The Gospel, What's That?

Galatians 1:1-12

The Gospel, what’s that?  Well, if you’ve been around me long enough, you know that when I ask that question I'm setting you up for one of my favourite discussions.  What exactly is the Gospel is indeed an important question for as Paul indicates here to turn to a gospel other than the one he proclaimed and which he received as the result of his personal encounter with Jesus is actually a turning away from Jesus.  The content of the Gospel is integrally tied to the person of Jesus.  Wrong Gospel, no Jesus.

In our reading Paul is very upset with the churches in Galatia for they had turned away from the Gospel he proclaimed to them and had easily accepted a different gospel that said a person is not truly one of the people of the Messiah unless one ascribes to the ethnic, cultural, and scriptural requirements placed upon a Law observant Jew.  This “other” gospel was bad news particularly if you were an adult male who was not yet circumcised. 

Humour aside, the problem with this “other” gospel was that external requirements trumped the God-given means of salvation, which is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and the faith and faithfulness creating work the Holy Spirit does in us.  In this “other” gospel salvation, which is new life in Jesus Christ enlivened in us by the Holy Spirit who moves us to be a community of people who live according to the way of the cross – unconditional love – did not hinge on what God has done in, through, and as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit according to the love of the Father.  Rather, it hinged on whether or not your men got circumcised and your women didn’t wear pants and about 611 other things.  The result of this “other” Gospel was that acting according to the love of Christ got overshadowed by eating and drinking like a Pharisee.

Well, that was Galatia.  Looking closer to home, what would Paul say to us today about whether or not we have stayed true to his Gospel? I would like to play Don Quixote this morning and try to make the case that if Paul were speaking to the church of North America today he would largely call us to the carpet for believing “other” gospels just as he did the Galatians.  There are many “other” gospels floating around in Christianity today. 

For example, one “other” gospel I am most familiar with is the one I heard growing up in the Bible Belt of the Southern United States.  That one goes like this: This is God’s world and God is a holy and righteous God but we are sinners.  We have transgressed his good commands and serve ourselves rather than him.  Therefore, death is God’s penalty placed upon us for our sin because God can’t let sin go on forever.  When we die our immortal souls will come before God to face judgment and the verdict will be go either to Heaven or to Hell.  The only way to get to Heaven is for a person to profess publicly “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour”.  That means that sometime in your life you must accept and believe the biblical truth that Jesus Christ died for your sins and paid the penalty of death on your behalf and from that point on you must show your belief by living as much in accordance with the Bible as you possibly can.  Do those things and God in his love will upon the doors of Heaven to you.

This “other” gospel, which I have heard proclaimed even at funerals, leans towards Jesus as the means to salvation but it omits the gift of the Holy Spirit and his work in us of creating saving faith and making us able to follow Jesus by giving us the desire to know him personally.  There is no talk of resurrection in it and thus it is merely a Good Friday rather than an Easter faith meaning that it reduces Jesus’ death to simply being an escape not from the true consequence of human sin, which is death, but rather as our way to escape Hell after death.  There is no real grace in this “other” gospel for in the end we simply wind up saving ourselves by being rational or smart enough to make a decision on our own efforts about the meaning of Jesus’ death and then how we ourselves are able to maintain that “saved from Hell” status by our own efforts at being good.  In this “other” gospel Jesus ultimately is not the means of salvation rather I save myself by my own reason and will. 

Well, I can pick apart “other” gospels all day, but due to time constraints and the reality of there being food downstairs maybe I should say what the Gospel really is.  Oddly, in his letter to the Galatians Paul doesn’t spell it out so clearly.  One place that he does is 1 Corinthians 15.  There Paul says, “This is the Gospel I passed on to you and which you received and in which you now stand and are being saved. Christ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with Scripture. He was buried and on the third day raised in accordance with Scripture and appeared” first to the apostles, then to 500 others, and then to Paul himself a few years later.  Let me stop and note some core elements: Christ Jesus, his death for our sins, and his resurrection both in accordance with Scripture.  Also, Paul wants us to really get the historical reality of Jesus bodily resurrection from the dead.  Over 500 people saw him.

There are other elements of Paul’s gospel that he spelled out in the rest of that chapter that need to be added in: Jesus’ return, the resurrection of everybody, the final judgment where those who are in Christ now by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will be justified, and then finally the new creation where God will reign and sin and death will be no more.  Also, the church is very important now as the fellowship of believers who walk by the Spirit according to the way of the cross is a foretaste and the proof of what is yet to come.

That’s Paul’s Gospel. Now, if Paul were here today calling us to the carpet for our “other” gospels, I would for the sake of conversation take up the futile exercise of arguing with Paul and ask him what happened in his Gospel to the Gospel that Jesus himself proclaimed which simply went:  “The time is fulfilled.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe this gospel.”  Paul would answer, “Yes, that is the Gospel Jesus proclaimed, but if you go on to read the whole of the four Gospels as they tell the story of Jesus Christ the Son of God become human, what led to his death which was for our sins, and his resurrection, the promise of the Spirit, the importance of the Church, that he’s coming back, there will be judgement and as Lord he will put his Creation to rights…well, my Gospel is all there.” 

I would then ask Paul, “Paul, I’m curious.  I’ve read your letters I don’t know how many times.  What happened to the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed to be at hand and manifested in everything he said and did?  You mention it once maybe twice.” I don’t know what Paul’s answer to that would be.  Probably he would say “everywhere in my letters you see the phrase ‘in Christ’ I am talking about the Kingdom of God. 

To shorten a long story Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom of God did not disappear from the gospel Paul proclaimed.  To Paul encountering Jesus resurrected and ascended on the road to Damascus meant that Jesus is Lord and his kingdom is at hand just not yet here in it’s fullness.  That day will come as God has promised.  Until then, God has given his Spirit to his people as a deposit assuring us that Jesus the Lord and Saviour will return to establish the kingdom of God in its fullness.  This assurance given to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit is the faith by which are assured that we are right with God in fact that we are his beloved children.  Then on that day the Father will raise the dead, there will be judgment (some will suffer eternal destruction), and he will make a new heaven and a new earth for us to live in resurrected bodies that are immortal and incorruptible by sin and death. 

Until then we’ve a message to proclaim and as Paul has said it here in Galatians God the Father has raised Jesus Christ from the dead, Jesus who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of the Father to whom be glory forever and ever.  Jesus is Lord and he is delivering us from this present evil age.  Paul would like us to think of ourselves as being on a new Exodus.  Just like when God led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, now Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit is calling and leading all of humanity to a new Exodus out of its slavery to sin and death.  Some people by the inner teaching of the Holy Spirit hear this good news and in faith get up and start walking according to it.  That’s us.  We are the ‘in Christ’ people who have the responsibility of living and proclaiming the Gospel.  Those who don’t, well, in God’s time in God’s way.  Don’t give up hope on anybody.

Friends, the time is fulfilled.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  God is really acting on behalf of his people in Jesus who by his death and resurrection has won the victory over sin, death, and the devil.  He has been and still is God with us and has done and is doing all the things God said he would do himself for his people.  He has come himself to be our shepherd in this New Exodus.  The end time kingdom of God into which it is God’s will that all peoples be included is now beginning.  We’re going to have to put our prejudices aside and be hospitable and compassionate to everyone.  We are on a new Exodus now, an Exodus from slavery under sin and death, but we’ve yet to wander through a vast wilderness following Jesus Christ by walking in the Spirit whom he has freely given to us to give us faith.  In the love of Christ and fellowship of the Holy Spirit that is in our midst we’ve a taste now of what is awaiting us when Christ returns. 

As we go on this Exodus Jesus by the Holy Spirit in our midst is going to manifest his kingdom in really wonderful ways.  Our especial task is to live our lives together right now according to the love of God that’s been poured into us so that we don’t discredit the work of the Lord.  We won’t do it perfectly.  But that will not separate us from the love of God who is with us now and has made us his children through Jesus Christ by giving us the Holy Spirit who cries out in us “Abba! Father!”  God truly has come as Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit to deliver us from this present evil age.  To know this and live according to it is the free gift of faith.  I pray the Spirit give us ears to hear the Good News and empower us to live accordingly.  Amen.

Filled with All the Fullness of God

Ephesians 3:16-19

One particular story in the Gospels that will ever hold my attention is the story of Jesus healing a woman who had had a menstrual haemorrhage for twelve years. If you remember the story, Jesus is walking through town and people are crowding him and brushing against him.  The woman sees him and thinks to herself that if she just touches his clothes she will be healed.  So, she stealthily works her way up to him and touches his clothes and immediately she is healed.  But then, quite oddly, Jesus stops and says, “Who touched my clothes?”  The disciples note the ridiculousness of such a question in the midst of that crowd pressing against him.  But Jesus says, “Someone touched me: for I noticed that power went forth from me.”  Then, the woman fearfully comes forward and owns up.  Jesus tells her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

Recently, I heard a bit of a sermon on this passage.  The ministerasked the question, “which are you doing – are you just crowding Jesus or touching him.”[1]  That question wasn’t original to him.  It’s been around Evangelical Christianity and Revivalism for centuries.  It’s meant to get us thinking about whether or not we have a life-giving personal relationship with Jesus.  Are we just in the crowd or are we actively reaching out and touching Jesus because we know he is the only means to wholeness, to well-being.

“Am I touching Jesus?” That question being asking, whether the answer is yes or no the question that would follow it is “How so?”  How does one touch Jesus?  I’ll share a bit of my own experience here.

Back in my university days I participated in something called a Discipleship Group.  We were a group that the campus pastor threw together because we were all going through something whether it was grief because of a death, a break-up, parents divorcing.  We didn’t choose each other.  We came from all walks of life, but we agreed we would meet together on a weekly basis, have a short devotional, share how things were going, and pray for each other.  The presence of the Holy Spirit was richly in our midst.  To varying degrees we all got emotionally better.  The troubled circumstances of our lives worked out for the good.  We grew in faith, in trust.  None of us could doubt the existence of God after our experience in that group.

One may ask what was the difference in this group and group therapy.  Well, that answer’s easy.  The overwhelming sense, felt-ness, that Jesus was present with us, that he loved us, and that he was working and would work things to the good.  In group therapy all you’ve got is the hope the therapist knows what she’s doing otherwise you’re just spinning your wheels with no clear direction.

Every one of us in that group can tell you what it feels it is to experience having Paul’s prayers here for the Ephesian Christians answered for us each personally.  In our weeks and months of meeting together we all sensed that we were being strengthened by the Holy Spirit in our inner selves.  We all sensed that Jesus was dwelling in our hearts and was changing us and that we were coming to know God more fully.  We all came to have a deeper understanding of God’s deep love for us.  That God was deeply interested in our lives, indeed personally involved in it for our good, with a love that would not let us go.  Six strangers who were awkward on all accounts and who would not have been friends otherwise began to trust and love one another to the extent of being able to share our lives in healing ways and pray for each other.  That’s remarkable. We met.  We shared.  We listened.  We prayed.  Jesus was there.  We touched him and he saved us from our brokenness and healed us.  We were filled with all the fullness of God.  He did not hold himself back from us.  He was with us in being and act.

Well, since I believe, since I know that praying for one another is crucial to growing in Christ I would like to introduce you to something called a Prayer Covenant.[2]  Does anybody know what a Prayer Covenant is?  It is when two or three people agree to pray the same prayer for each other everyday for a month.  It is rooted in the idea that where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name he is in their midst. 

Since he is in our midst when we are gathered in his name the type of prayer that we pray in a Prayer Covenant is specific to growth in Christ.  It is not the sort of thing that we typically wing out there like “God bless Bob and help him endure his bunions.”  Granted, if you have ever had to deal with bunions that is an important prayer and should be prayed.  The Prayer Covenant prayer is different in that it asks for strength to be Jesus’ disciples.  The Prayer Covenant prayer goes like this “Lord, grant Bob and me the grace today to commit our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ without reservation, and grant Bob and me further the grace to know your strength and your guidance this day.  Amen.”

Timothy and I have agreed that we would like to impose this discipline on the churches of the Coop for the purpose of congregational revival.  Renewal so often begins with intentional prayer directed at each of our personal relationships with Jesus Christ.  This Sunday and next in each of the congregations we are asking that each of you approach somebody in your congregation and become Prayer Covenant partners for a month.  Then in a month we will ask you to do it with somebody else.  Eventually, we hope you will begin to do this with friends and neighbours.

To facilitate this task we have made some business card size cards to help our memories. From here on out there will be a ready supply of these cards available in each church.  I am going to come now and pass them out to you and when I give you one, please go to somebody nearby.  This will be your Prayer Covenant partner for the next month.  Then, we are going to practice asking somebody to be a prayer partner. And yes, I do appreciate that this is not a comfortable thing to do for some people.  I am one of those people.  I would not be asking you to do this if I did not know and had not felt for myself what a difference this makes.

Here’s how you establish the covenant. Person on my right you get to go first.  Ask your partner, “____, do you know what a Prayer Covenant is?”  Person on left please play uninformed and say “Why no.  What is a Prayer Covenant?”  Person on right says, “Jesus, said that whenever to or three are gathered together in his name he is in their midst.  A Prayer Covenant recognizes that and helps us to become more aware of his being in our midst and helps us become more like him.  I have a business card with a prayer on it that we can pray for each other every day for a month.  It may sound strange but I believe praying for each other will help us both.”  Person on left, “Sounds great.  Let’s give it a try.”

Now, so that no one gets slighted person on left gets to practice asking the person on the right.  Let us close with this prayer and let’s just say us for the name: “Lord, grant us the grace today to commit our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ without reservation, and grant us further the grace to know your strength and your guidance this day.  Amen.”

---

[1] http://www.vitalchurchesinstitute.com/enews_posts/view/1120

[2] This idea comes from Stan Ott at the Vital Churches Institute.  http://www.vitalchurchesinstitute.com

Living in the Reign

Luke 19:1-28

In 1994 during my first summer of seminary I did an internship in a large country church in Virginia in the area where my parents’ families originated.  One afternoon I went to visit a man, Mr. Lotts, who would’ve been a distant cousin or something of my great-grandmother.  My great-great-grandmother had married twice due to the death of a spouse.  The first husband’s last name was Lotts so Mr. Lotts was related from there and my great-grandmother was a child from the second whose last name was Thompson.  Mr. Lotts lived about three or 4 miles from where Great-grandma lived and every so often he would drop by as country people do from time to time.

Now, Mr. Lotts was on the membership list of this church, but it had been years since he had been there.  He had been rather active but he got disgruntled a decade or so prior about something that didn’t seem right to him and so he just stopped going.  Regardless, he was family.  My dad had mentioned his name a time or two and I wanted to meet him.

Well, I dropped in on him unannounced one afternoon as people out in the country do and introduced myself.  Not that I needed to.  He had heard through the grapevine that I was working at the church that summer and I look so much like my dad it was obvious who I was.  We sat and talked and he was a bit emotional about my visit.

He told me a story about my great-grandmother and a visit that she had received back in the 70’s from the minister of that church.  She had been widowed since the early 60’s and rarely went anywhere.  (I guess she’s the one I got my hermit instinct from.  My wife would find that funny.)  She was a member of that church too but didn’t go.  She didn’t drive and nobody came to get her and that didn’t matter because back in the day my great-grandfather wasn’t exactly the church type so they never went.

The story went that one day the minister of New Providence Presbyterian just dropped in to visit my great-grandmother.  Of course, he didn’t call ahead.  That’s the way it’s done in the country.  I can’t see the visit lasting more than 15 or 20 minutes because Great-grandma wasn’t much of a talker.  As he was leaving Great-grandma made him wait a moment while she went to get something for him to take with him.  She had less than a little, but if people visited she didn’t let them go away empty handed.  She came back with a jar of homemade jelly and with tears in her eyes she gave it to him and said, “This is the first time a minister has ever been to my house.”  Apparently, that visit really meant something to Great-grandma.  It honoured her and I’m pretty sure it said to her that God remembered her and cared.

I don’t know why this story would stick out to Mr. Lotts other than it was an example of why he had gotten upset at this church years prior.  Or, I might have been the first minister-type to come to his house.  Great-grandma was a widow and lived by herself, but the church people rarely if ever checked in on her for some reason.  I haven’t heard too many stories about Great-granddaddy.  He died before I was born.  But, what I have heard was that he was a very hard worker, but also he could drink and had a pretty decent temper.  According to my dad who was actually raised by them rather than my grandparents, the two of them could have fights that were so intense that he hid under the table.

Maybe this story was important for Mr. Lotts that this story because it was just an example of how church people don’t act Christian and ministers…well, how ministers can get pinned down to looking after the people who pay their salaries to the neglect of those who can’t.  How much would it have been a support to my Great-grandmother in her grief or in the storms of her marriage if the people of the church thought as much about the real needs of their not-so-churched neighbours whom they all knew the gossip about rather than the things and people of their own at church and simply went and visited like that minister did?  I think it was the lack of that authentic, godly, personal caring that had upset Mr. Lotts so that he stopped going to church.  And it is not that they were hypocrites or anything like that.  They were good, solid down to earth people who cared but like us, like myself, we just forget to love our neighbours sometimes.  We fail to see people in their real needs.  We fail to sense how lonely and hurting people can be or if we can sense it, we lack the courage to act.

Anyway, this story about my Great-grandmother is one that comes to mind when I read the story of Zacchaeus.  Jesus didn’t get pinned down to being the Messiah of just the religious folk, but rather saw Zacchaeus for who he was.  I also think of this story because of Zacchaeus giving back quite a bit more than a jar of jelly because Jesus came to his house.  (During that summer I once came away from a visit with a couple of fresh picked onions.)

 Zacchaeus enacted something similar to what in the Old Testament was called a Year of Jubilee.  Every fiftieth year Israelites were to return lands to their ancestral families and free any Israelite slaves they had acquired.  It was a fair and just redistribution of wealth that God commanded but as far as we know it never happened until the days of the early church in which the Book of Acts says:

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day-by-day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:43-47 ^NRSV)

Today, Ascension Sunday, we celebrate Jesus enthronement as Lord of all Creation.  He is that ruler who has gone away to a distant country to receive power and is coming back.  In the meantime, he has left us to look after a few things pertaining to his reign.  He has left us each with a bit of his wealth, meaning the Holy Spirit, and he’s given us one commandment – to love as indiscriminately as he has loved us.  Acting according to that love is what I call living under his reign.  It is important we follow this commandment because it gives a picture of what things will be like when he returns.

Here’s an idea for how we might live in the reign.  What if we got together sometime and made a bunch of jelly and put it into small, little half or quarter pint jars.  Put little labels on them that said something like, “Because We Care”.  Then, we go out in two’s or three’s to every house in the area and give it away.  making special effort to talk to those we know are grieving.  It would take about as much work as a fundraiser, but would say a lot more.  I think it would get the message across.  Think about it.  Amen.