Corinth Presbyterian Church

Sloth: One of the Seven Deadlies

2007-06-26T09:31:00.000-05:00

Sloth is the most dangerous sin of our time. Sloth could be the sin that is the downfall of our nation. Sloth is an epidemic and that we are all infected.

Now the sloth I am talking about isn’t the sloth you might be thinking about. You might be thinking of sloth as the laziness described in Proverbs 26. We’ve all experienced this kind of laziness. I especially like the translation of verse 13 in the New Living Translation, “The lazy person is full of excuses, saying, "I can't go outside because there might be a lion on the road! Yes, I'm sure there's a lion out there!" Boy, I’ve had days like that, and I look forward to having them again. No, I don’t think that laziness is our problem.

Someone once defined Puritanism as the sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere might be having fun, and I think that people today might define conservative Protestants as the people whose greatest fear is that someone somewhere might not be working hard enough. I’m serious. You want to get people to vote for you or listen to your radio show all you have to do is mention that somewhere some people are standing around waiting for a handout and bam! you’ve said the magic words and you’ve got a following. No, Americans, especially Mid-westerners don’t need to be lectured on laziness. We’re the people who invented the rocking chair, so that even when we’re sitting, we can still be doing something.

Now habitual laziness is a sin, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s more like third-degree sloth compared to the deadly sloth that we’re up against today. It’s misdemeanor sloth. Not quite as bad as the second kind of sloth: boredom, or second degree sloth.

Boredom is a sin because it looks at the world and says, “Eh”. Boredom is a sin because God declared that the world is good and boredom disagrees. Boredom sits at the banquet table and surveys the great feast of life and says, “Oh. No. I don’t eat that.” And then there’s busy boredom. Sometimes boredom goes from thing to thing all day but has the look of a person who is waiting for something. Boredom is devoid of passion, has lost its feeling, and in the words of Mick Jagger, “can’t get no satisfaction.”

Boredom is a sin, it is offensive to God, because it is so self-centered. It is waiting to be entertained. It’s waiting for fulfillement to come from some outside force. Boredom is one of the inevitable fruits of the pursuit of pleasure. It’s a consumer’s sin.

But there’s a positive side to boredom too. It lets us know that something is wrong. It lets us know that the way we’re trying to live life just isn’t working. Boredom is a symptom of something wrong deep down. And what people usually do is treat the symptom.

But the real solution for boredom isn’t to do more and better things to make yourself feel less bored. Redemption from the sin of boredom comes from being reoriented from looking inward to being focused outwards. It comes from being called out of living only for yourself to living in relationship with God. Rescue from boredom come from being as interested in others as you are in yourself.

Laziness and boredom are nothing compared with the third kind of sloth. Sloth in its pure form is the most dangerous sin on the planet. It’s sloth in its pure form because it is directly derived from the latin word we’ve translated as sloth: acedia. Acedia literally means “absense of caring”. And as I look around the world today I see a resignation that borders on despair. If there was a phrase that summed up the last four years in this country, it would be, “Things are terrible, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I look around and I see that sloth has deeply infected our country, and the thing that infuriates me about that fact is that I believe it is entirely by design. The powers that be in this country want its citizenry to be two things: afraid and self-absorbed. And with few exceptions, the church has gladly complied. We’ve decided to live like the only thing the Bible has to say about war is that “there will always be wars and rumors of wars” and that the only thing Jesus has to say about the poor is that “they will always be with you”. And our silence and our compliance is what powers the whole operation. We’re placated just like the church in Laodicea.

Rev. 3:14 says

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

I’m a big Garrison Keillor fan. I grew up listening to a Prairie Home Companion with my parents and my brother. Garrison Keillor wrote in a column in the Chicago Tribune in Oct. 06,

“I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?”

Our sloth today, this pervasive first degree sloth, it’s only partly about the war and our inability to say anything about it. It’s only partly about our silence in the face of torture. It’s only partly about our resignation about the plight of the poor. But when you take all of these things together, they add up to a kind of spiritual paralysis, acedia...sloth, “the absence of caring”. And I truly do believe that it is our “absence of caring” that could enable the fall of this country from a noble nation of laws and virtures to an empire that exemplifies the seven deadly sins, an empire of greed, pride, gluttony, wrath, lust, envy... and sloth.

Whether we continue down the path that we’re on towards an empire of sin or whether we repent and turn around is not the decision of people in Washington. It’s our decision. It’s our choice. It’s our choice whether we will “go gently into that good night” or whether we will “rage against the dying of the light.” It’s our choice whether we will continue being consumers or will repent and return to being citizens. It’s our choice whether we will continue to be paralyzed by fear and sloth, or whether we will drink deeply of the Holy Spirit and find the courage to speak the truth to the power of government and to the power of sin.

Every generation must make this decision, not just once, not just 60 years ago against the power of fascism in Europe, not just 40 years ago against the power of injustice in America, but each generation must keep making this decision over and over again in every age of life. There is no retirement from the Christian call of duty. There is no age requirement for saying “NO”.

If you know what you feel called to do or say, but you are stuck in sloth and have lost your resolve, then these words from the same passage in Revelation are for you, “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent.” If God didn’t love you, he wouldn’t expect anything of you. But he does. So much that he gave his only Son to set you free from the powers that bind you. Jesus sets us free from sloth and helps us to act. If Jesus has set us free from sloth, so why aren’t we living like it?

If you want to be free from sloth, all you need to know is that Jesus has set you free from it, and believe it. Live like it’s true. Don’t expect that you’re going to go set the world on fire, or be a different person than you’ve always been. But free from the sin of sloth, with the absence of caring replaced with the love of Christ, you’ll find that you are able to perform the small acts of obedience that you’ve felt called to do all along. So write that letter to the editor. Speak up and share your unpopular ideas. Don’t delay becoming the person you know you were meant to be. Don’t wait for the right feeling of motivation. Don’t wait at all. You are sent by Jesus himself. Go.

A Missionary's Blog

2006-12-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

Want to read about the life of a missionary? Here is the blog address for Beth, a missionary serving in Nigeria that came to worship with us last week:

http://www.americanfriendsafricanfriends.blogspot.com/

Same Old, Same Old

2006-12-11T13:07:00.000-05:00

Text: Luke 17:11-19

During the sermon a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the deep fried turkey Dave's brother made. And as I started working on this sermon, I started thinking about Thanksgiving coming up next week. Maybe I shouldn't write sermons when I'm hungry. But as I thought about Thanksgiving, I remembered a Thanksgiving several years ago when Dave and I lived in Florida. Most of our relatives live in Orlando, so instead of choosing one of our families to spend the holiday with, we used to start at Dave's parents house, then go over to mine. One Thanksgiving, Dave's brother decided to cook a Thanksgiving meal as well, to try out some gourmet approaches to the traditional Thanksgiving dishes. We started at Dave's parents' house. And as all of the plates of steaming food came out to the table, our mouths started to water, and we were so thankful for the amazing meal Dave's mom had made. We scarfed up sweet potatoes, green beans, and Dave's mom's special recipe for stuffing. We praised the meal, and thanked Dave's mom for the blessing of the food she had made for the family.
Then we drove to my parent's house for our second Thanksgiving meal of the day. More heaping plates of wonderful food. Only this time, we were a little less thankful for the food before us. We started quietly comparing the two meals, debating which house had the better pie crust or which mashed potatoes were creamier. We thanked my mom for the meal, unbuttoned the top button on our pants as our bellies got bigger, and drove on to our third meal of the day. Dave's brother brought out several platters of gourmet Thanksgiving fare - sweet potatoes whipped with bourbon and served in oranges, you get the idea. But by this time, it had become the same old, same old. Another house, another meal. We ate our share, quickly thanked his brother, then dragged ourselves over to the couch to watch football.
As I thought about that Thanksgiving, I thought about how we get accustomed to blessing. We get used to God doing things in our lives, we get used to the idea that God has forgiven us, we get used to the miracle stories in the Gospels, they've become old hat for us through the years as we hear them over and over again. But do you remember the first time you really realized the grace of God in your life? Do you remember a time when it really hit you that God would love you and forgive you, no matter what? It reminds me of the line from the hymn Amazing Grace that says "How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed." And yet, with each passing year, it becomes easier to loss our thankfulness for God's work in the world in the person of Jesus Christ, it becomes like another round of Turkey and Sweet Potato casserole- it still tastes good, but we don't appreciate it nearly as much as we did the first time.
In our text this morning, we can see some folks who are accustomed to God's goodness. We find Jesus walking on this way to Jerusalem, when a group of lepers call out to him "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests, and as they go, they are made clean. The group does exactly what Jesus tells them, so they are not doing anything wrong. But it seems strange that they don't stop and at least thank Jesus.
Keep reading - one of the healed stops and turns around. He breaks away from the group, runs back to Jesus, and throws himself at his feet. He praises God in a loud voice, thanking Jesus for what he has done. The man couldn't help but be thankful for what Jesus had done. It seems like he couldn't stop himself from running back to Jesus and throwing himself at his feet.
God does amazing things in our lives everyday. The grace of God is as real today as it was the first hour we believed, as real as it was when Jesus healed the lepers. But how often do we throw ourselves at God's feet, overwhelmed with thanksgiving? In our text, Jesus does not rebuke the others - but he does ask where they are. God continues to pour grace and blessing into our lives, and then asks "where are you?" when we are too busy to notice.
This morning is Thankoffering Sunday, a tradition of the Presbyterian women. It is a time when we offer our money in thanks to God, and this money is used all over the world to reach out to those in need. Thankoffering Sunday started with one woman, over one hundred years ago, who saw what God was doing, stopped, and was thankful. As God continues to put a feast before us, as the grace of God continues to pour into our lives, will we respond with a quick thank you and run off to watch a football game, or will be throw ourselves at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus is on the Loose

2006-12-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

Text: Luke 21:25-36

In the city of Chicago, there is a priceless nativity, with handcarved pieces that was a gift from Italy to the city, that is set up every year during the Christmas season. As with any nativity, at the center of the scene is the baby Jesus. Several years ago, there was an abduction. The baby Jesus was missing from the nativity. The news stations covered the story around the clock, and the police department began searching for the missing Jesus. Finally, after a couple of days of frantic searching, an anonymous caller tipped off the police to find the baby Jesus in a locker. Sure enough, the figurine was there, and was safely returned to the nativity, unharmed. That would not be the last disappearance for Jesus. The baby Jesus was later abducted again, this time by a young man who apparently didn't set out to do the crime, and once he had Jesus just walked around the city with him, not quite sure what to do next. Again, the baby Jesus was returned unharmed. Now Jesus is strapped down with large metal straps, and often guarded to prevent another theft.
As I read this story, I thought about how interesting it was that every time the baby Jesus was stolen from the nativity, he was returned, unharmed. It seemed the thieves didn't know quite what to do with him once they had him out of the manger. it was also interesting to think about the panic of the city that followed the abduction, and the sigh of relief once he was returned. We like the image of the baby Jesus lying in th manger. The quiet, sleeping baby, so sweet and harmless. Jesus is very manageable this way.
But the message of Advent is not just a preparation to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus. Our Advent texts remind us that Jesus has not been kidnapped from the nativity. Jesus moved out of the nativity and is no longer the quiet sleeping baby but the living God who came to save us, our Lord Jesus Christ who will come again to bring judgment and redemption. When we read our text for this morning, we see Jesus not as the quiet baby but the "Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." The text describes the world in chaos and calls the readers to "raise your heads, for your redemption is drawing near." During Advent we certainly look toward the celebration of Christmas, and the birth of Jesus, but we also look with hope toward the second coming of Christ, the time when Jesus will return to bring the final judgment and redemption for the world.
This Jesus is a lot less manageable that the picture of Jesus in the manger. I think it's easier for us when Jesus is safely strapped into the nativity. When Jesus was missing from the manger scene in Chicago, when he was out on the loose in the city, people get a lot more nervous. Even thieves return Jesus to his place in the manger. But let us remember this Advent that Jesus is on the loose. Christ has come, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.

Labels

2006-11-01T21:02:00.000-05:00

We like our political party affiliations. They help us understand who we are. Labels like Democrat and Republican make a gray world more black and white. It helps us know who thinks like we do on the issues, it helps us know how to vote, it helps us, on some level, figure out who we are. The early Christians were also into labels. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1 the people of the early church are lining up behind the person who baptized them, labeling themselves not as followers of Christ, but also followers of this teacher or that baptizer. But Paul offers a strong course corrective here, asking was Paul crucified for you? Do you belong to these people who baptized you? Is dividing yourselves into camps based on these teachers really who you are? Or do you belong to Christ crucified, the one true Lord, the one true King?
And so it is with us. We create all sorts of labels for ourselves. We label ourselves as Democrats or Republicans. But no matter how strongly we identify with these labels, God has claimed us as God's own. The label that will always define who we are is not how we vote, but that we are children of God, heirs to the kingdom, disciples of Jesus Christ. When we walk into the voting booth, when we cast our ballot, when we walk away with our "I voted sticker" on our shirt, it doesn't matter how we're registered. What matters is that there is one label that is everlasting, one label that will not be swayed by political campaigns. And that label says that we are God's. When we vote next week, let us vote intelligently, let us vote our conscience, but most of all, let us remember we are first and foremost not Republicans and Democrats but the redeemed children of God.

Whose Side Are We On?

2006-10-29T20:19:00.000-05:00

Scriptures: Selections from Isaiah 59 (Verse 1-4, 6b-8, 12-15 to be exact)

Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
Your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt.
Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things.
No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments and speak lies;
They conceive trouble and give birth to evil...
Their deeds are evil deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands.
Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood...
The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths.
They have turned them into crooked roads, no one who walks in them will know peace.
...
So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us.
We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows...
For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us.
Our offenses are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities:
rebellion and treachery against the Lord,
turning our backs on our God,
fomenting oppression and revolt,
Uttering lies our hearts have conceived.
So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance;
Truth has stumbled in the public square
Honesty cannot enter,
Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.

Now the prophet speaking here in Isaiah knew exactly what sins with which he was taking issue, but he does not make them abundantly clear to us. But in this case, that is okay. In this age of fabricated news, political coverups, and echo chambers of talking points, we can imagine what the prophet might be bewailing when he says, “They rely on empty arguments and speak lies” Especially that empty arguments part, that’s Isaiah 59:4 by the way, if you want a memory verse to throw into your conversations that turn political.

We’ve heard one or two empty arguments, haven’t we? Maybe we’ve even been fooled by them, in the spirit of going along to get along. Maybe we’ve been hoodwinked once or twice by a carefully worded but completed empty and vacuous arguement in our time, but only in the spirit of good citizenship, right? We have to watch our for empty arguments, because those who seek to gain or keep power have as many people working on making their empty arguments believable as McDonald’s has working to make their hamburgers palatable. So we need to keep watch so that we are not fooled, and as promoters of social righteousness we need to call people out when they try to pull the wool over our eyes with empty arguments.

And these empty arguments are closely related to what the prophet gets mad about in verse 14, that truth has stumbled in the public square. Do you ever get the feeling that facts and figures don’t matter nearly as much as getting everyone to agree with you? Do you ever get the feeling that today it is truer than ever that if you repeat a lie enough and get enough people to echo the lie that it becomes the truth and it no longer matters anymore whether or not it was a lie to begin with? I won’t get into specifics right here and now, but I highly recommend that you do this week, and in the future in whatever way you hear God call you to do so. Sometimes as we promote social righteousness, we might have to show a little backbone. We might have to figure out how we live in this country and this world as authentic Christians without keeping quiet about things that are anti-Jesus, without letting our silence serve as our consent for things to continue as they are. We need to figure out where it is that we as the Church are going to draw our line in the sand, and say, “Far enough!” We need to decide when it is that we will stop being meek and mild and start becoming devoted and wild.

Now you might be thinking, uh, Dave, where are all these meek and mild Christians that you’re talking about? The Christians I see on tv are anything but meek and mild. In fact, they seem to be foaming at the mouth. And to that I say, you’ve got a good point there hypothetical interupter, and it also brings me to my first of three points. More like my first of three guidelines for how we should go about promoting social righteousness in our city and in our nation.

Because, yes, it does at times seem that Christians, or at least the Christians who tv executives love to put on the air, are indeed foaming at the mouth about their moral issues, and to that very situation comes my first guideline:

1.We’ve got to stop majoring in the minors. The folks on tv who always seem to be anything but meek and mild always seem to be upset about one of two things. It’s either something to do with sex, or perceived violations of their right to display their faith in public. But these are two things that Jesus never got upset about, and they are both completely absent from the prophet’s diatribe in Isaiah 59 this morning. We have to stop majoring in the minors. What does our passage foam at the mouth about this morning? The lack of justice. The collapse of truth. The oppression of the vulnerable. Acts of violence. These are the things that we should be upset about too. We have to stop majoring in the minors.

2. We have to show our work. I always got in trouble in math class for just writing down the answer to the equation when I knew what it was, and skipping the whole business of showing what steps I took to get there. That and the fact that the answer I put down was usually wrong. It seemed like too much effort to show my work. And that’s what Christians tend to do today. We jump straight to right or wrong, and fail to show our work. We forget to show why it is that we think something is wrong or right, what in scripture gives us motivation for our conclusion, what in our experience makes us think the way that we do. We forget to show all that and we end up yelling “No” at people who are yelling “Yes” or yelling “Yes” at people who are yelling “No”. And the exchange never goes much further than that. And when we show our work, we get to share the gospel with people. We get to tell them about how Jesus welcomed the outcast, about the God with a preference for the poor and vulnerable. I think we even need to abandon the terms of right and wrong and start classifying things as to whether they are Jesus-y or anti-Jesus-y. Right and wrong can always just break down to a difference of opinion, but Jesus-y and anti-Jesus-y has a little more commonground in the Bible.

3. State the obvious. Because what’s obvious to you might not be obvious to everyone else. For instance, one fact that we’re going to have deal with is the fact that we now live in a country that officially condones some forms of torture. Granted they don’t call it torture, but just as a rose by any other name wouldst smell so sweet, so torture by any name still stinks. And I’m not going to go on and on about what the passage of the bill to legalize torture means for our democracy and go on about right and wrong and Constitutional precedent, because that’s what I’m telling us all not to do.

Instead, I want to put torture through the ringer of my three guidelines. First, stop majoring in the minors. Now the Bible never deals with torture per se, but just listen to a few of these scriptures in light of this subject: Exodus 22:21 says, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.” Gen 9:5-6 says, “And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” And let’s just assume that when Jesus praises people in Matthew 25 for visiting him in prison, for as you did it unto the least of these you did it unto me, let’s assume that Jesus preference for prisoners is visitation and not being held under water until they almost drown but not quite, over and over again. Let’s take that liberty with the text. So we’re not majoring in the minors on this issue.

And we’re also stating the obvious, because in here in the soft light of stained glass, saying that torture is wrong gets a resounding, “Duh!”. It doesn’t get the same reaction out there. There are lots of people out there saying that “Torture is good!” and that people being tortured are human debris who have it coming anyway. And instead of getting into an argument of contradiction, we can set about to show our work instead. Here’s an example of a thoughly Christian, Jesus-y way of making the argument.

1st) Human being are created in the very image of God, and therefore have an inherent dignity that should not be trampled upon. All torture inflicts harm on a person for whom Christ died.

2nd) Prisoners are inherently vulnerable and powerless, that’s why our legal system has so many layers of protection for them. As God said to Moses in the giving of the law “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. “

3rd) We believe that humans beings are sinful through and through, including those in the government...especially those in the government! Due process, accountability and transparency are important checks and balances for human sinfulness and these things aren’t possible at secret prisons, and are irrelevant when torture is legal.

See, what was I talking about there...I was talking about faith and the Bible and how it all helps us to live and think today.

So, Don’t major in the minors. Show your work. And state the obvious. Three guidelines for how we should go about the business of the promotion of social righteousness. And if those are the how, we don’t have to look very far for the WHAT. We only have to look to our gospel passage for this morning, where Jesus reads from Isaiah and sums up the gospel with his quote. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." This scripture sums up all of social righteousness because it shows very clearly whose side God is on; the poor, the oppressed, the prisoner, the vulnerable.

The Promotion of Social Righteousness

2006-10-29T19:23:00.000-05:00

(Excerpt from series on the Great Ends of the Church)

An exhibition is meant to be seen. And promotion is meant to cause an outcome. You can promote an exhibition. Bare minimum for promotion is you put up an announcement somewhere and hope that someone sees it. If you want to promote something a little more thoroughly you stand on the street corner and hand out flyers or coupons. Maybe you go door to door. And if you want to get really obnoxious about your promotion, what do you do? You send in the telemarketers! You pay them extra to call people at dinnertime. Maybe you go whole hog and hire that team of telemarketers who have psychic powers who somehow always know that exact moment that I’ve taken my seat and call then. They cost extra. Because then you really get someone’s attention right?

So that’s what promotion is. It’s different from exhibition in that it has measurable outcomes. And that’s why the promotion of social righteousness is a different sort of animal from the rest of the Great Ends. The other great ends have alot more to do with the character of the Church, with the activity and commitment of the Church. But the promotion of social righteousness to the world has more to do with the world than with the church. It’s the promotion of social righteousness after all, not private righteousness or personal piety, but social righteousness to the WORLD. So this great end is saying that part of our job as Christians is to persuade, convince, push, and motivate the world to act with more and more righteousness in its social structures. Separate from any attempts to evangelize even, we as the church are called to work on behalf of those who cannot speak up for themselves, we are called to speak out when we see evil being perpetrated, and we are called to hold those who have power accountable for what they do and how they do it. Contrary to the impression you might get from Christians who love be on TV, this is not our sole calling in life, but it is one of our jobs.

This great end of the church beckons us to call attention to the fact that morality is not just whatever we agree it is, that it is not just that which is most convenient and expedient at the time, but that our moral laws come from God. That the standards for a society’s moral existence come from a source greater than the society itself; that they come from the living God. And this great end of the church, the promotion of social righteousness, and the great body of scripture that serves as its warrant, helps us to know that we do in fact have something to say to a civilization in decline.

Prayer Service Moved to 11 AM on Thursdays

2006-10-29T19:21:00.000-05:00

Not much to add to that. Come pray with us.

Salvation

2006-09-06T15:33:00.000-05:00

Salvation is something that happens in football stadiums at things called crusades or revivals, right? Something that goes on at those churches with just one sermon, given in a thousand different ways, right? The proclamation of the gospel has meant, in the past century, that someone who is very eloquent, or very passionate and persuasive, preaches a sermon that causes people to make a decision for Jesus Christ, hopefully with tears. And salvation means that that person do longer has the eternal destiny of being a rotisserie chicken right? You have to admit that that is probably the first thing you think of when you hear “The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind”. And so it is no small wonder then, that as a good Presbyterian you might have felt a little bit left out of the first great end.

That’s not our style. It’s never really been our style. But, in the 19th and 20th centuries, all of the emphasis was placed on the conversion event, at least among those who were most vocal about their faith, and who for most of this country defined what it meant to be a Christian as far as the popular consensus was concerned, making us Presbyterians seem very much like the “frozen chosen” we often joke that we are. The emphasis was on individuals making personal decisions to save their souls from the fire of hell. It was very effective, and still is. And it often left Presbyterians feeling a bit cold, and it still does. And you know, just because something is effective, doesn’t mean that it’s the whole truth and it doesn’t mean that it’s very Biblical, either. You see, Jesus’ concern was changed lives. When Jesus called people to be his disciples, did he say,”Admit that I’m an awesome guy, and that I’m the eternally begotten Son of God, and that compared to me you’re a piece of scum?” or did he say “Follow me?” Which did he say? Which did he say? Right, the second one.

You see, individual conversion experiences are great. But they have about as much do with being a Christian, as a big fancy wedding does with being married. So I think that we Presbyterians have some reconnecting to do with the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind. And I think that our understanding of the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind has alot to offer the church as it gets past this reductionistic view of the gospel and of salvation.

~This is an excerpt from our sermon series on the Great Ends of the Church. This one, in particular is on the salvation of humankind, the second half of the first great end.

Cats Can't Breathe in Bags

2006-09-06T15:25:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, Megan preached about the importance of proclaiming the gospel and reminded us of three ways that we as disciples of Jesus Christ can do just that, without becoming nuts about it. You know, without trying to convert the person in front of you in the check out line of the grocery store. That’s just not us. We’re Presbyterian after all.

And so Megan reminded us of three ways that we can share the story of the gospel. First, we can be good friends to people, spiritual friends even. And as spiritual friends, we can invite people to church. No pressure, no agenda, just an open invitation.

Second, as spiritual friends, as good neighbors, we can enter into dialogue with people. We can honor their questions and try to answer them even, but mostly we can love them as a community of faith.

And third we can demonstrate the gospel with our lives. As someone once said, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one. And that was the third way. Three ways to proclaim the gospel. Give it a listen.

Prayer on Thursdays at Noon

2006-08-08T17:43:00.000-05:00

The most important work we can do as Christians is pray. It's hard to make time to pray, I know. There is always something more pressing to do. Which is part of the reason that we will start to gather weekly in the sanctuary of Corinth Presbyterian Church at noon every Thursday, so that we can pray together in ways that we may not be able to on our own.

The other reason is because we need God's help. The world needs God's help. So we are going to gather to ask for it. And we are going to keep silence to listen for it.

Hope you can come.