[Today I will be one of ten clergypersons participating in a forum on “Religious Perspectives on Women’s Health Issues” (with a focus on abortion and contraception) at the Medical College of Georgia here in Augusta. Each panelist will give a five-minute (!) opening statement. We were asked to use this time to state our religious tradition’s perspective on the issues at hand. Here are my prepared remarks. If you have any comments, please post them quickly; the forum begins at noon EST today.]
I am grateful for the opportunity to be with you today to discuss these important issues. They are important issues because they are people issues. One thing that you who are medical professionals and we who are professional clergy share in common is a deep concern for the well-being and wholeness of people; you are concerned for your patients and we are concerned for our parishioners. Often, of course, those lines cross, because often your patients are our parishioners. In a very real way, then, we are all in this together. So I join my colleagues in gratitude for this opportunity to dialogue with you.
I hope to accomplish two tasks in these opening remarks. First, I want to summarize the perspective of my Baptist tradition on women’s reproductive issues. I must qualify this portion of my remarks by saying that there is no monolithic Baptist tradition on such matters. The Baptists with whom I associate the most are Southern Baptists, who tend to be very conservative, and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Baptists, who tend to be conservative in a more moderate fashion. Two cherished Baptist doctrines are the priesthood of believers and the autonomy of the local church; therefore, our church polity has historically been non-hierarchical. We don’t take too well to pronouncements from above on what we should think about anything.
Nonetheless, I think that I can speak with some confidence of a consensus among the more conservative Baptists. It is reflected in the words of a resolution adopted by the SBC in 1980; the sentiment of this resolution has been reaffirmed many times since.
Be it therefore RESOLVED, That the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirm the view of the Scriptures of the sacredness and dignity of all human life, born and unborn, and
Be it further RESOLVED, That opposition be expressed toward all policies that allow "abortion on demand," and
Be it further RESOLVED, That we abhor the use of tax money or public, tax-supported medical facilities for selfish, non-therapeutic abortion, and
Be it finally RESOLVED, That we favor appropriate legislation and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother.
Since the adoption of that resolution the messengers to the SBC have consistently said that abortion should be allowed only to save the life of the mother.
I think that I can also speak with some confidence of a consensus among more moderate Baptists. They would tend also to oppose “abortion on demand” but would be more likely to favor the availability of the abortion option under broader circumstances than risk to the life of the mother. Those might include rape, incest, and the probability of severe defect in the fetus.
Contraception has not been a big issue among the Baptists among whom I have lived and worked. The prevailing perspective has been that while terminating a pregnancy is problematic, preventing one is fine. Some trial balloons have been floated by some prominent Southern Baptist leaders in recent months that may indicate that contraception may become an issue in Southern Baptist life. One leader (Al Mohler) has suggested that “deliberate childlessness” by couples is “moral rebellion.” Another (Dorothy Patterson) has very recently written, “While taking an oral contraceptive is certainly not equal to purposely getting an abortion, the ethical considerations are similar. One function of oral contraceptives is to help prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg. If life begins at conception, this function of the pill is not contraceptive but abortive." I’m not sure where that discussion is headed; I suspect that artificial birth control is so firmly ingrained in most Baptist couple’s lives that it’s a non-starter.
Second, I want to mention some thoughts/concerns/perspectives that I think Baptist (and I suspect most Christian) women or couples might be harboring or nurturing or struggling with if they are confronted with a decision as to whether or not to have an abortion.
In the first place, they will likely be dealing with their presumption that the fetus is a life. Most of them will believe that life begins at conception. Some of them will have processed some of the other possibilities, such as that life only begins when the baby can live outside the mother’s body or perhaps when a nervous system begins to develop, but most will still believe that the fetus, regardless of its stage of development, is a life. I realize that we might need to differentiate between a “life” and a “person,” but I’m not sure that many of your Baptist patients will see that as a significant distinction. “Life” for some of them will equal “potential person” and for others “full person with all the rights of protection that full-grown person has.” So, many of them will be dealing with feelings of guilt over the mere contemplation of an abortion, even if there are valid medical reasons for having one.
In the second place, many Baptist and other Christian patients will come to you having been immersed in the idea that at the heart of the Christian faith lies the practice of self-sacrificing love. They believe that Jesus Christ laid aside his self-interest and his prerogatives as the Son of God and voluntarily gave up his life on the cross for the sake of us sinners—for people who are guilty! They believe that as followers of Christ they are called to have the mind and heart of Christ which require them to practice that same kind of self-giving love. They believe that they are called to put the interests of others—even of their enemies—ahead of their own. As I said earlier, most Baptists would say that abortion should be available when the life of the mother is in danger. But, even when that is the case, a follower of Christ may well be dealing with a sense that it is not right to put her own interests ahead of those of the fetus, even if it threatens her life. The dynamics of that inward struggle could be very painful.
I believe that to treat a person as a whole person means that we have to deal with the physical, emotional, social, environmental, and spiritual dimensions of that person’s life. I hope that I have given you something to think about as you contemplate the spiritual aspect of your patients’ lives as they deal with some very difficult choices.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
God’s Glory Road
(A sermon for the second Sunday in Lent based on Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35)
The Lenten path is a road to glory. It was that way for Jesus. The path that he followed during the last days of his life on earth was the path to his glorification. It was a path that led to resurrection but crucifixion had to be experienced before resurrection could be known. We will do well always to remember that God’s way, which is most fully revealed in the life of Jesus Christ, is the way of the cross. It is not an easy way and there are no shortcuts. But it is the necessary way.
What can we say about God’s glory road?
First, God’s glory road is a road of faith. We will make progress on that road as we learn to trust God more. By what is such faith characterized?
For one thing, such faith is characterized by honest questions. From Job to Jesus, the Bible continually shows us that the possession of real faith does not eliminate the asking of real questions. Indeed, faith does not require us to hang our integrity on a nail outside the church door; faith allows us to bring our honest doubts inside the church door so that they can be baptized. So when God said to Abraham, “Your reward will be very great,” the patriarch could not help but think that he had heard this before. God had earlier promised him that a nation would descend from him but Sarah and he had not yet had a child and they were getting old. So Abraham asked, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless…? (Genesis 15:2). That was a good and honest question. Later, God told Abraham that he was going to give him the land to possess. Again, Abraham had heard that before. So he asked, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (v. 8). Again, a good and honest question.
There is nothing wrong with such good and honest questions. Indeed, when it comes to conversing with God, if you’re thinking it you might as well voice it! Life with God is challenging. It takes us down some difficult roads. Doubts and concerns are bound to arise. As we give voice to them we give God the opportunity to alleviate them and to help us deal with them.
For another thing, such faith is characterized by radical trust in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Even in the face of honest doubts we can move toward radical trust. And so, after God reassured Abraham that he would indeed have many descendants, we find one of the most amazing verses in the Bible: “And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (v. 6). Abraham was made right with God not because he did all the right things; he was made right with God because, in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and in the face of honest and reasonable doubts, he achieved and expressed radical trust in God. True, Abraham did not trust perfectly from that moment on, but radical trust is not perfect trust, anyway. A person who has radical trust is a person who gives himself over fully to God and who deals with whatever comes knowing that his life is in God’s hands.
Sometime great obstacles stand between us and the fulfillment of God’s plan for us. Sometimes we create our own obstacles; as Pogo put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sometimes the obstacles emerge from the circumstances of life. Sometimes the obstacles emerge from the opposition of the world around us. But the obstacles do arise. And sometimes they seem insurmountable. That’s when real faith kicks in.
Second, God’s glory road is a road of hope. One key to being on God’s road to glory is the constant acknowledgement and awareness that we are indeed on a road, that we are in fact on a journey. Until we get there we have not arrived! We can be the child in the back seat of the car who continually asks her father “Are we there yet?” but if we keep asking our heavenly Father that question the answer is always going to be, “No, my child, no.” But that is actually a good thing.
It is a good thing because God has a future for us. It is a future in which, as Paul put it, “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory…” (Philippians 3:21). When God brings all things to their completion and we receive our resurrection bodies, then God’s great future will be realized in our lives. In the meantime, while we walk on this road that God has laid out before us, we are always drawn forward by the power of that great future. Our minds are set on heavenly things. We know that we belong in heaven and that one day our Savior will come and take us there.
God’s way is all about the future. Abraham had to believe in what God promised for the future. The Philippians had to believe that the day was coming when they would be all that God intended for them to be. We have to believe that God is going to keep his promises; we have to believe that he is not finished with us and with his universe yet. We have to believe in heaven and in the resurrection because those realities are what God’s great future is all about. It is heaven that makes going through what we have to go through worth it. It is the resurrection that makes the hard times in life worthwhile. It is trusting in the God who keeps his promises that keeps us pushing forward.
While God’s way is about the future, that way empowers us in the present. Thus Abraham believed in what God told him about his future heir and God reckoned that to him as righteousness in the present. Also, Abraham was able to move forward in hope because he believed that God would do what God had promised to do. Paul encouraged the Philippians, after he had assured them that God would one day transform their humble bodies into glorious ones, to “stand firm in the Lord” (4:1). They could stand firm in the present exactly because of what God was going to do in the future. So can we.
Third, God’s glory road is a road of perspective. When we accept the promises of God so that we walk the road he has placed before us in faith and hope, when we believe in his promises so that we are pulled toward his future in a way that empowers our present, then we are given a proper perspective on the living of our lives. What are some characteristics of that perspective?
First, it enables us to face the challenges of life head-on and with our eyes open. God told Abraham, “Do not be afraid, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (Genesis 15:1). That statement may mean many things, but it certainly implies that Abraham would need a shield. I am struck by the three-part phrasing of that statement. First, God told Abraham, “Do not be afraid.” Third, he told him, “Your reward shall be very great.” But in the middle he said, “I am your shield.” It is as if God was telling Abraham, “I will be your shield while you go through all the difficulties and trials that you are going to experience before you receive your great reward.” So it is with us. We are heading toward a great reward but in the meantime we must live these lives in which difficult things can and will happen. While we live in faith and hope, God will be our shield. Therefore, we don’t shy away from life. We have the kind of perspective that enables us to face it head on.
Second, it enables us to live the lives that God has called us to live regardless of the cost to us because we know that victory will come in the end. Once, Jesus was warned to steer clear of Herod because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus’ response revealed his commitment to fulfilling his mission of healing and helping; he had to do what he was called to do. He even stated that when his work of ministry was over he knew that he would go to Jerusalem to be killed. Jesus did not deny the threat to his life. Nor did he avoid his God-given responsibility because of that threat. He pressed on, knowing that one day people would shout “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Of course, even when they shouted those words on Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem would mean less than they should and would say more than they meant. But the day would come, Jesus knew, when some people would say those words because they would know that his faithfulness was a reflection of his commitment to doing the will of God. His resurrection surely revealed that truth. And one day, when he comes again, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, then everybody will say “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” and everybody will know what it means.
We need the right kind of perspective on our lives. Disciples of Jesus Christ are not called to have easy lives; we are called to live faithful lives. We are called to follow him wherever he may lead us. If we are faithful, those places will often be difficult and challenging. In a very real way, faithfulness is its own reward. And yet we are promised by our God that in the end we will know the reward of eternal life with him.
The Lenten path is a road to glory. The question we need to ask ourselves today is this: to what extent are we walking along the path that Jesus showed us and about which he taught us? Are we walking in ways that grow our faith, that increase our hope, and that enhance our perspective? Are we traveling down God’s glory road?
The Lenten path is a road to glory. It was that way for Jesus. The path that he followed during the last days of his life on earth was the path to his glorification. It was a path that led to resurrection but crucifixion had to be experienced before resurrection could be known. We will do well always to remember that God’s way, which is most fully revealed in the life of Jesus Christ, is the way of the cross. It is not an easy way and there are no shortcuts. But it is the necessary way.
What can we say about God’s glory road?
First, God’s glory road is a road of faith. We will make progress on that road as we learn to trust God more. By what is such faith characterized?
For one thing, such faith is characterized by honest questions. From Job to Jesus, the Bible continually shows us that the possession of real faith does not eliminate the asking of real questions. Indeed, faith does not require us to hang our integrity on a nail outside the church door; faith allows us to bring our honest doubts inside the church door so that they can be baptized. So when God said to Abraham, “Your reward will be very great,” the patriarch could not help but think that he had heard this before. God had earlier promised him that a nation would descend from him but Sarah and he had not yet had a child and they were getting old. So Abraham asked, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless…? (Genesis 15:2). That was a good and honest question. Later, God told Abraham that he was going to give him the land to possess. Again, Abraham had heard that before. So he asked, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (v. 8). Again, a good and honest question.
There is nothing wrong with such good and honest questions. Indeed, when it comes to conversing with God, if you’re thinking it you might as well voice it! Life with God is challenging. It takes us down some difficult roads. Doubts and concerns are bound to arise. As we give voice to them we give God the opportunity to alleviate them and to help us deal with them.
For another thing, such faith is characterized by radical trust in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Even in the face of honest doubts we can move toward radical trust. And so, after God reassured Abraham that he would indeed have many descendants, we find one of the most amazing verses in the Bible: “And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (v. 6). Abraham was made right with God not because he did all the right things; he was made right with God because, in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and in the face of honest and reasonable doubts, he achieved and expressed radical trust in God. True, Abraham did not trust perfectly from that moment on, but radical trust is not perfect trust, anyway. A person who has radical trust is a person who gives himself over fully to God and who deals with whatever comes knowing that his life is in God’s hands.
Sometime great obstacles stand between us and the fulfillment of God’s plan for us. Sometimes we create our own obstacles; as Pogo put it, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sometimes the obstacles emerge from the circumstances of life. Sometimes the obstacles emerge from the opposition of the world around us. But the obstacles do arise. And sometimes they seem insurmountable. That’s when real faith kicks in.
Second, God’s glory road is a road of hope. One key to being on God’s road to glory is the constant acknowledgement and awareness that we are indeed on a road, that we are in fact on a journey. Until we get there we have not arrived! We can be the child in the back seat of the car who continually asks her father “Are we there yet?” but if we keep asking our heavenly Father that question the answer is always going to be, “No, my child, no.” But that is actually a good thing.
It is a good thing because God has a future for us. It is a future in which, as Paul put it, “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory…” (Philippians 3:21). When God brings all things to their completion and we receive our resurrection bodies, then God’s great future will be realized in our lives. In the meantime, while we walk on this road that God has laid out before us, we are always drawn forward by the power of that great future. Our minds are set on heavenly things. We know that we belong in heaven and that one day our Savior will come and take us there.
God’s way is all about the future. Abraham had to believe in what God promised for the future. The Philippians had to believe that the day was coming when they would be all that God intended for them to be. We have to believe that God is going to keep his promises; we have to believe that he is not finished with us and with his universe yet. We have to believe in heaven and in the resurrection because those realities are what God’s great future is all about. It is heaven that makes going through what we have to go through worth it. It is the resurrection that makes the hard times in life worthwhile. It is trusting in the God who keeps his promises that keeps us pushing forward.
While God’s way is about the future, that way empowers us in the present. Thus Abraham believed in what God told him about his future heir and God reckoned that to him as righteousness in the present. Also, Abraham was able to move forward in hope because he believed that God would do what God had promised to do. Paul encouraged the Philippians, after he had assured them that God would one day transform their humble bodies into glorious ones, to “stand firm in the Lord” (4:1). They could stand firm in the present exactly because of what God was going to do in the future. So can we.
Third, God’s glory road is a road of perspective. When we accept the promises of God so that we walk the road he has placed before us in faith and hope, when we believe in his promises so that we are pulled toward his future in a way that empowers our present, then we are given a proper perspective on the living of our lives. What are some characteristics of that perspective?
First, it enables us to face the challenges of life head-on and with our eyes open. God told Abraham, “Do not be afraid, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (Genesis 15:1). That statement may mean many things, but it certainly implies that Abraham would need a shield. I am struck by the three-part phrasing of that statement. First, God told Abraham, “Do not be afraid.” Third, he told him, “Your reward shall be very great.” But in the middle he said, “I am your shield.” It is as if God was telling Abraham, “I will be your shield while you go through all the difficulties and trials that you are going to experience before you receive your great reward.” So it is with us. We are heading toward a great reward but in the meantime we must live these lives in which difficult things can and will happen. While we live in faith and hope, God will be our shield. Therefore, we don’t shy away from life. We have the kind of perspective that enables us to face it head on.
Second, it enables us to live the lives that God has called us to live regardless of the cost to us because we know that victory will come in the end. Once, Jesus was warned to steer clear of Herod because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus’ response revealed his commitment to fulfilling his mission of healing and helping; he had to do what he was called to do. He even stated that when his work of ministry was over he knew that he would go to Jerusalem to be killed. Jesus did not deny the threat to his life. Nor did he avoid his God-given responsibility because of that threat. He pressed on, knowing that one day people would shout “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Of course, even when they shouted those words on Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem would mean less than they should and would say more than they meant. But the day would come, Jesus knew, when some people would say those words because they would know that his faithfulness was a reflection of his commitment to doing the will of God. His resurrection surely revealed that truth. And one day, when he comes again, when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, then everybody will say “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” and everybody will know what it means.
We need the right kind of perspective on our lives. Disciples of Jesus Christ are not called to have easy lives; we are called to live faithful lives. We are called to follow him wherever he may lead us. If we are faithful, those places will often be difficult and challenging. In a very real way, faithfulness is its own reward. And yet we are promised by our God that in the end we will know the reward of eternal life with him.
The Lenten path is a road to glory. The question we need to ask ourselves today is this: to what extent are we walking along the path that Jesus showed us and about which he taught us? Are we walking in ways that grow our faith, that increase our hope, and that enhance our perspective? Are we traveling down God’s glory road?
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Leary, Georgia
(This is Sabbath Blog #7)
Our daughter Sara and several of her friends left the campus of Mercer University yesterday for a Spring Break (yeah, I know, it’s not even Spring yet, but the academic calendar is the academic calendar!) trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast. I hope they have a good and safe time.
Sara called her mother late yesterday afternoon and said, “I had to call and tell you that I’m in Leary!” Debra was excited. Leary, Georgia, you see, is the hometown of Debra Johnson Ruffin. It’s a small town of around 650 located in Southwest Georgia about twenty-five miles west of Albany in Calhoun County. It’s along one of the routes that folks take going from many parts of Georgia to the Panama City or Destin areas.
I don’t think that Sara was ever in Leary before her trip through it yesterday. Her grandparents, Dick and Kathleen Johnson, moved from Leary to Mr. Johnson’s hometown of Colquitt, Georgia around the time that Sara was born so we never had a reason to go there. Among the sights that Sara reported to her mother was the peanut mill where Debra’s father earned his living. It was Harvey’s Peanut Company back then; I think it’s called something else now.
I had never heard of Leary before I met Debra. When she told me where she was from I don’t think that I said what many of our Mercer classmates said when they heard it: “I bet you’re leery of being from there.” At least I hope I didn’t.
After we had been dating for a while, Debra took a deep breath and took me home to meet her parents. I had never been in the southwest part of Georgia before. As a matter of fact, I had made precious few excursions south of Macon in my short, to that point, life. I was unaccustomed to the wide open spaces of rural South Georgia; I was, after all, a city boy from Barnesville (pop. 5000). Debra’s family lived three miles outside of Leary. It was quiet out there most of the time and it was very, very dark at night. I liked it. I liked it mainly because Debra was from there.
Leary is known for a few notable things. It’s known for peanuts and soybeans and other agricultural products. It’s known as the place where Jimmy Carter reported that he, along with ten members of the Leary LIONS Club, witnessed a UFO in 1969. It’s known as the place where scenes for the movie The Long Riders (1980) were shot.
And it’s now known to you all as the hometown of Debra Ruffin, Leary’s greatest export!
Our daughter Sara and several of her friends left the campus of Mercer University yesterday for a Spring Break (yeah, I know, it’s not even Spring yet, but the academic calendar is the academic calendar!) trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast. I hope they have a good and safe time.
Sara called her mother late yesterday afternoon and said, “I had to call and tell you that I’m in Leary!” Debra was excited. Leary, Georgia, you see, is the hometown of Debra Johnson Ruffin. It’s a small town of around 650 located in Southwest Georgia about twenty-five miles west of Albany in Calhoun County. It’s along one of the routes that folks take going from many parts of Georgia to the Panama City or Destin areas.
I don’t think that Sara was ever in Leary before her trip through it yesterday. Her grandparents, Dick and Kathleen Johnson, moved from Leary to Mr. Johnson’s hometown of Colquitt, Georgia around the time that Sara was born so we never had a reason to go there. Among the sights that Sara reported to her mother was the peanut mill where Debra’s father earned his living. It was Harvey’s Peanut Company back then; I think it’s called something else now.
I had never heard of Leary before I met Debra. When she told me where she was from I don’t think that I said what many of our Mercer classmates said when they heard it: “I bet you’re leery of being from there.” At least I hope I didn’t.
After we had been dating for a while, Debra took a deep breath and took me home to meet her parents. I had never been in the southwest part of Georgia before. As a matter of fact, I had made precious few excursions south of Macon in my short, to that point, life. I was unaccustomed to the wide open spaces of rural South Georgia; I was, after all, a city boy from Barnesville (pop. 5000). Debra’s family lived three miles outside of Leary. It was quiet out there most of the time and it was very, very dark at night. I liked it. I liked it mainly because Debra was from there.
Leary is known for a few notable things. It’s known for peanuts and soybeans and other agricultural products. It’s known as the place where Jimmy Carter reported that he, along with ten members of the Leary LIONS Club, witnessed a UFO in 1969. It’s known as the place where scenes for the movie The Long Riders (1980) were shot.
And it’s now known to you all as the hometown of Debra Ruffin, Leary’s greatest export!
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Living the Forgiven Life: Trust in the Lord
(A Lenten devotion based on Genesis 12:1-4 & Romans 4:1-5, 13-17)
[Note: We are in the Season of Lent. Lent has been observed by the Church for centuries during the 40 days, not counting Sundays, leading up to Easter. Traditionally, Lent has been a time to focus on repentance, among other things. On Thursdays during Lent, I am offering a Lenten devotion. The title for the series of devotions is “Living the Forgiven Life.”]
What does it mean to live the forgiven life? Last week I said that living the forgiven life meant that we tell the truth. The truth we tell is that we are great sinners. The greater truth we tell is that we are saved by God’s grace that is much greater than our great sin. Today I want to talk with you about the fact that living the forgiven life means that we trust in the Lord.
What we’re talking about is the biblical word “faith”; the best synonym for that word is “trust.” Trust is in short supply in our day and time. We’ve come to expect that people will let us down. We’ve come to expect that people in authority will disappoint us. We’ve come to expect that people close to us will let us down. We’re raised not to trust people we don’t know. So it is a bit of a leap for us to give our whole-hearted trust to someone, even if that someone is God himself.
Yet that is what is necessary. Salvation comes only through faith. We are forgiven because of faith. It is human nature to want to do something about what is wrong. Some people are more prone to problem-solving than others, but I think that people instinctively ask the “What do I need to do?” question. We want to take action. In the background of that drive can lie some problematic motivations. We don’t want to depend on someone else. We want to be known as someone who takes care of himself. We want the credit for fixing our own mess. But recall with me the story of Paul and Silas and the Philippian jailer. After Paul and Silas had been sprung from jail by the Lord, the jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Do you recall their answer? “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Only believe. Only trust. But it is actually quite a lot and it is very hard to do.
It is hard to do because trusting means letting go. I remember hearing a story years ago about a man who fell off a cliff and was clinging to a tree that was growing out from the cliff, kind of like the predicament that the Sarge in Beetle Bailey gets into sometimes. He cried out to the Lord for help and sure enough, the voice of the Lord came from above and said, “I’m here to help you.” “Thank you,” the man said. “What must I do?” And the voice said, “Let go.” It’s hard to do but trusting means letting go. It means giving up the notion that you can fix yourself. It means giving up the illusion that you can take care of yourself. It means being poor in spirit. It means casting your life and your fate at the feet of God and saying, “I’m done for without you.” And it means living in absolute dependence on God.
That is how God means for us to live. We were created to live in fellowship with God. We were created to depend utterly on him in simple child-like faith. And we will never be who we were made to be until we come to live in total dependence on him and in simple trust in him. We live outside our natural environment until we live in a relationship of trust in God. Thus Paul makes the point that Abraham was made righteous by faith before he ever began to do the works of the law. We are made righteous like Abraham was when we are made righteous by what God has done. On this side of the life of Jesus we can say that we are made righteous by what God has done in Christ and that grace is made real in our lives when we trust in him.
Having entered into a relationship with God based on our absolute trust in his absolute grace, we then live our lives in trust. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, when we say that we have trusted God to take care of all the ultimate issues—sin, death, judgment, heaven and hell—but we refuse to trust him for all the other things of life which are after all much less significant. It takes trust in God to be forgiven; it takes continuing trust in God to live the forgiven life.
Having experienced his forgiveness, we continue to live as forgiven people by walking in trust. But we do need to walk. Trusting is not about just sitting around waiting to see what God will do. Trusting is about doing what God leads you to do. Trusting leads to action. Trusting leads to risk-taking. To trust in God is not to kid yourself into thinking that just because God loves you and you love God that everything is going to be easy. To trust in God is not to kid yourself into thinking that God will ask nothing difficult or challenging or even dangerous of you. No, to trust in God is to believe that God is your God and you are his child; it is to believe that God is working his purposes out in his creation and in your life; it is to believe that as long as you are trying to follow God will faithfully lead; and it is to believe that the act of following is its own greatest reward.
Sometimes the most amazing phrases in the Bible are the simplest ones and so we tend to read right past them. One of those amazing phrases is “So Abram went.” God came to him, called him, and told him to leave everything he had ever known and to set out on a journey to a land that God would show him. God promised him many descendants. But Abraham had to go if he was going to experience the blessings of God. Had he stayed where he was his story would have been much different and we may never have heard of him. But he went. That’s faith, that’s trust. Go. Do. Follow. Risk. Try. And in everything, trust.
As you trust you will be blessed because the reward is in the following. The reward is in the adventure. The reward is in the risk-taking. The reward is in our focusing on the God who has promised to be with us and to bless us. Too often we miss the blessing because we want to avoid the risk. Too often we miss the blessing because we really don’t trust that God will show us the way and that he will keep his promises. Too often we miss the blessing because we choose to limit ourselves to living life in the world’s way rather than in God’s way.
I want to challenge you to take a good hard look at your life. In what areas of your life are you living in ways that betray a lack of trust in God? It may be in the ethics of your personal life. Perhaps you have been compromising and taking short cuts in ways that you know run counter to the ways of God. That’s a lack of trust because it shows that you don’t believe that God’s way is for the best. It may be in your family life. You may not be living in the kind of wholehearted commitment to your family to which God has called you because you let yourself be distracted by other, lesser priorities. It may be in your contribution to the life of the church. You may be hiding your light under a basket; you may be refusing to recognize or to develop your spiritual gifts because you don’t want to take the risk of failing. In all these or in other areas you may not be trusting God like you should and it shows in your following or rather in your lack of following.
I know how it can be. We are so aware of our failings. We are so aware of the difficulties. We are so aware of the reasons that it can’t be done. We are so aware of the roadblocks and the impediments. But when push comes to shove there is only one thing of which we need to be aware. We need to be aware that our God is the God of life. He brings life where there is death. He brought life to the infertile and geriatric Abraham and Sarah but the greatest truth is that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ he brought life where there is death in the ultimate sense. That is the God we serve. That is the God in whom we can trust. That is the God who calls us to live the fully dependent life that is the fully blessed life.
So let us walk in faith. Let us trust in the Lord.
[Note: We are in the Season of Lent. Lent has been observed by the Church for centuries during the 40 days, not counting Sundays, leading up to Easter. Traditionally, Lent has been a time to focus on repentance, among other things. On Thursdays during Lent, I am offering a Lenten devotion. The title for the series of devotions is “Living the Forgiven Life.”]
What does it mean to live the forgiven life? Last week I said that living the forgiven life meant that we tell the truth. The truth we tell is that we are great sinners. The greater truth we tell is that we are saved by God’s grace that is much greater than our great sin. Today I want to talk with you about the fact that living the forgiven life means that we trust in the Lord.
What we’re talking about is the biblical word “faith”; the best synonym for that word is “trust.” Trust is in short supply in our day and time. We’ve come to expect that people will let us down. We’ve come to expect that people in authority will disappoint us. We’ve come to expect that people close to us will let us down. We’re raised not to trust people we don’t know. So it is a bit of a leap for us to give our whole-hearted trust to someone, even if that someone is God himself.
Yet that is what is necessary. Salvation comes only through faith. We are forgiven because of faith. It is human nature to want to do something about what is wrong. Some people are more prone to problem-solving than others, but I think that people instinctively ask the “What do I need to do?” question. We want to take action. In the background of that drive can lie some problematic motivations. We don’t want to depend on someone else. We want to be known as someone who takes care of himself. We want the credit for fixing our own mess. But recall with me the story of Paul and Silas and the Philippian jailer. After Paul and Silas had been sprung from jail by the Lord, the jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Do you recall their answer? “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). It doesn’t sound like much, does it? Only believe. Only trust. But it is actually quite a lot and it is very hard to do.
It is hard to do because trusting means letting go. I remember hearing a story years ago about a man who fell off a cliff and was clinging to a tree that was growing out from the cliff, kind of like the predicament that the Sarge in Beetle Bailey gets into sometimes. He cried out to the Lord for help and sure enough, the voice of the Lord came from above and said, “I’m here to help you.” “Thank you,” the man said. “What must I do?” And the voice said, “Let go.” It’s hard to do but trusting means letting go. It means giving up the notion that you can fix yourself. It means giving up the illusion that you can take care of yourself. It means being poor in spirit. It means casting your life and your fate at the feet of God and saying, “I’m done for without you.” And it means living in absolute dependence on God.
That is how God means for us to live. We were created to live in fellowship with God. We were created to depend utterly on him in simple child-like faith. And we will never be who we were made to be until we come to live in total dependence on him and in simple trust in him. We live outside our natural environment until we live in a relationship of trust in God. Thus Paul makes the point that Abraham was made righteous by faith before he ever began to do the works of the law. We are made righteous like Abraham was when we are made righteous by what God has done. On this side of the life of Jesus we can say that we are made righteous by what God has done in Christ and that grace is made real in our lives when we trust in him.
Having entered into a relationship with God based on our absolute trust in his absolute grace, we then live our lives in trust. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, when we say that we have trusted God to take care of all the ultimate issues—sin, death, judgment, heaven and hell—but we refuse to trust him for all the other things of life which are after all much less significant. It takes trust in God to be forgiven; it takes continuing trust in God to live the forgiven life.
Having experienced his forgiveness, we continue to live as forgiven people by walking in trust. But we do need to walk. Trusting is not about just sitting around waiting to see what God will do. Trusting is about doing what God leads you to do. Trusting leads to action. Trusting leads to risk-taking. To trust in God is not to kid yourself into thinking that just because God loves you and you love God that everything is going to be easy. To trust in God is not to kid yourself into thinking that God will ask nothing difficult or challenging or even dangerous of you. No, to trust in God is to believe that God is your God and you are his child; it is to believe that God is working his purposes out in his creation and in your life; it is to believe that as long as you are trying to follow God will faithfully lead; and it is to believe that the act of following is its own greatest reward.
Sometimes the most amazing phrases in the Bible are the simplest ones and so we tend to read right past them. One of those amazing phrases is “So Abram went.” God came to him, called him, and told him to leave everything he had ever known and to set out on a journey to a land that God would show him. God promised him many descendants. But Abraham had to go if he was going to experience the blessings of God. Had he stayed where he was his story would have been much different and we may never have heard of him. But he went. That’s faith, that’s trust. Go. Do. Follow. Risk. Try. And in everything, trust.
As you trust you will be blessed because the reward is in the following. The reward is in the adventure. The reward is in the risk-taking. The reward is in our focusing on the God who has promised to be with us and to bless us. Too often we miss the blessing because we want to avoid the risk. Too often we miss the blessing because we really don’t trust that God will show us the way and that he will keep his promises. Too often we miss the blessing because we choose to limit ourselves to living life in the world’s way rather than in God’s way.
I want to challenge you to take a good hard look at your life. In what areas of your life are you living in ways that betray a lack of trust in God? It may be in the ethics of your personal life. Perhaps you have been compromising and taking short cuts in ways that you know run counter to the ways of God. That’s a lack of trust because it shows that you don’t believe that God’s way is for the best. It may be in your family life. You may not be living in the kind of wholehearted commitment to your family to which God has called you because you let yourself be distracted by other, lesser priorities. It may be in your contribution to the life of the church. You may be hiding your light under a basket; you may be refusing to recognize or to develop your spiritual gifts because you don’t want to take the risk of failing. In all these or in other areas you may not be trusting God like you should and it shows in your following or rather in your lack of following.
I know how it can be. We are so aware of our failings. We are so aware of the difficulties. We are so aware of the reasons that it can’t be done. We are so aware of the roadblocks and the impediments. But when push comes to shove there is only one thing of which we need to be aware. We need to be aware that our God is the God of life. He brings life where there is death. He brought life to the infertile and geriatric Abraham and Sarah but the greatest truth is that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ he brought life where there is death in the ultimate sense. That is the God we serve. That is the God in whom we can trust. That is the God who calls us to live the fully dependent life that is the fully blessed life.
So let us walk in faith. Let us trust in the Lord.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Talk with Me about Abortion Some More
The forum at the Medical College of Georgia on “Religious Perspectives on Women’s Reproductive Issues” in which I will be participating will soon be here. (See yesterday’s post for details). I remind you that in my posts on this subject I am “thinking in print” and I am asking you to help me with that process by dialoguing with me through your comments.
Yesterday I said that I was hesitant to talk about abortion because I would never be in the position to have one since I am not a woman. For purposes of this discussion, however, I have been trying to think about the responsibilities that a pregnant woman has for the fetus she is carrying.
Pro-choice folks will probably say that my next statements constitute a caricature of their position; these sentences may in fact do so and if they do I hope some of you will say so and point out to me how that is the case. The pro-choice argument seems to me to include the idea that “a woman has the right to choose what will happen or not happen with her body.” Until the baby is birthed the fetus is a part of the woman’s body and so if she chooses to remove it from her body she has that right, they seem to me to say. I hope that I am not inaccurate in those summary statements.
We still have to deal with the fact that the fetus is a life that has the potential to be a person. A person might choose to have surgery to remove some bodily organ; such surgery might even be elective (some women, for example, have mastectomies when there is a family history of breast cancer even if they themselves have not been diagnosed with it). Usually such surgery takes place because leaving the organ in the body would endanger the life of the person. A person has the right to refuse to have such an organ removed despite the risk to her life. But, and I think that this is a big but, that organ is not a potential separate and independent life. Therefore, it seems to me a leap to treat a fetus like an organ that can be removed or not removed at the discretion of the patient.
It’s just hard for me to get around the fact that a potential person is being eliminated when an abortion takes place and past the thought that the fetus could, if not eliminated, become a human being. My “removal of an organ analogy” leads me to observe that, if the continuing presence of the fetus would threaten the life of the mother, then that could constitute just and moral cause to remove the fetus. The woman and her family would have to decide which life has more value at that point. That would be tough, because one would have to consider the impact of the death of the mother on those already viable lives who love and depend on her (spouse, other children, etc.).
I want to raise one more issue today. I have been trying to think about how a Christian woman should approach the issue of abortion. I keep coming back to the teachings and especially the example of Jesus Christ which focused on self-sacrificing, other-centered love. We talk a lot in church about Christ’s call for us to always put the needs of others ahead of our own needs and to give ourselves up for the sake of others. If we conclude that the fetus is a life (which I believe), then it seems that extraordinary circumstances would need to be in play before a Christian family could seriously ponder abortion, since by definition an elective abortion values the needs of the woman or others ahead of the needs of the potential life that the fetus is.
What do you think?
Yesterday I said that I was hesitant to talk about abortion because I would never be in the position to have one since I am not a woman. For purposes of this discussion, however, I have been trying to think about the responsibilities that a pregnant woman has for the fetus she is carrying.
Pro-choice folks will probably say that my next statements constitute a caricature of their position; these sentences may in fact do so and if they do I hope some of you will say so and point out to me how that is the case. The pro-choice argument seems to me to include the idea that “a woman has the right to choose what will happen or not happen with her body.” Until the baby is birthed the fetus is a part of the woman’s body and so if she chooses to remove it from her body she has that right, they seem to me to say. I hope that I am not inaccurate in those summary statements.
We still have to deal with the fact that the fetus is a life that has the potential to be a person. A person might choose to have surgery to remove some bodily organ; such surgery might even be elective (some women, for example, have mastectomies when there is a family history of breast cancer even if they themselves have not been diagnosed with it). Usually such surgery takes place because leaving the organ in the body would endanger the life of the person. A person has the right to refuse to have such an organ removed despite the risk to her life. But, and I think that this is a big but, that organ is not a potential separate and independent life. Therefore, it seems to me a leap to treat a fetus like an organ that can be removed or not removed at the discretion of the patient.
It’s just hard for me to get around the fact that a potential person is being eliminated when an abortion takes place and past the thought that the fetus could, if not eliminated, become a human being. My “removal of an organ analogy” leads me to observe that, if the continuing presence of the fetus would threaten the life of the mother, then that could constitute just and moral cause to remove the fetus. The woman and her family would have to decide which life has more value at that point. That would be tough, because one would have to consider the impact of the death of the mother on those already viable lives who love and depend on her (spouse, other children, etc.).
I want to raise one more issue today. I have been trying to think about how a Christian woman should approach the issue of abortion. I keep coming back to the teachings and especially the example of Jesus Christ which focused on self-sacrificing, other-centered love. We talk a lot in church about Christ’s call for us to always put the needs of others ahead of our own needs and to give ourselves up for the sake of others. If we conclude that the fetus is a life (which I believe), then it seems that extraordinary circumstances would need to be in play before a Christian family could seriously ponder abortion, since by definition an elective abortion values the needs of the woman or others ahead of the needs of the potential life that the fetus is.
What do you think?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Talk With Me about Abortion
As I mentioned in a post last week, I will be a member of a ten-clergyperson panel participating in a forum on Religious Perspectives on Women’s Health Issues (with a focus on abortion and contraception) at the Medical College of Georgia on Tuesday, March 6. I hope that many of you will dialogue with me on this blog this week while I try to think through the issues. We might keep in mind that the audience will be made up of medical students. Many of those folks are going to have the responsibility of dealing with women who may need (for reasons of health, for example) or feel that they need (for any number of reasons) an abortion. My real challenge, as I see it, is to offer those medical students something to think about as they try to arrive at their own ethical position.
Let me voice one of my reservations right up front. I’m a man. Now, I’m not usually particularly troubled by that reality, but in this case it makes me kind of sensitive. I have a feeling of “Who am I to say what a woman should do with her body or with the fetus that her body carries?” Because I am not a woman I will never have to make the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. Therefore I am by definition removed by one step from any possible direct involvement in the issue. That does not mean that I can or should try to avoid the issue; it’s just something that makes my throat tighten a bit when I try to talk about the subject.
One of my tasks at the forum is to represent the teaching of my faith tradition on the subject. As those of you who share my Baptist background know, that’s not easy. It is very difficult, the apparent ease with which some Baptist mouthpieces do it notwithstanding, to speak for all Baptists on anything. Still, I think that I can safely affirm that the vast majority of Baptists are opposed to abortion on demand.
I have two questions about that last statement. First, is it really accurate to speak of the status of abortion in this country as “abortion on demand”? Second, am I right to think that most Baptists are opposed to abortion on demand?
The real struggle is of course clarifying and articulating my own position.
It seems to me that one’s stance on abortion really must come down to one’s answer to the question “When does life begin?” I guess that the main options are that it begins either at conception or at birth. Obviously a baby is a life once it draws its first independent breath, so the question really comes down to whether or not the baby is a life before that. I think that it is. But the Bible can be used to argue that, even if the fetus is a life, it is not to be seen as having personhood in the same way that someone already born has personhood. In the Old Testament laws, for example, the life of a fetus was not valued as highly as that of a walking and breathing person: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life…” (Exodus 21:22-23). In other words, the penalty for causing a miscarriage was a fine while the penalty for harm to the life of the mother was parallel retribution.
As an aside, I would note that here the tenuous relationship between religion and science crops up again. Many people of faith fight against most advances of science that seem to them to treat the pre-born as less than a life (embryonic stem cell research, for example). But, if science could somehow prove that an embryo or a fetus is a life, those same people of faith would probably be ready to embrace that scientific conclusion. It seems to me that some of us tend to want to accept or use the conclusions of science when they fit our agendas but not to accept them when they don’t.
Even though I’m a man, I can’t separate my personal experience from this issue. My wife and I have two children for whom we have much love and in whom we have much pride. I remember how I felt when Debra was pregnant. In both instances, from the time that we learned that she was expecting, I thought of what was in her as our child. I didn’t think of it as a fetus; I thought of it as our child. And it would have hurt us deeply had Debra suffered a miscarriage and thus lost one of them.
Yet we are inconsistent. Families sometimes request funeral services for a stillborn child but they do not request them (not in my experience, anyway) for a miscarried fetus. I’m not saying that they should; I’m just saying that if we really believe that fetus to be a life, should not its passing be acknowledged in some way? I have been a ministerial presence in the lives of enough women who have miscarried to know that what they feel is definitely a kind of grief that results from their loss.
That brings up another question: I wonder what the grief experience is like for a woman who has had an abortion as compared to that of a woman who has had a miscarriage. When I first pondered that question it occurred to me that a woman who had chosen an abortion might have her experience complicated by feelings of guilt, but I have dealt with women who have suffered miscarriages who dealt with guilt. They had not chosen to end their pregnancy but they sometimes wonder what they might have done or not done to cause the miscarriage. One difference in those experiences is that the woman who had the abortion made the conscious decision to do so.
Well, these are some of my early thoughts. Please help to clarify them by questioning me, challenging me, and even affirming me.
I’ll be posting on this subject again this Wednesday and Friday.
Let me voice one of my reservations right up front. I’m a man. Now, I’m not usually particularly troubled by that reality, but in this case it makes me kind of sensitive. I have a feeling of “Who am I to say what a woman should do with her body or with the fetus that her body carries?” Because I am not a woman I will never have to make the decision of whether or not to have an abortion. Therefore I am by definition removed by one step from any possible direct involvement in the issue. That does not mean that I can or should try to avoid the issue; it’s just something that makes my throat tighten a bit when I try to talk about the subject.
One of my tasks at the forum is to represent the teaching of my faith tradition on the subject. As those of you who share my Baptist background know, that’s not easy. It is very difficult, the apparent ease with which some Baptist mouthpieces do it notwithstanding, to speak for all Baptists on anything. Still, I think that I can safely affirm that the vast majority of Baptists are opposed to abortion on demand.
I have two questions about that last statement. First, is it really accurate to speak of the status of abortion in this country as “abortion on demand”? Second, am I right to think that most Baptists are opposed to abortion on demand?
The real struggle is of course clarifying and articulating my own position.
It seems to me that one’s stance on abortion really must come down to one’s answer to the question “When does life begin?” I guess that the main options are that it begins either at conception or at birth. Obviously a baby is a life once it draws its first independent breath, so the question really comes down to whether or not the baby is a life before that. I think that it is. But the Bible can be used to argue that, even if the fetus is a life, it is not to be seen as having personhood in the same way that someone already born has personhood. In the Old Testament laws, for example, the life of a fetus was not valued as highly as that of a walking and breathing person: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life…” (Exodus 21:22-23). In other words, the penalty for causing a miscarriage was a fine while the penalty for harm to the life of the mother was parallel retribution.
As an aside, I would note that here the tenuous relationship between religion and science crops up again. Many people of faith fight against most advances of science that seem to them to treat the pre-born as less than a life (embryonic stem cell research, for example). But, if science could somehow prove that an embryo or a fetus is a life, those same people of faith would probably be ready to embrace that scientific conclusion. It seems to me that some of us tend to want to accept or use the conclusions of science when they fit our agendas but not to accept them when they don’t.
Even though I’m a man, I can’t separate my personal experience from this issue. My wife and I have two children for whom we have much love and in whom we have much pride. I remember how I felt when Debra was pregnant. In both instances, from the time that we learned that she was expecting, I thought of what was in her as our child. I didn’t think of it as a fetus; I thought of it as our child. And it would have hurt us deeply had Debra suffered a miscarriage and thus lost one of them.
Yet we are inconsistent. Families sometimes request funeral services for a stillborn child but they do not request them (not in my experience, anyway) for a miscarried fetus. I’m not saying that they should; I’m just saying that if we really believe that fetus to be a life, should not its passing be acknowledged in some way? I have been a ministerial presence in the lives of enough women who have miscarried to know that what they feel is definitely a kind of grief that results from their loss.
That brings up another question: I wonder what the grief experience is like for a woman who has had an abortion as compared to that of a woman who has had a miscarriage. When I first pondered that question it occurred to me that a woman who had chosen an abortion might have her experience complicated by feelings of guilt, but I have dealt with women who have suffered miscarriages who dealt with guilt. They had not chosen to end their pregnancy but they sometimes wonder what they might have done or not done to cause the miscarriage. One difference in those experiences is that the woman who had the abortion made the conscious decision to do so.
Well, these are some of my early thoughts. Please help to clarify them by questioning me, challenging me, and even affirming me.
I’ll be posting on this subject again this Wednesday and Friday.
Monday, February 26, 2007
God is Great, God is Good, Let us Thank Him for….
(A sermon for the first Sunday in Lent based on Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13)
Most of you probably prayed the same table blessing during your childhood that I did during mine:
God is great, God is good,
let us thank him for our food.
By his hands we all are fed;
give us, Lord, our daily bread.
Amen.
There was a commercial jingle during my childhood that was similar in rhythm to that blessing:
N-E-S-T-L-E-S,
Nestle’s makes the very best
chocolate.
That made a connection in my mind, because of all the foods for which I was thankful, chocolate was at the top of the list.
Now, though, I am a man, and I am supposed to have put away childish ways. I have, however, put away neither chocolate nor my gratitude for it. In fact, I now have more reasons to be thankful for dark chocolate, as research is indicating that the flavonoids in it are good for me, particularly for my heart and my brain, two rather vital organs. While I know that I am supposed to have put away childish ways, I hope that I will forever remain simple enough in my approach to life that I never stop thanking God for the simple things in life—family, food, friends, and fun.
Nevertheless, I and most of you should now be at a place in our lives where we understand what blessings matter the most. And it is not the material blessings of life that matter the most and for which we should be most grateful.
Still, the material world is not a bad place to start, since that is in fact where we do start. George Harrison sang, “I got born into the material world,” and we all did. Christian faith does not shy away from accepting the material world; the Bible does not shy away from teaching us of the responsibilities we have in relation to our material blessings. So the book of Deuteronomy instructed the people of Israel to make proper acknowledgement of the source of their material blessings. When they gathered their initial harvest in the Promised Land they were to take some of that produce, go the place of worship, show it to the priest, set it down before the Lord and worship him. They were to acknowledge that their material blessings had come from God and they were to give some of it back to him.
We learn something here of the importance of the discipline of giving our tithes. Such giving is not just so that the lights can be kept on and the missionaries funded, as important as such things are. Our giving, when it comes from a grateful heart and from a discerning mind, is our thanksgiving to God for what he has given us. The Israelites were also told, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house” (Deuteronomy 26:11). Our bounty should be cause for celebration! Giving and celebrating go together because they reflect our acknowledgement of God’s good gifts to us.
Do you remember how Scrooge reacted when the real wonder of Christmas dawned on him? That paragon of greediness turned into a whirlwind of generosity. When the wonder of all that God has done for us dawns on us his generosity fuels our generosity.
Notice, though, that the blessings that were to be celebrated by the Israelites went far beyond material things. When they brought their offering to the Lord they were to make a confession of faith before him. In that confession they were to acknowledge the fact that God had saved them from Egyptian bondage and that he had given them the good land in which they were living. Material things were an important component of the blessings of life but they were a part of a much bigger picture. That bigger picture was freedom from slavery and the blessing of being home. We express gratitude for our material blessings not just because we have been blessed materially but because the God who gives us those gifts also gave us our salvation.
Our greatest blessing is our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is that blessing that gives color and tone and hue to all other blessings. The blessing is not just for me and for mine, though. You may have noticed that in the instruction to celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord had given the Hebrews, they were to do so “with the Levites and the aliens” who dwelled among them. The Levites were Israelites who were ministers, so having them join in the celebration makes sense. But the “aliens” were non-Israelites, foreigners who had come to dwell among the people in the Promised Land. God has always intended that his grace and love and salvation be available to everybody, and they in fact are. So Paul could write,
The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:11-13)
How good and great is God? He is so good that he loves everybody. He is so great that he gave his only Son Jesus so that anybody who trusts in him and who calls on him will be saved. That salvation is for absolutely anybody who will come to him, believe in him, and call on him. Paul said that “the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” Our God is a generous God; how thankful we are that his generosity extends to his salvation!
So the blessing that we celebrate the most is our salvation; we celebrate our material blessings in the context of our salvation. That means more than remembering to thank God for our material blessings as well as our salvation. It also means to have a saved perspective on our material blessings. We who are Christians celebrate and express gratitude both when we have material blessings and when we do not. Jesus had just gone forty days without food when he was tempted by Satan. Naturally, then, the first area in which Satan tempted him was food. Jesus understood, though, that something was more important than food, even after going without for forty days. He knew that listening to God’s word and being obedient to God was more basic and more valuable than even the most necessary physical blessings. We should thank God for the fact that we can be thankful even when we don’t have the things that most people think you must have in order to be thankful!
Jesus relied on his relationship with his Father and on what he had learned from his Bible as he fought against the temptations of Satan. We can celebrate and express gratitude to God for his provision in our spiritual struggles. Sometimes we think that the closer to God we get the less we will struggle spiritually. The truth is, though, that often the closer we get to God the more our spiritual struggles increase. We have to look no farther than the life of Jesus to know that is true. No one ever lived in a closer and more obedient relationship to the Father than did Jesus but he experienced excruciating spiritual struggles, beginning with the his temptation by Satan and ending with his painful cry of “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” on the cross. He experienced those struggles exactly because he was so close and obedient to his Father. All the way through, though, he knew the strength that came from his life of faithful obedience. So can we.
Nothing matters more than our salvation. We praise God for that more than for anything else. Being saved, we want to be faithful to God in our salvation; we want to live life in his way. When Satan confronted Jesus following his forty days in the wilderness, he tested him in ways that went right to the heart of who Jesus was and right to the heart of the mission that he had been sent to carry out. Had Jesus given in to any of Satan’s temptations, he would have been turning his back on God’s way for him. He would have been compromising the hard way of the Father for the easy way of the world. He would have been giving up the way of sacrificial love for the way of superficial showmanship. But he did not compromise nor did he give up; he stayed the course. We Christians want to bear witness to who Christ really is as we go about our lives in the world. We celebrate and express gratitude for the help God gives us in being faithful to him and living life in his way.
God is great and God is good in so many ways. He gives us our material blessings. He gives us salvation. He gives us a saved perspective on our material blessings. He gives us the inspiration and resources that we need to persevere in our spiritual struggles. The question for you and me is, how can we best respond to him in gratitude and love?
Most of you probably prayed the same table blessing during your childhood that I did during mine:
God is great, God is good,
let us thank him for our food.
By his hands we all are fed;
give us, Lord, our daily bread.
Amen.
There was a commercial jingle during my childhood that was similar in rhythm to that blessing:
N-E-S-T-L-E-S,
Nestle’s makes the very best
chocolate.
That made a connection in my mind, because of all the foods for which I was thankful, chocolate was at the top of the list.
Now, though, I am a man, and I am supposed to have put away childish ways. I have, however, put away neither chocolate nor my gratitude for it. In fact, I now have more reasons to be thankful for dark chocolate, as research is indicating that the flavonoids in it are good for me, particularly for my heart and my brain, two rather vital organs. While I know that I am supposed to have put away childish ways, I hope that I will forever remain simple enough in my approach to life that I never stop thanking God for the simple things in life—family, food, friends, and fun.
Nevertheless, I and most of you should now be at a place in our lives where we understand what blessings matter the most. And it is not the material blessings of life that matter the most and for which we should be most grateful.
Still, the material world is not a bad place to start, since that is in fact where we do start. George Harrison sang, “I got born into the material world,” and we all did. Christian faith does not shy away from accepting the material world; the Bible does not shy away from teaching us of the responsibilities we have in relation to our material blessings. So the book of Deuteronomy instructed the people of Israel to make proper acknowledgement of the source of their material blessings. When they gathered their initial harvest in the Promised Land they were to take some of that produce, go the place of worship, show it to the priest, set it down before the Lord and worship him. They were to acknowledge that their material blessings had come from God and they were to give some of it back to him.
We learn something here of the importance of the discipline of giving our tithes. Such giving is not just so that the lights can be kept on and the missionaries funded, as important as such things are. Our giving, when it comes from a grateful heart and from a discerning mind, is our thanksgiving to God for what he has given us. The Israelites were also told, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house” (Deuteronomy 26:11). Our bounty should be cause for celebration! Giving and celebrating go together because they reflect our acknowledgement of God’s good gifts to us.
Do you remember how Scrooge reacted when the real wonder of Christmas dawned on him? That paragon of greediness turned into a whirlwind of generosity. When the wonder of all that God has done for us dawns on us his generosity fuels our generosity.
Notice, though, that the blessings that were to be celebrated by the Israelites went far beyond material things. When they brought their offering to the Lord they were to make a confession of faith before him. In that confession they were to acknowledge the fact that God had saved them from Egyptian bondage and that he had given them the good land in which they were living. Material things were an important component of the blessings of life but they were a part of a much bigger picture. That bigger picture was freedom from slavery and the blessing of being home. We express gratitude for our material blessings not just because we have been blessed materially but because the God who gives us those gifts also gave us our salvation.
Our greatest blessing is our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is that blessing that gives color and tone and hue to all other blessings. The blessing is not just for me and for mine, though. You may have noticed that in the instruction to celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord had given the Hebrews, they were to do so “with the Levites and the aliens” who dwelled among them. The Levites were Israelites who were ministers, so having them join in the celebration makes sense. But the “aliens” were non-Israelites, foreigners who had come to dwell among the people in the Promised Land. God has always intended that his grace and love and salvation be available to everybody, and they in fact are. So Paul could write,
The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:11-13)
How good and great is God? He is so good that he loves everybody. He is so great that he gave his only Son Jesus so that anybody who trusts in him and who calls on him will be saved. That salvation is for absolutely anybody who will come to him, believe in him, and call on him. Paul said that “the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.” Our God is a generous God; how thankful we are that his generosity extends to his salvation!
So the blessing that we celebrate the most is our salvation; we celebrate our material blessings in the context of our salvation. That means more than remembering to thank God for our material blessings as well as our salvation. It also means to have a saved perspective on our material blessings. We who are Christians celebrate and express gratitude both when we have material blessings and when we do not. Jesus had just gone forty days without food when he was tempted by Satan. Naturally, then, the first area in which Satan tempted him was food. Jesus understood, though, that something was more important than food, even after going without for forty days. He knew that listening to God’s word and being obedient to God was more basic and more valuable than even the most necessary physical blessings. We should thank God for the fact that we can be thankful even when we don’t have the things that most people think you must have in order to be thankful!
Jesus relied on his relationship with his Father and on what he had learned from his Bible as he fought against the temptations of Satan. We can celebrate and express gratitude to God for his provision in our spiritual struggles. Sometimes we think that the closer to God we get the less we will struggle spiritually. The truth is, though, that often the closer we get to God the more our spiritual struggles increase. We have to look no farther than the life of Jesus to know that is true. No one ever lived in a closer and more obedient relationship to the Father than did Jesus but he experienced excruciating spiritual struggles, beginning with the his temptation by Satan and ending with his painful cry of “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” on the cross. He experienced those struggles exactly because he was so close and obedient to his Father. All the way through, though, he knew the strength that came from his life of faithful obedience. So can we.
Nothing matters more than our salvation. We praise God for that more than for anything else. Being saved, we want to be faithful to God in our salvation; we want to live life in his way. When Satan confronted Jesus following his forty days in the wilderness, he tested him in ways that went right to the heart of who Jesus was and right to the heart of the mission that he had been sent to carry out. Had Jesus given in to any of Satan’s temptations, he would have been turning his back on God’s way for him. He would have been compromising the hard way of the Father for the easy way of the world. He would have been giving up the way of sacrificial love for the way of superficial showmanship. But he did not compromise nor did he give up; he stayed the course. We Christians want to bear witness to who Christ really is as we go about our lives in the world. We celebrate and express gratitude for the help God gives us in being faithful to him and living life in his way.
God is great and God is good in so many ways. He gives us our material blessings. He gives us salvation. He gives us a saved perspective on our material blessings. He gives us the inspiration and resources that we need to persevere in our spiritual struggles. The question for you and me is, how can we best respond to him in gratitude and love?
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