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

For the next several weeks we will be talking about growing spiritually. We don’t age into spiritual maturity. It is not a generational thing. We all know older Christians who have root canals, and new knees, and replacement hips that have stopped growing spiritually long ago. And we all know very young people who, like the twelve-year-old boy Jesus in the temple, possess a spiritual maturity that is way beyond their years.

To grow spiritually we need to think young! John Calvin said there is a sense in which a truly mature Christian maintains “a perpetual adolescence.” We remain open, and eager, and teachable. We want to learn more of God.

We don’t have to worry about running out of things to learn. We can never stop learning and growing, for our goal is a lofty one. According to Ephesians 4, we are to grow until we attain to “mature personhood,” to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Now this series is written specifically for Christians. Someone recently challenged me to explain how we become a Christian. According to Romans 10:9 “If you confesses with  your lips that ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.”

What does that mean? Let me see if I can flush it out by sharing my personal experience with you.

People talk a lot about being saved, or converted. Some say that religious conversion is a crisis. Others say that it is a process. In my personal experience, I am inclined to think that conversion is a process that leads to a crisis followed by a process.

I grew up in a Christian home. I am a child of the covenant. There is infinite value in that, more than we can imagine. I cannot tell you when I became a Christian in the eyes of God. By contrast, I can tell you when I consciously made a decision to seek God’s will and follow the Risen Lord. It happened just after midnight on a day in the summer of 1973. I had been troubled by a verse from book of James. Luther called James an epistle of Straw, but this verse hit me like a hammer. The text went something like this:

A wise man does not say, “I will go into this city and buy and sell and get gain,” but “if the Lord wills, I will go into this city and buy and sell and get gain.”

I had never concerned myself with the will of God. Hitherto I had only been concerned for what I wanted. Now, whether waking or sleeping, it completely dominated my thinking. After several days of struggling with that question, I got out of bed in the middle of the night, went to the living room of my apartment, which was located just two blocks from the San Diego harbor, knelt down and said, “O.K. God, if you are real, just touch the tip of my finger, and I will follow you anywhere. I will do what you want me to do.”

I have told you before: There was no touch; no bursting vision of light; no shaking of the foundations. Despite the lack of a dramatic display, I was utterly convinced that God, and a whole new life were just beyond the tip of my extended finger. I said, “O.K., God, I will do it your way. I will do it by faith. I will put my faith in your son, Jesus Christ.” Then I stood up and went to bed. The next day, I ate lunch in the Officer’s Club at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, with my friend from Texas, 1st Lieutenant Paul “Sonny” Kyle.  As we ate patty melts and drank free champagne, I told Sonny that I had become a Christian.

I think God provided that champagne for the celebration. Why not? The angels in heaven were rejoicing over one who had been lost and now was found. Of course, I was 25 years old, and God only provided one glass. It was not like that time that Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana. Yet even Sonny Kyle knew something was happening. I had gone on record. Though the words may not have been ideally correct, I had confessed the Lordship of Christ.

Since that time in San Diego, I have been growing spiritually. I am on a journey. Sometimes I take two steps forward, and one step back. Some will say that because I take a step backward from time to time my journey is a failure. I don’t accept that at all. There are detours on every journey—times when we misread the map, or take a wrong turn, or get delayed by an accident. We lose our way. We fall back. That is o.k. God does not let us go. Sometimes he loves us back on the right path. As the apostle says, “Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4b) Sometimes God disciplines us, and prods us until we get back on the road. What does the scripture say, “For the Lord disciplines him who he loves, and chastises every son (or daughter) he receives.” (Hebrews 12:6)

And that brings us to the heart of this sermon series. I am basing it on Mark chapter 12:28-31. In this text one of the scribes comes up to Jesus, and asks him a question:

“Which commandment is the first of all?”

Jesus answers:

“The first commandment is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Growing spiritually means nothing more and nothing less than growing in our love for God, for our neighbor, and, believe it or not, for ourselves. Love ourselves? Yes! God intends that. Yet, the problem with many of us is that we pamper ourselves, but we do not truly love ourselves. Love is disciplined.

Jesus says to love God in a four-fold way. He says that we are to love God with all the 1) heart, 2) soul, 3) mind and 4) strength.

Jesus mentions the heart first. That is understandable. It goes right to the “heart of the matter,” pun intended. In the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, the heart stands for the whole person: The heart is the center of the mind—and all thinking; it is the center of the soul—-the life force and all emotions , and it is the center of the person’s strength—-which is as much a strength of “will” as it is a strength of “muscle.”

According to various Biblical authors the heart can be hard, willing, obstinate, frightened, and deceived. It can also be true, faithful, generous, and brave. In every case, what the heart is, the whole person is. If you have a brave heart—you are a brave person. If you have a generous heart—you are a generous person. If you have a willing heart—you are a willing and helpful person.

The heart is the unifying principal, the seat of the mind, emotions and will. The heart is the thing that helps us maintain a proper balance. Let me explain that.

Imagine that you are like a perfectly round wheel that is made up of three perfectly proportioned pie-shaped pieces. Some people cut their pies in 6 pieces, and some in four; but I like to cut my pies in three pieces, and that is appropriate here.

You start your Christian journey perfectly round, because you have a proper balance of mind, emotions, and will. You are in balance because the gospel appealed to you at every level. It appealed to you intellectually—it made sense; it seemed superior to every other alternative. And it appealed to you emotionally—you were touched by the lives of those who allowed their hearts to be broken by those things that break the heart of God. And it must have appealed to you volitionally, because, in an act of will, you decided to seek and do God’s will and be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Because you are naturally “well rounded” your initial journey is a smooth one. You go rolling down the road with little resistance.

Then, for whatever reason, you (or I!) get out of balance.

Perhaps we become so interested in “theology” that we read all the theological greats from Augustine and Anselm to Zinzendorf and Wesley. Our minds—that is our understanding of the faith, grow dramatically. Unfortunately, we fail to get our faith out of our heads and into our hearts. That is a signal failure, particularly for Moravians. Do you know the one essential according to “The Book of Order of the Moravian Church?” It is “a heart relationship with the Triune God who reveals God’s Self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” There is a lot of theology packed into that statement. But it is not about the theology—-It is about the relationship. If we get the relationship right, the rest will be o.k. But when we have a big head, and miss the element of the heart,  0ur spiritual journey becomes disconcerting and downright uncomfortable. As our wheel rolls down the road we bounce up and down like a bicycle bumping down the center of a railroad track. And we go: WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP. WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP.

Or perhaps we have grown emotionally. Though we don’t know the name of Kierkegaard but understand intuitively that he was at least partially right when he said that faith is rooted in our religious feelings. Perhaps we major in worship, and we rush from congregation to congregation delighting in our experience of worship. But we never learn that in the New Testament worship takes two forms: The first is proskenuo—the act of prostrating ourselves before God. It also takes the form of latero—which means service. If we worship without serving we miss the point. As Jesus himself said, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”

The scenario is not so far fetched. In the last several weeks I talked to two people who attend two very different large traditional churches in our state that have added contemporary worship services alongside their traditional services. In order to add those services they have spent a lot of money to put on church for people. And when the people come, they don’t ask very much of them. They haven’t gotten very much either. Both these people told me that, though hundreds of people are attending these services, the have left the old guard in the two churches, the traditionalists if you will, to pay the bill.

I think this is a pretty common problem. For instance, I know of a church with over 800 giving units, and fewer than half of those 800 giving units actually make a pledge and support the church. These folks are great. They have the mind. They have the heart. The only thing they lack is the will. They too have become flat on one side. And when they roll down the roll of life the bounce up an down like a man on a bicycle riding down the center of a railroad track and they go: WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP. WHAPTY, WHAP, WHAP, WHAP.

They need to do something. They need to be like a man I knew who decided to tithe. He did not know how he was going to do that, because he was in business for himself, and his business was relatively new, and he did not know what he would make. He took a chance. He sat down and wrote 52 checks, and dated each one for the appropriate week in the year. And then the gave those checks to the church treasurer, and said, “You cash them as soon as the dates are appropriate.” The treasurer cashed 52 checks, and not one of them bounced. Then, at the end of the year, the man sat down and wrote a 53rd check, and it was a big one!

Some will say, “Worth, you have tricked us. You have said you are going to talk about growing spiritually, and you have sneeked in a stewardship sermon. “ It is no trick at all. I want to keep you and me rolling smoothly down the road, and that is not possible unless we are brave, big, generous hearts properly balanced, between the mind, the soul or the emotions, and the strength, or the will. If we don’t get the balance we are like a man riding a bicycle down the center of a railroad track. You know what that sounds like. It feels worse than it sounds.

Finis

Our Stewardship theme for 2012 is “Generations of Generosity.” This has started several of us thinking about passing the torch of Christian discipleship from Generation to Generation.

We need mature Christians! Unfortunately, Christian Maturity is not just about our chronological age. It spans the Generations. On the one hand, we all know young Christians who possess an amazing degree of spiritual maturity, like the boy Jesus in the temple. On the other hand, we know those who become more immature with each passing year, and never grow up mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Growing spiritually takes intentionality on our part, and a willingness to accept God’s help!

During our Stewardship Emphasis month I intend to preach a short series of sermons based upon the idea that Christians can choose to grow spiritually. My text is based on a saying of Jesus with roots in the Law of Moses: ”

“‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” Mark 12:29

• The first sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Heart.” In the Bible the heart is the center of the mind, emotions and will. Jesus is talking about maintaining a proper balance between all three. Oct 14
• The second sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Soul. This sermon is about controlling and using our emotions. In the Hebrew Bible the soul is the center of the emotions. We are drawn to the touching. We give to those people, organizations, and causes that touch us emotionally. Oct 21
• The third sermon is entitled, “Growing Spiritually: The Head.” Like Jesus our task is to grow in wisdom even as we grow in stature. The pursuit of wisdom is a lifelong occupation. John Calvin the great Reformer said that the mature Christian remains in a state of “perpetual adolescence,” meaning that we are always ready to learn. Oct 28
• The fourth sermon in my series is “Growing Spiritually: Strength of Will.” It does no good to have a warm heart, and a wise head if we are not learning to act on those things that we feel and know. God desires not just talk from his people, but a walk, a way of life. Nov 11

Some will notice that I have skipped November 4th, but we have not. On that Sunday Pastor John Rights will preach on, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” John’s grandfather was a Bishop Elect who died before he was concecrated. His father is a Bishop of the Unity. John is a pastor, and his son, Matthew is just a child. However, both his grandfather, who belongs to the Church Triumphant in Heaven, and to “the great cloud of witnesses”, and his father, who is very much a part of the Church Militant, the church at work in the world, would like nothing better than for John and Matthew, and the rising generations to exceed them in every achievement! DON’T MISS THIS SERMON.

I am really excited about this series. I hope you can be a part of it all.

Blessings,

Pastor Green

Photo by Bill Ray III

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

This week my high school class is getting together to celebrate our 45th High School Reunion! This has made me think about my old classmates a great deal. I would mention one in particular.

His name is J. At our 25th High School Reunion, which seems like yesterday, Jimmy had everybody talking. He drove up in a flash car, something like a red Corvette. He was dressed in a white suit like the one John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever, and he had a beautiful young lady on his arm. It was pretty obvious to all concerned that she had even been born when Jimmy and the rest of us were in high school. Everybody jumped to the conclusion that Jimmy was an eligible bachelor, extremely wealth, and the buzz in the room was that was a drug dealer.

He was an old friend, so, late in the evening we stepped outside, and I asked him flat out. “J, are you doing anything illegal?” And he responded, “No, I import high end stereo equipment for a living; but I haven’t told anybody that, because the moment I tell somebody that, they start talking about a discount of their dream system and all meaningful conversation goes out the window.” Then he told that he told me that he was just like everyone else. He was still looking for someone to marry, and he wanted to have a family, and live a good life. I am happy report that eventually he found someone to marry, and she was a great gal, and a lot closer to J’s own age, and it was my privilege to baptize their first child.

When J and I were in highs school, we were quite close. Neither of us made grades that we were particularly proud of, but we ran the mile together on the track team—he was a lot better than I, and on those long bus rides to and from meets we used to make up “wise sayings. “ We figured if Ben Franklin and Little Richard—or is that Poor Richard, could do it, we could do it. It is harder was harder than we thought it would be. If we did manage to come up with a pithy saying, it invariably turned out to be a rerun of what someone else had said. This should not have surprised us.

In Ecclesiastes 1:9 we read:

…what has been done (or said) will be done (or said) again; there is nothing new under the sun … Ecclesiastes 1:9

We do not invent wisdom; we discover it. It is the God who created all things who created wisdom. In Proverbs 8:22 Wisdom itself speaks saying:

22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.

Wisdom goes on to say:

“I was there when God established the heavens, and drew a circle on the face of the deep, and made the skies above, and set a limit to the waters, and marked the foundation of the earth. “

Wisdom says:

“I was beside (God), like a master workman; and I was daily (God’s) delight, rejoicing before him always.” (Proverbs 8:30)

There can be little doubt that the author of the 4th Gospel looked back to this passage when he wrote about Jesus of Nazareth, saying:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John 1:1-3

And then, in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth….”

The author of the Epistle of James has at least the Proverbs passage, and perhaps the gospel passage in mind, when he wrote:

…the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. James 3:17

I first planned to write on the whole verse. Then I broke it in half. Then I recognized that each word or combination that described “wisdom from above” was worthy of a stand alone sermon.

Let’s spend a few moments this morning thinking about the first statement in that verse. The text declares that the Wisdom from above (i.e. from God) is first “pure.”

The Greek word here translated “pure” is “hagnos.” In Classical Greek thought “hagnos” means “pure (or holy) enough to approach the gods.” In the case of the New Testament, “hagnos” means “pure (or holy) enough to approach God.” Or, to reverse the reference, “pure (or holy) enough for God to look upon.” For God cannot look upon sin without wanting to do something about it!

What does it mean that wisdom from above is pure? It means that the author of James cannot imagine any thing being truly wise which is not also truly moral.

I think that is true of all the Biblical writers. Thus, in John 14 when Jesus says, “I am the truth,” he is not saying that he is the truth about mathematics, or the table of elements, or the laws of relativity, or the Big Bang Theory. When Jesus says, “I am the truth,” he is talking primarily about his relationship to God. He is the revelation of God. In John 14:7 Jesus says, “If you have known me you have known my Father, also, henceforth you know him, and have seen him.” So, too, Jesus gives us the opportunity o have a relationship with God. In John 14:23 Jesus says, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” John 15:10 Jesus says, “If you love me keep my commandments.” The truth that is Jesus is primarily a moral, saving truth. And the wisdom that comes down from above is first and foremost a moral wisdom that puts us in a right relationship with God, with ourselves, and with one another. That is why the Psalmist declares, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom!” (Psalm 110:10)

Does this mean that scientific wisdom is necessarily immoral? Of course not! Without the advances of science our world would be a pretty sorry place to be. Where would we be without Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine that saved millions? Or, where would we be without Thomas Alva Edison who invented the phonograph and a practical electric light bulb? Or where would we be with out Alexander Graham Bell who invented the iPhone 5? I realize that in this last question I have collapsed the process of discovery. I realized that I am cutting quite a few inventions and quite a few inventors out of this discussion, but the truth is that we could not have a complete discussing about even the most popular and far reaching advances of science if we committed to be here for a week.

What would you mention in such a discusion? Would you mention antibiotics, modern plumbing, the printing press, the automobile, and plastics? Your remember the man speaking to Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” and saying, “One word: plastics!”

That leads us to a larger question: What is the right relationship between faith and science?

I do not think it is the role of faith to dictate facts to science.

Take the case of Galileo. He taught that the earth resolved around the sun and that we live in a heliocentric universe. The Catholic Church said, “No, so, for the Bible teaches that the earth, not the sun, is the center of creation.” Authorities urged Galileo to recant upon threat of excommunication, and though he did recant, and they buried in an unmarked grave. They learned to regret that. In 1734, ninety-two years after Galileo’s death, they dug up the body and buried him in a mausoleum in the church, marking his new resting place with his name. Really accepting Galileo’s work took longer. It was not until 1744 that his book was released in a censored version, and not until 1835, 202 years after the death of Galileo that an uncensored version of his book was released. It was three hundred and fifty years after Galileo’s death, when Pope John Paul II said in 1992, that Galileo suffered unjustly at the hands of the Church and praised Galileo’s religiousness and his views and behaviors regarding the relationship between science and religion.

Some people say, “Worth, doesn’t this worry you?” Well, it makes me worry about the church—Protestant and Catholic, but not the Bible. I do not believe that God intended the Bible to be a scientific textbook. It is hard to convince some people of this. When I went to seminary my grandmother told me that if I did not accept the fact that God created the world in 6 literal days I had to give up all claim upon the Bible. Imagine my chagrin when I finally studied the book of Genesis in a seminary classroom, and discovered that the sun and moon was not created until the 4th day. How then were those literal days marked? Dare I say that my grandmother was wrong? You betcha. Of course, I later discovered that my grandmother did not say to me what she said based on her knowledge of the Bible. She said it because her favorite TV preacher had said it. That preacher forgot something very important, which many do. He forgot that God did not originally address the Bible to the people of the 20th and 21st century. If we take Moses as the author—or at least the contributor of the Pentateuch, God addressed the Bible to people who lived as many as 3500 years ago. That reminds me of a conversation I once had with a scientist.

He came to me, and said, “Worth, I am a Christian. My faith has seen me through a war, and the death of my wife, and the death of a son to a horrible disease. Worth, I am a scientist, and I am having a hard time reconciling the early chapters of Genesis to what I know about the creation of the world which I think started in a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Can you help me reconcile the two?”

I said, “I am not sure reconciliation is necessary. Let me explain. Suppose you are writing another scientist, and you assume another vocabulary and write to him anything you please?”

He said, “Yes

“Suppose you are writing his son,” I continued, “could you assume the same vocabulary and write to the same level?”

He said, “No, of course not.”

“Now suppose you are writing both the scientist and his son, to what level would you have to write?” I asked.

“Why I would have to write to the level of the son,” he answered.

I then told him that is precisely what God was doing when he addressed the Bible to humankind in its adolescence. He assumed those of us who are more mature intellectually and spiritually could understand what he had written to those who were less mature intellectually and spiritually.

Of course, the problem is that we are often more mature intellectually, and less mature spiritually. We have science and understanding, but we misuse it. A theory or an invention can be the best scientifically wisdom available in a certain time and place, and it still might be immoral.

The role of faith is not to dictate to science, but to confront science when it becomes immoral.

Take an obvious example of splitting the atom. It is one thing to split the atom for the sake of creating an unlimited source of power. That might be wisdom from above. But it is quite another thing to split the atom for the sake of creating a weapon of mass destruction and nothing more. That is not wisdom from above.

It was the work of Albert Einstein that enabled the United States to split the atom and make the atom bomb that ended World War II. Many scholars and historians think that dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only saved tens of thousands of American lives, but an even greater number of Japanese lives. They say that if we had invaded the Japanese homeland the Japanese would have fought to the last man, the last woman, and the last child. We would have been forced to commit genocide. In that sense, the bomb was merciful. Still, Einstein himself ever after regretted that we had to drop the bomb on Japan. As his life neared the end he wrote, “I made one great mistake in my life…when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.”

What is true of science could be true of science, or politics, or anything else. A thing might be the very best financial wisdom attainable, and it might still be immoral. A bank which charges an extra fee on a certain kind of transaction just because it can, is no more moral than a loan shark which charges exorbitant interest on a loan just because he can. So, too, a thing might make very good political sense, and still be immoral because it does not truly serve the nation in question, or the community of nations of which it is a part. I recall starting out some years ago to vote for a particular candidate. As I left my driveway on the way to the polls I was listening to the radio. His campaign chairman said, “People ought to vote for my candidate instead of the other guy because my candidate only told little lies while the other guy told great big lies.” That was not what I wanted to hear on the way to the polls. I ended up doing a right in for a man of integrity, though some would say that I threw away my vote.

In this world there are always some who will say, “The Ends justifies the means.” The Bible puts the lie to that kind of thinking. The Bible teaches that God has the end of a thing in mind from the beginning. The Bible teaches us that God trust us not with the ends, but with the process that leads to the ends. It teaches that the wisdom from above is first of all pure.

Finis