Sermon I preached about being God's own fool!

From: http://www.savagechickens.com/tag/fools

The New Testament Scriptures from the Lectionary for the sermon this week:
Matthew 5:38-48

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile."

So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

SERMON:
What is Paul telling us when he writes his letter to the Corinthians? He writes, Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.

Why does Paul say this? Why is our worldly wisdom foolishness to God and why does God's wisdom look foolish to the world? I think those questions are answered in the passage we read from Matthew and that Alex talked about.

Close your eyes and try to imagine yourself back during the time of Jesus. Imagine walking around the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps you were a fisherman, perhaps you were a tax collector, maybe you stayed at home and took care of the house and the children.

One day you start to hear a buzz. At first it is just your neighbor saying, “Did you hear about that guy who is healing people, performing miracles? I think he is a magician.” As the weeks go on you hear more and more people talking about that guy. He spends his time wandering around, healing the sick, raising people from the dead, and saying some of the strangest things. People have referred to him as “Emmanuel” or the “Messiah.” Average people, just like yourselves, think that he might be the savior, the one who fulfills the prophecies in the Old Testament. Other people think he is just a crazy man. Some think he is an outlaw or a con man. But there are a lot of people talking about him.

He is saying some of the craziest and most foolish things! He is turning the whole social order on its head. Everything that we have come to accept as normal when it comes to religion, purity, cleanliness and following the law, how we treat people, especially those who are different from us, it is all being called into question by this foolish man.

I call him foolish because he is really upsetting things around here. Our religious leaders, the priests, scribes and pharisees, are following him around, and writing down what he is saying just to be able to use it against him when they take him to religious court or throw him to the Roman authorities. And he is saying some pretty crazy things!

Just this past week he gave a sermon, they called it the “Sermon on the mount.” Thousands gathered from all around. He stood on a hill on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, near Capernaum. Everyone listened intently to what he was saying, some were believers and followers, some were curious, and like I said earlier, some of them were really angry about what he was saying and what it meant, they were there too.

I don't have time today to go over the whole sermon with you, but the last part was pretty profound. This man called Jesus would take a law or a saying from the Old Testament, which is the law that all of the religious people follow and the law that helps us keep order in our towns and cities. And he would repeat that law, and then completely flip it around! For example, he said, “You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' That is right from the book of Leviticus, our book of laws in our holy scriptures. That law was written and is followed to provide a sense of order and justice. And then this Jesus fellow said, “But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Whoa! This is some pretty revolutionary stuff. Rather than equal justice for wrongdoing, if someone in power over me does something wrong to me, I am supposed to look them in the eye, force them to acknowledge my humanity, and offer them my other cheek. If someone wants to take my coat, I am supposed to offer them my shirt as well? And if a Roman soldier forces me to carry his pack for 1 mile, I am supposed to carry it for 2?!?!? This throws all the power out of balance and doesn't seem to make any sense!

Then he went on to say, Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. Well, if I do that I will go broke. Why should I do that? I have worked hard for my money, and now this guy is just telling me to give it away? This seems like utter foolishness. Apparently to follow this guy, we have to just throw caution to the wind. We have to give up ourselves, give up everything that we know and understand, give up all of our laws and social order to follow him. That is scary, only a fool would do that.

Then it starts to get really foolish! Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy, once again quoting from the Old Testament. Then he revises it by saying, But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

This is just crazy talk! I don't know why he would be asking me to love my enemies and pray for people who are mean to me. Really, what does he expect here. This is just asking too much. He points out that God provides to all no matter how good or bad they are, but I am not God. Is he really calling me to try and act more like God? Ahhh.

You see, being a Christian means really rejecting the order of this world and embracing an order that advances the kingdom of God. It is utter foolishness to those who stand outside and watch our behavior, it looks crazy. But the more we begin to embrace this life, the more we realize that the ways of THIS world, the ways that break people down and don't build up the kingdom, are actually foolish.

The very way that Jesus came and the message that he was preaching was perceived as total foolishness at the time, and it can even seem foolish today. Let's think about this. If a king was coming today, would that king come as a poor wandering carpenter's son or as a mighty military ruler? It is utter foolishness to say that a king would be humble, kings have to be proud by their very nature. But Jesus showed us a new way, a new kind of leadership. We call that servant leadership.

Servant leadership sounds foolish. Don't those words contradict each other? How can you lead and serve at the same time, doesn't a leader need people to follow him, servants? But Jesus showed us it was not only possible, but it is the most effective form of leadership our world has ever known. Jesus took an authentic and keen interest in the lives of the people who were following him. He worked to make sure their needs were met, even before his own. In a cut-throat world of competition, this seems counter-intuitive, even foolish! But it worked and it even works today.

I went to a small college for my undergraduate education, Pacific Lutheran University. We had a football team that won the national championship during my senior year. The whole team was built around the idea of servant leadership. The coaches and the captains were the leaders and they were very well respected, but as part of their leadership, they cared about the people who were following them. And it wasn't a surface level care, they cared very deeply. They even cared about their opponents and after every play they would stop and help up the people they had just knocked down. Many of the people watching this thought it was just crazy, it was foolish to waste that extra effort to help out the opposing team, it was foolish to pray for them when they were hurt, it was foolish for the coaches, captains and seniors on the team to carry the bags of the first year guys on the team. Reporters from newspapers, TV stations, even Sports Illustrated, came to watch this team and how it functioned under this model of “servant leadership.” They call came away scratching their heads. This didn't make sense to them, it was foolish. But that foolishness of servant leadership led to a national championship. The coach of the team, Frosty Westering, is the 9th winningest football coach in the United States, and he won four national titles and has been inducted into the college football hall of fame with his model of “servant leadership.” Coach Westering understood the message of Paul and understood the teachings of Jesus. The world's wisdom tells us to be aggressive, cut-throat, and vicious. And they would say a model of servant-leadership is foolishness. But Coach Westering knew that the real foolishness is in aggressive leadership. God's wisdom, taught to us through the example of Jesus Christ, is to be a servant leader. It may seem foolish to the rest of the world, but it is truly wise.

So we learn what true leadership is, a carpenter's son humbly going around and taking care of people. And Jesus didn't stop there. Many leaders are ruthless tyrants, killing people to advance and to hold on to their power. Jesus flipped the whole thing on its head and humbled himself to the point of death, a humiliating death on a cross. This was true servant leadership, but it was the exact opposite of what the world thinks of as good leadership. Jesus pointed out that worldly leadership is foolish and his form of leadership was really wise, but the world would try to tell us differently.

There is a song written about this called “God's own fool.” I am not going to sing it for you today, that would be foolish and none of you want to hear that. But I would like to read you the lyrics as a poem, a prayer, something for us all to meditate on:

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life, As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to man, He must have seemed out of His mind
Even His family said He was mad, And the priest said a demon's to blame
But, God in the form of this angry young man, Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
We in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
We in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
So we follow God's own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well

So come lose your life for a carpenter's son, For a madman who died for a dream
And You'll have the faith His first followers had, And you'll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know, Find the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes, And blinds those who say they can see

So I put this challenge to each of you. The next time you have to make a decision, whether it is a big one or a small one, and you are trying to figure out how to make the best decision possible, think about using God's wisdom to make that decision, not the wisdom of the world. Become God's own fool just like Jesus and make your decision based upon the example that was set before us. Amen.

Re-Post of an awesome sermon

Pastor John Bell, the senior pastor at Wellshire Presbyterian church, preached a great sermon last Sunday. Below is the "rough text" of his sermon. Enjoy!

This is a VERY crude manuscript from last Sunday, May 2, based on Acts 11:1-18.

“By Our Love” by John H. Bell, Jr.

Within most religions, there is a desire to be: perfect – to get it right, to be perfectly clean, to follow the rules, to obey every single law, to become perfectly sinless, holy. The Hebrew canon insists that we are to be holy, as God is holy. Jesus says that you should be perfect, just as your Heavenly Father is perfect. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” he says. And yet that very desire to be perfect, to be sinless, can also lead you in the wrong direction. If you are not careful, the desire to be holy, perfect, sinless, can ironically separate you from God and others, which is universally acknowledged to be the essence of the laws of God. Left unchecked, striving for personal perfection can lead you to build up walls around you – walls of hostility that lead you to despise or even hate those people who do not follow your rules, who are not as good as you are – and believe me: the feeling is mutual!

Thus, we find ourselves – quite wrongly! – fearing or even hating those who are not like us. There is something within human nature that causes us to fear or hate what we do not know, what is different from us — the alien, the stranger, the one who does not look like us or act like us or share our values. Who frightens you? Who do you hate? Who do you think might ruin your life, corrupt your world or threaten your values? Who do you wish was dead? Would his death improve your life?

The first Christians were mostly Jews, and they were afraid of Gentiles – pagans, secular, worldly people, who did not obey Jewish laws, who ate unclean food, were not circumcised, did not worship God in the synagogue and did wicked things – like watch Desperate Housewives on the Sabbath. They were not terrified of them, so much, as they were afraid that they would be corrupted by their influence. They were not allowed by rule of law to eat with them, speak to them or been seen in public with them. Gentiles were simply “different,” which meant somehow they were bad, a threat to their little chosen community of faithful Christians. The disciples were kosher; they were clean, holy, pure, chosen by God; the Gentiles were considered to be an unclean, dirty, vile, disgusting people.

But that all changed when Peter had a dream. He was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance he saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to him. As he looked at it closely he saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. He also heard a voice saying to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But he replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. … At that very moment three men arrived at Peter’s house. These men had been sent to Peter from Caesarea by a man named Cornelius, who was a centurion and a member of the elite Italian cohort. He was a devout, God-fearing man, who prayed and gave alms to the poor, but … a still a Gentile. The Spirit told Peter to go with them and not to make a distinction between the unclean Gentiles and the kosher Christians. Six Christians accompanied him, and they entered Cornelius’ house. He told them how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.”

And, as Peter began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon the Jews at the beginning … So … Peter baptized Cornelius in the name of Jesus Christ, and the early church had to come to realize that they could not make any distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, for we are all somehow one in Christ Jesus, our risen Lord, whose plan it is to gather up all things together – things in heaven and things on earth! The dividing wall of hostility, of hate, of fear, between Jews and Gentiles has come down in Jesus Christ. “Truly,” as Peter claims, “God shows no partiality.” None.

[Notice that it was Peter and the church that had to change to accommodate Cornelius.]

This is true because the way of Jesus Christ is – not a religion of a thousand rules, but it is the way of love – radical love, extravagant love. The essence of Jesus’ expectation of you is love: he says that all you have to do is love God with your whole heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment, a simple commandment, a very clear commandment: he says that we should love one another. We should love one another as he has loved us … and there is no greater love than one who voluntarily lays down his life for another … in the same way, you must deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow him … in the way of love. You are not only expected to love your family members and your friends or your fellow church members and your book club, but this is a love for people who are very different from you, a love for the neighbors whose dog barks all night, a love of neighbors all the way around the world living in huts in Zimbabwe, a love of those who sleep on the streets or rot in our jails, a love for your enemies. The love of God does not recognize borders or skin color or socio-economic class … truly, God shows no partiality. “Red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves all the children of the world.” Yes, Christians are supposed to be perfect: we are supposed to be perfect in our love; we are to love purely, perfectly – in this way we are holy, in this way we are like our Heavenly Father, God, who is LOVE. People are supposed to know us, to recognize us as Christians – not by our piety or moral rectitude, but, as they old hymn declares: “They will (or should!) know that we are Christians by our love, by our love.”

Religion that is based on a thousand rule builds walls and fosters hate. You are in or out, you are with us or you are against us, you are clean or dirty, you obey or you dis-obey, you are good or bad, you are holy or not, you are on your way to heaven or destined to hell. Religion that is focused on following rules inflates the importance of the self, because everything seems to rise or fall based on your discipline and ability to obey. Religion which is based upon rules is cold and heartless, resulting in deadly legalism. If you are primarily focused on your ability to obey, you are not focused on God or others – you only care about how YOU are doing. It is this kind of religion which gives religion a bad name, breeds terrorists and hate-mongers and wages war in the name of God.

But true Christianity is not based on rules; it is infused with love; it offers an abundance of grace and mercy and forgiveness; and it creates peace – peace for those who are near and peace for those who are far off. In the name of Jesus Christ, there is no room to hate aliens or strangers – even if they are here against the rules; in the church of Jesus Christ, there is no justification to hate homosexuals just because they are different from you; in the name of the God of love, you cannot despise or disrespect or dismiss the Muslim or the Jew, the scientist of the artist, the conservative or the liberal, the President or the Pope or the common man of the people.

Just as Peter realized in a dream and subsequent encounter with the Gentiles, truly, God shows no partiality — and, in God’s name, we may not harbor hate or withhold love. Who are you to hinder to flow of God’s love for all people everywhere? You, who have been called, saved and granted new life in Jesus Christ, have been commanded to love – even the stranger and alien in your midst and your enemy in the far country. Indeed, you were not called by Jesus Christ to follow a strict set of rules and regulations, nor to force others follow the rules; you were called by God to perfectly love others. You were not called to build up dividing walls of hostility; you were called to be ambassadors of reconciliation.

Pastor John Bell's Easter Sermon

Below is a repost of Wellshire Presbyterian Church Pastor John Bell's Easter sermon. I usually use baseball analogies to describe sermons (you struck out, or you hit it out of the park.) I even keep "batting averages" for pastors and their sermons, which will no doubt haunt me some day. My baseball analogies are especially fitting as you read below. This sermon was a home run!

Easter Sermon 2010: Back to the Garden

Read: John 20_1-18

The late comedian George Carlin, who has probably never been quoted in an Easter sermon, rightly recognized that baseball has spiritual value. This becomes clear when baseball is compared to football. He observed that:

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life; Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying. Football has clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness; Baseball has the sacrifice. In football, the clock is often considered to be: the enemy; Baseball has no clock and no time limit! The game theoretically could go on for … eternity!

And finally, the objectives of the two games are very different:

In football, you want the field general to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz — even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing the air assault with a sustained ground attack until they arrive at the … end zone. In baseball the main objective is to go home, and, when you arrive at home, you want to be safe! You want to be home and be safe.

Now, it is not a stretch to say that the main concern of God-fearing, faith-seeking people, our chief objective, is – like baseball – to return home and be safe. The Psalmist writes, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

Bishop and former Dean of the Duke Chapel, Will Willimon, suggests that human beings “sigh for Eden” and want to go back to that peaceful and prosperous place where it all began — before sin and evil entered the world. We all have a deep desire for things to be placid and perfect, free and fruitful — the way we believe things should be — with no bullies, homework or over-draft fees — the way we imagine it was in the Garden of Eden when it was said by God to be “all good.” Some say that deep within every human heart there is some faint memory of Eden and a deep and abiding desire to re-wind the clock and return there.

As an oft recorded, popular song (Joni Mitchell, Woodstock) declares:

We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

We wonder: How are we going to get back to the Garden?

*****

News flash: the resurrection of Jesus Christ takes place in a garden!

If you go to Jerusalem today, you may go visit the so-called “Garden Tomb.” It is probably not the actual tomb of Jesus, but many believe that it probably looks most like what scholars believe the tomb of Jesus looked like. It is located just outside the city wall of Jerusalem. The Bible says that Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, and very nearby the Garden Tomb there is a high rock formation which does look like a skull. The tomb is nice and large, and we know from Scripture that Jesus was placed in the tomb of a wealthy man. There is a large stone, which has been rolled away. However, the Garden Tomb is best known for – guess what? – its Garden! The tomb is located in the middle of a lovely, mature, fragrant, green Garden. The tomb is surrounded by trees and shrubs and flowers, chirping birds and buzzing bees. The courtyard is dotted with benches and well-raked, pebble paths and pools of living water. When Jesus came out of the tomb, he set foot in a lush garden …which probably looked something a bit like the garden, which now surrounds the Garden Tomb – minus the gift shop. Mary actually mistook Jesus for the gardener.

[By the way, this mistaken identity was actually reversed in Peter Seller’s hysterical movie, Being There, in which a would-be savior actually turned out to be only a simple gardener who only knew about plants and weather.]

The symbolism is clear: in the resurrection, which took place in “a garden,” Jesus is on his way back to “The Garden.” Easter morning represents the dawn of a new creation!

*****

It is a spiritual necessity to have a clear vision of Paradise, to use your imagination to envision with the eyes of your heart what life in the Garden will be like. Imagination is extremely powerful: Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard and best-selling author, claims that human beings are the only animals that possess the ability to think about the future. He writes, “To see is to experience the world as it is, to remember is to experience the world as it was, but to imagine – ah, to imagine is to experience the world as it isn’t and has never been, but as it might be. … As one philosopher noted, the human brain is ‘an anticipation machine’ and ‘making future’ is the most important thing it does.” [Stumbling on Happiness, p. 5]

The Hebrew prophets were an imaginative lot: the prophets of Yahweh speak of a place where there will be no more death, tears or pain, where each person can sit out in the open under his own fig tree trees and not worry about violence or vandalism, a place where justice will roll down like waters and righteousness shall flow like a swift-moving stream, a place where we will all know the Lord and God’s law will be written on our hearts, a place of perfect peace where we will not teach our children war anymore for implements of war – spears and swords – will be turned into plows and pruning hooks. In that place:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. [Isaiah 11:6]

And, in the New Testament, the last couple of chapters of the Book of Revelation offer John’s imaginative vision of a new heaven and a new earth, centered in a New Jerusalem, in which is found the Tree of Life, sitting of the banks of the River of Life, which flows from underneath the throne of God. There will be no night, because God’s glory will shine around the clock and angels will surround the throne, singing beautiful songs of God’s glory. What a glorious vision?

*****

It is natural to imagine what Heaven looks like or wonder where Heaven is located or who will be there to greet us when we arrive. BUT it is even MORE beneficial – to use your imagination to ponder: what spiritual condition exists in Heaven? What does Heaven feel like? What quality of life do people in Heaven experience?

You may come to a different conclusion, but, as I read and understand the Bible, Heaven is primarily a place of peace. I imagine that people in Heaven are perfectly at peace. In the Bible, “peace” [shalom] is descriptive of what people experience when things are the way God wants them to be. Peace means – not just the absence of unpleasant things like war, terrorists, talk radio and dishonest politicians, but the presence of all good things, such as healthy food, people to love, justice, equal rights, quality health care, affordable housing and baseball. I imagine that people in Heaven are perfectly at peace. Another way to say the say same thing is that people in Heaven will feel blessed – richly blessed, which is can also be translated in English: HAPPY!

“Happy” may be a seemingly trivial or small word. “Happy” is a word and an experience which is actually very hard to define. The Greek word “makaros” can be translated blessed or happy, suggesting those two words are virtually synonymous in Christian thought. “To be happy” is to feel richly loved and blessed by God. It may be helpful to think of peace as the condition that creates the feeling of happiness. People in Heaven are at peace, blessed, serene, content, HAPPY. People in Heaven will sport a grin.

It is spiritually beneficial to think of Heaven – not so much as a physical place to which you are transported after you die, but as a spiritual condition, because – listen up: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL YOU DIE TO EXPERIENCE HAPPINESS! The resurrection took place in a garden on the same globe that your feet are resting on now. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! It is near. It is right here, right now. The Good News of Easter is that you are invited to taste the Kingdom of Heaven now, you are welcome to experience it today! When you are at peace, perfectly happy, doing exactly what God created you to be, what Jesus taught you to do, it is not too strong to say: you are experiencing a little slice of Paradise, a little foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. You are the first fruits of a renewed, very happy humanity.

*****

… That’s good, because there are a whole lot of unhappy people on earth – and a high percentage of those people live in America. In fact, the happiness industry is big business. You can go to any bookstore and pick up hundreds of books with pictures on the cover of beautiful, rich people, with expensive smiles and fabulous hair, telling you how you can be happy – like they are. Don’t do it! Some of the books might be a helpful if you have a specific problem, but after you read most of those books you will probably be less happy because you are not as rich and beautiful as the author.

Actual research on happiness is fairly interesting. The most interesting thing to me is that human beings are remarkably poor at predicting what will make us happy. Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard, writes in a new book, “People are surprisingly bad judges of what will make them happy. In particular, they seem unable to predict the duration of the happiness or unhappiness brought on by many common events or changes in their lives. Instead, they attach too much importance to the immediate effects of a happy or unhappy experience without realizing how quickly they will adapt and grow to what has occurred.” [Politics of Happiness, pp. 5-6]

Daniel Gilbert, the psychologist that I quoted early in the sermon, says that most happy people simply stumble on happiness; they get lucky. He opens his book with a quotation from a play written in 1902, which summarizes his research: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour …” [Stumbling on Happiness, p. 1]

David Brooks wrote a piece for the New York Times which was picked up by the Denver Post on Thursday. If you were Sandra Bullock would you choose between an Academy Award, which brings riches and fame and celebrity, or a happy marriage? David Brooks wrote, “If you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, you are absolutely crazy,” because marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining happiness – and everybody knows it, but we seem to ignore the truth.

Human beings are surprisingly bad judges of what will make us happy. Left alone in this world, it is all too easy to become lost and make bad choices … which is precisely why Jesus came to save us from ourselves and lead us back to the Garden! He came to tell us of God’s love and teach us how to find true, lasting peace and happiness.

*****

The problem is – and this is a very serious problem – that the advice that Jesus gives seems to do and be in contrast with that the world tells you to do and be.

The great author and Bible translator, J.B. Philips, wrote [I am not sure where this can be found. It has floated in my files for eons. I believe that it was published in his great little book, Your God Is Too Small.] the world is clear about how to be happy:

Happy are the “pushers”: for they get on in the world.

Happy are the hard-boiled: for they never let life hurt them.

Happy are they who complain:

for they get their own way in the end.

Happy are the blasé: for they never worry over their sins.

Happy are the slave-drivers: for they get results.

Happy are the knowledgeable men of the world:

for they know their way around.

Happy are the troublemakers:

for they make people take notice of them.

In contrast, Jesus says that there is a different way to be happy in Matthew 5:

3 ‘Happy are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 ‘Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 ‘Happy are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

6 ‘Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

7 ‘Happy are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

8 ‘Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

9 ‘Happy are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

10 ‘Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness’

sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The difference from what the world tells you will make you happy and what Jesus tells you is almost as great as the difference … between football and baseball. It would be harder, I imagine, to convince you of the truth in Jesus’ teaching on happiness than to try to convince you that he rose from the dead, setting foot in a garden.

Re-Post of Sunday Sermon

Pastor John Bell at Wellshire Presbyterian Church preached a great sermon this Sunday. Below is the text:

Read: II Corinthians 5:16-21

If asked to give one Bible passage to summarize the Gospel, many folks would point to John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” However, the sermon text is thought by many students of the Bible – including this student of the Bible – to state the basic spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ more clearly and powerfully than anywhere else in the New Testament: The Apostle Paul declares, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.” – that is the essence of what God was doing through Christ and continues to do through the church and in the world.

The process with which God goes about reconciliation is very different from the way Congress reconciles bill between the House and the Senate! God is reconciling the world to himself by choosing not to count our trespasses against us. When you forgive another, when you turn the other cheek, when you make a decision not to retaliate against your enemies or escalate hostility against your foes, there is at least an opportunity for reconciliation. Desiring a fresh, new start with his fallen and sinful Creation, God decided not to count our trespasses against us, to forgive us, to blot from his memory sinful things which we have done and good things which we should have done but failed to do. In plain English, God decided to “let it go,” to let bygones be bygones, to put the past behind him and start anew.

Reconciliation may best be seen in the story of the Prodigal Son. The Son comes to his senses in the pig pen, in the far country, hungry, dirty and tired, and decides to return home. The father chooses not to count the son’s trespasses against him: he chooses to forgive and the son is granted immediate amnesty. The father asked no questions of the son, he didn’t mention his own pain, he did not seem to care about the past … rather, the father ran out and hugged the son and welcomed him home; he gave him the best robe, the finest ring, killed the fattest calf; he threw a party for the son. What was lost now is found; what was dead to the father now has come alive again. It was an act of amazing grace. This is an act of reconciliation.

In the sermon text, Paul does not take the time to explain how or when God decided not to count our trespasses against us; rather, Paul simply declares that our forgiveness is somehow “in Christ,” who, for our sake, was made to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

So, Paul concludes, everything has become new: “If there is anyone in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away.” Another Paul – the late Paul Tillich, a 20th century theologian, once said memorably in a sermon: “If I were asked to sum up the Christian message … in two words, I would with Paul: It is the message of a ‘New Creation.” [The New Being, p. 15]

*****

The sermon text from Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians also clearly states the heavy burden of your Christian responsibility: in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us, and in Christ, God has entrusted the message of reconciliation to you. So “you are ambassadors for Christ, because God is making his appeal through you.” Stunning! God is making his appeal to the world through YOU. God is making his continued appeal for reconciliation with the world through YOU!

I encourage you to think of your self as an ambassador for Christ. Ambassadors are extremely important people, and they have an important role in the world. They live in foreign lands and represent their home their king, parliament or president. Their job is to generate good will between countries, broker peace, engender commerce and maintain healthy boundaries and good relations. They try to act responsibility and behave in an exemplary fashion; they often entertain strangers, opening their home, the embassy, to foreigners; they excel in the gift of hospitality; they shower gifts upon visitors and engage in meaningful dialogue. They study their context, learn a foreign language and study foreign cultures – as a sign of respect for people from nations other than their own.

As an ambassador for Christ, your job, your calling, your responsibility, is daunting: you have been charged with the task of reconciling the whole world to God! You have an awesome task in front of you, if you choose to accept it. Christianity is not for small thinkers; the pews of the church should be packed with people who want to go out and change the world – not only change your family, or city or nation, but change the whole world!

The Gospel compels us to go out and seek reconciliation with gang members and Guatemalans, with people from Zimbabwe and Russia, with Israelis and Palestinians, with Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews and atheists – with the whole world … including the planet on which we live!

*****

It is not only humanity that is in need of redemption and reconciliation with God, but in some way the whole world, all of creation, is in need of reconciliation with God. In the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, God says to Adam, who had sinned, “cursed is the ground [the earth!] because of you.”

And the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 8:

19 … the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now …

Apparently, all of creation needed a savior and was waiting on a messiah!

A leading Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, wrote a section in one of his dozens of books about God’s partners. In this section, he wrote that Israel is a special partner of God, in some way all of humanity – corporately – is in partnership with God, you and I as individuals are in a special partnership with our Creator, but there is a very interesting section about creation as the partner of God. He cites numerous passages which speak about how nature plays a role in the praise of God. Psalm 148 is typical, in that it calls upon the earth to participate in the praise of God:

3Praise [the Lord], sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
4Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens! …
7Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!
9Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10 Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds! …

13 Let them praise the name of the Lord,

for his name alone is exalted;

His glory is above earth and heaven.

And Psalm 19 suggests that creation even speaks for God:

1The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament* proclaims his handiwork.
2Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4yet their voice* goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

Many have called creation “the theater of God’s glory.”

Creation is a full partner of God – and, no less than we, creation is in need of reconciliation with God, for creation too seems to be broken and times, it too is abused and it too seems to have experienced a fall and is harmed by others. I read somewhere that Christians should think of creation as “the new poor.” I am not sure what the author meant, but I like the phrase, because Christians are aware that we are to show special care for the poor. [I cannot recall where I read this, but I believe it was written by Sally McFague.]

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Of course, when we think about the state of creation today, the hot topic is global warming. And I am often asked what I think about climate change for some reason, … so … here’s “my take” on global warming – and this will not take long. I can even say it one sentence: it’s debatable. From what I read by the scientific communities that I am inclined to trust, humans are at the very least partially responsible for global warming, but the cause of climate change is still debatable, because global temperatures have fluctuated.

What is absolutely NOT debatable is this: regardless of whether or not humans are responsible for climate changes, you and I – as Christians – have a God-given responsibility to care for the planet. You see, I really, truly, honestly, do not think it matters much what I believe about global warming or climate change – I am not a scientist or an ecologist, but, as a life-long student of the Christian faith, what I can say with great confidence is: you and I, as Christians, are expected to be thoughtful and just stewards of the earth, practice conservation, reduce our carbon foot-print, clean up our waters and the air that we breathe, and protect and preserve this planet entrusted to our care by our Creator – not only because the globe is warming or the climate is changing, but because we love God, the creator of the heavens and the earth! We have not been placed here to abuse, ravage, spoil, kill and otherwise destroy our home for our own selfish or greedy purposes. We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation with God. This applies equally to sinful people and to this broken, abused, poor planet.

In recent years, it seems as if everybody is “going Green,” but a deep reverence for all of God’s creation, care for this planet and good stewardship of the earth is clearly a very significant topic in the Bible and a teaching which has been present in the church in every age – a teaching which has been regularly ignored by the large majority of Christians – until recently.

[(This paragraph was dropped from the sermon due to time concerns.) I do not need to tell you how to care for the good ship earth this morning. You have all heard the simple slogan: reduce, recycle and reuse. I read a section in a book by theologian Sally McFague that encourages us to apply the rules we learned at home as children to the world: take no more than you need – don’t greedy; clean up after yourself – this is a basic life-lesson if you want to get along with others; and keep things in good order for your children and grandchildren – don’t spoil the world so that they cannot enjoy it. She says if we apply these lessons to creation, they the world will be a better place and we will all be happier. I think that is helpful advice! But you have to go further than replacing your light bulbs or recycling your newspaper; you must go out into the world and be an ambassador for the reconciliation between abusive people AND the world, between God and God’s creation.]

But you have to go further than replacing your light bulbs or recycling your newspaper; you must go out into the world and be an ambassador for the reconciliation between abusive people AND the world, between God and God’s creation. An ecologist, Lawrence Hamilton, wrote, “It is not ecologists, engineers, economists or earth scientists who will save spaceship earth, but the poets, priests, artists and philosophers.” [The Earth Under Threat, Prance, p. 27] – to which I would add “all Christians” can help save planet earth – and you should, because you are ambassadors for reconcilation!

At the end of his sermon of II Corinthians 5, Tillich challenged those to whom he was speaking, “The message of Christianity is not Christianity, but a New Reality. A New state of things has appeared, it still appears.; it is hidden and visible, it is there and it is here. Accept it, enter into it, let it grasp you.”

I charge you with the five “r’s”: reduce, reuse, recycle … repent and be reconciled to God, your creator, who is making his appeal through you.