My Two Cents

I’d like to make a theological observation about abortion.  Let me please begin by saying that I am not a professionally trained theologian.  I am a committed follower of Jesus Christ with a healthy curiosity and a penchant for reading… a lot.  I believe Karl Barth was right when he said “In the church of Jesus Christ there should be no non-theologians” so I have put a lot of time into reading and studying the Bible with the help of a myriad of books and commentaries.

 

By the time I am done, I will probably irritate both the pro-choice AND the pro-life crowds so I humbly request the following:  1. Please do not bother to comment if you haven’t read the entire essay.  2. I welcome thoughtful theological comments, whether or not they agree with my position but I have taken great pains to limit this essay to theological thought.  As such, I have no interest in political rhetoric.  Partisan comments will be summarily deleted.

 

Shortly after becoming a Christian I attended classes and became certified as a lay speaker in the United Methodist Church.  Over the years I have enjoyed the occasional turn in the pulpit and my agreement with my current (Presbyterian Church USA) church is that I will gladly fill the pulpit any time the pastor is away as long as someone else doesn’t want a turn.  I generally preach 4-5 times a year.

 

One of the first sermons I ever preached was from the book of Habakkuk.  As a young Christian the book appealed to me as a rather tidy lesson about God’s ways not being our ways.  In a nutshell, Habakkuk complained to God about injustice in Judah.  God replied that He was about to use Babylon to judge Judah.  Habakkuk, aghast, asks how God could possibly use Babylon “That ruthless and impetuous people” to judge God’s chosen.  God essentially answers Habakkuk by saying  “Who do you think you are to question me”.  The book ends with Habakkuk singing a song of praise to God.  Babylon carries Judah into captivity, 70 years later a faithful remnant returns, rebuilds Jerusalem and the temple, and sets the stage for the coming of Christ.  Nice, right?

 

This year I preached on Habakkuk for the second time.  This time my sermon was informed by a great deal more study, including reading the work of Habakkuk’s contemporary Jeremiah.  The book of Lamentations is the only book in the Bible that I have read and studied only once.  I couldn’t bear to study it again.  The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem was horrific, and without going into the ugly details, suffice it to say that many good and faithful Jewish people suffered… horribly.  The lesson to be learned from Habakkuk goes much deeper than God’s ways not being our ways.  In the book of Habakkuk, God is calling us to completely change our perspective and look at the world through heavenly eyes, rather than looking at the world through earthly eyes.  Habakkuk, and we, are called to trust God when, from a worldly standpoint, He appears to be the least trustworthy.  How am I supposed to trust in God’s goodness when the Bible says “Compassionate women cooked their children, who became food” (Lamentations 4:10)?  How can I trust a God who allows such a thing to happen?

 

Our earthly eyes tell us that the suffering and death of the righteous is an abomination; it’s something that should never happen.  But you and I both know that it does, and it does so with regularity.  Are we to assume that, because this happens, God is not good?  How are we to interpret events when the outcome is inconsistent with our concept of “Good”?   The believer interprets these events not with earthy eyes, but with heavenly eyes.  We learn to view events from God’s perspective.  Francis Chan has this wonderful message where he has this enormous piece of rope that he carries out onto the chancel.  There is a little short piece of tape on the end of the rope, and he uses the short piece of tape to represent our lives here on earth with the huge length of rope representing the eternity that we can’t see.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_x8dsvb_4)   Our lives are not about this earth.  We are foreigners here; ambassadors.  Our kingdom and our destiny is the eternal Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ.  As such, we are called to view the events of this life according to their eternal significance and to view death not as an end, but as a transformation, and for the believer, a joyous one at that.

 

To the person looking at a crisis pregnancy with earthly eyes, there are two possible outcomes.  Either the baby lives or the baby dies.  If we look at the crisis pregnancy with earthly eyes, for the baby to die is an unspeakable tragedy and for the baby to live is success.

 

Look at a crisis pregnancy with heavenly eyes however, and we see that there are not two but four possible outcomes.  In the worst case scenario, the baby dies and the mother is so adversely affected by the experience that she never finds God’s grace and forgiveness.  This is truly the greatest tragedy, because now we are dealing with an event that has eternal consequences.   With our heavenly eyes we know that the baby, unborn and innocent, has a secure place in God’s Kingdom, but the mother is lost. Without somehow finding God’s forgiveness, she will be eternally separated from God’s love and care.  In what might be a better scenario, the baby lives, but the mother is still adversely affected by the experience and never finds forgiveness.  Bearing in mind the uncomfortable fact that a mother, antagonistic to Christianity, is highly likely to pass that antagonism on to her children, and you understand why I say it MIGHT be a better scenario, because now we are possibly dealing with two events of eternal significance.  In the third scenario, the baby dies but the mother, cared for with grace and compassion throughout her ordeal, finds God’s grace, finds God’s forgiveness, and becomes a child of God’s Kingdom.  With our heavenly eyes, we see that we now have two people who have entered into God’s eternal Kingdom.  In the perfect scenario, the baby lives and the love of Jesus, exemplified by those who have ministered to the mother in her time of need, leads her to a saving faith, and hopefully to her child as well.

 

Let me be clear.  More than once in the Bible God says “Before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you”.  Every living being is ordained by God and there can be no theological question in my mind that an unborn child is an ordained part of God’s kingdom.  To take the life of an unborn child is, theologically speaking, taking a life… period.

 

But as one looking at the world through heavenly eyes, we know that free will is a central part of God’s eternal plan.  Each of us has been given the capacity to choose whether we will love God, or whether we will reject Him.  CS Lewis once said “Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  Only through the expression of our free will can we truly love God.  As believers we must understand this.  The Bible says that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  As emulators of Christ, it is our responsibility not to tell others how to behave, but to tell others about the riches to be found in a saving relationship with Christ Jesus.

 

There are two people who were mass murderers who went to prison.  Our earthy eyes tell us these people are the dregs of humanity, but in prison both became Christian and both have borne tremendous fruit for the Kingdom.  God forgave them and God used them and our heavenly eyes rejoice in their salvation and the fruit they have borne.  Mark 3:28-29 says  “Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”  Of course without repentance there is no forgiveness, but when one repents, God is willing and indeed eager to forgive ANY sin.  Only the sin of rejecting Him is unforgivable.  Forgiveness of all other sin, however, is a private matter between the individual and God.  Each of us is called to “Work out our own salvation with fear and trembling”  (Phil 2:12b) If God is willing to forgive any sin, should we, who have been blessed with forgiveness and given a set of heavenly eyes, be any less willing?  Our focus needs to be not on items of earthly significance, but on items of eternal significance.  Uncomfortable though it may be, we must allow each of God’s children to make their own choices in this world and we must make our focus the heavenly focus of being God’s voice and bringing the Gospel to an unbelieving world.

 

I believe that the church should take a stand against evil.  But I believe our stand should be one of offering an alternative of love, compassion, and forgiveness; a stand that uses heavenly eyes and produces results of eternal significance.

Ooh, Ooh, Call Me

 

I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t a very good student in high school.  I pretty much did the minimum amount of work that I needed to do to get by, and for the most part, my grades showed it.  The one exception to that was music.  My music grades were pretty much all “A’s”.  Most of you have probably already heard the story about how I hated band and seriously hated practicing and wanted nothing more than to quit.  One day when I was in 7^th grade, my mom, in what I am convinced was a Spirit inspired stroke of genius told me that I was no longer required to practice.  She said that I could be “As bad as I wanted to be” (That’s a direct quote) and that I was welcome to quit band; but only after I had finished my freshman year in high school.  It was during 7^th grade that I was semi-willingly coerced into joining the school stage band (Actually a jazz ensemble that played big band music).  It was jazz that led me into a lifelong love of big bands, playing the trombone, and music in general.  By the end of my freshman year quitting band was the furthest thing from my mind.

 

I was never the type of student to skip classes so I did spend the requisite amount of time attending them but to me, school was not an opportunity to improve myself, it was just something to be endured.   I did homework only when absolutely necessary and I counted on having been blessed with a pretty good memory for what I heard in class to get me through the tests… more or less.  Studying was out of the question (Hey, I was too busy practicing music anyhow!) and to this day I still have nightmares about being called on by a teacher to answer a question to which I have no clue what the answer is.  Many were the times that I would shrink into my seat and try to make myself as invisible as possible.  Let me ask you a question… How did you respond when the teacher asked a question?  Were you like me, hiding behind the person in front of you hoping not to be called?  Or were you the kid who waved your hand in the air “Call me!  Call me”.  I actually went to school with a kid who had a routine for this; three “oohs”, followed by the teacher’s name three times, all while madly waving his hand and leaning forward half sitting and half standing in his seat.  “Ooh, ooh, ooh, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith”.  I guess there is a lot to be said for confidence.

 

Our willingness to raise our hand and answer the question is directly related to the confidence we have in being able to answer the question correctly.  In music classes I saw students shrinking behind their music stands when the question was asked “Who wants to play the solo?”.  Now it was my turn to be that annoying kid.  Ooh, Mr. Hoffman!  So many people in band or choir were paralyzed by stage fright, but I learned early on that stage fright is caused by the fear of being caught making a mistake, and that if I was thoroughly prepared and knew the music inside and out, not only did I not get stage fright, but I really enjoyed making music for others.

 

Here’s the thing…  Long before I became a Christian, God was preparing me to be a musician, and preparing me for the privilege of serving Him through music.  Yes, I was raised in the church, I attended worship regularly with my parents and I even suffered through the Lutheran confirmation classes, but my relationship with God consisted only of an intellectual assent to His existence.  There were no feelings of attachment, no knowledge of His presence, no inclination to shape the course of my life based on His calling.  And yet in my ignorance (And in my arrogance) God, in His grace, chose to love me, and chose to teach me to serve Him.  I can look back on my life and see a myriad of times when I KNOW that God had a hand in things that happened.  I can see times where He took me by the hand and led me to places that I would not have gone on my own.  These experiences have been a powerful and irrefutable witness to me of God’s power and God’s presence, but I owe the fact that I was able even to see God’s invisible hand working in my life to the work of two very faithful friends of mine. Their persistent witness to me, their overflowing love for me, and their relentless faithfulness to tell me the Good News of the gospel, broke through my ignorance and my arrogance, taught me the truth of God’s love and grace, and led to my choice to become a servant of Jesus Christ.  And now, I am charged with the same task of being a bearer of the Good News to others.

 

If you were a person who had followed this journey of mine closely, my experiences might have influenced your belief as well, but only a few people have known me that long.   A few more people have known me long enough to have seen the way God has changed my life and it’s possible that those having seen the changes might be more inclined to believe my witness, but for those who haven’t known me that long, they have only my word; and they may choose to believe me or not.  For these folks, the effectiveness of my witness will depend on what they see in the here and now.  The impact of my witness will depend on how loving I am, and on how prepared I am to answer the inevitable questions.  1 Peter 3:15 says “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,”

 

My friends, we’ve been given a job to do, and a very important job at that.  We are the latest in the long line of apostles who have been called to bring the Good News of the gospel to the world.  And so my question to you this morning is…  Are we prepared?  Are we prepared to live a life of extravagant love for others so that the light of Christ shines through our lives?  Are we prepared to let the Holy Spirit speak through us so that we can boldly proclaim the message of healing and forgiveness?  Are we prepared to answer the questions that will arise when we do share our faith?

 

I wanted to focus a little bit this morning on some of the questions that are common and how to address them.

 

There are many people who believe (Or like to believe) that Jesus is only a myth:

 

The fact is: there are 21 separate, non-Biblical, late first or early second century references to Jesus.  Several of these references were openly hostile to Christianity and the fact that none of these hostile witnesses denied Jesus’ existence is very powerful evidence indeed.  Jesus is mentioned by all three of the preeminent historians of His day, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus.  He is mentioned by the vehemently anti-Christian satirist Phlegon.  He is mentioned in a correspondence carried on between the Roman Governor Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan.  He is mentioned in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud.  And finally, my personal favorite, He is mentioned in the Graecae Magicae, a book of spells and incantations for healers, as a name by which people could be healed.  The fact is, no serious historian would deny the fact that Jesus was a real person who lived in first century Palestine.

 

There are many people who believe (Or like to believe) that the Bible was written hundreds of years after the disciples had died.  They believe (Or like to believe) that the Bible is full of legends and myths, that it was produced by a backwards people living in a backwards time and that superstition substituted for fact and logic:

 

The fact is:  There is an avalanche of evidence to support the fact that the New Testament was indeed written during the lifetime of the original disciples at a time when eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ life would still have been plentiful.  A scrap of paper 2.5” by 4.5” found in northwestern Africa in the 1930’s contains fragments of the Gospel of John.  This document, though there is some dispute over the dating, is generally considered to date from before the year 130 CE.  Assuming this to be the case, for John’s gospel to be in circulation 1500 miles from where we know John spent the last years of his life, we would have to presume authorship some 10-20 years prior to the dating of this fragment.  Since John’s Gospel is the last one to be written, the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) would have had to precede this date by another 10-20 years, and the letters of Paul would have preceded the synoptic Gospels by another 10-20 years.  This timeline places authorship of the Gospels and the letters of Paul exactly where conservative Bible historians and the Church Fathers have been saying they belong for 2000 years.  Not only do we have this physical evidence, we also have the witness of the Church Fathers.

 

I’m going to try to summarize this without getting into a really convoluted discussion about the church fathers.  John, Peter, and Paul each had followers who personally heard their stories and passed them on.  John’s church father followers were Ignatius who lived from 35 to 117 and Polycarp who lived from 69 to 155.  Said to have been one of the children blessed by Jesus, Ignatius wrote 6 letters that are extant.  (For those unfamiliar with archaeological terminology, extant means an original item that survives to this day).  In these letters he either quotes or mentions Matthew, Luke, and John’s gospels and several of Paul’s letters.  His writings do not vary from the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the NT.  Polycarp wrote a well attested letter identifying 14 NT books as scripture.

 

Ignatius and Polycarp taught Irenaeus (120-202), who taught Hippolytus (170-236).  Both wrote important works and both recognized 24 NT books as scripture.

 

Paul was mentor to Linus and Clement of Rome (2 of the first 4 Bishops of Rome).  Clement wrote “The 1^st Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians” which is the oldest surviving non-Biblical Christian document.  Presumably written between 80 and 99 the letter quotes or mentions 7 NT books.

 

Peter referred to John Mark as “My Son”.  John Mark is the presumed author of the gospel of Mark. Mark taught Justus, who taught Pantaenus, who taught Clement of Alexandria.  Clement quoted or mentioned as scripture every NT book except Philemon, James, 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John.  Clement of Alexandria taught Origen who wrote a commentary on every book of the modern NT.  Origen taught Pamphilus, who taught Eusebius, who’s “Church History” is extant and identifies 24 of the NT books as scripture.  Eusebius died in 339 which brings us into the time frame of the writing of the Codex Siniaiticus which contains the entire text of the modern NT.

Though the story of the church fathers is a long and complicated one, following the story shows the continuous chain of apostolic authority, shows how the Gospel message was transmitted with consistency, and shows the books of the NT being identified, quoted, and cited at a very early date. These multiple 2^nd and 3^rd century references to the New Testament make the claims that the New Testament wasn’t written until the 4^th century seem somewhat foolish, don’t they?

 

For anyone wishing to dig deeper into the answers to questions of the faith, I’d like to recommend a few books.  First of all, for outstanding answers to the more philosophical questions about the faith, Leonard Keller’s “The Reason for God” is the best book I’ve ever read.  I’ve bought this book six or seven times.  I keep having to buy it because I keep giving my copy away to people.

 

For answers to the more physical evidence there is J. Warner Wallace’s “Cold Case Christianity”.  Detective Wallace is a police detective who received special training to work cold cases.  He began to use his detective training to examine the claims of Christianity, becoming a Christian in the process.  He documented his experience in this book and teaches us a lot about detective work along the way.

 

In a similar vein, Lee Strobel was a reporter assigned to cover the Chicago police homicide division.  He also became a Christian while using his investigative reporter skills to examine the claims of Christianity.

 

Probably the best of the books informationally is Josh McDowell’s “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”.  It’s not an easy read because it’s organized like a textbook, but it is terrific as a resource because the organization of the book makes individual subjects easy to find and research.

 

For a deeper understanding of the faith we have authors like CS Lewis, AW Tozer, Francis Chan, Dallas Willard, and others.  Tozer’s works are available for free on the internet, as are the sermons of Charles Spurgeon.  There are lots of opportunities to help grow our faith through the work of these faithful authors.

 

Finally, there is no substitute for the original source material.  We need to be spending regular time reading and studying the Bible itself and we need to take advantage of Bible Study opportunities as they arise.

 

God has a plan for me.  He has a plan for you too.  Ultimately His plan is for us to rejoice in His presence forever, but right now, we have a job to do.  God has called us to be His voice.  He has called us to be the bearers of the gospel, literally the Good News of Jesus Christ.  It’s a call we need to be prepared to answer.  Are we going to shrink into our seats?  Or will we wave our hands in the air and say “Ooh, God, Send me”?