Discovering the Evangelical Tradition and the Word-Centered Life

We are this summer looking at six streams of Christian spirituality that have renewed the church at different times and places and that can come together to enrich our lives in significant ways. Look at the list on page 11 of your bulletin. Most of us are inclined to two or three of the streams, and are perhaps a bit afraid of the other streams, and the variety in stream preference in this congregation is significant, but in this series of worship themes, we are encouraging each member of our church to consider what they might gain from the other streams. Today we are:

Discovering the Evangelical Tradition and the Word-Centered Life

John 3:1-8

3:1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

When I say the word evangelical, negative stereotypes may come to mind: angry, judgmental, right-wing, manipulative, insensitive, shallow, and ignorant. I ask you to lay aside those stereotypes. They are distortions, bad apples, not what the evangelical tradition essentially is. I have in mind a giant evangelical tent covering a great many people. Under this tent, I see Jesus and all the New Testament apostles, many early church fathers and mothers, many saints of the Roman Catholic Church (such as St. Patrick and St. Francis, who were both fiery evangelists), many founders of denominations, nondenominational movements, revivals, missionary endeavors, and Christian charitable institutions, not to mention millions of faithful people who remain unknown to historians.

There are six basic convictions that define the evangelical tradition:

Evangelical Conviction Number 1: God is personal and relational. By personal, I do not mean human. Rather, I mean that God has personality, character, emotion, reason, and will, and that God expresses these qualities in relationship.

What is the alternative to seeing God as personal? It is seeing God as something like an impersonal force, an abstract principle, or a mythic way of speaking of the shaping of history. The most enduring split in American religious life is between those who believe in the personal God of the Bible and those who believe in the impersonal God of the Enlightenment philosophers. The tension between these two views was present in the forging years of our national identity before our American Revolution, and the tension lives on today. Evangelicals need not deny the valid discoveries of Enlightenment science, but they consistently hold that God is personal and relational.

Even within the Triune God, there is relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that relationship is extended to his human children. God’s intention from the beginning was to dwell in close relationship to us, but our sin got in the way of that perfect plan; nevertheless, because of the saving work of Jesus Christ, and the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, in the coming new heaven and new earth, that is exactly what the faithful will do, live closely to God forever. Indeed, it is what we can begin to do now! The purpose of our lives is fulfilled in a close relationship with the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe. If you believe that God is personal and relational, you just might be an evangelical.

Evangelical Conviction Number 2: The Bible, although written by human beings, is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that its words, when properly understood, convey precisely what God wants us to know about his character, purposes, and promises, and about our divine calling as God’s children. We all know that it is easy to misinterpret the Bible, and that many people do so, but this does not take away from the inspiration and authority of the Bible. It just means that we need to rightly handle the word of truth.

Rightly understanding the Bible means standing under its authority and letting it reveal the nature and purposes of God. Standing under the Bible will help us to see the dominant threads that run through the Bible about the holiness and steadfast love of God, about human sin and redemption, about right and wrong, about wisdom and folly, about faith and unbelief, about the mission and gifting of the people of God, about the role of the church, about creation and new creation, and, most of all, about the work of Jesus, the Anointed One, Son of God, Lord and Savior of the universe. If you treat the Bible as divinely inspired and authoritative, you just might be an evangelical.

Evangelical Conviction Number 3: Jesus Christ is absolutely central to our redemption as children of God, to the quality of our present lives, and to our eternal destiny. He is our only Savior and our only Judge. He is the Master of our daily living. He is the head of his church. Evangelicals look to his pre-existence and incarnation, his life and ministry, his teaching and preaching, his death and resurrection, his ascension and exaltation, his final coming to inaugurate the perfect and eternal new heaven and new earth.

If we understood and accepted what was intended to happen in our profession of faith and baptism, then we have died to self and sin and have come alive to the ruling of Jesus Christ in, through, and over our lives. As Paul tells us in Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

In our baptism, we placed ourselves in the same position as the Apostle Paul when he described the results of his own entry into Christian life in Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” This dying to self is not just for apostles, but for all of us. In coming to Christ, we die to our personal preferences, and come alive to his mission.

The centrality of Christ, and of our life in Christ, receiving his saving work on our behalf, and living under his rule, is key to the evangelical tradition. If your life is centered in Christ, if his mission rules over even your personal preferences, you just might be an evangelical.

Evangelical Conviction Number 4: Evangelicals believe that salvation is by grace, through faith, for good works. Saying that salvation is by grace means that it begins with God’s free choice to save us, a salvation that we do not deserve, a salvation that is sheer, free gift. We cannot earn it, cannot buy it, cannot manipulate our way into it. The all-time favorite evangelical hymn which we will sing today puts it this way, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Salvation is first and foremost the work of God, but it must be received through our faith, which is itself a precious and gracious gift from God, a working of God’s Spirit in our hearts and minds. Although our faith is the gracious work of God, our free choice must be involved. We must say, “Yes,” to the gift. We must receive and unwrap the present in order to enjoy its benefits. “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.”

The grace comes to us through the self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ, and we receive it by believing it. The saving grace has a purpose that not all evangelicals sufficiently notice. From some evangelical messages, you would think that the purpose of God’s gracious saving of us is simply that we might escape hell and enter heaven. To be sure, that is the by-product of salvation, but salvation’s purpose is that we might become children and servants of God, doing good works and living for the praise of God’s glory...NOW as well as eternally. We do not earn our salvation through good works, but we show that we have been touched by grace when we live graciously and generously. If we know that we have been saved by grace, through faith, for good works, we just might be evangelicals.

Evangelical Conviction Number 5: We must be born anew from the Holy Spirit. When we first sinned, we distorted the image of God within us; we wrecked our ability to represent the nature and purposes of God. When we profess faith and are baptized, if we understand what we are doing, we are dying to self and sin and coming alive to God, and we are put in touch with the Power of renewal, the One who can give us new hearts and minds, being gradually transformed into the likeness of our Creator. New birth begins by degrees to keep the picture of God in our lives consistent and clear. That is what it means to be born anew of the Spirit of God. This is not a mere option in the Christian life, Jesus said, “You must be born anew; you must be born of the Spirit.” If you believe that we must be born anew from above and gradually renewed in the likeness of God, then you just might be an evangelical.

Evangelical Conviction Number 6: Evangelicals are known for their dedication to fulfilling the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples to go into all the world, making more disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that he had commanded them. Let’s be honest: some evangelicals have done this very badly, doing it in the enthusiasm of their fleshly pride, rather than under the leading and direction of the Holy Spirit. If some of us hold back from being evangelicals, it is most likely because we do not want to be associated with the sledge hammer sensitivity of some visible evangelicals. But the fact that some have done it badly in no way removes the Great Commission. It just calls us to be wiser. Some of us try to get off the hook by saying that we are sharing the gospel with deeds rather than with words. The deeds are great and essential, but, under the leading of the Spirit, the deeds need to be explained in words. If you will covenant with me that we will seek better and better ways under the guidance of Scripture and the leading and empowering of the Holy Spirit, to share the message of God’s saving love in Jesus Christ, then you just might be an evangelical.

In summary, evangelicals believe:

1. That God is personal and relational,

2. That the Bible is divinely inspired and authoritative,

3. That Jesus Christ is central to our redemption as children of God,

4. That salvation is by grace, through faith, for good works,

5. That we must be born anew of the Spirit of God, being renewed in the image of God, and

6. That we have been commissioned by Christ to share his message of salvation in deeds and words.

If those six convictions fit within your picture of Christian life, then it is not that you just might be, but I dare to say that you ARE an evangelical. Without the evangelical stream of living water, the church would have died long ago. Forgive me if what I say next sounds offensive to you—I don’t think it will, just please forgive me if it does--but I trust that it will help you remember the point: Christianity without the evangelical stream (at its best) is like marriage without sex: unproductive.

What a Herald of Hope Looks Like

Yes, I know that “hope that is seen” is no longer hope, but still…

Several months ago, I attempted to transplant a butterfly milkweed to our Christview Ministries rock garden. I had been warned repeatedly that I needed to get all the taproot, or all was lost. I did my best, digging down on one side and feeling my way down the through the rocky soil until my hand slid under the root before attempting to complete the excavation, but the tricky root turned horizontal on the side opposite my hand and went several feet in that direction. When I dug down on that side, I severed it. I saw no purpose in proceeding, but, nevertheless, I attempted to get the rest of the severed taproot, and succeeded in getting only another foot of it. I decided to plant both the plant (which so far has lived, although seriously damaged by two monarch caterpillars) AND the additional severed foot. The planting of the severed portion felt more like a burial. I did not take my planting of the severed foot very seriously because I covered where I planted it with mulch. But in the last days of the spring season, there emerged through the mulch above the severed root

a baby butterfly milkweed plant.

Make of it what you will,

but I choose to take it

at least as a spiritual metaphor,

perhaps as a divine sign of encouragement,

a herald of hope, if you please.

John Turner

A Battle Worthy of Real Men and Women

Experiencing the Contemplative Tradition and the Prayer-Filled Life
Psalm 46:1-11; Ephesians 6:10-20; Luke 4:1-13

In our culture and perhaps in most cultures, women are more oriented than men toward developing and practicing skills in relationships, intimate communication, and inward reflection on feelings. How many of you women have noticed that? (lots of women’s hands were raised). We need those skills in a community of faith, but…I don’t know about the rest of you men, but that is scary territory for me as a man. Being in a room where a group of women are talking about relationships and feelings gives me uncomfortable shivers. I may force myself to sit still, and I may know in my conscious mind that a little of this is good for me, but my subconscious mind is looking for all the exit doors. I know that there are exceptions among both men and women to my general observation, but I think that it is at least three-fourths true.

So, when we define contemplative prayer as deepening our relationship with God through prayer and meditation, lots of men say to themselves, “Oh, that’s women’s stuff,” and tune out. Practical men may tend to view contemplative prayer as being for people who are out of touch with the hard realities of the world, for people who are of no earthly use. But that association of contemplative prayer with irrelevance, other-worldliness, and exclusively with femininity is a great and tragic mistake.

Let me make the counter-suggestion—just to balance things out--that real contemplative prayer, rightly understood, is not for sissies, but only for tough-minded men and women who want to make a real and practical difference in the world. Indeed, Jesus shows that contemplative prayer is for those who wish to engage the world in hard, disciplined spiritual battle. We need strong men who will enter this battle, father figures who will pioneer and model such life for their children. Of course, we also need women and mother figures like this. But today, on Father’s Day, I am especially challenging the men.

Authentic contemplative prayer might be described as:
pursuing prayerful listening and practicing personal reflection
in order to purify our divine hopes, desires, and callings.

Real contemplative prayer is a deep inward journey that results in focused effectiveness in outward ministry and mission for the glory of God.

Our best model for contemplative prayer is what happened in the temptation of Jesus. Immediately after Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Under the Spirit’s direction, Jesus fasted, prayed, and dealt with Satan’s temptations for forty days. The Holy Spirit put Jesus in this position not so he would succumb to Satan’s temptations, but so that he would, in prayerfully resisting, be prepared to resist Satan’s temptations again and again when those temptations would inevitably rush upon him in the midst of his busy and high pressure ministry.

At his baptism, Jesus had received confirmation that he was to live in such a way that he would be, on the one hand, the Royal Son of God and agent of the reigning power of God, proving that God is more powerful than any forces evil can muster, and, on the other hand, the Suffering Servant of God, giving himself sacrificially for the redemption of the God’s wayward children and, indeed, for the restoration of all creation. This was an immense task. How can one be at once both victor and victim?

Jesus had to live out his calling as a real life story orchestrated by his heavenly Father. Jesus had to coordinate his actions like a symphony, with the twin contrasting themes of the triumphant King and the slain Lamb, and the great underlying and ultimately unifying theme of God’s redeeming love.

Satan would try to misdirect him so that the symphony of Jesus’ life and ministry would never accomplish its purpose. Satan’s basic tactic was to appeal to Jesus to make his symphony go straight to the triumphant theme and to play it with no contrasting theme and with no underlying unifying theme. Such a symphony about a powerful king might have excited some initial attention, but it would never have dealt with the depths of our sin, it would never have won our hearts, and it would never have saved the world. Every time Satan tempted Jesus to focus solely on his power as the Son of God, Jesus recognized the temptation as a lie contrary to the will of God and quoted Holy Scripture to defeat the lie.

The forty days contemplative prayer that Jesus spent in the wilderness were well spent indeed, for in approximately three years of ministry, he always remembered to get his signals straight with the Father, and to resist any tempting shortcuts that would have ruined his life’s symphony. He remained always the Royal Son of God, always the Suffering Servant of God, always our loving Kinsman Redeemer. Each theme might come to the fore in its own time, but none were ever forgotten. All three themes remained woven together in the symphony of Jesus’ life and ministry.

Sometimes Satan’s temptations of Jesus to forget some strand of his ministry came to Jesus through those he loved most dearly: his family, his disciples, even the one disciple he had picked to lead his church after his death. But Jesus engaged regularly in contemplative prayer and, whenever temptation reared its head from whatever source, he was able to say, “Get behind me, Satan!”

It would have been far easier for Jesus to take the path of least resistance, the path of common sense, the path of worldly wisdom, the path of comfortable compliance, the people-pleasing path. But he loved us too much to do that. He kept his mission always before him, and he stayed prayed up so that he would not go off course. He stayed strong and tough because he engaged in contemplative prayer. Because he did, we are here this morning. We would not be here without the focused purpose and toughness that Jesus maintained with his prayer life.

We too have a mission. We have done our best as a church to discern our mission as, “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”

That mission statement is now the reason for our being. It contains the seeds of the answer to almost any question we can ask regarding what we should do about anything.

How should we worship God? By “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”

How should we win disciples and gain church members: By “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”

This may begin to sound a bit repetitive, but how should we serve our community? By “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”

And, yes, even, how should we raise funds? By “Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”
Who are we as a church? We are a people who are—say it with me--“Building a Community of Hope through Jesus Christ: drawing people to Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and doing the work of Jesus.”

As we unpack those words, there are many ways that they can help us resist temptation. Sometimes those words will help us resist the temptation to do things the easy way, to take the worldly-wise shortcut that undermines the integrity of our mission.

But, if those words are not just to be an empty slogan, they must be grounded in contemplative prayer, sharpened through a deep and broad meditative interaction with the Scriptures, empowered by the Holy Spirit who moves in our lives in answer to our prayerful obedience to his calling and gifting of us.

The members of this church need to decide that we will spend the time in prayer to purify our hearts and minds so that we can live in total obedience to what God is putting into our hearts. We need to determine that we will resist Satan’s distracting temptations toward short cuts and comfortable paths. We need strong men and women who will sit down and reflectively determine that we will pay the cost to answer the call that God has put upon our lives.

But, you object, I am not a strong person. That does not count as an objection. None of us are strong by nature, but the miracle of the gospel is that God can make of us far more than we can ever even imagine making of ourselves. And he has provided the spiritual armor that can make us strong to stand against the lies of the enemy. That armor is put on with mediating on God’s word and praying in God’s Spirit. It is put on through contemplative prayer.

Contemplative prayer is not for sissies. A person who engages in contemplative prayer will have to get ruthlessly honest with himself or herself, answering questions such as, “What are my real motivations? What are my real commitments? What faith am I actually living out with the way I spend my time, energy, and resources? What lies, what false narratives, are shaping my daily life and decisions? If I am to become free to serve God more fully, what demons must be cast out and replaced by the gospel of Jesus Christ?

No army drill sergeant, no football coach, ever asked tougher things of those under him than Jesus asks of all of us, but the pay-off for Jesus’ toughness is even greater than that of either the drill sergeant or the football coach. (1) Jesus does not ask anything of us that he will not do himself. (2) Jesus goes with us as we do the tough things to give us strength, comfort, and renewal. (3) When we pick up our crosses to follow him, what looks on the front end like the toughest thing we ever did turns out to bring with it the easing of many other burdens, for, from the perspective of obedience, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. (4) When we follow Jesus, no matter how tough the road may seem for a time, we always, always, always, win in the end!
A true disciple of Jesus Christ has to be ready to do inner battle for the truth of the Christian message and mission on a daily basis. And inner battle is the very toughest kind of battle, but it brings the greatest victories.

Jesus’ enemies came at him with flattery, bribery, and offers of honor and influence. They came at him with hostility, threats, shame, and pain. Not once did they knock him off course. The most stunning thing about Jesus is the way he stayed free from the traps his enemies set for him. The great freedom with which Jesus operated in ministry can be traced to his regular practice of contemplative prayer.

It may seem that I am about to wander off topic, but I plan to bring everything quickly back together as we draw near the conclusion of this sermon. I wish to offer one warning in the area of contemplative prayer. Some people who claim to teach contemplative prayer are really teaching either Gnostic philosophy or Eastern religion. What these two schools of thought have in common is an attempt to rise above or to detach from material creation. They seek to get you into a meditative state that convinces you that nothing material matters, and they tell you that this is spiritual progress. Nothing could be more contrary to true, Bible-based faith.

The Bible begins with a good creation and ends with a restored and unified new heaven and new earth. At the heart of the Bible’s story of redemption is Jesus Christ’s bodily incarnation, his embodied ministry to embodied human needs, his bodily crucifixion, and his bodily resurrection. The writers of the New Testament are consistently clear that what we do with our bodies matters. It is no improvement to convince ourselves that we have risen above our bodies. Indeed, it is a denial of the central truths of Christian faith.

The contemplative prayer to which Jesus calls us is a call to real and authentic bodily life, first in the bodies with which we were born in this fallen creation and then in the bodies with which we are raised for life in the perfect and eternal new creation.

Contemplative prayer is not about how we escape bodily life, but about how we live our bodily existences in this fallen world in ways that point toward and glorify God’s perfect purposes for our bodily lives in the new creation. That is a tough battle, but it is a battle worth fighting, and, by God’s gracious work in our lives through Jesus Christ, it is a battle worth winning. It is a battle worthy of real men and real women.

When we commit ourselves to be disciples of Jesus Christ, when we are immersed in his life and ministry, his death and resurrection, his holiness and grace, his redeeming love, we are embarked on a great adventure from which there is no turning back, but a journey on which only those who are prayed up can stay on the path. It is a battle worthy of real men and real women.

First Day of Summer Garden Update!

Zuchinni beginning to ripen on the vine.

We've had good luck and bad luck in the garden this spring. The apple trees continue to show blighted leaves despite (in spite of?) several applications of various non-chemical solutions. The trees can drop all their leaves and still be essentially healthy, but my goodness, it still causes feelings of discouragement.

The blueberry bushes also seem to be limping along. Jennifer Hudspeth has determined, with a consult from Extension, that they may have an iron deficiency. So: we have applied both an iron supplement and plenty of blood meal (which has a high iron content). The blood meal attracted the attention of a few wandering dogs, but they have since wandered off...with a little help from Mr. Boot.

The zucchini--pictured above--is doing so-so. A few are fruiting but a couple of the plants have been attacked by borers and are showing the usual dripping, disgusting, and slimy characteristics left behind by these pests. Basically, we're taking the zucchini day by day. The okra also appears marginal but that seems to be the nature of okra: one day it's lousy and the next day it is four feet tall and thriving.

We have harvested potatoes and onions and have planted tomatoes where the potatoes were and will probably put in some fall weather crops where the onions were. The squash appears to be doing well, the flowers are spectacular, and the evil Japanese Beetle has been temporarily defeated.

One remarkable thing has been observed: yesterday morning we glanced around us and noticed nice big fat bumble bees hovering around the squash blossoms. Further observation caused us to see that the garden was filled with literally hundreds of bees; there were everywhere; in the squash, the cucumbers, and hovering around each zinia blossom. It was really wonderful to see them.

A view of the zinias supervised by a sunflower sentry.

Lush and Lovely: we have had an abundance of rain and sunshine this year. Praise God!