July 4th Sermon

If you're looking for a sermon for July 4th, here's one I'll be preaching at FBC Tryon, NC. Just click on the graphic to the left.

A Modest Plea for Bible Reading

From time to time people who know of my appreciation for C. S. Lewis will ask me if I’ve read some recent book about Lewis. I always say the same thing: “No. I don’t read books about C. S. Lewis; I read Lewis.” There is this idea afoot that secondary literature (writings about other writings) is somehow as good as, or even perhaps more valuable than, primary literature (the writings themselves). And so, as a result people read biographies or “studies” of C. S. Lewis, thereby intending to understand his “thought,” rather than going straight to the “horse's mouth,” so to speak, and reading Lewis’s own writings themselves. “You’ll learn more Plato from the ‘experts’ than by reading the Symposium; you’ll learn more Homer from the textbook on ancient Greek literature than by reading the Odyssey.” I don’t much think so.

I’m sure some of it is merely the result of feelings of inadequacy. “How could I possibly know as much as the experts about Homer or Plato or Lewis?” Some, no doubt, is the result of indolence. It’s easier to let the experts do the hard work and boil it all down to a few “scholarly paragraphs” which can then be lifted and dropped in an appropriate context as if I had done the work myself.

But nowhere is this tendency more pervasive and insidious than in reading the Bible. Years ago, I was teaching at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, and I had gone home to South Florida for a holiday. While I was there, at church one Sunday someone came up to me and, knowing that I was a seminary professor, asked what I thought about Experiencing God (a “Bible study” course popular in the churches at the time). I said: “I don’t have an opinion; I haven’t read it.” The person looked shocked and said: “What do you mean you haven’t read it? Why, I thought that’s what you’d be teaching in the seminary!” Said I, “No, we still teach the Bible in the seminary.”

I’m constantly amazed at the lengths to which Christians will go to avoid reading the Bible, preferring just about any “study” or “exposition” or “inspirational writing” to the Bible. You go to a “Bible study” these days and there is precious little reading or study of the Bible itself going on at all! They’re studying Rick Warren or Beth Moore or whoever is perceived to be “trendy” or “relevant” at the moment. I observe that many, appropriately enough, don’t even call them “Bible studies” anymore. “I’m attending a Beth Moore study.” Precisely. Again, in my judgment the causes are the same: inadequacy and indolence. Some feel inadequate to move into a collection of writings composed in a world and a culture so vastly different from our own, so they look to the “experts” (credentialed or self-styled) to negotiate the distance for them. Others just don’t want to work that hard.

But the real tragedy is that the Bible, when given a chance, is not nearly so inscrutable as many seem to think. If one would just sit down and read a Gospel from beginning to end as one would any other story, the plot, the characters, the setting, and the message come through with surprising clarity. Even Paul’s letters, which Peter said were “difficult to understand” (2 Peter 3:14-16), nonetheless speak with striking relevance across cultures and through centuries when given a chance to speak for themselves.

And so, here’s a novel idea! Why not, at your next Bible study, actually study the Bible, rather than books about the Bible? Leave the “experts” and the “inspirational speakers” standing out in the hall and instead invite Matthew and Paul and John and Luke to your Bible study. Just read the Bible and see if it doesn’t make more sense than all those books about the Bible that are trying to “explain” it to you. I dare you!

Bird in the Grill

My late teacher, affectionately known as Dr. George, never tired of telling stories about his grandsons, Ben and Luke. They were the joy of his life. And among the stories he liked to tell was this one.

When Ben was about four and Luke two, their parents were returning from a trip with the boys when, during the drive home, a bird flew out in front of the car and the car hit it, killing it. They did not know it at the time, but the bird got stuck in the car grill. When they arrived home, they found the bird stuck in the grill, and Ben, being a sensitive and soft-hearted sort, was grief-stricken at the sight of the bird. He insisted that they had to bury the bird and have a funeral for him right on the spot.

So his dad went into the garage, got a shovel, and dug a grave for the bird in the backyard. Ben very respectfully took the lifeless little bird and placed its body in the hole, and then slowly filled the hole with dirt mounding it over the grave. When he finished, with tears in his eyes, he patted the mound of dirt and began to pray: “Dear God,” he said, “We’re sorry we killed this bird. We didn’t mean to; he just flew right into the car. He was a good bird, and I know he’s in heaven with you. Amen.”

When he finished, his dad asked little Luke if he wanted to say anything, and Luke thought for a minute, patted the ground, and said: “And that’s that.”

For some people, that is precisely what life is – just a series of events and circumstances through which we live, good or bad, and then when it is over, “That’s that.” We’re like a bird in the grill, a victim of dumb luck or bad judgment; but mercifully it comes to an end and “that’s that.”

Of course, when put that way, no one wants to believe that about themselves, but they live as though it were true. They either slog through life without ever having a serious thought about anything, meeting life as it races at them as just a series of meaningless events, or else they try to live a “happy little life” in which life is good, the kids are safe, the job secure, the marriage uneventful if not fulfilling, and the test results came back “normal.” But sooner or later both kinds of people will “hit the wall,” and when they do, no one…no one wants to believe that “that’s that.”

Tommy, a CPA who lived his life as though it were “one big party,” called me when he lay on his deathbed terrified that despite how he had lived his life “that most certainly was not that.”

“I want to be okay when I meet my maker,” he told me. “Is it too late to make it right?” Death is the great simplifier. There was precious little chitchat between us that day. Tommy didn’t have time for chitchat. He had work to do, and he wanted me to get to it. He needed to make his peace with God. We talked, Tommy and I, about dying, about faith, about life and death and resurrection. We talked about the fact that we’re all terminal. The mortality rate is 100%. Tommy just had the advantage of having a more precise “delivery date” than most. We talked, and then we prayed, and Tommy opened himself up in faith to God. And on that day, February 1, 2006, Tommy professed faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior of his life and claimed his promise of eternal life on the other side of the grave. And so, I baptized him. He was much too sick to do what we Baptists usually do. We dunk you, you know. And so, I improvised. We Baptists can do that. His wife brought me a chalice of water to serve as a makeshift baptistry. I looked at Tommy and said: “Tommy, do you now openly and publicly, in the presence of God and in the company of fellow believers, profess your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.” And he looked at me with level gaze and said: “I do.” And I dipped my finger in the water, raised my right hand heavenward, and said: “As a confession of your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, I baptize you my brother in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Sprit,” and I made a watery cruciform on his pale, weak forehead.

Less than a week later they gathered, his family and friends, to say “goodbye” to Tommy. They remembered the Tommy I never knew – happy-go-lucky Tommy, fun-loving Tommy, not-a-serious-bone-in-his-body Tommy. “Life was one big party for Tommy,” they said. But when I saw Tommy, “the party was over” and he desperately wanted to know, needed to know, had to know, that “that was most certainly not that!”

We all have a date with the dirt. What it means to be Christian is to live on this side of the dirt as though you will live on that side of the dirt, and as if “that is most certainly not that.”

God and Government (Luke 20:20-26)*

I love Sundays. And I love the Fourth of July. Sundays and the Fourth of July; I love them both. That’s why I’m always a bit puzzled by the ambivalence I feel when they share the same square on the calendar as they do this year. I love them both – Sundays and the Fourth. Why the queasiness when they occupy the same space on the calendar?

I don’t know, really, but I think it might have something to do with the birth of our son. I was a pastor in southern Indiana at the time, First Baptist Church of Austin. It was the summer of our nation’s Bicentennial. It was also the summer after I had just completed my M.Div. degree and was about to begin my PhD studies at Southern Seminary. I don’t know what came over me – I guess I had too much time on my hands – but I came up with the idea that our church should hold Sunday services outside that year, in honor of the Bicentennial, July 4, 1976, which fell on Sunday, just as it does this year. And so I talked the deacons of the church into moving our services outside for the day. Thought it would be kinda neat to do something different on Bicentennial Sunday. It’s a trick we preachers use when we really don’t have anything to say. We use “smoke and mirrors” to distract you – use a gimmick – put balloons on the ceiling or pull out some other bag of tricks – and hope you won’t notice that we really don’t have anything to say! One of the deacons, Albert Thormyer, had a farm about twenty miles or so out of town, and he said that he’d mow the pasture, pull out a hay wagon for a chancel, and people could spread their blankets on the grass, and we could hold services there. After services, we would have an old-fashioned dinner on the ground, and I do mean ground, and then we could have an old-fashioned Gospel sing in the afternoon. Sounded like a plan.

Then again, they didn’t have a wife who was nine and one-half months pregnant at the time. The baby was already overdue, and Cheryl was getting more miserable with each passing day. And it was hot! The whole Midwest had been sweltering under a heat wave for weeks that summer, and the forecast for Bicentennial Sunday was temps in the mid 90’s with humidity to match. When I told Cheryl we were going to the Thormyers’ farm for outdoor Bicentennial Sunday services, she said: “Do you know how hot it’s gonna be on the Fourth? And with me overdue? You are so dead!” I said, “Not to worry. The baby will surely come before then.” He didn’t. And so out to the farm I traipsed with my wife great with child (to use the biblical idiom). I spread a blanket for her at the foot of the only tree on the property, and one of the women in the church, Margaret Harrell, agreed to sit with her and try to keep her comfortable while I conducted services. Well, because it was Bicentennial Sunday, the services went longer than usual, all the music and such, and by the time I got up to preach, the sun was almost directly overhead. Did I tell you it was hot that day? All hope of shade had vanished in the noonday sun, and there sat my wife, on a blanket under a tree producing no shade, nine and a half months pregnant. Before the sermon, I stole a glance at her and Margaret, and Margaret looked at me and mimed the words that sent a chill up my spine, she mouthed: “You are so dead!”

After the sermon, the women of the church told Cheryl that she should get up and walk; would help the baby come quicker. And so there she was, a woman under each arm, waddling around the pasture in the sweltering heat. Did I mention it was hot? They brought her by where I was holding forth with a group of men telling stories, and glaring at me, she whispered: “You are so dead!” My son has no idea just how close he came to being fatherless when he was born.

To this day I still get a bit queasy when the Fourth of July and Sunday share the same square on the calendar. Maybe that’s it.

Or maybe it’s because of something Jesus once said about the relationship between God and government. He said it in the temple in Jerusalem during the final week of his life. According to Luke, the religious leaders who had the most to lose by Jesus’ popular messianic movement because they were in cahoots with the Roman occupational army, attempted to discredit him before the people before whom he was teaching every day in the temple. They did it by asking him “trapping questions” designed to discredit him with one of the many popular religious factions of the day no matter what he answered. But Jesus deftly sidestepped first one question and then another, refusing to be snared in their trap. Then, Luke says, they “sent spies, pretending to be sincere, to exploit his answers and deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor.” Don’t you just hate that – pious frauds trying to stir up trouble to their own benefit? “Teacher,” they asked, “is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” It’s a “Gotcha question.” If he says, “Well, of course we should pay taxes to Caesar,” then he’s discredited in the eyes of the people who wanted liberation from the Romans. But if he says, “No, we should not pay taxes to Caesar!” he’s guilty of treason, and the governor will have him arrested. And so, when the question was put to Jesus, everybody leaned forward and listened carefully for His answer.

And answer He did. He asked one of His interrogators to reach into his pocket and produce a coin. Then He asked: “Whose image is on that coin which, I might add, you took out of your pocket?” “Caesar's.” “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s!”

He did not deny the legitimacy of Caesar’s claim. Indeed, He reminded His interlocutors that Caesar’s claim was ubiquitous. They carried Caesar’s money in their pockets; they walked on roads Caesar had built; they enjoyed Caesar’s protection against would-be invaders. It was utter nonsense to try to claim that one could live in Palestine and have nothing to do with Caesar. But, what He did not say but clearly implied was: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s, but never give to Caesar what is God’s!”

What did He mean by that? Just what is God’s that is never to be given to Caesar? Well, I don’t know for sure. But C. S. Lewis, in his book, The Four Loves, has, as usual, helped me here. Lewis argues that when Jesus defined the fundamental obligation of every person in terms of “You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself,” He was laying down a double commandment. We are to love God in one way, “with all our heart and soul and mind and strength;” that is, with complete and unqualified devotion. But we are to love neighbor, and by implication, everything else, “as we love ourselves;” that is, with something less than the total, unqualified devotion. This we reserve for God alone. Lewis calls the first kind of love “worship-love,” and the second “nurture-love.” Only God is already perfect and complete in Himself, and the devotion I give to Him, Jesus says, should be of the kind that is appropriate to such a Reality, “…with all my heart and soul and mind and strength,” that is, Worship-love. But everything else, including myself, my neighbor, and my country, merits a different kind of love, a love that is nurturing and developing and which recognizes the “not-yet-completeness” of myself, my neighbor, and my country. Nurture-love. Get it? Both “worship-love” and “nurture-love” are proper for the Christian, but the former is always reserved for God alone!

I do love my country, and I’m reminded of it every time I travel overseas. I guide groups to the Holy Land with regularity and have done so nearly every year since the 1980’s. When I went to Gardner-Webb some years back, I teamed up with the president who also loved to travel to the Middle East and, like myself, had been doing so for many years. He had a little game he played with me called “Let’s take Wayne somewhere in Israel he’s never been before.” He tried diligently every year to find some place off the beaten path where the tourists did not go, but it never worked. In the 80’s I had stayed in Israel studying for an extended period of time, and hardly ever went where the tour groups go. “Been here?” he’d asked. “Yep,” I’d say. And he’d huddle up again with our Palestinian guide to try to find a place where I had never been. I’ve been to Israel so many times through the years that it almost feels like home…almost. And then I board the plane to fly back to the States. When I finally land on US soil and present my passport at Passport Control, the agent looks at it, looks at me, stamps it, hands it back to me and says: “Welcome Home!.” I can’t tell you how that makes me feel! No matter how many times I hear those words, my heart swells with pride and a chill travels down my spine. “Welcome home,” he says.

But for the Christian, no matter how much we love our country, no matter how much it feels like “home,” there is one home, and it’s not the USA, no matter how much we love it or take pride in it. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. But never give to Caesar what is God’s alone!” God alone is our origin and our destiny; God alone is our heart’s true home.

But if Jesus is to be our guide in this matter, one thing more needs to be said: While Jesus did not deny the appropriate place of government and the proper devotion to it, He also made it clear that His ultimate hope for humanity was not in government, anybody’s government; it was in the Kingdom of God! I find it intriguing that Jesus gave no public policy or offered any “social reforms” during His life and ministry. To be sure, He did champion the cause of the poor and the marginalized, but He never did so out of a concern for social policy or political system. He did so always in the context of His proclamation of the Kingdom of God! He did it because, at bottom, Jesus believed that all systems, no matter how altruistic and noble, were provisional. His hope for social justice and human welfare was inexorably tied not to what man could do, but to what God would do!

And sometimes even we Christians forget that and have to be reminded. That’s why the Early Church gathered at Table each Lord’s Day – for fellowship, for support, but most of all, to remember both who and Whose they were. They called their gathering The Supper. To be sure, they gathered at Table for fellowship and communion and forgiveness and grace. But they also gathered as an act of Hope, eagerly awaiting the Day when their little Supper would become a Feast, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb and His Bride, the Church. And when they gathered, they remembered what Jesus had said: “I’ll not eat or drink with you again, until I do it in the Kingdom!” They prayed this, you know! Maranatha – “Our Lord Come!” And so they sat at Table and ate the Bread and drank from the Cup and reminded each other that empires rise and fall, Caesar's come and go, but when the smoke clears and the dust settles, God alone is our Hope; God alone is our Home.

There’s a story about Billy Graham that, while I don’t know if it’s true, it certainly sounds like something he’d say. The story goes that when Ruth Graham died, the aging, frail Billy Graham insisted on attending her service and even surprising everyone by delivering her eulogy himself, despite the fact that his Parkinson’s disease had made standing and speaking nigh unto impossible. It was said that when the long ordeal was over and Dr. Graham was finally transported back to Montreat to rest and recover, Franklin escorted him inside the house that had been their home all these many years. And once inside, he turned to his father and said: “It’s good to be home, isn’t it Dad.” To which Billy Graham reportedly replied, “I’m not home yet.”

*This sermon is doing "double duty." It was prepared both to preach on July 4th of this year (which happens to be a Sunday), as well as serving as a "sample sermon" for a preaching workshop I am conducting for the Greater Cleveland County Baptist Association on June 7, 2010).

Why I Use the Lectionary

When I teach preaching I always encourage my students to use the Common Lectionary (in one of its many variations) in planning their preaching schedules. Being a Baptist and, therefore, firmly ensconced within the free church tradition, my predilection for a worship instrument that constrains the preacher may require, in the minds of some, an explanation.

First, a word about preaching in general. I often get questions from preachers about which “kind” of preaching I prefer. I presume they mean by that one of the many monikers used to distinguish various types of contemporary preaching, such as expository, narrative, inductive, confessional, etc. However, these tend to focus more on the form than the content of preaching, the “vehicle” rather than the “freight.” Irrespective of the style one employs, if one’s preaching at the end of the day is not, in its truest sense, “biblical,” then one is not preaching; one is merely giving a speech. What distinguishes a sermon from a speech is the biblical text and the way it is employed in the sermon.

By my way of thinking, therefore, there are only two approaches to preaching: topical or textual. Either you start with a topic and then choose a text that "supports" what you've already decided you're going to say anyway; or you start with a text and then let the text dictate your topic. I do the latter for reasons that should be obvious, with a moment's reflection. But let me state them nonetheless.

There are five reasons, chiefly, why I use the Lectionary when planning my own preaching.

• The Lectionary alleviates the preacher’s perpetual pressure of wondering what to preach on Sunday. It’s comforting and reassuring to know on Monday that my text for Sunday is already selected and waiting for me. I need only settle in for my weekly journey into and out of the text listening for a word from God to share with His people.
• “To Lectionary or Not To Lectionary” is not the question anyway. Every preacher will utilize some sort of lectionary. The only choice is whether to use a lectionary of one’s own devising, or one which the church has shaped and honed for centuries. I often tell my preaching students: “Just look through your sermon file for the past ten years, and you’ll discover the shape of your lectionary.” I prefer to use the one which the church, in its collective wisdom, has fashioned through centuries of experience with corporate worship.
• The Lectionary forces me to preach the whole Bible, and not just the parts I happen to like. That is to say, the Lectionary is based on the entire canon of the Scriptures, and not on some truncated, eviscerated canon comprised exclusively of my “pet passages.” On more than one occasion, I have climbed into the pulpit and begun my sermon with the words: “I would not have preached this sermon today had the Lectionary not made me.”
• The Lectionary is based on the Christian calendar and the church year. I like that. Of course, that’s not the only option for the preacher. There are multiple “calendars” all vying to dictate the preacher’s choices. For example, culture’s calendar will tell you that last Sunday was “Memorial Sunday” rather than “Trinity Sunday.” The denomination also has its “calendar” and will, if you let it, dictate what you call a given Sunday and what you preach – “Right to Life Sunday” or “Religious Liberty Sunday” or “Denominational Headquarters Needs a New Roof Sunday.” Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the point. The church calendar, on the other hand, is based on the Gospel (now, there’s a novel idea!) so that over the course of the year the preacher preaches the Gospel Story from Christ’s Coming (Advent) to Christ’s Coming (Christ the King Sunday). I like that.
• The Lectionary provides a larger perspective when, on occasion, a sermon seems mordant or harsh. When people tell me that the message of a particular sermon seemed to them harsh or difficult or judgmental, I typically remind them: “Please remember that this is but one word from God in an ongoing conversation. I have preached other words; I will preach other words. But this is one word which the church, in its wisdom, thought we needed to hear. Be patient. Judgment this week, grace the next. It is the way of things with the God of this Book. Besides, I do not attempt to preach all of the Christian faith in every single sermon, for which we shall both be grateful.”

To be sure, the Lectionary isn’t failsafe or foolproof. There are some Sundays when I scratch my head and ask: “Why did they pick these texts?” And there are some preachers for whom even having a text in advance is no necessary advantage! But that said, using the Lectionary helps me keep my preaching biblical so that even when I mess up, I mess up about much more important issues than I would if left to my own devices or choices.