I am planning this weekend to present a plan for 2012, both in terms of worship themes and for reading through the Bible in one year. I will be inviting the whole congregation to join me in this exercise of Bible reading (and any others of the fans of the LNBS who would like to join in, I can send you the format we will be using). Since this is Bible Sunday and we will be presenting Bibles to the kids at Children’s Time, I thought it was a great time to introduce the project for 2012.
You’ll be hearing more about it all is this space, and others, as I roll out the worship themes for 2012, from January through December. It is something I have never done before, at least on this scale, and I am excited about it all. I am calling 2012 “A Year of Taking Jesus Seriously,” and I am hoping for a dynamic year of worship and discipleship and service. So, watch for it! Or better yet, ask me and I’ll tell you all about it!
I bring it up here, however, to tell you about one particular experience that I hope will finally get us into our text for this week. One of the topics we will be exploring this year (during Lent - if you much be specific) is the whole area of Spiritual Disciplines. These are the practices that John Wesley called the Means of Grace. It is how we both live out our faith and experience more deeply the presence of Christ.
I was looking for a good list, since there are a variety of them out there, and I ran across a website from an evangelical Christian group that call them the tools of the devil. Needless to say I was intrigued. Paragraph after paragraph the site condemned Spiritual Formation and these practices as heretical and designed to lead people astray. Individuals who I had considered teachers and leaders in the faith - Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, Adele Calhoun and many others - were vilified in very negative terms. Foster, for example, was described as that Quaker Mystic, as though that was about as negative as the writers could be.
I don’t know why this stuff surprises me. But it always does. I’d seen it before. Something that I consider helpful and Christlike for my own faith as well as for teaching others (I’ve done courses on some of those authors up there) is now being presented as the very antithesis of the faith and a sign of the coming apocalypse because those who think themselves Christians were dabbling in what amounted to witchcraft and Satanism.
Part of the argument – OK, I probably gave it too much of my time by reading page after page looking for some sanity in the midst of the tirade – was that the authors were afraid that those who promote Spiritual Disciplines were saying that we can earn our way into heaven. That our salvation was all something we could do, by practice (or incantation, as they described it) instead of by grace through faith. And that the Bible doesn’t list these Disciplines anywhere. That it is all about believing and not about doing.
Which made me think these dudes have never read the end of the 25th Chapter of Matthew. Which seems to say the very thing that this editorialist was red-faced against. Take a look:
Matthew 25:31-46 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
I suspect that the creators of the website I was reading have a Bible with a hole in it toward the end of Matthew. It can’t have fit very well into their unwavering and dead certain theology. Or they believed that Jesus was having a bad day and not really saying what he meant. Or that Matthew was putting words in Jesus mouth long after Jesus had left and therefore couldn’t correct him so easily.
This passage seems to say that very thing that we all know isn’t true: that we can earn our way into heaven by doing good works. And yet here is the King Jesus in all his glory, with all his angels, telling us exactly that. Just do it. Just get out there and serve Him, by serving those who need, the least of these. And then, whether you realize or not, you’ll be serving Him. And you’ll get your reward.
Whether you realize it or not. Actually, this parable is not inconsistent with Jesus teaching all along. “What is the greatest commandment?” “Love God and Love neighbor.” He couldn’t, or wouldn’t separate them. Our believing and our doing have to be two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t believe, you can’t have faith and not act on it. You can’t accept the saving power of Jesus Christ and not be transformed into a servant of Christ. It is not just that good works are “nice” as my evangelical friends were arguing, it is that they are essential. They are one in the same.
Some scholars argue that “the nations” that are gathered before the throne in this parable include everyone but those who are already followers. This parable, they argue, is the answer to the ubiquitous question “What about those who haven’t come to believe in Jesus, but still live Christ like lives?” If they served people, they served Christ, whether they realized it or not. Christ was at work in them, whether they realized it or not. Because, as he told us, without him, we can do nothing.
Which makes that verse from Hebrews all the more interesting, the one about entertaining angels unaware. Because maybe what Matthew 25 says is that sometimes we are those angels. Whether we realized it or not!
You’ll be hearing more about it all is this space, and others, as I roll out the worship themes for 2012, from January through December. It is something I have never done before, at least on this scale, and I am excited about it all. I am calling 2012 “A Year of Taking Jesus Seriously,” and I am hoping for a dynamic year of worship and discipleship and service. So, watch for it! Or better yet, ask me and I’ll tell you all about it!
I bring it up here, however, to tell you about one particular experience that I hope will finally get us into our text for this week. One of the topics we will be exploring this year (during Lent - if you much be specific) is the whole area of Spiritual Disciplines. These are the practices that John Wesley called the Means of Grace. It is how we both live out our faith and experience more deeply the presence of Christ.
I was looking for a good list, since there are a variety of them out there, and I ran across a website from an evangelical Christian group that call them the tools of the devil. Needless to say I was intrigued. Paragraph after paragraph the site condemned Spiritual Formation and these practices as heretical and designed to lead people astray. Individuals who I had considered teachers and leaders in the faith - Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Henri Nouwen, Adele Calhoun and many others - were vilified in very negative terms. Foster, for example, was described as that Quaker Mystic, as though that was about as negative as the writers could be.
I don’t know why this stuff surprises me. But it always does. I’d seen it before. Something that I consider helpful and Christlike for my own faith as well as for teaching others (I’ve done courses on some of those authors up there) is now being presented as the very antithesis of the faith and a sign of the coming apocalypse because those who think themselves Christians were dabbling in what amounted to witchcraft and Satanism.
Part of the argument – OK, I probably gave it too much of my time by reading page after page looking for some sanity in the midst of the tirade – was that the authors were afraid that those who promote Spiritual Disciplines were saying that we can earn our way into heaven. That our salvation was all something we could do, by practice (or incantation, as they described it) instead of by grace through faith. And that the Bible doesn’t list these Disciplines anywhere. That it is all about believing and not about doing.
Which made me think these dudes have never read the end of the 25th Chapter of Matthew. Which seems to say the very thing that this editorialist was red-faced against. Take a look:
Matthew 25:31-46 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' 44 Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' 45 Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
I suspect that the creators of the website I was reading have a Bible with a hole in it toward the end of Matthew. It can’t have fit very well into their unwavering and dead certain theology. Or they believed that Jesus was having a bad day and not really saying what he meant. Or that Matthew was putting words in Jesus mouth long after Jesus had left and therefore couldn’t correct him so easily.
This passage seems to say that very thing that we all know isn’t true: that we can earn our way into heaven by doing good works. And yet here is the King Jesus in all his glory, with all his angels, telling us exactly that. Just do it. Just get out there and serve Him, by serving those who need, the least of these. And then, whether you realize or not, you’ll be serving Him. And you’ll get your reward.
Whether you realize it or not. Actually, this parable is not inconsistent with Jesus teaching all along. “What is the greatest commandment?” “Love God and Love neighbor.” He couldn’t, or wouldn’t separate them. Our believing and our doing have to be two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t believe, you can’t have faith and not act on it. You can’t accept the saving power of Jesus Christ and not be transformed into a servant of Christ. It is not just that good works are “nice” as my evangelical friends were arguing, it is that they are essential. They are one in the same.
Some scholars argue that “the nations” that are gathered before the throne in this parable include everyone but those who are already followers. This parable, they argue, is the answer to the ubiquitous question “What about those who haven’t come to believe in Jesus, but still live Christ like lives?” If they served people, they served Christ, whether they realized it or not. Christ was at work in them, whether they realized it or not. Because, as he told us, without him, we can do nothing.
Which makes that verse from Hebrews all the more interesting, the one about entertaining angels unaware. Because maybe what Matthew 25 says is that sometimes we are those angels. Whether we realized it or not!
Shalom,
Derek
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