easter is that God is ‘for us’, not against us.   Some people still think God is out to get them (or us), but what Easter proclaims to us that has come not only to save us, but through the resurrection of Jesus, God shows us his promise to bring about a whole new creation.   God not only loves us, he wants to point us toward the world that is still coming and the future that is still coming.  God is not any kind of God who is out to get us, any of us, even sinners, but God is up to something.  Through Jesus Christ, God ‘proves his love for us’ and reveals, once and for all, that he a saving God, not a condemning God,  who wants to save us for what God will do next.

WE SEE JESUS DIFFERENTLY TOO.   Because we can now see God differently, as a God who is for us, not against us; through Easter we can also see Jesus differently.   As I said before, everything Jesus did, taught, lived, and died for would have been forgotten, had it not been for the Resurrection.  But when God raised Jesus from the grave, God not only proved his love for us, but he vindicated everything Jesus was about while he lived his short life on earth.

Isn’t this what the 4 gospels are about?  Isn’t this what the ‘apostles’ teaching’ is about?  Isn’t this what ‘discipleship’ and Sunday School, and also Worship is about?  Everything we do in the church today, is because God put his stamp of approval on everything Jesus said, did, lived and died for.   And what was that?

When Jesus preached the sermon on the mount, Jesus revealed a whole new way of interpreting the law.   Jesus said, ‘you’ve heard it said, but I say to you….  Blessed are those who mourn….Love your enemy…Do good to those who hurt you!   Those are just a few of the very strange teachings Jesus gave us.  We would call them all ridiculous, and some still do, except that God put his stamp of approval on all Jesus said and did.   He did this through Easter.   Through Easter, we are all challenged to live the truth that Jesus lived.

Another thing different about Jesus is that we know not only what he said was true, but we know that God accepted Jesus, the sinless one, as the sacrifice for all sin.  Because of validating and vindicating Jesus, God says that sin is not a problem; unless we want it to be.  We still have a free choice, but because of Jesus, when we put our faith in him, sin is forgiven, sin is forgotten, and sinners are transformed by God’s love. 

The final thing different about Jesus, is not just what God approves of, and who God as excepted as the final sacrifice for sin, but the truth of Easter tells us that we too can put our trust in Jesus.   Just as Jesus trusted the Father and put himself into God’s hands, we too can trust God to the very end and put ourselves into God’s hands.  Because God was faithful to Jesus, we can know that God will be faithful to us, and we can trust our lives into this very faithful God.

Some time ago someone spoke about how it’s hard to trust anyone or anything anymore.   We used to trust the military, then came Vietnam.  We used to trust the politicians, then came Watergate.  We used to trust the engineers, then came the Challenger explosion.  We also thought we could trust in our Broker, then came Black Monday.  We thought then, that we could trust in the preachers, then came Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart.  In a world that is broken, fallen, and still rebellious, who can we trust? 

 Who can we trust who will never let us down?   We can trust in Jesus.  Jesus never stopped loving the world, and neither does God.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes (trusts) in him, will not perish, but will have eternal life.”   If we can’t trust in Jesus, and we can’t trust that God raised, him; there is nothing, no one else to trust, because we all fall short of God’s glory.  But Jesus doesn’t fall.  Jesus is faithful to the end, just like God will be faithful to all who put their trust in him; not in this world.

Finally, because we can now see God differently,  and because we can see Jesus differently, WE CAN NOW LIFE DIFFERENTLY TOO.   When the woman sang in that sad song, “Is this all there is?”  We now can answer, from our hearts, from the truth in our lives, and from our trust in Jesus and in God’s hope, that THIS LIFE IS NOT ALL THERE IS!  

The Bible calls Jesus’ resurrection ‘the first fruit’ and the Holy Spirit given to us through the resurrected Christ, the ‘earnest’ of what is still to come.  Now, every time we face the darkness of death, we can face it like going to sleep at night, trusting that one day, we will all wake up in the world that is still coming.  “Our Father, who art in Heaven… Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, On earth, as it is in Heaven.”  Because of Easter, when we pray, we pray differently.  When we live, we live differently.  And even when we die, we also know that we die differently.  We live in hope and we die in hope, because God’s new life, new world, and new creation is still ahead of us.  In Easter the Kingdom rule of God has already started in our hearts, and in our lives too, when we follow, trust, and live out of this Kingdom hope.  But we still live toward the Kingdom, that is not yet hear, but is coming. 

It may sound strange to say that God only gave us part of his promise at Easter.  The best part is still to come.  But isn’t this the best way we can live.  God gives us hope, promise, and peace, and God transforms how we can live, treat, and love each other, but God still gives us something to live for because we have something to live toward.   Promise.  God tells us, in Jesus resurrection, that with life, the best is yet to come.

A child’s SS class Teacher was telling her young class about Easter, telling them the story in ways they could understand.  She told them about how Jesus was a good man who did many good things to help people.  Then, she told them how bad men went against Jesus and decided to kill him.   Now, some of the children who were in the class that day, had parents who never went to church, except on Easter, so they didn’t know this story.  One of those little tenderhearted little boys, named Petey, looked at the teacher and started to cry, asking why they did this.  Why did such a good person have to die.  When another little boy, who did come to church, saw that his friend Petey was going to cry,  he said to him:  “Don’t worry Petey, he comes back in the in!”

Isn’t this the message of Easter for all of us, no matter what we are facing in life?  Life can seem unfair.  Sickness, illnesses can overcome us.  Someday all of us have to face obstacles, even death that we can’t overcome in this life.  But we don’t have to worry,  Jesus came back.  Jesus comes to us, in Spirit of peace, hope and love, still today.  And Jesus promises, that if we trust him, we can trust that we will come back too.   As Paul told the Thessalonians: “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. (1 Thess. 4:14 NIV).  Did you hear that?   “God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”  

When you believe that Easter is not just about what God did when he raised Jesus, but that Easter is also about what God will one day do in Jesus, for all who have fallen asleep in him.  You see that God looks differently.  Jesus looks differently.  Life and Death looks differently too.  And all this started, when God raised Jesus from the dead, but this God isn’t finished yet.  That’s how Easter makes everything different.  Jesus is not a long-forgotten Messiah, because God is still promising us, more to come.   Trust him.  Follow him.  Live for him.  Hope in him.  Even if you are old, especially if you are old, Hope in God.  As Robert Browning wrote:

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!” I like that.  That’s why I believe, in God, in Jesus, and in Life!  The Best is not past, but the best is yet to be.  Amen.

The Cross Has Two Sides

A sermon based upon Hebrews  13: 1-3; 8-16

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Passion/Palm Sunday,  April,  14 2019

There is an old Jewish story about how one day the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave Rome. 

Naturally there was a big uproar from the Jewish community.  So the Pope made a deal. He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community.  If the Jew won, the Jews could stay. If the Pope won, the

Jews would leave. 

The Jews realized that they had no choice. They looked around for a champion who could defend their faith, but no one wanted to volunteer.

It was too risky. So they finally picked an old man named

Moishe to represent them.

Being old and poor, he had less to lose, so he agreed. He

asked only for one addition to the debate.  Not being used to saying very much, he asked that neither side be allowed to talk. The pope agreed.

The day of the great debate came. Moishe and the Pope

sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers.

Moishe looked back at him and raised one finger.

The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head.

Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat.

The Pope pulled out a wafer and a glass of wine.

Moishe pulled out an apple.

The Pope stood up and said, 'I give up. This man is too

good. The Jews can stay.'

An hour later, the cardinals were all around the Pope

asking him what happened. The Pope said:

'First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity.

He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that

there was still one God common to both our religions.

Then I waved my finger around me to show him, that God

was all around us.  He responded by pointing to the ground, showing that God was also right here with us. 

I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show that God

absolves us from our sins.  He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything. What could I do?'

Meanwhile, the Jewish community had crowded around

Moishe, amazed that this old, almost feeble-minded man had done

what all their scholars had insisted was impossible!

'What happened?' they asked.

'Well,' said Moishe, 'first he said to me that the Jews had

three days to get out of here. I told him that not one of us was leaving. Then he told me that this whole city would be cleared of Jews.

I let him know that we were staying right here.'

'And then?' asked a woman.  'I don't know,' said Moishe. 'He took out his lunch and I  took out mine.'

That old Jewish tale illustrates the old adage that says: “There are two sides to every story.”   In fact, there are two sides to just about everything.  Just like every coin has two sides; heads and tails, there can also be two sides to morality; right and wrong, good versus evil, the dark versus the light.   “I’ve looked at life from both sides now…” goes a popular folk song.

When you think about it, even round things, like the moon, the sun, or the earth have two sides-- the side in the light, and the dark side.  Also squares, rectangles, and octagons---although they can have multiple sides, just like stories, ideas, or morality can become more complicated too.  But even will all their extra layers and complications, they can still be reduced to front or back and right side up, or upside down.  Maybe you can’t see this when all the angles are exactly the same, but if just slightly change only one of the angles, even a multisided rectangle, a pentagon, or an octagon, will it then also be understood two have two most basic sides---a front and a back, or an up and a down.

Now, I’m not trying to get scientific or silly here.  What I am trying to illustrate is that in life and reality there is always more than one dimension of truth or reality.  Understanding the truth about the cross of Jesus Christ, has at least two sides, but it can be multi-dimensional too.   The cross is that big; big enough for every person and every purpose too. 

But this day, on this Passion Sunday (or is it Palm Sunday, this day is two-sided too), I want us to consider the cross from at least two angles, both Jesus’ cross and also our cross.   Jesus said clearly in the very first gospel, the gospel of Mark; Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Mk. 8:34 NIV),.  This cross, also called the disciples cross was not just a cross to wear as a decoration, but also a cross to bear as a cross of vocation and calling to obey the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In our Scripture text from Hebrews, we are reminded that just as Jesus suffered to outside the gate of Jerusalem, so that we can be made holy, we too, as Jesus’ followers, are to go outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.  For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come (Heb. 13:13-14 NIV.  Those are certainly strong, sobering words for us all to consider and take seriously as we approach Holy Week.  These words reminds us that there are two sides to the cross: On one side of the cross Jesus suffered, but on the other side, he calls us also to suffer for the truth and to live for God’s truth, even if it hurts. 

This other side of the cross is not a popular message in a world that only wants what it wants, when it wants it.  But this side of the cross that we die on, has as much saving power, and is has as much to do with God’s saving message as the side Jesus died upon.   We acknowledge both sides of the cross when we sing: At the Cross, At the Cross, where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away….   And do you know what it means, when the writer Issac Watts said: I first saw the light?  In the very last verse he explains: But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe...   He continues: Here, Lord, I GIVE MYSELF AWAY, ‘Tis all that I can do.’  That line takes us straight to the other side of the cross, but first let’s remind ourselves of this side of the cross.

HE DIED FOR US

When the writer of Hebrews writes: …so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate (Heb. 13:12 NIV), this is the picture of the side of the cross we are all most familiar with.   The Apostle Paul put it in its most classic expression in Romans:  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8 NIV).

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says even more dramatically:  but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, (1 Cor. 1:23 NIV).

Here, we must remember that, the cross was, and still is, considered a bunch of foolishness.   Most logically, when you study closely what happen to Jesus; his teachings were rejected, his healing gospel was rejected, and he himself was rejected, as God’s Son.   For as John writes, in the most descriptive of all, “He came unto his own, but his own received him not.”

What is most amazing about the New Testament message, is that Peter, Paul, Luke and others, came to see this terrible tragedy and defeat as the purpose and plan of God.   As Simon Peter preached at Pentecost: This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross (Acts 2:23 NIV). Here, already see two sides of the cross (Stagg).  On one side the cross was ‘a life given’ by God ‘for us’, but on the other side, Jesus’ death was ‘a life taken’ innocently, and cruelly, by people who had their own evil plans. 

The question the first disciples came have when Jesus died, which was only resolved through Jesus resurrection, was why did God’s plan allow this senseless suffering and murder of his Son, Jesus Christ?   This is already, another side of the cross, where the senseless suffering and death of Jesus because a message of God’s purpose and healing hope, when Jesus’ suffering was then preached as God’s way of human salvation and redemption through the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24;47; Acts 2: 39; 13:38; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14). 

But here again, perhaps as much as it was for them, the mystery of the cross continues, as we may wonder to ourselves, again in this Holy Week: How does God forgive our sins, through such a terrible, bloody, dispictable death of Jesus suffering on a cross?  While even the greatest scholars of theology can’t fully answer ‘how’ this kind of divine forgiveness was accomplished in Christ’s death, the most reasonable and most biblical answer always has to do with God’s love.  The mystery of love, which answers, For God so love the world, that he gave… is the only answer to sin and suffering that can ever make any sense.  Again, here, we go right back to what Paul wrote to the Romans: But God demonstrates his love for us… Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us (5:8-9).”  This the only way we are ever allowed to fully understand the cross, that Jesus was God’s love in the flesh, submitting to death so that God’s love and forgiveness could be preached and proclaimed.  Amazing Pity, Grace unknown, And love beyond degree, Watts wrote.  This is the only way Jesus’ suffering and premature death makes any real sense. 

When Jesus’ death is about God’s love, not about God’s wrath, not finally about God’s absence, and not finally about God’s judgment, only in this way can we see the side of the cross that Jesus died upon.  This is the side which reveals to us, a new possibility; that even in the ugliest suffering and death, there can also be present an undying love that not only suffers senselessly, but Jesus reveals a love can also be selfless and sacrificing.  Through Jesus, God offers redemption to us, and for us, through faith in the only kind of love that could ever overcome suffering, sin and senselessness.  It is only the kind of love fully demonstrated in Jesus Christ, that can transform any situation of life, because it is a love ‘for us’, that can also transform us.

The power of love is exemplified through the story of a family who was out for a drive on a Sunday afternoon, and they relax at a leisurely pace down the highway. Suddenly, the two children begin to beat their father in the back: “Daddy, Daddy, stop the car! Stop the car! There’s a kitten back there on the side of the road!”

The father says, “So, there’s a kitten on the side of the road. We’re having a drive.”

“But, Daddy, we’ve got to stop and pick it up.”

“No, we don’t.”

“But, Daddy, if we don’t, it will die!”

“Well, then, it will just have to die. We don’t have room for another animal. Our house is a zoo already. No more animals.”

“But Daddy, are you just going to let it die?”

“Be quiet, Kids, let’s just have a pleasant drive.”

“We never thought our father would be so mean and cruel as to let a helpless little kitty die.”

Finally, the mother turns to her husband and says, “Dear, we are going to have to stop.”   So, reluctantly, Dad turns the car around, returns to the spot and pulls the car off the road. “You kids stay in the car. I’ll see about it.” He gets out to pick up the little kitten.

The poor creature is just skin and bones, sore-eyed and full of fleas; but when Dad reaches down to pick it up, with its last bit of energy, the little kitten bristles, baring tooth and claw. Ssst! He picks the kitten up by the loose skin of the neck, brings it over to the car and says, “Don’t touch it; it’s probably got leprosy.” Back home they go.

When they get to the house, the children give the kitten several baths, about a gallon of warm milk, and intercede, “Can we let it stay in the house just tonight, please, please, please? Tomorrow we’ll fix a place in the garage.” The father says,

“Sure, take my bedroom; the whole house is already a menagerie.” They fix a comfortable bed, fit for a pharaoh.

Several weeks pass. One day the father walks in, feels something rub against his leg, looks down, and there is the cat. He reaches down toward it. When the cat sees his hand, it doesn’t bare its claws and hiss; instead it arches its back to receive a caress. Is that the same cat? Is it? No, it is NOT the same as that frightened, hurt, hissing kitten on the side of the road. Of course not. And you know as well as I what has made the difference.

(Fred Craddock, “Praying Through Clenched Teeth,” in The Twentieth Century Pulpit, Vol. II, James Cox, Ed., (Nashville, Abingdon, 1981), pp. 51-52)

WE DIE WITH HIM

The ‘difference’ love makes, which points us back to the difference God’s love can make in our lives brings us to the other side of cross of Jesus.  

The first letter of Peter points to what this other side of the cross means,  when he wrote: He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Pet. 2:24 NIV).   Here, Peter points to the same ‘side’ of the cross our text in Hebrews points to, when the writer challenges: Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore (Heb. 13:13 NIV).  How can the healing, saving, and the forgiveness of God, also be made real in us, as we bear the disgrace he bore’? 

Morgan Guyton, tells about an incident he had one morning while setting up for summer camp. There was a scrawny old white guy passed out on the sidewalk where the children would be playing.  He was asked to wake him up and send him on his way. So Morgan went over to him and lightly tapped him on the shoulder. ‘He lunged away as if a rattlesnake had bitten him. He started screaming cuss words at me, so I decided I would just turn around and walk away before things got violent.

And then he said it. “Where's your f-mercy, man?” Yes. He said the F-word. And he said mercy, too, the word Jesus often spoke about.   Morgan then says then, I froze in my tracks. Here was an angel of the Lord who had just dropped the F-bomb on me. I didn't know what to do, but I thought God was commanding me to do something, so I turned back around and sat down on the sidewalk in front of him.

Then I noticed a black man I'll call Wayne, who was a church volunteer. He greeted the homeless man cheerfully by name and told him he could come back later for some food. The homeless man responded with a tirade in which he said the N-word probably thirty or forty times. My heart was in my throat, Morgan said: I was terrified about what would happen if a black person was called that word to his face. My own racist presumptions made me wonder if Wayne was going to react with violence. But Wayne stayed completely calm. He never raised his voice, and he never stopped smiling.  

As Morgan reflected on this incident in the years that followed, he says that he realized this was what God had called me over to witness. Wayne was a perfect embodiment of God's mercy. No matter how many flaming arrows Satan shot at him through that awful word, every single arrow was extinguished in Wayne's shield of mercy.  I've come to realize that the mercy Wayne embodied is an antidote, not just for the hate of a racist homeless man, but for a church that loves sacrifice a lot more than mercy. Wayne's beautiful witness became a part of my salvation.

(Guyton, Morgan. How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity (Kindle Locations 433-438)).

Folks, here is a perfect picture of what Hebrews means, when it calls us to the other side of the cross, going outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore (Heb. 13:13).  This is an example of what Peter also meant when he also wrote that If you suffer for what is right, you are blessed (1 Pet. 3:14).  And isn’t this what is most missing in our world, right now, as people speak so negatively to each other, are so hateful, are so violent, and so uncivil, and so selfishly motivated by this world?  Isn’t the heart of the problem that fewer want to go outside the camp  of what they want for themselves and are willing to also bear the disgrace, and bear the a cross, like Jesus bore? 

But what if this is the only way of salvation?  What if Jesus’ way is really the only way, the only truth, and the only way to life?  When Jesus calls us to take up the other side of the cross, which is our side of the cross, Jesus is also calling us to ‘die to ourselves’, and ‘to die to our sins’ and to come and live our life abundantly.  It may sound strange how it works, to say that we gain our life by losing it, or that we lose our lives by saving it, but this is exactly what happens, isn’t it?

On the news recently, a video camera in a prison cell showed a young woman writing in the pain of drug withdrawals, throwing-up, and then being forced by guards to clean up her own vomit.  The scene was cruel and gruesome; and it all was made most tragic by the fact the girl was not found dead until 5 hours later.  She laid there, on camera, struggling, suffering, and then dead.  There will probably be a law-suit by the family, which will prove the prison to be negligent.  But this does not change how all this started and why she was here?  It all started because this young girl, rather than take Christ’s way, to endure, to bear the burden, an allow others to help her bear the burden, chose to ‘self-medicate’ through drugs; so that in her trying to find life, she lost it.

The thief comes to kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life, and have it fully (abundantly), Jesus said (Jn. 10:10).   When Jesus comes and asks us to ‘deny ourselves’ or to ‘die to ourselves’ he is not trying to kill us, forsake, or refuse us, but Jesus is trying to give us a full life.  He is trying to save our lives, when he calls us to find our lives by living in and for him.

WE LIVE FOR HIM

Isn’t this what Paul meant, when he announced that he too was ‘crucified with Christ’, and ‘no longer lives’; but now, ‘the life that he lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God who gave himself for him’ (Gal. 2:20). 

What Jesus did for Paul, is what Paul says Jesus can also do for us.  Jesus does not call us to the bear the cross, bear the disgrace, or to bear the senseless suffering, because Jesus wants to kill us or negate us, but Jesus calls us to bear the disgrace because only by following Jesus on this cross, can God give our life back to us in a this broken world.   For only when we ‘crucify the flesh’ can we fully live by the Spirit (Gal. 5:24).  This is how God, through the cross of Jesus, calls us, as the song says, ‘to give’ ourselves away, which is ‘all we can do’ (Issac Watts).

On the news, last year there was an interesting report about what it seems that today’s educators are doing by ‘coddling’ students, giving in to their demands, their wants, and their requests, rather than challenging them to live and to learn.  One example is what happen two years ago, when students at the University of California at Berkeley demanded the cancellation of speeches by conservative commentators Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter. Shut it down. Shut it down!  They shouted, and they did.  The same kind of thing happen on a Vermont campus, when controversial speaker political scientists Charles Murray visited, and students demanded that he be stopped and dismissed.  No one was supporting these opposing views, but what noticed and feared is that it seems that many educators have invented a intellectual world where students only hear what they want to hear, so they can believe only what they want to believe.

(https://www.npr.org/2018/09/04/644446963/authors-of-a-new-book-take-on-the-coddling-of-american-minds

One of the reasons, the way of Jesus, which is the way of the cross, is so important for our world is that without the willingness and desire to ‘bear the burden’ of someone else, even someone’s else’s stupidity; and without opening our heart to listen, even to the opposition or even allowing ourselves to be challenged with other views; is that when we lose the ability to bear the disgrace; that is, to do even the hardest things and to be willing to suffer for the good; if we all refuse to do this, all we have left is a world where we exist only for ourselves, and then, slowly, and sometimes suddenly, love dies.   Only by sharing life with Jesus and by taking up his cross, which is now your cross, will you a life that is full and abundant.

In Herb Gardner’s A Thousand Clowns, an uncle tells of what he wants for his nephew:  “I just want him to stay with me till I can be sure he won’t turn into a Norman Nothing. I want to be sure he’ll know when he’s chickening out on himself . . . I want him to stay awake and know who the phonies are, I want him to know how to holler and put up an argument. I want a little guts to show before I let him go. I want to be sure he sees all the wild possibilities And I want him to know the subtle, sneaky, important reason he was born a human being and not a chair.” (Be Your Whole Self pp 62—63)

Folks, on this Passion/Palm Sunday, the logic of both sides needs to be clear.   We cannot afford to “chicken out” on God or on ourselves. We must know  that God loves us and that love forgives, but we must also know that to know love, is to also to become love.  When love happens to us; then life happens.  And when life happens because we love, even though we may suffer outside the camp too, just like Jesus loved outside the gate; when we bear the other side of the cross in life, and suffer love like this, as we do good to others, so that we, as Hebrews says, ‘offer to God a sacrifice of praise’; when we not only bring glory to him now, we will bring glory, and live in glory forever and ever.  This is the glory that comes to those who live on both sides of the cross. Amen.

“BE STRONG IN THE LORD

A sermon based upon Ephesians 6: 10-20

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Fifth Sunday in Lent-C,  April 7th ,  2019 

(14-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)

In these weeks leading up to Easter, we’ve been focusing our minds and hearts on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  But today we come to the final message from this amazing letter, which was one of his prison letters.

Today’s message focuses on Paul’s discussion of how our Christian life is part of a great struggle.  We are not only in a personal struggle to do and be good, but Paul reminds us that we are part of a greater cosmic conflict, where good must overcome evil, where light must shine to expose the darkness, and where human weakness must continually challenge the ‘powers and principalities’ that too often dominate in this world.   The only way we can remain this fight, Paul says, is to be ‘strong in the Lord…’

WE WRESTLE…AGAINST...

If you are my age, you can recognize the majestic, musical score, of the 1977 blockbuster hit movie, Star Wars.  I heard it being played recently even on a classical music station.  The movie, the music, and the characters are today considered ‘classic’.  And part of the reason ‘Star Wars’ became such a blockbuster hit, is not just because of the famous actors, the great acting, or even its imaginative characters. 

Right up there, on that big screen, people observed a very obvious, and also ‘unobvious’ struggle between good and evil.  Who can forget its major villain, “Darth Vadar”?  Behind that mask was a mysterious, conflicted and most destructive evil—the kind of evil we all know still appears and incarnates itself in our world.

Even though we all know that evil is very real, both in low places and in high places too, we seldom heard much direct, public talk about ‘evil’ until after 9/11.  I will never forget hearing President Bush, say this word; a word I had mostly only heard in church, until that evening when the president addressed the nation with a word, I hadn’t heard a president use before, and had mostly only heard at church, when he said: Today “thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.”

(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/bush.speech.text).

Still today, the public, and many Christians still don’t know much how to talk about ‘evil’, and even less how to talk about ‘the devil’.  “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in. their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”  Paul does not make either of these errors.  He has not left out mentioning the devil and his schemes, but he has also not made the devil ‘front page news’.

Here, in this text, Paul tells us about the devil because he believes, and we should too, that to live as a Christian and to answer God’s call with our lives, will draft us into a battlefield where spiritual warfare is taking place.  You may hardly notice it, when you’re not trying to say anything, do anything or be anyone; but just begin to open your Bible, hear God’s voice, and even attempt to respond fully to God’s call, and the jolt of resistance is so strong, you’ll feel it. 

In his commentary on Ephesians, N.T Wright wrote that often when he writes about passages like this dealing with spiritual warfare, he “runs into problems.” One time a workman outside his home accidently drove a nail into an electrical wire, and his power went off, disabling his word processor.  As he was writing about this text, his computer jammed, just as he began to write. “It’s as if certain hidden forces would much rather we didn’t talk about it, or that we would sweep it under the carpet….I have come to accept this as normal—and to be grateful that this is all that has happened, thus far  (Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters, pp. 72-73).”

Of course, discussing the devil is difficult for us today for a lot of reasons.  “The majority of Christians don’t believe in the literal existence of the Devil”.  That’s why Christians psychologist, Richard Beck, says that we need to consider ‘Reviving Old Scratch’.  Have you ever heard of the devil named ‘Old Scratch’?  You find the Devil called ‘Old Scratch’ in the writings of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.  Some think the term comes for the old Norse word skratte, which means goblin or wizard. It is a term once used in New England, but is almost forgotten today, just like talking about the devil has become awkward or embarrassing in this ‘secular age’.

As close as most people get to really thinking about the devil is in horror movies, like those from Stephen King, or perhaps even the other 1970’s blockbuster movie, ‘The Exorcist’.  C.S. Lewis was right; we either think about the devil too much—with to much dramatics, or we don’t think much about him at all.  But Jesus did.  The Gospel present to us a Jesus who ‘cast out demons’ and was ‘tempted’ by Satan in the wilderness. 

Paul, Peter, and the rest of the New Testament reminds us too, as Paul does here, when he says, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph. 6:12 NIV).  If the devil and his schemes (v. 11) are real, what kind of struggle is this?  Can we name it. How might we sum it up, as the Bible’s presents it too us? 

One of the very first books I read about our struggle was a book I purchased in my college days, especially aimed at young Christians minds.  It was a book written by John White, entitled ‘The Fight’.  I still have the book, and I reopened recently and noticed that White categorizes the devil with three actions; the tempter, the accuser, and the deceiver. 

(See, The Fight, by John White, IVP Press, 19786, p. 78-91).

The Devil as a ‘tempter’ dominates Jesus’ experience as he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1ff).  Later Jesus taught his disciples to pray, Lead us not into temptation (Matt. 6:13), but the Bible most often makes temptation a test (1 Peter 4:12) or trial (James 1:12) that ‘proves’ us faithful or unfaithful in life (1 Cor. 4:2).  “No one should say, ‘God is tempting me’”, wrote James (1:13), but God allows us, like Job (1: 7-12) to have our faith tested by trials and troubles (2 Cor. 13:5-7). But even when tests come, Paul said, God is faithful not to allow you to be tempted (or tested) beyond what you can bear and always provides a way out (1 Cor. 10: 13). 

So, what’s the difference between being tempted or tested?  Scripture makes it clear that the devil, or Satan is the ‘tempter’, while God only allows us to be tested in life (See Job 1).  James said that what makes this difference is our own desires that drag us away and entice us to sin (James 1:14-15).  In other words, because of Jesus’ victory over evil, the devil has no direct power against us unless we grant it.  Satan’s power as a tempter is only as an accuser (Rev. 12: 10) who deceives (Rev. 12: 9, 20:6).  Through faith in Jesus we can ‘overcome’ the devil, because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world (1 Jn. 4:4).   

In this text, Paul say we can be strong in the Lord because through God’s mighty power we are able to stand against the devil’s schemes, that have now been exposed by the love and light of Jesus Christ.  Knowing that it is the devil and his schemes that we are struggling against, is how we begin to overcome and stand against him.  I recall in one of my seminary classes in the 1980’s, we were studying the book of Revelation, and a discussion broke out about whether or not the devil was real or just a symbol of evil.  After having the discussion go on and on, one exasperated student blurted out: “Well, all I can say is if there is no real devil, what in the *&%# are we here in seminary for?”  That student had a good point.  We don’t have to believe that there is an animal with horned ears, pitchfork and pointed tail running around tempting us, but we do meet the devil, each of us personally, through the temptations, accusations and deceptions that come to us, mostly in the wilderness moments of our lives.

THE WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD

When we find ourselves up against the schemes of the devil, how can we, as Paul says, struggle and stand against him?  Did you notice how Paul said that we must ‘put on the WHOLE armor of God?  The implication is that we leave ourselves vulnerable when we only put on PART of the armor.  If you’ve ever seen ancient ‘armor’, it’s quite heavy and burdensome to bear, but when you know you are in a battle, you don’t mind the weight of wearing it every single piece of it, do you?

What Paul basically does in this passage, when he describes the Christian’s armor against the devil’s schemes, is to take an ancient Roman soldier’s battle uniform and spell out our best defense against evil, piece by piece.  What Paul implies, is what the best army always knows; that the battle is normally won before the actual battle, through combat readiness, preparation, and best of all through prevention. 

Make no mistake, the Roman Empire produced the longest period of peace in the ancient word, not through fighting bloody battles, but most often by preventing those battles from ever breaking out, through the ‘strength’ of their readiness as the most well-fitted, well-trained army in the western world. So, what kind of armor was this Christian armor?  It’s very familiar to us, but let’s review briefly, noting the strange ‘order’ that occurs. 

Paul first speaks of the Christians defense against evil as wearing a belt of truth; that is, living and telling the truth.  Here we know that Paul is not taking the solider image literally, for who puts their belt on first?  Then, Paul follows with his order, that wearing ‘truth’ enables you to put on a breastplate of righteousness.  By living the truth, you live for what is true and right every day and it then follows, that by living honestly and rightly, you put on shoes of peace, living with feet firmly planted in a life lived ‘peaceably with all people’ (Rom. 12: 18).  What lasting good, value, or stability, or strength comes without aiming to be at peace.

Next comes the shield of faith.  I find it very interesting that Paul did not begin with faith, but by this order suggests that faith flows best out of truthful, right, peaceable living.  We don’t normally think of it that way.  We think that right living flows out of having the right beliefs.  But Paul is more realistic, I think, when he understands that the potential to have faith stands on its best foundation, when it stands on human concerns for truth, goodness, and compassion.  Having a shield of faith, that is, both having faith and being faithful to that faith, is at its strongest when it flows from a moral, ethical, and human concern. 

Even stranger still, Paul suggests also, that the helmet of salvation, that is, knowing and having God’s saving hope in us, is the most natural outflow of all these concerns; truth, goodness, compassion, and faith.  The point here is not that we are good before we can be saved, (for Paul certainly wasn’t), but that God’s salvation is the ultimate crown of everything all that God made us humans to be.

The only offensive weapon mentioned of our Christian armor against evil is the welding of the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (vv. 14-17).  It is most fitting that Paul ends with source of all spiritual power: God’s word.  The word of God, which releases the Spirit into human hearts, is not the conventional kind of weapon, because our struggle is not the conventional kind of battle.  This is spiritual warfare, which is much more than people fighting against people, but we are up against ‘powers of darkness’ and against ‘spiritual wickedness in high places’ (6:12) .  You can’t fight these ‘powers’ on their terms, or you will always lose.  If you want to resist and overcome, then you must fight on God’s terms.

This is exactly what I saw happening, recently when I learned about Daniel Barenboim, a Argentinian born, Jewish musical conductor, who was using a whole different set of weapons to fight against the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians.  I don’t guess, in our lifetime, there is any conflict more resistant to a peaceful resolution.  What this Jewish musician did was to use all kinds of spiritual weapons, which were quite controversial to many Jews and Palestinians.  He said that he was embarrassed by the way Jews had treated Palestinians, by building such a dehumanizing wall and segregating them in the West Bank.  He stated, challenging the very moral fabric and soul of Israeli citizens who have occupied Palestine: “The occupation, of course, is catastrophic for Palestine – everybody knows that – but it is very negative for Israel too. It has eroded all sense of decency and humanity and morality from people like me [Jews], who had been persecuted for over 20 centuries.”

While everyone may not agree with Barenboim’s charge, what is most remarkable about him is not just that he saw the problem as moral and spiritual.  But he also did not see the solution of the problems in a usual way.  Instead of going after challenging laws or changing geography, he invited talented Palestinian and Jewish musicians to play in his orchestra together, along-side each other, with each other.  He had them practicing and performing together; he had growing to appreciate each other, and he had them subduing their own cultural, religious, and political differences to live for something higher; having a musical, if not a spiritual connection. 

In this way, he took a very different approach to relating to Palestinians as a Jew, which went beyond ‘us’ verses ‘them’.  He went beyond the ‘call of duty’ to become a Palestinian citizen himself.  Now, like all of us too, he humanized Palestinians by becoming not just one with them, but one of them (https://thewire.in/culture/daniel-barenboim-israel-palestine. ).    

PRAYING ALWAYS… WITH ALL PRAYER

Paul believed too, that if we are going to resist, and even overcome some of the worst evils of this world, we’ll have to do with more than ‘bullets and bombs’, laws or legislation, or use something other than conventional weapons.  In fact, the greatest empire in world history, the Roman Empire, did not fall due to any lack of military strength or readiness, but if fell from within.  The decline of the Roman Empire is well documented as the result of years of moral, internal, political, social and personal corruption. 

In the same way, only when we realize, as Paul says, that we ‘wrestle not with flesh and blood’, but against ‘spiritual wickedness’ can we resist the greatest evils that seeks to devour and destroy.  And if we want to win the great spiritual battle, our weapons for our daily victory over evil, beginning within ourselves, must be God’s weapons, if we really do want God’s victory.  The question is, do we really want it? 

This is why Paul ends his discussion with prayer.  Prayer is most powerful weapon in the Christian’s arsenal because it the most revealing.  Prayer is the internal weapon that puts the deepest corner of our hearts on display.  More than anything else, prayer discloses what we want.   When you see a person praying; when you hear a person praying; when a person prays or asks you to pray for them, this is when you know what is really going on the inside of that person.  This is when you know that they truly understand that any lasting victory in life or death depends only on God.

Notice how many times and how many different ways Paul speaks of prayer in his concluding words to the Ephesians.  He speaks of all kinds of prayers and all types of praying when he says, “Pray in the Spirit… with all kinds of prayers and requests,” or when he says “kept on praying for all the Lord’s people” and then concludes, “Pray also for me…, an ambassador in chains...that I may declare fearlessly…the mystery of the gospel” (18-20).

How Paul prayed was who Paul was and how Paul lived, just like how we pray is who we are and how we live too.  But what is most important to understand here, is that for Paul, prayer as a weapon was not just words, but it was also Spirit, it was not just making requests, but it was also attitude and perspective.  Prayer was only something you do in a sacred moment, but it was what was always on your mind making you to be alert and causing you to be fearless to evil, while connecting you with God and to the needs of all God’s people.  In other words, prayer is not just a privilege in life, it was also the position of one’s life in God on all occasions and in every moment you are most strong in the Lord. 

The German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was one of the young, great theological minds in the history of Christianity.   Because of his involvement in the Valkyrie plot to overthrown Hitler and Nazism, which was an attempt to stop one of greatest evils the world has ever known, professor Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging early on Monday, April 9^th, 1945, in one of the last vile evil acts of Hitler’s regime. 

Bonhoeffer came from a well-known family in Berlin, as his father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was one of Germany’s finest psychiatrists and neurologist.  When Bonhoeffer announced his call to become a pastor, the family was somewhat shocked, because they were not used to such public displays or involvement with religious devotion.  But Bonhoeffer was not so shy with his faith, as he fully believed that religious life and public life were not so easily separated.  Even as a public figure, and a scholarly professor, Bonhoeffer believed in the confessing church and was a man of regular, disciplined prayer.  His daily devotions in the Nazi prison camp (now written in a book that has become a devotional classic), gave him tremendous stability and so much calm, that his fellow prisoners, and even wardens, sought excuses to consult with him. 

It is clear to see in his own final writings, that Bonhoeffer’s prayer life is what gave him strength, even in the presence of his enemies, even the last enemy, death.  Our very last picture of him is the picture of a man praying on the morning of his own execution.  It comes from the prison doctor who wrote many years later: “Through the half-open door of a room in one of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, still in his prison clothes, kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God.  The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man moved me to the depth.”  As one of his biographers wrote: “It was there, finally, naked under the scaffold in the spring woods, Bonhoeffer knelt for the last time to pray.  Five minutes later, his life (on earth) was ended.” 

But it was as they came to lead him to the gallows, that he spoke his final audible prayer: “This is the end---for me, the beginning of life.” 

Who can live with such strength and determination, in the face of the most destructive evil?  Paul says the person who lives with truth tight around them, whose heart is secured with right living, who plants their feet in peace and shields their life with faith by putting on salvation, so that they can weld the sword of God’s Spirit through word and prayer.  A person who protects their own heart will prevent much evil, or they can stand firm and take on the greatest ‘powers of this dark world’ and prevail, even with the chains of life or death wrapped around them, because Christ’s undying love has already conquered and is Lord of all. 

Dear brothers and sisters, will you be strong in the Lord?   Will you take your own stand against the devil’s schemes, both in your private life and in the world which we know?  Will you put on the WHOLE armor of God, rather than pick and choose?  Will you keep on praying in the Spirit and praying for all the saints?  If you will, then you can have, no matter what comes against you, the peace and love with faith, which comes to us through the grace of God, who gave his love through the Lord Jesus Christ we also love with undying love.   Amen.