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31

October
Imitating Good Stewards
October 31, 2017 Admin Sermons

The sermon this morning is entitled, “Imitating Good Stewards.” Imitation is defined as “the action of using someone or something as a model.” When it comes to stewardship there are a number of models we could follow, but the best is Jesus himself. Over the course of his life Jesus gave us two very different models of stewardship.

For the first thirty years of his life, he gave us a very traditional model. We know from Mark 6, that at the time he started his ministry, he was living in close proximity, and probably under the same roof with his mother, Mary, four named brothers, and several unnamed “sisters” besides. He lived in the village of Nazareth, and he worked as a carpenter. In his book, “The Mind of Jesus,” William Barclay observes that Mark calls Jesus a “teknon,” which is the Greek word for a master carpenter. Barclay said that Jesus undoubtedly kept a shop in his family home, and Barclay imagines that the sign over the door of the shop may have been an ox yoke, on which Jesus, or Joseph before him had written, “My yoke fits well.” That little bit of advertisement would later furnish Jesus with a superb illustration of what it means to be his disciple. One who takes the yoke with Jesus takes a yoke that does not bind or chaff.

There is no doubt that for the first half of his life that Jesus engaged in a trade and earned a living. Likewise there is no doubt that Jesus gave a portion of that salary to the synagogue. In Matthew 23, Jesus criticized the Pharisees saying:

But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and dill and every herb, and (you) neglect justice and the love of God; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.

Jesus would hardly have approved the tithe without practicing it, though he probably practiced it as a minimum. We know from the gospels that Jesus also was mindful of and gave to the poor (John John 12:5, 13:29, etc.). In Matthew 6 Jesus was undoubtedly speaking from experience when he said,“When you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” No doubt, over the course of his life, Jesus knew both ends of that exchange.

When he was about thirty years old, Jesus left Nazareth to begin his ministry. From this time on, he gives us a completely different model of stewardship. He depends completely on God, and on the kindness of those whom he serves. Accompanied by his disciples, Jesus moved about the country preaching the kingdom of God. As he did, Jesus and his followers often slept outdoors. Thus in Matthew 8, we read how Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” During the time of his active ministry, Jesus and his disciples kept a common purse, and they accepted charitable donations. Likewise, they often ate in the home of good friends, like Mary and Martha, and they sometimes ate in the home of people who either accepted the gospel, like Zacchaeus in Luke 19, or (initially at least) rejected the gospel, like Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7.

When Jesus sent his disciples out to preach the good news of the kingdom from town to town, he charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff. He permitted them to wear sandals, but not to carry an extra tunic, or bread or or money. He told them to rely upon the hospitality of those who received their message. We know from the book of Acts, and from certain of the epistles, that even after the resurrection, the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and certain other prophets and evangelists and teachers continued to rely upon the hospitality of those whom they served. Eventually, the number of people who did this multiplied, and it got old. A late first century document known as “The Didache,” and sometimes spuriously called, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” warns that a true prophet may ask for bread or a night’s lodging, but if he ask for money he is a false prophet. Likewise, The Didache warns that a true prophet may visit with a church in a particular location, and stay a day, or two; but, if the prophet seeks to stay a third day, he is a false prophet. The purpose of the Didache is pretty clear—it warns the itinerant preachers that are welcome in the churches, but only for a very brief visit. Of course, The Didache was not scripture. Thus, over the centuries from that time to this other Christians have felt called to depend completely on God for their living.

In the early 13th century, the man we now know as St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a wealthy merchant by the name of Pietro di Bernardone. When Francis felt that God had called him to rebuild a certain church, he took several bolts of cloth from his father’s business, sold them, and used the money to refurbish the small chapel. When his father learned of it, he declared that Francis had lost his mind, and demanded that Francis payback the money he had taken. A few days later, Francis and Pietro appeared before Bishop Guido. They stood on the steps of the cathedral and presented their arguments. The Bishop ordered Francis to repay his father. So Francis entered the cathedral and took off the expensive clothes he had worn to the trial. He then came out of the cathedral, stark naked. Without a hint of shame he announced:

“Until the present moment, I have called Pietro di Bernardone my father. Now, since I am determined to serve God, I return to him the money over which he is so upset, and also my clothing that he bought for me. From now on I wish to say only ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven’ and not ‘My father, Pietro di Bernardone.’ ”

As Bernardone stumbled off with his goods, Bishop Guido ascended the steps of the cathedral and covered Francis with his enormous cloak. Soon Francis would follow the rule laid down by Jesus for his disciples when he sent them out to preach from town to town, a simple tunic, belted with a rope. Francis started a movement of like minded brothers that endures today as the Franciscans .Some have called Francis one of the greatest human beings who ever lived. Yet, even those who admire Francis most admit that he is not the model that all of us can imitate. If some few people wish to follow the example of Francis, the rest of us give thanks to God, and call those people saints. However, if all of us were to follow the example of Francis, we would soon create a hardship for our families, and our friends, and the church, and the society in which we live. We know from the Book Acts and the Epistles of Paul that the members of the church in Jerusalem sold all that they had, and held all things in common. It was a grand attempt at communism. However, after a very few years, St. Paul was going around to the Gentile churches collecting alms for the relief of the church in Jerusalem. Likewise, in 20th Century India, Gandhi lived a lot like Francis; but the Mahatma knew this model would not work for everyone. Gandhi famously and rightly said, “My poverty has cost my friends a fortune.”

The first apostles, prophets, and preachers existing on hospitality alone; but this model did not last indefinitely. We know from Acts 18:3 that Paul and Silas worked as tent makers.We know from 1st Thessalonians 2:9 that they worked at this trade day and night so as not to place a burden on that church. And we know from 1st Corinthians 9:18 that they did this so they could make the gospel free of charge. Even today, some people engage in what we now call “a tent making ministry.” I know a young baptist preacher with a Ph.D. who lays tile to support his ministry. Not long ago, he told me that God has not yet seen fit to call him to a full-time church, but God has seen fit to prosper his tile business.

Of course, as you know, not every pastor works outside the church. Over the centuries, as the gospel spread and churches grew in both numbers and in size, it seemed good to the church to set aside certain persons to an ordained ministry, which was deemed worthy of a salary. I think it is interesting that, though St. Paul never took a regular salary himself, in the case of others, he did justify and approve it. He discusses the matter several times, and it all comes down to what he said in 1st Corinthians 9:11. There in Paul writes, “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” In other words, Paul says that, in general it is o.k., and even desirable for the churches to “…pay the preacher.”

Now let me say a word in the defense of all the preachers, pastoral assistants, Christians educators, organist, business managers, secretaries, custodians, etc. who do receive a salary. If we were primarily interested in money, or better benefits, or shorter hours, or longer weekends, or an early retirement, we would certainly have followed another calling. Most of us are salaried because simply because that is the model of the churches we have served. If the model changed, most of us would change, too.

So, we have dealt several models for church staff; but what about the rest of us. What about the church in general? What models do we have that we can all follow?

Well, we can all imitate the example of Jesus the carpenter, if not the example of Jesus the preacher. The character of Jesus did not change when he changed his primary vocation.

Likewise, in1st Thessalonians 2:14, Paul says that we can imitate the example of the churches in Judea. Of course, If we do that, we must pick and choose. We have already seen that the Judean churches tried communism, and failed; and we have seen how their failure put a hardship on the other churches. Thus we can imitate them in generosity, but we can hardly follow them into that failure. Paul says we can also imitate them in their willingness to suffer for their faith. It may sound strange, but one who suffers, through no fault of their own, and suffers well, is a wonderful steward, and a sterling example to us all. We know from Romans 5 that St. Paul thought suffering was good for us, as it produced endurance, and character, and hope. The only chance we have to suffer, and suffer well is in this life. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “He who shirks suffering, and escapes it in this life, will find it eternally without remedy.”

Likewise, we can imitate the example of Paul himself. In Philippians 4:9 Paul says, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.” We have already talked about what we have heard and seen in Paul. What have we learned and received from him?

Well, in 1st Corinthians 16:2 Paul tells the members of that church to “…put something aside on the first day of every week as he or she has prospered.” Let’s break that down.

First, we must give regularly. We may give weekly, or monthly, or whatever, but it is important we give regularly. Remember: We plant a thought and reap a word; we plant a word and reap an action; we plant an action and reap a habit; we plant a habit and reap a character; we plant a character and reap a destiny. If we want to fulfill our destiny as good stewards, we must make giving a habit by doing it regularly.

Second, must give proportionally, according to how we have prospered. At this juncture, it is hard not to mention the tithe. In Genesis 14, the first person in the Bible to tithe is Abraham, the father of all who have faith. He paid a tenth of all that he had to Melchizedek, the Priest of God Most High, whom the book of Hebrews calls a “type” of Christ. Then, in Leviticus 27, Moses commands the children of Israel to make a tithe of their herds and flocks, saying that every tenth animal is holy to the LORD. Eventually the people of Israel gave a tenth all their income and possessions to God. Thus in Malachi 3:10, God speaks through his prophet saying:

Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house; and thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.


Paul echoes this passage from Malachi in 2nd Corinthians 9:8 wherein he says that “…God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.”

Now, what if we can’t afford a tithe. If someone can’t afford a tithe, there are two options. First, we can give a lesser percentage, in hopes, that, as God prospers us, we can increase the percentage. If you can’t give a tithe, give five percent. If you can’t give five percent, give two percent, and increase it as you are able. Leviticus 27 says that it is possible to redeem the tithe at a later date by adding ten percent to the tenth.

Second, I would be remiss if I did not suggest that we may make a leap of faith, and trust God to supply the resources we need to tithe. When Elayne and I married, I made $430 a month, and she did not work. At the end of the first month of marriage, we were flat broke. The second month we started to tithe. We were away, so we took a tenth, $43 dollars and split it right down the middle, sending $35 to my church and $8 to hers. We have never been broke since. Or what about this, a much better story. I had a friend, no longer living, who started tithing at about the same time he started a new business. He wrote and dated 52 checks, filing in an amount he hoped would be a weekly tithe. He then gave the checks to his church treasurer, and told him to cash each check as it fell due. He told me that not only did he have enough money in the bank to cover each of those checks; but, at the end of the year, he had to write a 53rd check that was written for almost as much as the total of the first 52. I know this little story sounds suspiciously like it was purchased from one of those internet sights that peddle sermon illustrations to busy preachers, but it is genuine in every particular. The grandson of the man that told me that story is now a member of this congregation, and the business his grandfather started is still going strong after more than fifty years.

Now, what if you can afford more than a tithe? This a tremendous opportunity, for when start to give beyond the tithe, we tend to make special gifts to the people and ministries that matter to us most. Nothing gives me more pleasure than making a 2nd mile gift—a gift beyond what I have pledged to the local church, to some deserving cause. That cause may vary from person to person, whether it be the Mission in Cuba, or Hope—“Help Our People Eat,” or Laurel Ridge, or the Forsyth Prison Ministry, or City with Dwellings, or Hurricane Relief, of The Open Door Lunch which benefits a number of local ministries, or some special ministry of your choosing.

Paul says that several things happen when we give.

First, we have the satisfaction of having something to give. All of Paul’s teaching on stewardship assumes the truth of the Proverb, “It is better to give than to receive.” How do you want to pass your life? Do you want to spend it looking for the relief that comes when someone makes a gift to you? Or would you like to live your life looking for an opportunity to invest in the lives of others? With this understanding, everyone wants to develop the habit of giving!

Second, we have the satisfaction of watching the gift grow from seed to flower. It is a joy to watch a new building go up, or to see an old one refurbished. It is a joy to follow the launch of a new ministry. It is a joy to watch the positive impact our gifts make in the lives of others. Though it is always wonderful to be personally involved, it is not always possible; but we can our money to work of us.

Finally, we have satisfaction of knowing that God will not only multiply our fiscal and physical resources, but God will also “increase the harvest of our righteousness.” That is from 2nd Corinthians 9:10. In other words, St. Paul ties the state of our stewardship with the state of our discipleship! Billy Graham does exactly the same when he says we are not converted until the religion of the head reaches down into the heart, and the religion of the heart, reaches down into the religion of the pocketbook and out through the hands that we have pledged to God’s service.

God loves a cheerful giver! Those of you who wish to express that Joy may bring your gifts and promises of the same and place them on the communion table as we sing our final hymn.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

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22

October
Stewardship 2017: The Powerful P’s of Philippians Four
October 22, 2017 Admin Sermons

Today we begin our Stewardship Season. My hopes for the next four weeks are two-fold. On the one hand, I hope that each of us, as individuals, will prayerfully consider the stewardship of our time, talent, and treasure. On the other hand, it is my aim that all of us spend a little time thinking about our stewardship as a church. We need to know where we are, so that we can know where we are going.

Our assigned lesson is Philippians 4:1-13. As we look at it, consider that the Philippians’s church was one of Paul’s absolute favorites. We tend to forget that the apostle’s experience of church was not unlike our own. He loved all the churches, but he loved some churches more, and some churches less. Let me illustrate. About a decade ago I was a guest in a hunting camp in eastern North Carolina. Another pastor was also a guest. When he found out who I was he came to me and said,

“I hear you are a preacher. What kind of church do you serve?”

I told him I was a Moravian, and I served a wonderful church, this church.

He said, “I suppose that is alright, but I serve a New Testament church?”

I said, “Really, a New Testament church, what kind? Is it a good church, like the one that Paul served at Philippi? Or is it one of those problem churches, like Paul served at Corinth, where things were so bad that one member was living with his father’s wife?”

He looked at me as if he were suddenly far away, with his church, and said, “I never thought of it like that.”

Paul did. Paul was a lot like us. He loved all the churches, but he loved some churches more, and some churches less, and when it came to his favorite churches, the church at Philippi was near the top. In his letter to that church, and especially in chapter four, Paul is trying to encourage the congregation to new heights. He uses a number of powerful concepts, and, in English, the words that express these concepts all begin with “p.” I would mention three.

1. The first powerful “p-word” that Paul uses in Philippians four is praise. Paul tells the church at Philippi that he loves them and longs to be with them, and then he praises them, calling them, his joy and his crown. We know from the first chapter of Philippians that the church is Paul’s joy because they had been his “partners in the gospel” from the very first day that he came into contact with them. There had been some difficulties. Some of the leaders had disagreed with one another, but the good far out weighed the bad. The church at Philippi is Paul’s crown because together they had produced a lot of fruit.

Several times in his letters Paul imagines what it will be like to stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. The Master will say,“Paul, you have been in my service. What proof of your life and ministry can you offer?” In 1st Thessalonians 2, and here, in Philippians 4, St. Paul says the only proof he has to offer is the churches he has served, and what they had accomplished for Christ together.

Like Paul, I am a pastor. If I were writing a letter to New Philadelphia Moravian Church, I might be inspired to call New Philadelphia, my joy and my crown.

This church is certainly my joy, and I hope it is yours. Several weeks ago, I took a Sunday off to visit another church in our community that is not unlike our own. It has a great reputation. That morning, I attended not one church service but two , a contemporary service and a traditional service. I found about what I expected to find, good music, good preaching, and some outstanding people I assume to be volunteers. I was pleased to see four people working the audio-visuals. I got some good ideas just by attending. However, though I admit to having been secretly jealous of this church in the past, I am jealous no longer. I went away thinking that if I were a young pastor with a choice of serving that church or this church, I would want to cast my lot here. I think I would feel the same way if I were a first time lay visitor, but that does not mean that everyone would feel the same, for every visitor has a different set of expectations and needs.

Likewise, I consider this church my crown. I believe that we have done some great things together for Christ. Some of those things are hard to measure. It is difficult to measure the good we have done in the lives of individuals. Though Paul would occasionally mention individuals that were his “children in the gospel,” he never attempts to put a number on his spiritual work. It is impossible to do that, because it is easier count the apples on the tree, than it is to count the trees in an apple. You might reach only one person with your witness to Christ, but that person may multiply themselves many times over.

So how do we measure what we have done together? We can look at our time, talent, and treasure.

Treasure is easy. I do not know of a single instance over the last thirty years that we have failed to meet our obligations to ourselves, our suppliers, or the Province. You may not know this, but whereas a Church like First Presbyterian contributes about fifty-thousand dollars to its denomination. Because our denomination is so much smaller, we send almost two-hundred-thousand dollars to our’s. Likewise, we we have built two buildings that, in the money of yesterday, cost almost four million dollars; and we paid the last one off in half the allotted time. Finally, following the example of Joesph, when he was Pharaoh’s steward, in the fat years, we have put something away in case lean years follow.

What about talent—or Spiritual gifts, if you prefer? We have invested that, too. It takes a lot of talent to put on a worship service each Sunday. It takes musicians, ushers, greeters, audio-video volunteers, hospitality host and hostesses, and, last but not least, somebody to drive the golf cart! Likewise, in a time when people have been saying that Sunday School is old fashioned and outdated, we have maintained a very-good one. We have staffed it with teachers and filled it with learners. (Admittedly, for some time, we have needed for some pupils to become teachers.) Many of our members have invested their talents in working inside the church, as Elders, and Trustees, and in the Men’s, Women’s and Youth fellowships, at the Open Door Lunch. You work outside the church too. You serve important organizations like Laurel Ridge Moravian Camp, Sunny Side Ministry, City with Dwellings, Samaritan Ministries, Crisis Control, Contact, and the like. Many of you have also been active in foreign missions through agencies like the Moravian Mission Society, and the Armando Rusindo Foundation. I am particularly proud of the way that our youth have served in places as far-flung as Alaska, Jamaica, and Cuba. I agree that they could do as much closer to home; but the cross-cultural experience stays with them for a lifetime.

And what about our time? Let’s look at the time people spend in worship. Since the late 1980’s our average weekly worship attendance has rarely dipped below 350. That put’s us in the upper 10% of all churches in America. For more than twenty of the last thirty years, we have worshiped more than 400 people per week; and for more than a dozen of those twenty years, we have worshiped more than 500 people per week.

Today things are different. Last year we averaged 413 people in two worship services. This year, I expect that final number to be between 370 and 380. It will be down for a number of reasons. It will be down because we have sent a few individuals and families to other cities where their work has called them. It will be down because we have sent another batch of our young adults off to college, and when we send our children to college, parents follow, at least for a time. And who would not want to attend Parent’s Weekends, and football games and the like? From top to bottom, as a church, we have grown older. Over the years, we have seen many family members and friends move from the rolls of the church at work to the rolls of the church triumphant. Likewise, a number of members who were fit enough to attend services last year, are no longer fit enough to do so. We can’t forget them! In the last several weeks I have visited with no fewer than half a dozen individuals and couples who fall into this category. Though it pains me to mention it, I would be less than honest if I did not admit that we have lost some members to other churches because they could not find what they were looking for here. In every case–but one, I have to endeavored to learn their reason for leaving, and I think I can give an account of that, even when their reason for leaving is me. At the very least, I can say with confidence, that we have not lost these folks to unbelief. Finally, there are those who belong, and have good intentions, but for one reason or another, no longer come to Sunday school or worship. These are they who concern me most, because we love them and miss them. People attract people. People do not come to church for preachers, people come to church for people. So, as a part of my stewardship efforts, in the months ahead, I will be attempting to convince them of how much we need them.

So, we are not as strong as we have been; but, when all is said and done, I would still call New Philadelphia our joy and our crown. I were a young minister with a choice, somebody like Joe Moore, I would rather serve here than almost anywhere else. I do not say this lightly. I think the church has entered an age of leanness. It will be harder than ever before to reach people for Christ, and harder still to engage them in a local church. The good news for us is, that it has always been harder for Moravians to get new members. Very few Moravians move into Winston-Salem, and when they do, they have a choice of more than a dozen churches. Because it has always been harder for us, we are better suited to this new age of leanness than many churches of many denominations. I believe we can continue to do it.

Am I praising you unjustly? I think not. In Galatians 4:18 St. Paul says, “For a good purpose it is always good to be made much of…” And E. Stanley Jones, the Methodist missionary and evangelist, said that the first duty of a pastor is “to hold a crown over the heads of the church until the church grow into it.” I still believe that from the bottom of my heart. Peter Berger affirms it in his book, “Invitation to Sociology,” saying “the one who is given respect comes to respect him or herself.” I suppose I would add only that if people do not grow into the crown, it is a pastor’s duty to help them groan into the crown. I am not so good at that; but, at least, I am well aware that there are many good churches, and few great ones; and that just being good is often the enemy of being great.

2. The second powerful “p-word” that Paul advances in Philippians four is prescription.

In Philippians 4, Paul’s prescription is two fold.

First, he twice tells the church at Philippi to rejoice, saying, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” Thirty-five times in his letters Paul uses the word “rejoice.” He uses it 8 times in Philippians alone. In various epistles he tells the members of the churches to “rejoice in God,” to “rejoice in hope,” to “rejoice in all that is right,” and to “rejoice with those who rejoice.” In Romans 5 he says that:

“…we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God, more than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, because, as we know suffering produces endurance, and endurance character, and character still more hope, and hope does not disappoint us , because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

Paul was a joyful Christian, and he hoped to pass on that attitude, because he knows that our attitude determines our altitude. We have to name it before we can claim it. We have to confess it before we possess it. We have to believe it before we can receive it. I am a rapper, so don’t you be a napper!

The second part of the prescription is equally dynamic. Paul says:

6 Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

There is absolutely no concern we cannot bring before God. Only after we have made our request known, do we receive the peace of God, which passes all understanding. When can’t explain God’s peace, but when he achieve it, we believe it, and when we see it in others, recognize it. My friend Ron had it. About 15 years ago he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He had a lot of people praying for him. When he went into hospital, they cut into this kidney, but they could not find the cancer. They sewed him up and sent him home. Nine years later, he called me to say the cancer was back. This time it encased his kidney and grew-up over his vena cava. One of his doctors was afraid to operate. Another agreed to do it, but told Ron his chances of survival were risky at best. The surgery was put off for two months. Early on the morning before the surgery I sat with him for thirty minutes before his family arrived. He told me the last two months were the best of his life. He told me if, after the surgery, he woke up and saw his wife, he would be alright. And if, after the surgery, he woke up saw his LORD, he would be alright, too. He spoke as calmly as I am speaking to you now. He had God’s peace, the peace that passes understanding. He did not just affirm it in his head, he knew it in his heart.

Now what of our justified anxiety over the church? Let me make a confession to you. Though I am absolutely sure that the church of Jesus Christ will survive, and thrive, I don’t begin to know what it will look like next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. I don’t know; but I am sure that God does. And I believe that God wants to guide his church to the future that he has prepared for it. I am confident that God will make his will known. He may make his will known through me, or through you, or through someone we have not yet met. There are always three options when it comes to discovering the will of God: My way, your way, and God’s way. It is our task to discover God’s way. We can only do that together; and we can only do that after we have committed ourselves to God and to one another. That is why, in 1st Thessalonians 2:8, Saint Paul says to the church at Thessalonica, which was no less dear to him than the church at Philippi, that they had become very dear to him, so much so, that he was ready to share with them not only the gospel of God, but also himself.

3. The final powerful “p” of that Paul shares in Philippians 4 is the “p” of his personal example.

This personal example, like Paul’s prescription is two-fold.

First, in verse 8, he tells the members of the church to think about whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and gracious. He says, “If there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.” Paul is not suggesting that we spend our time pining over the window displays at Jarrod’s, or Macy’s, or or over the Cabela’s catalog. Paul is not urging us to think on physical things, but to think on those moral qualities that transform us. Remember we don’t use ideas, ideas use us.

Second, Paul tells the members of the church to mark his personal example. In verse 9 he writes, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you.” I once read this text with a group of ministers. I don’t remember everyone who was present, but Br. Bishop Wayne Burkette was there, and Dr. C. Daniel Crews, and several others. Each of us responded in the same way. We sat before this text in silence, thinking of how hard it must be for a pastor to be so confident of his or her own conduct so as to advance themselves as an example to the church. Now, admittedly, Paul was bolder and more confident than most pastors. In Philippians 3, Paul is bold to say, that before he came face to face with Christ, there was a time when he considered himself , as to righteous under the law, “blameless.” In 1st Corinthians 15, he boasts that he has worked harder than any of the other apostles. In 2nd Corinthians 11, Paul boast that he has suffered more than those that many regard as superlative apostles; and, in Colossians 1, he is so brazen that he says, “In my body, I complete what is lacking in Christ’s suffering, for the sake of his body, the church.” Of course, Paul can point out his weaknesses, too. In 2nd Corinthians 10, he says that he is better at writing letters than at preaching, and that his bodily presence is weak.

So, then, ignoring my weaknesses for the time being, are there any qualities in Worth Green that I would advise you to imitate? A few, perhaps. Let me mention three.

First, I take refuge in God’s grace. I live by Ephesians 2:8 where-in we read, “By grace (we) are saved, through faith, and not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest lest anyone should boast.” My late daddy used to stop people on the street and say to all who would listen, “I know God loves you. He must, because he loves a rascal like me.” If I could take one thing from my dad, it would be his willingness to speak this truth to strangers.

Second, though I like to think I can be hard on myself, I am not so very good at judging others. I frequently take refuge in the saying of Jesus, “Judge not, lest you be judged, for the judgment you give will be the judgment you get.” This can be good or bad. I once led a young attorney in a profession of faith. He told me my best quality was my non-judgmental attitude. “It enabled me to talk to you,” he said. Maybe. Maybe not. My friend, the late Tom Cartee, once told me that, in the world of business, and, perhaps, in the world of the spirit, our greatest asset is also our greatest liability. Ouch! Maybe, in being non-judgmental, I am too willing to accept the good, denying people the opportunity to reach for the great. Remember: The good is the enemy of the great. My mother said it, “Good, better, best, never let it rest; until the good is better, and the better is best.”

Third, I may retire someday, but I won’t quit. That is what I promised the Joint Board when I accepted the call here. I won’t quit because I believe it is only when we have reached the end of our own resources, that we enter “God Room, “ which is the place where only God has room enough to work. I believe that God is able to do for us, “far more abundantly than all we can ask, think, or imagine,” but God can do it only after we have jumped in with both feet, and made a real commitment of our own time, talent and treasure. The church does not need people who touch a toe in the water, and try to decide if it is too hot, or too cold, or just right. The church needs people who jump in with both feet, knowing they may be treading water for a long, long time, before God comes to their aid. The church needs people who will love it for more than it is worth, so that it can become more than it is. I pray God that I might be one of those people; and that each of you might be one of those people, too.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M. D.Min.

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12

October
“God Knows”
October 12, 2017 RMW Sermons

“God Knows” September 3, 2017

New Philadelphia Moravian Church – Sermon – Rev. Joe Moore

 

Last Sunday, as part of his sermon series on the Word of God, Worth talked about those Scriptures that many of us find easy to overlook or would rather ignore. Books like Leviticus, with all it’s commandments and laws and ordinances; or Ecclesiastes, which despite its beautiful poetry, is ultimately a downer. And passages like Psalm 137, which talks about “dashing children against rocks.” The Holy Bible is filled with books and passages that we might wish weren’t there- passages that don’t make any sense, or those that don’t seem to have any relevance to our world today, or those that are just too bizarre for us to relate to. But it is necessary to remember that they all have their place in the Bible, they all have their own importance and significance.

Then there is another category of books of the Bible or passages of scripture that we would rather overlook or ignore. These are the books and passages that make us uncomfortable because they call us to do things that are too hard to do or require too much sacrifice on our part. Jesus was really good at calling his followers to do things like “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” or “take up your cross and follow me.” When we read those kinds of passages, we are tempted to try to explain them away as metaphors or hyperbole.

We think “Jesus DIDN’T really mean that we had to do those things. They were just examples or illustrations of the kind of things we are supposed to do, of the kind of people we  are called to be.” But I don’t think that it is quite right for us to do that. I think that Jesus truly means for us to do them- to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to take up our cross and follow him. They may be difficult, they may require a huge sacrifice, they may even seem impossible. But still we are called to do them.

Jesus wasn’t the only one in the Bible who calls Christians to do something difficult. The Old and New Testaments both are filled with calls and commandments that lead us to place we don’t want to go and instruct us to do things that we would rather not do. The apostle Paul is no exception. Throughout his letters to the churches, Paul gives many instructions that are challenging at best, and some that even seem impossible. Today it’s that last verse, the very end of the passage that we read from Romans, that falls into this category. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

“Overcome evil with good? Oh, is that all? No problem. I’ll get right on it.”

Overcoming evil with good isn’t something that is very high on most Christians “to-do list”. It definitely falls into the category of those Scripture passages that we would prefer to overlook or ignore. At best, it is overwhelming to even contemplate. And at worst, it seems to be asking us to do the impossible.

Most people would say that it is impossible to overcome evil with good. And it always has been that way. The Christians in Rome in the first century, the ones to whom Paul was writing, would most likely have thought it impossible. And Christians in the United States in the 21st century can look at our world and think the same. All we have to do watch the news and we see the evil that is all around us.

At this point, I was planning to list all of the evil that we face in our world. But I decided not to, for the simple fact that we all know the evil that we are facing- the evil that we are facing as a society, as a whole, and the evil that we face as individuals. And it is all of this evil that Paul is calling us to overcome. He doesn’t distinguish between societal and individual evil. He just says to overcome evil with good.

Fortunately, he also tells us how to do that. Or at least he gives us a roadmap for how we can overcome evil with good. At the very beginning of this passage, we are told the main thing that we need- love.

It may seem like an overly simplistic idea, that what it takes is love to overcome evil, but just because it is simple, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And the love that Paul is writing about isn’t just basic, garden -variety love. He is writing about genuine love. “Let love be genuine.”

To understand what he means by this, it is important to remember the context of the statement. Paul’s letter to the Romans is a letter written to people who already believe in Jesus, who already believe that he is the crucified and risen Messiah. It is written to people who are already followers of Jesus. He is not writing to tell them about Jesus in order to convince them to believe in Jesus, to encourage them to become followers of Jesus. He is writing to them to tell them that, since they believe in Jesus and have become followers of Jesus, this is how they  should live; this is how they live among themselves and live in the world, in a world that doesn’t necessarily believe in Jesus.

Paul is writing those words to the Christians in Rome in the first century and he is writing them to us today. The genuine love that is required is a genuine love for each other. It is the love that Jesus commands us to have. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus told his disciples to love one another. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus wasn’t talking about loving the whole world, he wasn’t speaking of loving strangers or loving your enemies, at least not in this instance. But instead he is commanding his followers, those who know who he is and believe in him, he is commanding them to have love for each other, to love each other with the same love that he has for them. And I think that it is safe to say that this is genuine love.

“Let love be genuine.” Or in others words love each other with the same love that Jesus has for you. When we come together as a community of believers in Jesus, as a group of followers of Jesus, our first task is to love each other with genuine love. We do that by showing mutual affection, by outdoing one another in showing honor to each other. Sadly, that is often easier said than done.  For even among other Christians, it is hard to love each other.

We are all human, we all do things and say things that make it hard for others to love us. Our moments of greed and selfishness, our pride and our stubbornness, all of those things make showing mutual affection and having genuine love difficult. It’s interesting to note that Paul writes about “genuine” love, which implies that there is love that isn’t genuine, love that can be (and often is) fake love.

As Christians, we can’t allow this, we can’t have “fake love” It is our love that defines us and identifies us as followers of Jesus. I have heard it said that the congregation here at New Philadelphia knows how to love each other, that we don’t let our differences and disagreements get in the way of our genuine love. And after 11 months here with you, I definitely agree. We are able to do this because we understand that it takes work to maintain genuine love, to show  mutual affection. It takes zealous and ardent service, to God, to each other, and to the community around us. It takes our being able to rejoice in hope, to be patient in suffering, to persevere in prayer.  This is how we let our love be genuine, this is how we maintain our community,

And from our community of believers, from this congregation of the faithful, we can then move out into the world, we can extend hospitality to strangers, we can even bless those who curse us. Our genuine love and mutual affection for each other gives us the strength and the courage to move beyond the comfort and safety of our community and share the love of Christ with the world. It is what moves us from the internal to the external.

If it is hard for us to love each other, to love those who are most like us, it is even harder for us to love strangers, or to love our enemies. Yet that is the next step in overcoming evil with good- to bless those who persecute us, to feed our enemies when they are hungry, to give them something to drink when they are thirsty. We  would much rather repay evil with evil, to fight  fire with fire. We would much rather seek vengeance on our enemies and overcome evil with  evil.

Now I am not saying that we are all evil at heart. I’m not saying that we want to do evil to others, that we want to hurt others. But what I am saying is that it is much easier to do unto others what they actually do unto you than it is to do unto others what you WOULD HAVE them do unto you. It is much easier to pay back what you receive than it is to pay back in love. It is much easier to overcome evil with evil than it is to overcome it with good.

And that brings us back to where we started. “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” We have seen how hard that it is, we know how impossible it seems. But the thing is, God knows it, too. God knows how hard it is, God knows how impossible it seems. God knows because God has been here, God has done that. God knows how hard it all is- from loving each other, to loving strangers and enemies, to overcoming evil with good. God knows it because Jesus has done it.

I don’t think that we pay enough attention to the incarnation, to the fact that God became human, that the Word became flesh and lived among us. Like those challenging passages in Scripture, it is something that we find easier to overlook or to ignore than to confront and deal with. Maybe it’s because we don’t understand it, maybe it’s because we can’t truly grasp its importance. But whatever the reason, the incarnation is something that we don’t pay a lot of attention to. And that is a shame because that is how God knows. It is how God knows what it is like for us to do what he has called us to do. It is how God knows how hard it is for us to be who he has created us to be.

We don’t like to really think of Jesus as human. We don’t like to think about him as “one of us.” We would rather set him apart from us. We would rather him not be “truly human.” It’s hard to think of Jesus as being angry or jealous or greedy or proud or stubborn. We would rather him be truly divine and not so human. But that misses the whole point of the Incarnation.

One of my very favorite books is “To Kill a Mockingbird” and in it, Atticus Finch tells his daughter “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” This is just about the  best explanation of the incarnation that I have ever heard. While it is not intended to explain what it means that God became human, it explains it just the same.

God really understands us because he has considered things from our point of view, God has climbed into our skin and walked around in it. God knows and God understands. And that gives me hope. It gives me hope that our love can be genuine. It gives me hope that we can overcome evil with good.

God, in Jesus, has done what seemed impossible. He has overcome evil with good, he has overcome death with life. And through him, we can do the same. So let us do what he has shown us, let us hold onto what he has given us. Let our love be genuine, let us love one another with mutual affection. Let us extend hospitality to strangers. Let us love our enemies. Let us do what seems impossible and let us overcome evil with good. God knows that we can. God knows.

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20

September
Reading the Bible: 3 of 3
September 20, 2017 Admin Sermons

Last week we saw that everyone reads the Bible with certain presuppositions, and the impact of our own presuppositions can be minimized if we remember that the best interpreter of Scripture is scripture itself. I shared with you three of my own presuppositions, which I have gleaned from scripture over the past 40 years:

First, I believe the Bible is the divinely inspired record of God’s revelation of God’s Self on the plane of human history. 2nd Pet. 1:21 we read: “…no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” In Scripture, the revelation takes four different forms, all complimentary.

  1. There is a revelation in nature. As the Psalmists says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork.”
  2. There is a revelation in history, for God revealed himself in a series of Mighty Acts which God performed on behalf of his people. This revelation includes events like the creation, the call of Abraham, and the Giving of the Law at Sinai. It reaches its hight point in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
  3. There is a revelation directly in the heart of the writer. In the Bible the heart is the center of the mind, emotions and will. In Psalm 139, the Psalmist was responding to the revelation of God’s faithfulness and care when he wrote, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”
  4. There is a revelation in the heart of the reader. John Calvin said the Bible is never truly inspired until the same spirit that inspired the writers, inspires the reader. When this revelation does not come; it may be our own fault. John Baillie, author of “A Diary of Prayer,” says that it does not come because we have failed to act on that revelation which we have already received.

Second, I believe the Bible teaches that the Revelation of God is progressive, or at least progressively understood. This is true in nature. When David said, “the heavens are telling the Glory of God,” he was speaking of that portion of the heavens he could see with his naked eye; he never did get a peak through the Hubble, nor did he see pictures from the Cassini mission to Saturn. That’s okay, we don’t have to be a physicists to believe in God, though we could be a physicists. The Special Revelation is also progressive. In Deuteronomy 21, Moses pronounced a curse on the man who was hanged on a tree; but Moses could not have foreseen that, in the person of his Son, God would one day take that curse upon himself to save us from our sins. Thus, in John 1:17-18 we read that:

“the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. ”

Do you want to know about God? Look to Jesus, he is God’s ultimate revelation of himself.

Third, I believe the Bible we have is the Bible God intends us to have, in other words, I trust the text and follow it where it leads. Last week we saw that, in the case of the New Testament alone, we posses more than 1,000 manuscripts and partial manuscripts of the New Testament books. We saw that there are more variations in the manuscripts than there are words in the text of the entire New Testament. Most importantly, we saw that most scholars agree that not one of these variations effects a major doctrine of the Christian faith. Those variations remind us that, though the words are important, the ideas behind the words are even more important. The Great Old Testament theologian, Walter Bruggemann says not it is not the word but the sentence that conveys theological meaning and communicates ideas. Never underestimate the power of an idea. We are vain enough to think that we use ideas; the truth is that ideas use us, for they precede us and (in this world at least) they outlive us.

This morning I want to add a fourth and fifth presupposition which I freely admit colors my reading of scripture.

Fourth, I believe the Bible we have is the Bible God wants us to have in a second way: In other words, I believe in the Canon. The Protestant Canon consist of 39 books in the Old Testament, and 27 books in the New Testament. Protestants reject the 14 intertestamental books of the Apocrypha from inclusion in the canon for the same reason we reject the spurious gospels and epistles; they do not seem to be in harmony with the canonical books. Catholics recognize the 14 books of the Apocrypha as authoritative, and read them for edification and for doctrine. Anglicans read the books of the Apocrypha for edification but not for doctrine. Personally, though I do not read the books of the Apocrypha for edification or for doctrine, like most 21st century students of the Bible, I do read them as a window into 2nd Temple Judaism, for that is the Judaism into which Jesus was born, and as I learn more of it, I learn more of him. (2nd Temple Judaism last from from 516 B.C. and the construction of the 2nd Temple by the Jews following the Babylonian Exile to 70 A.D. and the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans.)

It is my personal belief that the vast majority of the books in our New Testament were certainly written before the end of the first Christian century. Though it is still debated by some, the New Testament canon was first “closed” or “declared complete” by the Synod of Hippo in 393 A.D. The 300 year gap between the writing of the New Testament books, and the closure of the canon reminds us that, just as the Old Testament did not create Israel, but Israel, inspired by God, created the Old Testament; so the New Testament did not create the church, but the church, inspired by God, created the New Testament.

This leads to an important affirmation: By faith, we believe that God not only inspired the writers of the various epistles and gospels, but God also guided the process by which certain books were included and certain books excluded from our canon.

The church laid claim to the authority to do this as early as Matthew 16. Therein, just after Peter confessed him as “the Christ, the son of the Living God,” Jesus said:

17 “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Whatever else we say about reading the Bible, we must say that we read it in the context of the church. “The Ground of the Unity,” also known as “The GOTU,” is the only official doctrinal statement of the Moravian Church. “The GOTU” declares that when we Moravians read and interpret Scripture, we look not just to the wisdom of our Moravian forbearers, but to two thousand years of ecumenical Christian witness. We look all the way back to Matthew, and to Peter, and beyond Peter to Jesus, and we believe that it was the Jesus we worship who gave us the power to bind and loose.

5. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, written, with this proviso, it must be interpreted in the light of Jesus Christ.

This is what Bishop Sam Gray taught in 2015 when he spoke to us during the Lenten Season about how Moravians read scripture. Surprisingly, this is exactly what the Southern Baptist Convention once taught . I think the Convention made a mistake in 973 when dropped the idea that, for the Bible to be fully the Word of God, it has to be read in light of Jesus Christ.

More importantly, in the New Testament, Jesus himself claimed the right to interpret of scripture. In Matthew 5, Jesus makes a fantastic claim for the Jewish Scripture. He says: “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.” Jesus then proceeds to raise the bar for for his disciples. Five times he says, “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you…” and in every instance, Jesus makes demands upon those who hear him that go way beyond the Law of Moses.

In his teaching, Jesus himself claimed the right to interpret scripture. So, too, his person and work made an impact on the interpretation of scripture, too. Let me give you two examples of this.

First, in 2nd Corinthians 3, St. Paul says that before an Israelite comes to Christ, when he reads the Law of Moses, a veil lies over his or her mind. He says that, only when an Israelite comes to Christ, is the veil taken away. What does that mean for us? At the very least, it means that when we read the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament we read it differently from the way that the Jews read it, for we read it in light of Jesus Christ. Let me say it loud and proud: We Christians still read and revere the Old Testament, but we read it in light of Jesus Christ.

Second, the law of commandments and ordinances. We know from the books associated with Moses that God used not just “the Ten Commandments,” and the “Moral Law,” but also “the law of commandments in ordinances” to separate Israel from the nations and make her a peculiar people. When Israel refused to eat pork and shrimp, or to wear mixed fabrics, or to perform any work on the Sabbath, she was bearing witness to the nations of the God she knew to be “Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise and Powerful.” The people of the nations could not see God, but the people could see how Israel believed in God. Eventually, this resulted in what some regarded as too much separation. After the Babylonian captivity, the Jews built a second temple in Jerusalem to replace the temple of Solomon that was destroyed before the Exile to Babylon. And in the temple, they built a wall to separate the gentile court from the inner courts of the Jews. And on the wall they placed a sign, “Any Gentile who passes beyond this point is responsible for his own death.” In Ephesians 2:13-16 the apostle writes about that wall, that once separated Gentiles from Jews, and he writes about the Law of Commandments and ordinances that once separated Jews from Gentiles. He said:

13 In Christ Jesus you (Gentiles) who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.

Did you get that: Jesus tore down the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances. Now God invites Jews and gentiles alike to come together in Jesus Christ. God’s people, the church, no longer needs a special diet or a special look to separate us from the nations. Our worship of the God of the Cross is enough to do this, provided of course, that we are willing to take up a cross of our own to follow him.

I used to laugh at my friends who used the Schofield Reference Bible, but Schofield got at least this much right: Scofield saw that some portions of scripture applied to the Jews, but not to Christians.

And my Jewish friends may say, “Well, Worth, you have handled our scripture handily, but what about your own? Are you willing to put your New Testament to the same test?”

Yes I am for I think we must. There are some texts in our New Testament, that must be read in light of Jesus, too. Take the commandment from Ephesians, “Slaves be obedient to your masters.” It does not unnecessarily disturb most of us; but to some it was heard like the sound of a whip hitting human flesh. Let me illustrate.

In his book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” Howard Thurman tells about reading the Bible to his grandmother, who had lived in Florida, in the days of slavery. She would always ask him to read from the Psalms, or Isaiah, or the gospels, or, from time to time from 1st Corinthians 13, the Love Chapter; but most of the time she would not allow him to read to her from St. Paul. Finally he asked her why she would not? She said something like this:

In the days of slavery, she said, the master would not permit the slaves a preacher of our own, but from time to time, he would send a white preacher down to preach to the slaves, and that preacher would most often select texts like, “Slaves be obedient to your masters.” I vowed, if ever I attained my freedom, I would listen to Paul no more.

Ouch! Is it possible to free Paul from this taint? I believe that it is. There are many reasons we could advance, but let’s leap to the first, and read this text in the light of Jesus. We know from 1st Thessalonians 4:15 that Paul thought Jesus was coming back in his own lifetime. Thus Paul thought that the time was short, and the form of this world was passing away, so he concerned himself not primarily with freeing slaves from their temporal fate, but with freeing as many as he could from the slavery of sin and death. He made slavery and everything else second to preaching Christ. I would mention just one other. bit of evidence in Paul’s behalf. I would mention Paul’s best thought about slaves and masters, which I believe to be God’s thought, too. It is the last word on the subject period. It cannot be improved upon. In Galatians 3:28 the apostle wrote that there is no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male and female, but all are one in Christ!

Of course, it is easy for us to look back and see this. It was harder for our ancestors who lived in the American South prior to the Civil War. Many of the preachers of that Era used the New Testament to demonstrate that slavery was good for masters and slaves alike, and their parishioners believed them.

A friend of mine once remarked that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not much of a gospel preacher. He said that King was more like an Old Testament prophet. I said, “Yes, and what choice did he have? Like abolitionist of the Civil War Period, to find a theme for the Civil Rights movement, Dr. King was forced to go to the story of creation, wherein all men (we will leave that alone for now) are created in the image of God, and to the story of the Exodus, wherein God sides with the Hebrew slaves against their Egyptian Masters.

I have told you before, how, just hours before his death, Dr. King said:“I seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I have climbed the mountain, and I have seen the Promised Land, and you will get there.”

I will say it again, I believe the Bible is the Word of God, but with this proviso, it must be read in light of Jesus Christ. If that disturbs you, then that is o.k., the Bible is doing its work, and I am doing mine. As Reinhold Niebuhr or53n said, “We come to church to be disturbed by the Word of God.” I f the Word of God does not disturb us, it may be that we are taking it for granted.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

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15

September
Reading the Bible: 2 of 2
September 15, 2017 Admin Sermons

Most Christians have an emotional attachment to the Bible that goes beyond our understanding of the Bible. When I was in seminary, my professor, the late Dr. Robert Lyon, told how he was asked to speak in a United Church of Canada. When he flew up, he forgot his English New Testament, but he had his Greek New Testament with him. Therefore, when he stood to preach, he made an on the spot translation of the Greek into the English. As he was still reading, an elder of the church stood up, and noisily stormed out of the sanctuary, allowing the door to slam shut behind him. After the service, another elder of the church told Bob that the man had stormed out because he would only accept the Bible being read in the King James Version.

Bob told our class that story more than forty years ago; but people like his protagonists are still around. Not long ago I saw a bumper sticker which read:“The Bible is the Word of God, and there is only one Bible, the King James.”

If this is true then God had nothing to say to us for almost 1600 years. Ha! We may chuckle at this, but the truth is that everyone reads the Bible with certain presuppositions. The impact of our own presuppositions can be minimized if we glean our presuppositions from the Scripture itself, for the best interpreter of Scripture is Scripture. For the next several weeks, I want to tell you what I have learned from the Bible itself about how to read and interpret Bible. This morning I would offer three key points:

1. I believe that the Bible is the Divinely inspired record of God’s revelation of God’s self on the plane of human history. In 2nd Timothy 3:16-17 the apostle writes:

16 All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 2nd Timothy 3:16-17

Please note that this revelation of the Bible is not a scientific revelation, but a moral revelation. God gave us the Bible that we might know what God requires of us. The text says that the Bible is “…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”

In the Bible, God’s revelation of himself takes four forms.

First, the Bible says there is a general revelation in nature. Psalm 19 declares:

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

God speaks in nature, whether in the stars which declare his order, or in human beings which were intended to show his glory. Thus, in Romans 1, St. Paul bases his theology of sex upon the visible make-up of the human body, male and female. And in Romans 7, St. Paul explains the power of sin, by calling attention to the Law that he sees at work in his own members, a law that is contrary to the Law of God which he affirms with his mind. He says, “The good that I would I do not; and that which I would not, is the very thing I do.” Ouch!

From all this we deduce that the truly Spirit directed man or woman sees God’s handiwork everywhere, and learns from his or her environment, whether from the world of nature, or the world of human beings. Thus Jesus told his disciples to consider the flowers of the field and the birds of the air. And John said of Jesus that, “No man had to tell him what was in man, for he knew what was in man.” Jesus knew what was in man, for he was one of us, and lived among us.

Second, the Bible says that God revealed himself in several in a series of mighty acts that begin with the Creation, and continue through the call of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and far beyond.You can’t get at this revelation through a telescope or a microscope. You can find it only in the scripture. The Ten plagues that God visited upon Egypt is a part of the Special Revelation, and so is the miracle that God worked at the Red Sea whereby God caused the a strong east wind to blow all night, so that the waters of the sea stood in a heap, and the Hebrew children passed over the sea as on the dry ground, and then, when the Egyptians tried to follow, the waters rushed back in, destroying their Army. The Special Revelation reached a high-point (Pun intended!) when God gave the Law through his servant Moses at Mt. Sinai. The Special Revelation reached its absolutely apex in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in Galatians 3:24 St. Paul says that the Law was “…a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.” And in Romans 10:24 he says that “Christ is the ‘telos,’ (meaning the ‘end,’ or the ‘goal’) of the Law, so that everyone who has faith in him may be justified.” Remember, when I am justified, despite all the evidence against me, it is “just-as-if-I’ed never sinned!” When you are justified, despite all the evidence against you, you are pronounced not guilty!

Third, the Bible teaches that the Revelation of God often takes place in the human heart, which is the center of the mind, emotions, and will. The Psalmist we know as King David was inspired by the Holy Spirit at work in his heart and life when he wrote, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.” And the prophet Malachi was inspired by the Holy Spirit at work in his heart and life when he told Israel to quit robbing God, saying:

Bring the full tithes into the storehouse…and…thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. (Malachi 3:7-9)

A lot of people tell me that they take the Bible literally. I always counter, “Yes, but do you take it seriously. If so, you must be tithing.”

Fourth, the Bible teaches that God continues to reveal himself in the human heart. The great reformer John Calvin said, the Bible is truly inspired when “…the same Spirit that inspired the writer, inspires the reader.” If I might borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, apart from this personal revelation of the Spirit in our hearts, the Bible remains “…a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

2. I believe that God’s revelation, whether in nature or in scripture, is progressive, or, at least progressively understood.

This certainly true of the revelation in nature. One night King David looked up and saw thousands of stars filling the night sky, and wrote: “3 When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established; what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? ” David felt how small he was, and he contrasted his smallness with God’s magnificence. Now, imagine what King David would have felt had he looked at the heavens through the Hubble telescope! When looking with his naked eye, he would have seen thousands of stars. Looking through the Hubble, he could have seen millions and billions of stars. Remember, too, that David thought that the stars were just points of light. He did not know that each of the stars were like our sun, though some are larger, some smaller. And remember that David thought that the sun was smaller than the earth. He could never have imagined that it would take 1.3 million earths to fill our sun, or that each of the stars that sprinkled the night sky had a solar system of its own. Had David known all this, he could not have borne the weight of God’s glory.

Likewise, the Special Revelation is progressive. Moses knew more about the Law than we will ever know; but, in the days of his flesh, Moses did not know that the story of Jesus and his love would become the fulfillment of the Law. In Deuteronomy 21 Moses pronounced a curse upon him to hangs upon a tree, but Moses could not have foreseen that God, in the person of his son, would one day bear the curse to save us from our sins. Likewise, according to 1st Peter chapter 1, when predicting the sufferings of Christ and his subsequent glory, it was revealed to the prophets that they were serving not themselves, but the generation of those who would be privileged to believe the Good News about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thank-God, we belong to the generation that has heard the gospel, for, according to 1st Peter, we know things about what God has done in Jesus, into which angels once longed to look.

Revelation, both natural and special, is progressive, or, at least, progressively understood. This means that a text from Moses often means more to the Christian than it did to the Jew. That is why we ask two questions of every text: 1) What did the original writer intend to say to the original reader? And 2) What does God now say to me? We may seek the answer to the 2nd question, and be richer for answering it; but we will not attain to the full inheritance that Scripture has for us, until we have learned to answer that first question, too. Just as importantly, it may even change how we answer the 2nd question.

3. I believe the Bible we have is the Bible God wants us to have: In other words, I trust the text and follow it where it leads.

I say this knowing, that, in the case of the New Testament alone we possess more than a thousand manuscripts of various books and parts of books, and that there are more variations in these manuscripts than there are words in the entire text of the New Testament. That is okay. We have seen in a previous sermon in this series that the leading New Testament textual authority of the last 100 years, my teacher Bruce Metzger, said that not one of these thousands of textual variations effects even one important doctrine of the Christian faith. This whole scenario tells us something. It tells us that, though the words are important, the ideas behind the words are even more important. If the words were more important than the ideas, we would still read the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek, for we would be fearful of making a translation. As it is we have translated the Bible into hundreds of languages, and we have made dozens of translations into the English language alone.

Now it goes with out saying that some individual words are “key-words,” for they are tremendously important beyond the average word. These words often evoke pictures that portray stories. Consider the word “justified,” which we have already used. For those who know it, it evokes an image of a defendant standing before a judge in a court of law, with the prosecutor on one side of him, and the defense attorney on the other. The defendant is smiling, for he has just heard the judge pronounce his sentence: “Not guilty!” “Justified.” Or consider the word “redeemed.” It evokes an image of a slave, who still bears the scars of his servitude, standing on the auction block. This slave is smiling, too, because he has just been purchased by a benevolent new master who has promised to set him free.

Almost any word can be filled with meaning, but only as a part of a sentence. Consider the preposition “for.” I could stand up here all day long and say, “For, for, for, for, for, for,” and your life would be no richer for it. Yet, when I place the preposition “for” in a sentence, and say, as Paul did say, that “Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,” that little preposition becomes pregnant with meaning. We see in it an echo of the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. Just as a long dead Israelite priest once offered up a lamb without spot or wrinkle or blemish to atone for the sins of a long dead Israelite sinner, so Jesus died for our sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to make atonement, or “at-one-ment” between us and God. No wonder St. John could say that Jesus is “the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” And no wonder the Old Testament theologian Walter Bruggemann says that, in the Scripture, it is the sentence, and not the individual words, that serves as the primary vehicle of meaning. I will say it again: I believe that the Bible we have is the Bible God wishes us to have. I trust the text and follow it where it leads.

Conclusion:

Some years ago I had a friend come to me with an unusual request. His wife was dying of a terrible cancer, and he was concerned for her future. He asked me if I really believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and if I believe his resurrection was a sign that we too would survive death and live in his eternal kingdom. I told him that I did, and I shared with him several relevant scripture. I shared with him 1st Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter. And I shared with him from 2nd Corinthians 4 and 5 wherein St. Paul says that if this earthly tent we dwell in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.

Then I said, “I know that you grew up in the Moravian Church, then you left us for a pentecostal church, so why didn’t you put these questions to your pastor?”

He said, “Oh, I could have done that, but I know what he would have said, for he has to answer in a certain way; but you are a Moravian, and I knew I could trust you to tell me what you really think.”

Now I do not think there is that big a contrast between me and the average pentecostal pastor. I have nothing but the highest respect for them, and I think he was paying me, at best, a back-handed compliment; but I know what he was getting at. He knows that we Moravians do not build a fence around scripture to protect it from the hard questions of life. We trust it, and follow it where it leads in the sure confidence that it will always lead us to Jesus Christ.

Finis

Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.

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5

September
“God Knows”
September 5, 2017 RMW Admin, Sermons

“God Knows” September 3, 2017

New Philadelphia Moravian Church – Rev. Joe Moore

 

Last Sunday, as part of his sermon series on the Word of God, Worth talked about those Scriptures that many of us find easy to overlook or would rather ignore. Books like Leviticus, with all it’s commandments and laws and ordinances; or Ecclesiastes, which despite its beautiful poetry, is ultimately a downer. And passages like Psalm 137, which talks about “dashing children against rocks.” The Holy Bible is filled with books and passages that we might wish weren’t there- passages that don’t make any sense, or those that don’t seem to have any relevance to our world today, or those that are just too bizarre for us to relate to. But it is necessary to remember that they all have their place in the Bible, they all have their own importance and significance.

Then there is another category of books of the Bible or passages of scripture that we would rather overlook or ignore. These are the books and passages that make us uncomfortable because they call us to do things that are too hard to do or require too much sacrifice on our part. Jesus was really good at calling his followers to do things like “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” or “take up your cross and follow me.” When we read those kinds of passages, we are tempted to try to explain them away as metaphors or hyperbole.

We think “Jesus DIDN’T really mean that we had to do those things. They were just examples or illustrations of the kind of things we are supposed to do, of the kind of people we  are called to be.” But I don’t think that it is quite right for us to do that. I think that Jesus truly means for us to do them- to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to take up our cross and follow him. They may be difficult, they may require a huge sacrifice, they may even seem impossible. But still we are called to do them.

Jesus wasn’t the only one in the Bible who calls Christians to do something difficult. The Old and New Testaments both are filled with calls and commandments that lead us to place we don’t want to go and instruct us to do things that we would rather not do. The apostle Paul is no exception. Throughout his letters to the churches, Paul gives many instructions that are challenging at best, and some that even seem impossible. Today it’s that last verse, the very end of the passage that we read from Romans, that falls into this category. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

“Overcome evil with good? Oh, is that all? No problem. I’ll get right on it.”

Overcoming evil with good isn’t something that is very high on most Christians “to-do list”. It definitely falls into the category of those Scripture passages that we would prefer to overlook or ignore. At best, it is overwhelming to even contemplate. And at worst, it seems to be asking us to do the impossible.

Most people would say that it is impossible to overcome evil with good. And it always has been that way. The Christians in Rome in the first century, the ones to whom Paul was writing, would most likely have thought it impossible. And Christians in the United States in the 21st century can look at our world and think the same. All we have to do watch the news and we see the evil that is all around us.

At this point, I was planning to list all of the evil that we face in our world. But I decided not to, for the simple fact that we all know the evil that we are facing- the evil that we are facing as a society, as a whole, and the evil that we face as individuals. And it is all of this evil that Paul is calling us to overcome. He doesn’t distinguish between societal and individual evil. He just says to overcome evil with good.

Fortunately, he also tells us how to do that. Or at least he gives us a roadmap for how we can overcome evil with good. At the very beginning of this passage, we are told the main thing that we need- love.

It may seem like an overly simplistic idea, that what it takes is love to overcome evil, but just because it is simple, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And the love that Paul is writing about isn’t just basic, garden -variety love. He is writing about genuine love. “Let love be genuine.”

To understand what he means by this, it is important to remember the context of the statement. Paul’s letter to the Romans is a letter written to people who already believe in Jesus, who already believe that he is the crucified and risen Messiah. It is written to people who are already followers of Jesus. He is not writing to tell them about Jesus in order to convince them to believe in Jesus, to encourage them to become followers of Jesus. He is writing to them to tell them that, since they believe in Jesus and have become followers of Jesus, this is how they  should live; this is how they live among themselves and live in the world, in a world that doesn’t necessarily believe in Jesus.

Paul is writing those words to the Christians in Rome in the first century and he is writing them to us today. The genuine love that is required is a genuine love for each other. It is the love that Jesus commands us to have. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus told his disciples to love one another. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus wasn’t talking about loving the whole world, he wasn’t speaking of loving strangers or loving your enemies, at least not in this instance. But instead he is commanding his followers, those who know who he is and believe in him, he is commanding them to have love for each other, to love each other with the same love that he has for them. And I think that it is safe to say that this is genuine love.

“Let love be genuine.” Or in others words love each other with the same love that Jesus has for you. When we come together as a community of believers in Jesus, as a group of followers of Jesus, our first task is to love each other with genuine love. We do that by showing mutual affection, by outdoing one another in showing honor to each other. Sadly, that is often easier said than done.  For even among other Christians, it is hard to love each other.

We are all human, we all do things and say things that make it hard for others to love us. Our moments of greed and selfishness, our pride and our stubbornness, all of those things make showing mutual affection and having genuine love difficult. It’s interesting to note that Paul writes about “genuine” love, which implies that there is love that isn’t genuine, love that can be (and often is) fake love.

As Christians, we can’t allow this, we can’t have “fake love” It is our love that defines us and identifies us as followers of Jesus. I have heard it said that the congregation here at New Philadelphia knows how to love each other, that we don’t let our differences and disagreements get in the way of our genuine love. And after 11 months here with you, I definitely agree. We are able to do this because we understand that it takes work to maintain genuine love, to show  mutual affection. It takes zealous and ardent service, to God, to each other, and to the community around us. It takes our being able to rejoice in hope, to be patient in suffering, to persevere in prayer.  This is how we let our love be genuine, this is how we maintain our community,

And from our community of believers, from this congregation of the faithful, we can then move out into the world, we can extend hospitality to strangers, we can even bless those who curse us. Our genuine love and mutual affection for each other gives us the strength and the courage to move beyond the comfort and safety of our community and share the love of Christ with the world. It is what moves us from the internal to the external.

If it is hard for us to love each other, to love those who are most like us, it is even harder for us to love strangers, or to love our enemies. Yet that is the next step in overcoming evil with good- to bless those who persecute us, to feed our enemies when they are hungry, to give them something to drink when they are thirsty. We  would much rather repay evil with evil, to fight  fire with fire. We would much rather seek vengeance on our enemies and overcome evil with  evil.

Now I am not saying that we are all evil at heart. I’m not saying that we want to do evil to others, that we want to hurt others. But what I am saying is that it is much easier to do unto others what they actually do unto you than it is to do unto others what you WOULD HAVE them do unto you. It is much easier to pay back what you receive than it is to pay back in love. It is much easier to overcome evil with evil than it is to overcome it with good.

And that brings us back to where we started. “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” We have seen how hard that it is, we know how impossible it seems. But the thing is, God knows it, too. God knows how hard it is, God knows how impossible it seems. God knows because God has been here, God has done that. God knows how hard it all is- from loving each other, to loving strangers and enemies, to overcoming evil with good. God knows it because Jesus has done it.

I don’t think that we pay enough attention to the incarnation, to the fact that God became human, that the Word became flesh and lived among us. Like those challenging passages in Scripture, it is something that we find easier to overlook or to ignore than to confront and deal with. Maybe it’s because we don’t understand it, maybe it’s because we can’t truly grasp its importance. But whatever the reason, the incarnation is something that we don’t pay a lot of attention to. And that is a shame because that is how God knows. It is how God knows what it is like for us to do what he has called us to do. It is how God knows how hard it is for us to be who he has created us to be.

We don’t like to really think of Jesus as human. We don’t like to think about him as “one of us.” We would rather set him apart from us. We would rather him not be “truly human.” It’s hard to think of Jesus as being angry or jealous or greedy or proud or stubborn. We would rather him be truly divine and not so human. But that misses the whole point of the Incarnation.

One of my very favorite books is “To Kill a Mockingbird” and in it, Atticus Finch tells his daughter “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” This is just about the  best explanation of the incarnation that I have ever heard. While it is not intended to explain what it means that God became human, it explains it just the same.

God really understands us because he has considered things from our point of view, God has climbed into our skin and walked around in it. God knows and God understands. And that gives me hope. It gives me hope that our love can be genuine. It gives me hope that we can overcome evil with good.

God, in Jesus, has done what seemed impossible. He has overcome evil with good, he has overcome death with life. And through him, we can do the same. So let us do what he has shown us, let us hold onto what he has given us. Let our love be genuine, let us love one another with mutual affection. Let us extend hospitality to strangers. Let us love our enemies. Let us do what seems impossible and let us overcome evil with good. God knows that we can. God knows.

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