Harbinger!

Text: Luke 1:26-38
Theme: “Harbinger!”
4th Sunday of Advent
December 18, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS


26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

The words you just heard have become, down through the circling years, the traditional text for today, the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It brings to our ears, hearts, and minds the story of the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, the mother of our Lord.

For many Christians, this selection pulls double duty as it serves as the chief reading for the minor festival called The Annunciation of the Lord. That feast or festival, celebrated in the more liturgical traditions, is observed on March 25th every year. Interestingly, that’s nine months before Christmas Day. Divide nine by three and you get three: a first, second, and third trimester. Today’s selection locates us toward the end of the second trimester of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Elizabeth, a relative of Mary, was the mother of John the Baptist.

Many congregations use today, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, to have the annual service of Lessons and Carols. That particular service – and a beautiful one it is! -- has a history that springs from the English church. It begins with the lovely bidding prayer which we paraphrased at our “Christmas Traditions” choir concert here at FPC this past Wednesday. Luke 1:26-38 shows up in Lessons and Carols, but, while there is a bidding prayer, there’s no provision for a sermon in that liturgy. As a result, it does stand to reason that the Gabriel and Mary encounter, while read from the Scriptures, is not proclaimed all that much. Today, thankfully, we get to buck the trend and spend a bit more time with this incredible event.We are informed that “God sent” the “angel Gabriel.” So the initiative – the opening “oomph” in this story, if you will – begins with God. Already, this tale bucks the trend.

We like to begin the story with us, and our plans, and our schedules, and our traditions, and our menus, and our shopping lists, and our guest lists, and our errands. “Whoa! Wait a minute,” this text seems to say. Look what’s going on here. “God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.” No, God didn’t this angel with a personal name (Gabriel) to Rome and the Palatine Hill where the great Caesar surveyed his vast domain. Neither did God send Gabriel to Jerusalem to the great temple built by King David’s son, Solomon, and recently restored by the Herodian dynasty. No, He didn’t send the angel for a meeting with the Jewish Sanhedrin at their next scheduled session. Instead, he chooses Nazareth – nothing short of a little backwoods town in Galilee. If the story took place in Texas in 2011, the town might have been Gainesville or some such place. The town’s on the map. The town has people in it. It even has a nice golf course; I might add. But it’s not where all the action is. That’s what Nazareth was like.

There was a young woman there, a virgin – probably no older than a teenager. We discover that she is engaged to be married. Her fiance’ is named Joseph, and we are informed that he is a direct descendant of King David. He’s got some royal blood in his veins. And there, in that patriarchal, male-dominated society, where women were relegated to the periphery of life or pushed to the margins, something else happened. The angel didn’t just send for Mary to come to where the angel was at. Instead, it says that the angel came to her. The angel, Gabriel, was a dutiful servant. He was just following orders. He cared little for what the mores’ of society were. That’s refreshing to hear about, I say!

This isn’t the first time Gabriel shows up in Holy Writ. Centuries before this get-together in Nazareth, we read of Gabriel explaining to Daniel some visions God had given him about what was yet to come. He must have been good at that, because this is precisely what he’s telling this young woman whose name was Mary. Before the trip to Nazareth, Gabriel was also in Jerusalem, at the great temple, telling the old priest Zechariah that he and his wife, Elizabeth, were going to have a baby. To the extent that Gabriel reports on future events, he is a “harbinger” of things to come (hence, the title to today’s sermon).

Gabriel. What an incredible name it is. It’s a compound word. It comes from the Hebrew gabar (which means to “prevail”) and the Hebrew el, short for elohim, which is the title of God. Literally, his name means “God prevails.” Later, when he told the young woman, Mary, that “nothing is impossible with God”, he was simply being true to his name. This kind of obedience to God’s commands joined to a robust confidence in God’s ability is really quite refreshing to read about in our day and age. Unlike Gabriel, we humanoids tend to pick and choose what, from God, we want to obey, or highlight, and look for confidence in our own abilities to steer our lives or church in the direction we believe it should go. Gabriel is a happy resource against this.

Gabriel starts the conversation with an angelic greeting: “Hail, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.” Artists have had fun capturing on canvass what they imagine this scene must have been like. Did Gabriel have human characteristics, or did he appear – as he did in one famous painting – as a flash of bright light. We are not told. Apparently, what he said was far more important than the experience. This, too, is quite refreshing to consider in our day and age. We like to think that a good life, even a godly life or spiritual life, is the sum total of the “experiences” we have had. Marketers and advertisers have a field day in the “holiday season.” They aren’t stupid; they play right into our hand. Everything is geared toward making our Christmas “experience” a warm and special time. Think about that when you’re waiting in the check-out line at Dilliards, or Macy’s, or Best Buy this week! Are you having a “warm and special” experience?

Meanwhile, back in Nazareth, this young woman named Mary freaks out. But it’s not her fear over the presence of the angel. Rather, it’s what the angel said that momentarily stunned her in fear before she could engage her “fight or flight” response. Gabriel, obviously anticipating this, nips the fear in the bud.
Gabriel declares: “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end. “ Someone queue the “Hallelujah Chorus”: “And He shall reign forever and ever.” It’s all going to take root and take wing with this young, peasant girl sitting alone, in her little world, in ordinary, run-of-the-mill Nazareth in Galilee.

Being the sensitive souls that we are or at least claim to be, we would be shocked if we were Mary. We would need time to “process”, as psychologists and therapists like to say, this announcement. We might write it off as due to drinking too much Bacardi 151 in our eggnog the night before. We might scoff and deny and say: “What a bunch of flim-flam and hooey this is.” Or we might burst into mental overdrive: “Oh, my goodness, gracious! I’m going to have a baby!” I like that commercial for Nissan cars. A woman looks at her husband with amazement in her eyes and says: “We’re gonna have a baby!” The husband upon hearing this is momentarily stunned. Then he runs outside, looks at his Nissan 350Z 2-door coupe, and ponders his options. Then he grabs the back bumper and starts to pull, and, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, his pull causes the little car to magically turn into a 4-door Nissan Maxima sedan. Pleased with his work, he says: “We’re gonna have a baby!”

Meanwhile, again back in Nazareth, the virgin Mary simply said what she said. Without over-reacting or under-reacting, and seemingly without any drama, she says: “How will this be since I am a virgin?”

With a precious, wonderful, total lack of drama, she asks the obvious question. Gabriel chimes in with the reply: “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

Mary’s reply to Gabriel, the harbinger of things to come, is, if I may say, one of the most precious and powerful statements in the entire Bible. We think of precious as being very dear and valuable and fragile. Something dear and valuable and fragile can easily be dispensed with by power which we think is oppressive and aggressive. But here, in Mary’s words, the precious and the powerful combine as one and give us the way to live as children of God and brother’s and sister’s of Mary’s baby boy, the Son of the most high.

Mary says (and I provide a literal translation from the original Greek): “Behold, the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to what you have said.” It is not “Let it be to me according to my plans”, not “Let it be to me according to my best hopes”, not “Let it be to me according to my vision of the future, not “Let it be to me according to what my family says, or my politics say, or my government decrees, or my bank account reports, or my physical health dictates.” No, it’s far deeper –and simpler – than any of that. It’s “Let it be to me according to what you have said.”

Mary references nothing – except the Word of God delivered by the angel Gabriel. This, of course, is faith which rests on the Words and promises of God.
How shall it be with us this week, this Christmas? Will it be just another holiday experience like any other? Will we come out of it with more gifts and more debt and more weight? May I suggest an alternative? Hear again the story, so old and ever new, that “Unto you is born a Savior.” And then say: “Behold, the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me according to Your Word.”

Amen.

Advent in 4-D!

Text: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Theme: “Advent in 4-D”
3rd Sunday of Advent
December 11, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

At the end of A Christmas Carol, the famous story by Charles Dickens, Ebeneezer Scrooge was a changed man. No longer mean and miserly, he was the epitome of joy and laughter, kindliness and generosity. The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future had done their work. Dickens wrote, at the very end, that old Scrooge knew how to “keep Christmas well.”

There’s something magnificent about this thought of keeping Christmas well. Luke says of Mary, the mother of Jesus, that she “kept all these things” (the announcement of the angel Gabriel, the holy birth, etc) and “pondered them in her heart.”

The temptation, old yet ever new, is not to keep Christmas. Actually doing that would require the engagement of our minds, hearts, souls, and a certain amount of time. What’s familiar to us about Christmas is really that it’s NOT kept. We may observe it; we may rush through it; we may count down the shopping days until it’s here. But do we really, truly keep it?

I have to confess that I’ve actually “kept” the Advent season this year. For reasons that I’m not entirely convinced of, this time of preparation we call Advent has been particularly meaningful to me in 2011. I’ve benefited greatly from the Advent devotions by O.P. Kretzmann that our Worship Committee has offered. I’ve found myself, for whatever reason, immersed more deeply in the Advent Scripture readings. My prayers have been less scripted and more personal. I didn’t see this coming; I didn’t expect this to happen. Like many of you, I’ve got a lot going on in my life, and I have entertained thoughts of Christmas kind of getting in the way. There were moments when I wanted Advent and Christmas to hurry up and be over with.

Then, a little over a week ago, while lifting a 65 lb dead weight over my head at LA Fitness, a thought occurred to me. It created what actually was a feeling of grief. Somewhere along the line, that sense of childhood wonder had died and I was mourning its loss. My intellect, my mind had glossed over that word of Jesus that we must become like children. And children – like my grandson Noah watching Yo Gabba Gabba on Nickolodeon – have a sense of playfulness and wonder about them. And that becomes amplified at Christmas.

I want that playfulness and wonder back, and I don’t want it to leave anymore. I don’t want to check Christmas off on my long list of things to do and then move on. Like Scrooge, like the mother Mary, like baby Noah, I want to keep Christmas well.
I’ve got a fighting chance for that to happen this year, and I can’t understand why. It’s certainly not due to any hard work – spiritual or otherwise – on my part. Part of the answer, I’m persuaded, lies in circumstance. I’m at a point in life when I’m making some serious decisions about my two oldest daughters who live in Indiana that are both disabled with autism. My father and stepmother, who reside in Nebraska, are now facing the unpleasant realities that their advancing age brings. The foundations of the global economy are nothing if not wobbly. Tens of thousands of dollars that some people are depending on for security in their retirement years can vanish in one day’s trading on Wall Street. Then I look to the Presbyterian Church (USA), the denomination that our congregation is part of, and I see strife and division that diverts it from its mission. Statistically, the membership of many of the old, mainline Protestant denominations is dropping drastically. I look at our congregation and what it has been through in the last ten to twelve years. I’m aware of what many of you, today, are going through as you face the limits of life. Ill health can come on slowly or suddenly. You wonder what the next day – or the next hour! – will bring.

Martin Luther, one of the great reformers, was a busy man. Like many of us, he had a lot going on – so much, in fact, that he once remarked that he needed to spend the first three hours of the day in prayer just to get through what lay ahead.

The best prayers are the ones that flow out from the Word of God. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once remarked, “The Word of God ought to determine our prayer – and not the poverty of our own hearts.” And during this season of Advent, as I’ve found myself once more immersed and bathed in the Scriptures of the season, there has been much to pray about because there have been so many words from God for us to consider.

The Word of God takes on all these circumstances we face, and Advent becomes more than just shopping days before December the Twenty-Fifth!
Advent becomes not one dimensional, not two dimensional, not three dimensional, but four dimensional. The four stands for four words that begin with the letter D: drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship.

Drama involves the facts, the story, the narrative: the Messiah was prophesied and prepared for. John the Baptist, as he declared in today’s Gospel, was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Jesus was born at a certain place and a certain time. He began a public ministry of preaching and teaching and healing. He instituted a Supper, the meal of His new covenant. He was crucified. He rose from the grave bodily. He issued a commission to go into all the nations to baptize and teach. He ascended into heaven. His Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. These are not fractured fairy tales. These are the facts. All of this is the drama.
The second D word is doctrine, and the doctrine – or teaching – is this: You and I are part of the drama. We are part of Christ’s story. His narrative is our narrative. Christ was born for us, lived for us, died for us, rose for us, ascended for us, sent His Spirit for us. Why? Because only God in Christ could do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Why? Because God loved – and loves! – us even when we were God’s enemies.

This leads to the third D word: doxology. Doxology literally means “glory words” or “right praise.” In simple terms, it involves worship. Realizing that the drama is our drama and the teaching that flows from it enlivens shapes our lives, we respond with much, much praise and much, much thanksgiving. We are only too ready, in public worship, to hear the drama and to study the doctrine over and over again. Why? It is because the forces of evil, the world, and our own sinful selves are always trying to distract us – to pull us away from and out of the drama and the doctrine.

So the drama leads to the doctrine. The doctrine leads to the doxology. And the doxology leads to the fourth and final D word: discipleship.
A disciple, quite simply, is a follower and student of Jesus Christ. Discipleship is taking our following and learning right out into the world we live in, into our various callings at home, in our schools, in our places of employment.
This Sunday’s New Testament reading from First Thessalonians is particularly appropriate to this matter of discipleship. We are encouraged to “rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances.” This encouragement has direct application to the four D words I’ve brought to mind. But especially, it treats discipleship.

Best of all, we are encouraged to rejoice, pray, and give thanks not because they are good ideas, or means to an end, or methods of self-improvement or fulfillment. We are not encouraged to do these things, as Christ’s disciples, so we can have “our best life now.” There’s only one reason for us to do these things –and it is right there in the text: it is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

You see, that’s the reference point; that’s the North Star. It’s not our own circumstances – good, bad, or ugly. It’s not our own dramas or stories. Jesus didn’t come to simply give us insights or principles for holy living, or to help us write a better script for the movie of our lives. Jesus came, as He Himself said, to “seek and to save the lost.”

If I focus only on myself, I’m lost. I can’t find my way. My heart is impoverished and filled with evil. I’m the black sheep gone astray. I’m dead in my trespasses and sins. Put a fork in me; I’m done. But when I look to Christ and what He has done for me in His advent, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, I find that I’m part of the greatest story ever told. I’m strengthened in this when I hear the Gospel of God and I recall the baptism that sealed me into God’s story. And then I get to partake of the bread and the cup, the body and the blood of Christ, as a foretaste of that great banquet I’m going to enjoy with you when my life’s journey ends and I’m at home with God and with you.

Drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship! Don’t miss this for the world!

Amen.

The Dragnet Gospel

Text: Mark 1:1-8
Theme: “The Dragnet Gospel”
2nd Sunday of Advent
December 4, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah,[a] the Son of God,[b] 2 as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way”[c]—
3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”[d]
4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6 John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with[e] water, but he will baptize you with[f] the Holy Spirit.”

In this new church year, only over a week old, the majority of the Gospel lessons that are slated for Sunday morning will come from the Gospel according to Mark. For you lectionary buffs, we are in Series B of the Revised Common Lectionary. For those of you who like to – or have to -- live fast-paced lives, zipping from one thing to another, then you will thoroughly enjoy Mark’s Gospel and its prominence in Series B. It is the shortest; it gets finished in sixteen chapters. For example, you could leave church, go to your Sunday brunch, and finish reading Mark all before the Cowboys game at 3:15 in Arizona this afternoon! How about that! The word “immediately” shows up over forty times – “immediately” Jesus did this, or “immediately” they did that. You can almost get a good cardio workout reading Mark; as you read the narrative, you barely catch your breath before you’re off doing the next thing. And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no Christmas story in Mark. (You’ll have to read Matthew and Luke for that; John gives a kind of interpretation of the Christmas story.) You know, there may be folks – more than likely grown-ups -- who are entirely okay with that. Christmas can be a time of ramped up expectations that are almost impossible to meet. The “holiday season”, as our culture likes to call it, does seem to put peoples’ lives on steroids.

In public worship, we read our Gospel lessons from the NIV (New International Version) translation which is in your pew. The Presbyterian Church (USA) tends to prefer the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) translation which is not quite as literal -- or, I should say, faithful to the original text – as the NIV. Today’s reading is given on page 1045. Now the NIV, generally speaking, is pretty accurate in its translation from the original Greek language. However, they slip up a bit – right off the bat – in the first verse of this morning’s text. It reads: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” A direct translation from the Greek would read a smidge differently: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The word “Christ” and the word “Messiah” are interchangeable; they mean the same thing, so there’s really not a problem there. But we must note that the good news is not about Jesus Christ (as the NIV puts it). It is the good news OF Jesus Christ. In other words, the good news belongs to Him. It’s not just “about” Him. It is entirely possible for churches, including our own, to talk about Jesus constantly while never getting around to actually proclaiming His message, the good news that belongs to Him.

The Greek term at the heart of things is Evangeliou. Evangeliou, literally translated into English, is “evangel”, or “blessed message”, or “good news”, or “gospel”. They’re all interchangeable terms. From evangeliou we derive the English word “Evangelical.” Now, this term “Evangelical” has a history. It gained traction during the Reformation era in the days of Calvin and Luther. Then, it meant what it said. But, unfortunately and sadly, the term now has negative connotations. Nowadays, an “Evangelical” is considered to be something of a religious fanatic, a right-wing ideologue, a social conservative, a fundamentalist. It’s rather sad that we’ve twisted this term into something that it, by definition, is not. If words still mean things, then an “Evangelical” is someone who is of and about the Gospel. He or she has received, believed, and endeavors to live out the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Mark starts not with the basics of the evangeliou or the “principles of God’s Word” as we might say, Mark starts with the beginning! And the beginning points to that Advent prophesy of Isaiah: “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way, a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’”

The Gospel begins with preparation, and that preparation is embodied in the one we know as John the Baptist. There he stands at a certain place (the desert region around the Jordan River) and at a certain time (nearly two thousand years ago). He, too, has a message: a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Certain messages catch on – as do the messengers that bring them. Such is the case with John the Baptist, the great preacher of the Advent season. We are told, by Mark, that “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.” As John saw it, a “Don’t ask; don’t tell” policy toward sin was not in the cards. The option, rather, was to confess their sins, to “come out of the closet” with them, to come clean. John’s preaching was heavy on the Law of God. It convicted them of their sins. But instead of holding on to them, instead of attempting yet again to try and deal with them on their own, John gave the option of confessing them.

This past week I took a road trip to Nebraska to see my folks. On the way up and on the way back down, I became something of a student. I listened to a number of podcasts. One podcast, The Whitehorse Inn, featured Michael Horton, a professor at Westminster Seminary in California. He was interviewing a gentleman who is the pastor of The Protestant Church of Smyrna in Turkey. Turkey is largely, if not exclusively, a Muslim country, and they aren’t allowed to call it a church. They have to call it a “club.” Thus, officially, the church is called “The Protestant Church of Smyrna ‘Club’”. In the interview, the pastor related how he, a former Muslim, came to faith in Jesus Christ. It took a long time. He related his experience that it takes quite awhile for others to convert as well.

The most fascinating part of the interview was when the pastor told of a Muslim gentleman who started attending the Protestant Church of Smyrna “club” and began reading the Bible. The pastor guided him through a set of readings undertaken over a period of time. Much later, the man came in to share something of a confession. It turns out, initially, that he had a hidden agenda. He told the pastor that his real goal, at the outset, was to read the Bible in order to show how corrupt it is. “Did you find any corruption?” the pastor asked. “Yes,” the man said, “but I didn’t find it in the Bible.” “Where did you find it?” replied the pastor. “In my own heart,” the man said.

Something happened to that man. Basically, the message of John the Baptist rang true. He understood himself convicted of sin. The beginning of the Gospel, the preparation for the Gospel, worked. He confessed the corruption of his heart. The path was straightened; the rough place was made plain. He heard – and believed! – the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was put to death for his sins and raised from the grave for his justication. The entire trajectory of his life changed as the gospel of Jesus, the good news of forgiveness, began to dawn on him and take root.

John the Baptist, who stands right there at the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, did not, like some religious figures did then and do now, toot his own horn. He didn’t found an organization called “John the Baptist Ministries” that you could support and become a part of for a love gift of $100 or more!

His job – his vocation, his calling, if you will – was to point away from himself to Jesus Christ. Mark says that “This was his message: ‘After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’”
Read through Mark’s Gospel before the Cowboys game and you’ll involve yourself with something of a newspaper report – a narrative that gives you the facts about Jesus and His good news. And here we mark one of the differences between Christianity and all other religions. Every religion gives you teachings, and from those teachings you can derive principles. Such principles, it is said, are designed to help you lead a transformed life, a more fulfilling life, a more contented and happy life. They assist you on the path toward self-actualization – or something like that.
But then comes Christianity. Better yet, then comes Christ with His good news. And what is it based on? Facts! It is founded on such historical events as these: Christ was born! Christ died! Christ was risen! Christ instituted a mission to baptize into and teach the world His good news. In His Supper that He actually inaugurated in history, His presence is still among us to seal the gifts of faith and forgiveness and life and love to us all.

In this advent season, think for a moment about the advent of television. Its history has included many programs devoted to law and order and police work. Think of, yes, Law and Order, or Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Then you have Hawaii Five-0 – both past and present. Some of you will remember T.J. Hooker and the Streets of San Francisco. Then there’s that program that was called Dragnet. It featured the actor Jack Webb playing a character – a police detective – named Joe Friday. He would interview witnesses to a crime, and sometimes the witnesses would go off on some tangent. He would have to get them back on track. He would say, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Like the witnesses we are, we, too, can get off on tangents. But we have a world that is asking about – and, dare I say, desperately needs – the facts. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ delivers! Only the Gospel makes Christmas truly what it is. Only in the Gospel do you tap the power of God unto salvation! It is exactly what it says it is: Good News!

Amen.

THE GRATIA INFUSA AWARD!!!

Your friends at THE STRAIGHTFORWARD PULPIT are proud to announce that an annual award has been established. Entitled The Gratia Infusa Award, the recognition honors, posthumously, individuals who have made significant, ongoing contributions to the advancement of American Religion*. The name of the inaugural honoree will be announced, annually, on the Second Sunday of Advent.

Speculation is sure to abound, but, for now, take a look at the photo above. This is an image of our first recipient. See if you can guess who it might be, and reply via response to this post or on our editor's wall (Paul Dunklau) on Facebook. The first to guess correctly wins a venti Peppermint Mocha Latte at Starbucks!

*=note that "American Religion" is NOT synonymous with historic Christianity.

Involved Responsibly

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Theme: “Involved Responsibly”
1st Sunday of Advent
November 27, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— 6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

A little over eleven hours ago, at the stroke of midnight, the old church year came to a close and a new one began. Thus, we are gathered on the First Sunday of Advent -- “New Year’s Day” for the church year. The decorations are up; the wreath is in the place and the first candle lit; the liturgical color is purple which has the ring of royalty and repentance to it. We are mindful – or ought to be -- of the traditional antiphon for the First Sunday of Advent which comes from Zechariah the prophet. We read, in chapter 9:9b: “See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation.” As such, in the setting of the church year, it’s not about us having our little advents or our “come to Jesus” moments. Rather, it’s about Jesus having “come to us” moments. He does that with His Word – read, proclaimed, and sacramentally enacted. It’s all powered by His Holy Spirit. The best way for this advent to happen is not through social networking but through Lord’s Day worship.

Advent means “coming.” Who is coming? The King who, we are told, is “righteous and having salvation.” That’s a good thing because we are not, in and of ourselves, righteous, and we do not, in and of ourselves, have salvation. The righteousness and salvation have to come from outside of ourselves – in other words, as gifts.

Just what sort of situation, here in 2011, is Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, coming to? Well, the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie, wafting through countless homes on Thursday, gave way to the mania of “Black Friday” with the media report of one frantic shopper/bargain hunter pepper spraying others to keep his or her place in line. More locally, there were reports of Salvation Army kettles being stolen right there in front of the grocery or superstore. Never mind the injunction to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Forget about “Thou shalt not steal.” There is an element out there that thinks that “He who dies with the most toys wins” – and the ends justify the means to accomplish it. It’s even better when you can get a bargain and do it on the cheap.

God isn’t into getting. Everything is God’s to begin with. God, rather, is into giving. St. Paul’s opening remarks to the Corinthian church illustrate this. He thanked God for the “grace given in Jesus Christ” to his brothers and sisters there. He has the audacity to assert that his friends in Corinth were “enriched in every way”. Lest there be any doubt, he makes the startling claim that these Christians do “not lack any spiritual gift” as they wait for the advent of Christ. And, apparently, God is not a “drive-by” giver, something akin to a cosmic Santa Claus, who shows up once a year to deliver goodies at bargain basement prices, and then just as quickly disappears. Rather, God just keeps on giving. The apostle says that God “will keep you firm to the end; God is faithful.”

Lord’s day worship in the church year gets our attention focused, or re-focused, on God the gift-giver! It puts us on the receiving end of His Word and precious sacraments. It strengthens us not like a spiritual narcotic with its subsequent spiritual hangover, but more like a vitamin. Worship in Word and Sacrament – and our own, individual meditation on the Word and Sacrament – gives us the divine nutrients that sustain our lives in Christ. A stanza from one of the great Advent hymns has it entirely right: “For Thou art our Salvation, Lord, our Refuge, and our great Reward. Without Thy grace our souls must fade and wither like a flow’r decayed.”

Following up on the grace and faithfulness of our God, the First Sunday of Advent is prime time to ask ourselves, as a body of believers, what our response will be to God’s faithfulness. On a number of occasions throughout the year and a half I’ve been among you, certain individuals – with inquiring minds! – have asked me what the “requirements” of church membership are. More than once, they’ve asked: “What are the expectations?” I’d like to take my remaining minutes to address these questions.

I’ve heard it said that here in America we are a nation of joiners. We sign up and we suit up for the causes we hold dear, and we become card carrying, flag waving members. I’m not so sure this is completely true anymore. I suspect that our society is trending more toward individualism. I’m getting the idea that people are increasingly skeptical about membership in this or that group because they somehow realize that membership is going to require commitment. And commitment is going to require time. And time is something we just don’t have enough of. Even worse, we might even be asked to serve on a committee!

The thing about time is really pretty simple. The issue does not revolve around having too little of it or too much of it. The last time I checked, we all get the same amount. Instead, it’s a matter of how we prioritize it.

Because we have convinced ourselves that we lead such busy lives, the idea of membership is not greeted with something like universal enthusiasm. We’ll consider membership. But it will be on our terms. We’ll think about what we can get out of membership more than about what we can put in. People aren’t necessarily comfortable with this either; it sounds rather selfish, so the buzzword now is “affiliation” – as in, “No, I’m not formally a member of this group, but I’m kind of loosely ‘affiliated’ with it.”

Return with me to our biblical text, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9. It does not say that God is “loosely affiliated” with us. It says that God is faithful. In fact, when you get right down to it, the “true meaning” of Christmas, if you will, is not that God became “loosely affiliated” with the human race. Quite to the contrary, God joined up! He became part of it. God became one of us “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel”, we sing. Immanuel means “God with us”!

Someone says: “Okay, Pastor. This is great! I’m a member of the church; I’ve confessed my faith publicly; I’ve been baptized and confirmed. Good things are happening here at FPC. I’m rip, roarin’, and ready to go! What now? What are the expectations and requirements?”

In that marvelous courtroom scene from A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson says: “You want answers.” Tom Cruise replies: “I think I’m entitled; I want the truth!” Nicholson replies: “You can’t handle the truth!”

The truth about membership, at least in the Presbyterian Church, is that we don’t talk about expectations and requirements for this reason: Expectations and requirements are the language of the Law, and the Law has absolutely no power to strengthen your spiritual life. All the Law does is expose, accuse, and curse. Ultimately, the expectation and requirement of the Law of God is one hundred percent perfection one hundred percent of the time. Earlier in this service, as in every Lord’s day worship, we confessed that we have not met the expectation or fulfilled the requirement of perfection. But then, just moments after that, we heard the startling and amazing news that God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We learned of our sins forgiveness. We heard that the just requirement of the Law was met for us by Jesus Christ who was crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification!

The first part of the truth is that the Presbyterian Church doesn’t talk about expectations and requirements once a person becomes a member. The second part of the truth is that the Presbyterian Church does talk about being involved responsibly in the life of the congregation. With God being the gift giving God that God is, who wouldn’t want to be responsibly involved in God’s mission? This is the real question: what does responsible involvement in a Christian congregation look like?

The Presbyterian Church, in its Book of Order, puts forth a short list of what responsible involvement includes. In a section entitled “Membership as Ministry”, our church declares thus:

A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his church. Such involvement includes:
a. proclaiming the good news
b. taking part in the common life and worship of a particular church,
c. praying and studying Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church,
d. supporting the work of the church through the giving of money, time, and talents,
e. participating in the governing responsibilities of the church,
f. demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the church,
g. responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others,
h. living responsibly in the personal, family, vocational, political, cultural,
and social relationships of life,
i. working in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human fulfillment.

Now, if I look at these components of responsible involvement in the ministry of the Church in a Law way, all it will tell me is that I’ve not been very involved and I’ve not been very responsible.

But we are people of the Gospel! We want to look at these components in a Gospel way. And if we do, we don’t see a list of expectations and requirements. We see, rather, a list of opportunities.

I close with a question: What would motivate you the best – a rule imposed on you that you are required to keep, or an opportunity freely given to you to serve?
Happy New Year to the Church, and a blessed Advent season to us all!

Amen.

Not If, But When

Text: Matthew 25:31-46
Theme: “Not If, But When”
Christ the King (Reign of Christ)/Thanksgiving Sunday
November 20, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS


31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Just this past week, while searching for some Christmas sheet music, I came across the piano score for the Lerner and Loewe musical, My Fair Lady. I’m sorry to disappoint the younger folks among us, but they probably won’t be aware of songs such as “Get Me to the Church on Time”,
“On the Street Where You Live”, or “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Nevertheless, many of you can, indeed, remember the chemistry – as they say today – between Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady.

The story of My Fair Lady is adapted from a play, written by George Bernard Shaw, called Pygmalion. Shaw, an Irishman, was a Nobel Prize winner. As I sat there on the floor of my office perusing the music of My Fair Lady, I remembered a few things about Shaw. He was, essentially, an atheist. He did not believe in God. But he did believe that humanity would evolve to such a degree that it, humanity, would eventually take on god-like characteristics. In a 1931 play, Too True to Be Good, one of Shaw’s characters sums up what many think is Shaw’s atheistic position – his atheistic faith, if you will. Listen to this:

The science I pinned my faith to is bankrupt: its tales were more foolish than all the miracles of the priests, its cruelties more horrible than all the atrocities of the Inquisition. Its spread of enlightenment has been a spread of cancer: its counsels that were to have established the millennium have led straight to European suicide. And I—I who believed in it as no religious fanatic has ever believed in his superstition! For its sake I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now look at me and behold the supreme tragedy of the atheist who has lost his faith!

As I survey the spiritual, religious, intellectual, and cultural landscape of 2011, I see lots of George Bernard Shaws – lots of thoughtful and intelligent atheists who have lost their faith. Likewise, I see lots of agnostics who have lost their faith. I see lots of folks who are not sure of what they are not sure of anymore. On the deepest levels of life, where the great questions of the ages are asked, we find ourselves living a nomadic existence. We wander around looking for something – anything! – that can hold and protect and nourish and empower our fondest hopes for life! We want to want to believe. We want to be able to wish upon a star and have it make no difference who we are; since when we wish upon a star our dreams come true. We want to believe that somewhere over the rainbow way up high, there’s a land that we heard of once in a lullaby.

But the minute we start thinking this way or feeling this way – BOOM!, doubt enters in. So its faith then doubt then faith then doubt – and around and around it goes. We get spiritually dizzy. Stop the merry-go-round! I want to get off! Have you ever felt like that?

According to their commercials, the Metropolitan Life company sells its products to people who face the “ifs” in life. What if? What if? What if? What’s going to happen? What will the future bring? Who knows? But whatever happens tomorrow, it would be nice to have some insurance for those “ifs” in life.

Newsflash: Jesus Christ was never one for “if”s. In today’s Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday, the Last Sunday in the Church Year, He does not say “If the Son of Man returns.” Quite to the contrary, he says “When the Son of Man comes in His glory… .”

He first arrived on the scene, the Scripture’s teach, as helpless infant lying in a manger-bed. He was born on the run – in a little backwoods, two-bit, hayseed town called Bethlehem. He was wrapped not in warm, sterile blankets but in swaddling rags. There was no disinfectant soap on-hand. There was only the tender vulnerability. Who – in his or her right mind – could think that the God of the universe would wear diapers? Such a thought is the opposite of intellectual. Why, such a view is unenlightened. We can’t have that.

But that’s what we’ve got, and that’s who we have in Jesus. His reign, His Kingship, will always be in dispute. Of all people who ever lived, it was Jesus who knew that best. But in His mind and soul – in God’s heart and soul! – there was no dispute. As I said, he was never one for “if”s. He says He will come again – not in grace (which can be disputed or rejected), but in glory (which cannot be disputed or rejected).

The Gospel reading teaches us the He is coming again as Lord Sabaoth: the Lord of the heavenly armies. He’s going to sit down on His throne, and everyone – past, present, and future – will gather before Him. There will be no plea-bargaining, no lawyers, no deals cut, no super committees. But there will be a reckoning; there will be judgment.

As Jesus describes it, he does so in a visual way. There are two groups: the sheep on the right and the goats on the left. First word goes to the sheep on the right: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
And the sheep, the righteous, are given their moment in court. They reply: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
The Judge, Christ the King, replies: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Next, he turns to the goats and the decree goes forth: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
Those on the left, the goats, are also given their moment to respond: “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” Christ the King replies: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

At first, the difference is subtle. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes very clear. Those on the left, the goats, argued in favor of their good works. In other words, “When did we not see you in need and not help you? We’ve been doing it all the time!” Jesus didn’t buy that pride and piety for a split-second.
Those on the right, the sheep, didn’t argue at all. In fact, they had no idea. Caring for the least of these, as Jesus described them, was so second nature to them that it shocked them that Jesus brought it up. You see, they lived by the grace of God, the love of God, the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, the care of God for the least of God’s children. And what is that grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and care if it is not shared? It’s a natural. You share it. It’s a way of life; it’s who you are.

That’s the rub, my friends. Some depend on their good works. Others depend only on the mercy of God. When you depend on the mercy of God, you know that you don’t deserve it. Therefore, you share it – even with the least of God’s children. I’ve seen more mercy of God in some Alcoholics Anonymous meetings than I’ve witnessed, at times, in entire Christian denominations!

I talked to a man not long ago who is about my age and going through something of a vocational crisis. “At one point,” he said, “I wanted to be a success in what I did.” I nodded my head while listening. He went on: “Well, I’m not a success by the world’s standards, and that’s okay with me. Now, I’m at a point where I just want to lead a life of significance; I’m just trying to figure out how.”
I thought about what he said. I’m still thinking about it. Is that it? Is it success? What about significance, is that what’s it’s all about?

Success and significance. I can almost hear the goats bleating: “Why, we led lives of sterling success for you, O Lord. Our lives were ones of significance; they made a significant difference in the lives of others, O Lord.”
But what of the sheep? The silence is so loud it’s deafening. You see, it’s not about the success; it’s not about the significance; it’s not about the achievements; it’s not about putting your name in granite on a thousand charitable institutions. It’s about the grace of God and the service to the least of these that such grace and mercy produces in people by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Bono, the lead singer for the U2 rock and roll band, is a Christian, and he was at one time the Time magazine Person of the Year. You might say he is leading a life of success and significance. But then there’s that song from the album Joshua Tree album that gives us pause. In fact, the title itself captures it all. “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” he sings.

The good word to Bono and to us all is this: Whatever you have done to the least of these my children, you have done it unto me. You don’t have to look around anymore. A happy and blessed Christ the King week and Thanksgiving to all of you!
Amen.

What You Do With What You Have

Text: Matthew 25:14-30
Theme: “What You Do With What You Have”
22nd Sunday After Pentecost
November 13, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Jesus Christ, at yesterday’s presbytery meeting in beautiful downtown Waxahachie, Texas, was acclaimed, by one of the prayer leaders, as a “universal Savior.” At face value, that’s wonderfully good news – for you, for me, and for the universe. If you accept life on life’s terms, if you read the newspaper enough or been an observer of current events, then you might conclude that the universe needs a little saving – if not, a lot! There is, for instance, the possibility of Iran nuking up. Then there’s the European financial crisis that has caused our money markets to experience something akin to financial schizophrenia – up 200 points one day, down 380 the next. And our universal Savior, never one to deliver dry lectures to yawning groups of people keeping an eye on the clock before the Cowboys game, told stories – parables they are often called – that arrested peoples’ attention, entertained them, illustrated the issues of their lives, delivered hope, and, at the very least, gave them something they could think about as they went on their way.

Today’s story from our universal Savior, the parable of the talents, is part of a grouping of tales that Jesus told that were related to the future. There’s a fancy theological term operative here, “eschatology”, which refers to the “eschaton”, or to the “last things”, or to the end. But that’s, perhaps, better left for a Bible study. For the time being just know this: at one point He came as a helpless baby lying in a manger. But, as He made abundantly evident in His stories, He was going to come again. And, at the second time around – or the “second coming”, if you will – there wasn’t going to be any more helplessness or vulnerability. It will truly be universal; it won’t be hidden away in a little nook, or cranny, or hamlet like Bethlehem, or in a little manger bed. The dead will know it; the living will know it; the universe will know it – and that’s going to be that. It’s enough just to ponder the great truth of The Apostles’ Creed: “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” If you don’t like the creed, then at least read Psalm 98 where God is praised for everything and especially for the fact that God will return and judge the people with truth and equity.

Today’s attention-grabbing story has to do with talents. As an aside, I have to remark that there has been a lot of theological gobbledygook based on this story. Congregational stewardship committees enlist this tale as an encouragement to give more to the church and so forth. I can understand that, but I also believe that if a congregation proclaims and lives the gospel as the good news it really is, people will respond accordingly. That way, ministers don’t have to be fund-raisers. Let me pause, at this point, and thank you for your generous response to the Gospel of Christ in this place. Your response to God’s love enables First Presbyterian Church to continue its mission to share the goods news of the Gospel and worship our universal Savior in a wonderful sanctuary and inviting facilities.

More political or economically-minded people like our story today too. Entrepreneurial capitalists love this story and have actually claimed Jesus just had to be a supply-side economist. I mean, look at it. You’ve got three private investors, and two make a nice return – and there’s no talk of government bailouts either. Three cheers for Jesus on that count. Of course, Jesus once told a rich young man to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. There weren’t so many cheers for Jesus among the capitalists on that point.

At any rate, we’ve got this story of a man – apparently a man of some material wealth – going on a long trip. The last thing he does before leaving town is gather his servants together. (We might call them his board of trustees, or something appropriate like that.) Three folks show up. The first one gets five talents. The second one gets two talents, and the third gets one. We are told that the talents were dished out according to the ability of the people for whom they were dished out. Now, the man who had the money to dish out didn’t say a thing to the three servants about what to do with what got dished out. Perhaps it was just understood that they were to take good care of their master’s money.

All three obviously did some things with the money – or the “talents” as they were called. And we’re going to get to that. But first let us consider what they didn’t do. They didn’t skim a little cash off the top to help support their political cause of choice. No “tea party” for them. Neither did fleece a little bit more for travel expenses to get where their like-minded friends were where they were occupying Jerusalem’s version of “Wall Street.” Maybe one of them was an environmentalist and used the money to support the cause “celebre’”. I read recently read of a group called “Environment Canada” that is trying to save the polar bear population and, of course, would love money to support the cause. But there’s nothing about that in the story. The trustees don’t appear to be corrupt. There’s no hint of a ponzi scheme. It all goes to show that when we try to line Jesus up with our political points of view or pet causes, we’re going to end up disappointed in the long run. Jesus is a lot of things, but He’s not a glob of spiritual silly putty that we mold and shape to our liking.

One thing’s for sure: He does like to travel. It’s hard to pin Him down. He is the man in the story who went on a long journey and distributed his money to his servants, “each according to his/her ability”, before he left town.

Now how much was a “talent” in today’s reckoning? A talent is, for starters, a bunch of money, but how much is a bunch of money in this case? If my research is anything near accurate, a talent – rounded up – was worth about one thousand dollars in real money at the time of Jesus. That is huge! If you adjust for inflation to our day, it’s even more than huge. One talent alone, in Jesus’ day, could support a family, a family’s family, and a family’s family’s family for a year or more.
As the story goes, the one who got the five talents didn’t sit around and twiddle his thumbs. The same holds true for the one who received two talents. Instead, on their own initiative, they went out and put their master’s money to work. They didn’t sit around waiting to be told what to do. They didn’t host an “idea summit” to come up with yet another idea that failed for lack of implementation. Instead, of their own volition, they put the money to work. That in itself was a gutzy move because it involved risk. As far as I know, there wasn’t a FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) back then. Neither did they take some cash off the top and hire some security firm to guard the cash while went out and did other things. All this reminds me of a story my dad told some years ago. He and his wife met their new neighbors in California, became friends over a period of time, and, eventually, enjoyed dinner at a fine restaurant. The couple was celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. My dad noticed the beautiful diamond necklace the lady was wearing. My dad was curious about the cost. The 60th anniversary celebrant whispered: “I paid a cool million for it.” Moments, later he pointed to a booth behind them in the restaurant. “Do you see that man behind us?” said the husband. Dad looked and saw him. The friend said, “That’s the security guard from the insurance company. My wife can’t wear the necklace in public without a guard keeping an eye on it. When we’re done with dinner, he’ll take the necklace back for safekeeping.” What do you do with what you have or what you acquire? Do you have to guard it?

Let’s turn again to our story. There’s a whole bunch of money that has been entrusted – put in trust, if you will – to three people. As it turns out, two out of the three see the money as a tool to use to support the cause of the master. Yes, there are risks involved. But what is life and the achievements that come with it without as measure of risk? As it is said, a ship is safe in the harbor – but that’s not what ships are for. Apparently, it was a bull market out there in Jesus’ day. The steward (or trustee) with the five talents got a 100% return on his investment. The same held true for the trustee with the two talents. How would you like it if your savings account, 401K, or investments yielded a 100% return? You’d be riding in high cotton! Even if you were just the trustee and only got a portion of your master’s money due to the agreed upon finance charges, you’d still be riding in high cotton!

But then there’s that third trustee. Like the other two, he did something with this vast amount of money. But instead of putting it to work, he hides it. There was no “bull market” in his future (his pessimism or lack of faith insured that), so it is best to just hang on to what you’ve got. More than that, make sure no one knows what you’ve got. Bury the money. Hide it. Pretend like it doesn’t exist. Go off and act as it it’s another rotten day in paradise. Turn it into a rainy day fund. The master isn’t going to be back any time soon, and who knows what might happen? The master harvests where he has not sown; he’s a hard man to please. His work is far more important than any of my little ideas on what to do with his money.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear members and friends of First Presbyterian Church, and to everyone either listening to this message or will read it later online: either as individuals or as a group, we do not have to be the third man with the one talent.
We may not be the largest church. We may not have all the programs to meet all the needs, spiritual or otherwise, that a needy and scared world is crying out for. We may not have the best track record when it comes to what we do with what we have.
But November 13th, 2011 is a new day, it it not? We believe and love a universal Savior, do we not? On a personal note, I’ve been in big churches, mid-sized churches, and small churches. Person for person, I have never been at a church like First Presbyterian, Denton. We’ve had our troubles, but troubles always happen when faithfulness is operative. It’s the age-old struggle of light versus darknessa, of God versus evil. And faithfulness is operative here. Although small in number and in what some might call influence, I have never been in a church with more dedicated or talented trustees of the gifts of God.

This is a time of year, a prime time of year, to take stock of all the gifts God has given us in trust. This is the time of year when we resolve to set our shovels down because we’re not going to “bury” what we have and run away and hide.
This is the time to believe, all the more firmly, that God has given us all we need as it pertains to life and godliness. Each of us has gifts given according to our ability. They are gifts we hold in trust. We did not earn them. Christ earned them. They are given to us as a gift; this is what grace is all about. They are not meant to sit and collect dust. They are not designed to be covered over with dirt. They are to be nurtured and used – gladly and joyfully – for the cause of the master, the mission of our universal Savior. He is going to come back to settle accounts and look for a return on His investment.

You see, when it’s all said and done, I want to hear something – and I want you to hear the same thing with me. I want to stand with you before that universal Savior that will, indeed, come back. Then, by the grace of God, these are the words I want to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful. Come and share your master’s happiness.”

Amen.

What Would Joshua Say Today?

Text: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Theme: “What Would Joshua Say Today?”
21st Sunday After Pentecost
November 6, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

People in my line of work do a lot of reading. Of course, we ministers read the Bible – sometimes every day! And, if we are true to our calling, we’re going to base our messages on what we’ve read and meditated upon therein. But that isn’t all. I think it important to pick up a newspaper on a daily basis. Someone once said that a good preacher has the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. And I’m proud to report that I have USA Today sent to my Kindle. (That’s a device that allows you to wirelessly download books and newspapers.) I peruse the titles in my morning quiet time, and if something looks interesting I’ll read on. Unfortunately, my trial subscription is about to end, and I have to decide whether to go to a paid subscription. Then there’s good theological writing. When something comes out (Michael Horton’s The Gospel-Driven Life is a good example), I’ll at least read the previews and reviews to see if I want to take on the whole thing. I better get going because, later this week, the City of Denton is holding its annual Prayer Breakfast at the Gateway Center at UNT. The guest speaker will be the author of the book-turned-movie, Seven Days in Utopia. I’ve got to finish the book ASAP. (It’s on my Kindle.) Lately, I’ve been fascinated with history – both of the fictional and non-fictional variety. I like it when a writer, like Ken Follett, weaves a fictional tale in and around actual events. One really neat book of history I devoured recently was Erik Larsen’s In the Garden of Beasts. It’s the story of President Roosevelt’s ambassador to Germany in the early 1930s, when the “Third Reich” was just getting started under Hitler. And then there’s Edmund Morris and his masterful three-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (which portrays his pre-presidential years), Theodore Rex (which tells of his presidency which began shortly after the assassination of President McKinley), and Colonel Roosevelt (which tells us all about the adventures Teddy had after he left office). It was a quite a project – and really a great joy! – to read all three books, each of which being over nine hundred pages long.

But, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess a weakness for spy novels. Vince Flynn has written a series of books revolving around the doings of a fictional character, Mitch Rapp (even the name is the epitome of American cockiness and cool), who is a disgruntled navy seal/CIA agent who is always off on some worldwide manhunt to get the bad guys. I’m just about to finish Nelson Demille’s book, The Lion’s Game. His cool character, a semi-retired NYPD cop, is off chasing a bad guy who is out seeking revenge for the American bombing of Libya in the mid-1980s.

Did you know that the Bible has something of a spy novel in it? It certainly does. At a time when the Israelites were getting ready to enter the promised land, Moses sent spies into Jericho to see if they could take the city. The king and local officials got wind of this, and they went on a manhut for the spies. But Rahab, a prostitute, who was sympathetic to the Israelite cause, hid the spies away in her home, and they escaped out a window.

Interestingly, this wouldn’t be the first time in subsequent history when there would be such a daring escape. Later on in the New Testament, the apostle Paul escaped from the city of Damascus by being lowered over the wall in a basket to avoid persecution. And some say that the Bible is boring. It is, if you haven’t read it! If this isn’t enough, fast-forward to the year 1533.

The city is Paris, France. A young, Catholic man lived there. He was a law student and quite brilliant. He began reading Martin Luther’s writings. (not on a Kindle; they didn’t have those back then). Thus, he became a leader of the Reformation in France. This, however, did not come without risk. The risks for supporting the Reformation were arrest, imprisonment, or even death. This law student had written that “Only one salvation is left open for our souls, and that is the mercy of God in Christ. We are saved by grace…not by our works.” Shortly after that, this man assisted a Paris University official in preparing an inauguration address. The speech called for the church to turn back to the basic teachings of the New Testament. It took aim at all the modern theologians of the day who had distorted everything. The lawyer wrote: “They teach nothing of faith, nothing of the love of God, nothing of the remission of grace, nothing of justification, or if they do so, they pervert and undermine it all by their laws and sophistries. I beg of you, who are here present, not to tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses.”

That language got the lawyer in a whole heap of trouble. The king and church officials were furious. They sent the police after this lawyer. As it turns out, this lawyer left town by lowering himself from a window on bedsheets tied together. He escaped Paris dressed as a farmer. He took an assumed name, Martianus Lucianius. He made it to Switzerland and wandered around as a fugitive evangelist. Finally, he became one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation. In case you didn’t know, his name is John Calvin.

Today’s Old Testament Reading puts before us one of the great characters in the Bible’s story that, sad to say, doesn’t get as much attention as he deserves. He is almost always overshadowed by his more famous leader, Moses, who delivered God’s Word to the Pharaoh of Egypt: “Let my people go!” Eventually, under the leadership of Moses, Pharaoh got the message, and the Israelites marched through the Red Sea on dry land. There, participating in all these proceedings, was the man we’ve come to know as Joshua. Later, after the great exodus from Egypt, Joshua organized the spy ring that went into Jericho, as I previously mentioned. It could be argued that Joshua was kind of a CIA agent for God’s people.

Last summer, amid the searing heat of North Texas, we celebrated, on July 4th, the two hundred thirty fifth anniversary of American independence. Now the Israelites were slaves in Egypt not for two hundred thirty five years but for four hundred years! If one generation consists of twenty five years, then Israel was in slavery for sixteen generations. That meant that you, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your great-great-grandparents, your great-great-great-great grandparents, and twelve more generations of grandparents preceding that were slaves in Egypt. Then, after the exodus, there was a period of forty years of wandering in the wildnerness.

There, at what can only be described as a pivotal moment in world history, stood that man named Joshua. Moses had died. Joshua, chosen by God, had taken his place. They had finally settled in the promised land. Joshua assembled all those people in all their tribes. He summoned all the elders and leaders and judges and officials. The moment of truth had come. He delivers to them the Word of God: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and gtave him many descendants.”

The narrative, in the book of Joshua, continues as God Himself shares what God had done down through all those many years. God, speaking of the promised land where they now lived, said: “I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.” Joshua, preaching a sermon based on God’s World, concluded this way: “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The nation of Israel thought it was a very fine sermon! “Great job, Joshua! We’re with you all the way!” appears to be the attitude. They say: “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!” They acknowledge all that God had done for them, and finish up their reaction this way: “We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”

But Joshua was having none of it. He said: “You are not able to serve the Lord! He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
And the people of Israel had none of that either. They replied: “No! We will serve the Lord.” Joshua then notarized the entire conversation. “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” They said, “We are.” Joshua said, “Throw away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

At front and center, as always, is the God question. How do people define God today? One of the definitions I like is quite simply this: a god is that to which you look for the highest good in your life.

If Joshua were here today, I think he would look at our congregation and ask us – as individuals and as a body of people – what the highest good in life is. What is the highest good in your life? Is it money? Is it the almighty dollar? Is it the Dow Jones industrial average and how it relates to your retirement account? Is it your health, your well-being, your serenity, your security? Is it your family? Is it your American citizenship?

And we would respond to a modern-day Joshua, and say: “No! It is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus who died on the cross to forgive our sins.”
What if a modern-day Joshua would say “No” to that? What if he said, “You are unable to serve Him”? You see, Israel based it’s choice to serve God on the past. They remembered what God had done. In and of itself, that’s okay. But folks, we don’t live in the past. We live in “Realville” – in the here and now.
I hold in my hands a beautifully bound book that I have thoroughly enjoyed reading. It’s called History of the First Presbyterian Church, Denton, Texas. It was lovingly compiled and published to commemorate one hundred twenty five years of faithfulness to God by you, the dear people of this congregation.

I think Joshua would look at that book and say, “That’s great. But you can’t base your choice to serve the true God on your history. The question is: will you – right here, right now, and in real time – serve the Lord? Will you make that choice? Will you, today, incline your heart to the God who, through Moses, brought His people out of four hundred years of bondage, and, through Jesus Christ, brought the human race out of the jaws of death and hell? Will you entrust your lives and your future to this God who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son? Will you notarize, with your affirmation of faith this day, that this is what you intend to do?” Based on the Holy Scripture, these are some of things I think Joshua would ask of us today. How will you respond? What choice will you make?

By the way, as you think about this, “Joshua” is the Hebrew name. The same name in Greek is “Jesus.” The name, whether in Hebrew or Greek, means the same thing: “God saves.” God grant that First Presbyterian Church – indeed, the holy catholic church throughout the world – always notarizes its choice with its words and its life.’

Amen.

What Does Reformation Look Like?

Text: Matthew 23:1-12
Theme: “What Does Reformation Look Like?”
Reformation/All Saints Sunday
October 30, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
5 “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6 they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7 they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.
8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

On this day, together with Christians throughout the world, we observe Reformation and All Saints Sunday. To bring us up to speed, Reformation Day recalls the momentous events that began when Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic monk turned university professor, posted what has come to be known as the “95 Theses” on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His thoughts on what it means to repent and be forgiven of one’s sins started a large upheaval in Christianity. He posted his theses on October 31, 1517 which was the eve of All Saints Day. All Saints Day, traditionally held on November 1, began hundreds of years before Luther’s action in Wittenberg. In the year 609, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the pantheon in Rome, Italy to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs. This, historically, is the origin of All Saints Day. In Mexico, the day is called “Dia de los Muertos” or “Day of the Dead.” Customs include visiting the graves of loved ones to clean up the surrounding area, place a bouquet of flowers, or light as candle. A lovely tradition, observed in our worship this morning, includes the naming of the saints who have passed from the church militant to the church triumphant in the last calendar year. We also sing the hymn “For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest”, a piece that musically captures the emphases of the day.

I have two short Scripture passages to share with you. The first one shapes our understanding of the Reformation. The second illustrates All Saints. If you’d like, turn to Ephesians 2:8 (p. 1225) in your pew Bible. What a powerful statement this is and what great relief it provides. The apostle Paul writes: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God… .” We did not earn our way, pay our way, work our way, decide our way, choose our way, or even will our way into God’s favor. Quite to the contrary, we were dead in our trespasses and sins. God had every right to forsake us forever. But here we are today – living, breathing, worshipping, praying, singing, thanking God once more for that amazing grace!

The second short Bible selection, referring to All Saints, is also from the New Testament. It’s Hebrews 12:1-2 (p. 1263). After spending an entire chapter referencing many of God’s saints who lived and died in the faith, the writer opens a new chapter with these mighty words: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Following the sermon, we will name those saints, known and loved by this congregation, who have died in the past year. Mindful of the verse from Hebrews and even though they are no longer with us in the earthly life we now live, we are still – to use the language of Scripture – “surrounded” by them.
This particular Sunday is a wonderful occasion to ask and answer the following question: what does reformation look like? At the heart of the word “reformation” is the word “reform” which means “change.” When it comes to our relationship with God, both as individuals and as a church, what would change look like?

Reformation/All Saints Sunday is prime time to ask that question. If the events of the 16th century Reformation mean anything today, then we will look like a people who trust in God alone. We toss out our moral resume’s; we leave behind our endless search for “meaning”, and we put ourselves at the mercy of God as He is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With whatever happens in this life, we know – first, last, and always – that God is sovereign; God is gracious toward us; God loves us. After all, He sent His own Son, born of a woman and born under the law, to redeem us, to buy us back. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

I talked to an individual this week who almost lost a child to illness. It’s hard to think of a worse pain to befall a parent than the loss of a child. This parent, a Christian, prayed an angry prayer to God one night. She prayed: “Dear God, do you have any idea what it’s like to face the prospect of losing as child that you love?” All of a sudden, it dawned. Indeed, God DOES know the prospect of losing a child. God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all.

And reform would also look like something else. It would look like a person and a church that remembers and celebrates those who have gone before us. On this Reformation/All Saints Sunday, for some reason or another, I remember my Uncle Harold. He was a school principal in Kansas City, Missouri for nearly all of his adult life. He had hair as white as snow. He loved to fish and he taught me how to tie a hook on the end of a line. He taught me how to set the hook when that Bluegill or Crappie would go for the worm or minnow. He also loved the Lord his God with all his heart and soul and mind and strength. One winter evening, long ago when I was a boy, Uncle Harold came in the back door of Grandpa’s house for Sunday dinner in Arlington, Nebraska. He was singing that old Dean Martin song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” He was that kind of guy. Remember those people of faith who molded and shaped who you are today – in all the unique, meaningful, and even funny ways in which they did it.

What does reformation look like? It also looks like people who take God seriously. God is not one among many subjects for study. God is not an afterthought. God is not someone that “we’ve taken out of public schools.” I mean, really: we can’t take God out of anything. God is not someone hoping an hour of our precious schedule each week. God is not the means to our ends. Take the great reformers of church history – Martin Luther and John Calvin, to name just two – who threw their entire lives into the God question. These men – and other men and women like them – were people of Scripture. They studied Scripture; they memorized Scripture; they attempted to live it out; they sought to teach it. In fact, they endeavored to bring the Scriptures, God’s Word, back to the people. Martin Luther, for example, translated the Bible into German which was the language of his people. No longer would people have to go to church and hear everything in Latin – a language they couldn’t understand. The Bible was not – and is not! – the exclusive possession of priests or popes. It is for God’s people. It is nothing short of amazing to me that the printing press was invented by Gutenberg right about the time that the Bible was written in the language of the people. As a result, people could study, learn, read, and enjoy Scripture on their own. The Bible was no longer hid away in a monastery or cathedral. It was disseminated far and wide!

Since then, modern technology has given us far more than a new printing press. It has given us satellite, wireless, and broadband communication. It has given us an internet and iphones and ipads and kindles and nooks. You can read the Bible on your computer, on your laptop, on your phone. Passages can be cut and pasted into PowerPoint software and then projected onto a screen. There are applications that can send you Scripture readings for each day. Yet, despite all these wonderful advancements, we live in a culture increasingly illiterate when it comes to Biblical basics. People see the Bible as a book of ancient – translate: a boring -- wisdom, or as a rule book, a how-to book, or a manual of religious instruction, and all of it is of the “take-it-or-leave-it” variety. Oh, my friends, it’s so much more, wonderfully more, than that. But yet, if you ask people what justification is they say it’s a reason for what they’re doing or what they did. If you ask what redemption is, they say it’s something you do with a coupon. If you talk about some weighty Biblical terms such as incarnation or sanctification, they look at you as if you’re from another planet. Talk about discipleship and they think you’re a fanatic. As a Christian, you can have a “spiritual” life without the Bible, but not for very long. That spirit of yours needs to be fed. And what better food can there be than the living and abiding Word of God?

Finally, reformation looks like a people who see Jesus not as an important historical figure. Instead, they see Him as a daily and constant companion, guide, teacher, and mentor. Truly reformed people are ones who do not depend on what denominations – their own or others -- do or decide. As Luther once remarked, “Popes and councils have often erred.” They do not trust the religious establishment – current or otherwise. They do not blindly follow the dictates of pastors, priests, popes, presbyteries, synods, general assemblies, or even best-selling Christian authors.

Instead, they follow Jesus Christ – from cross to crown. And, in the following, they learn a little something about where true greatness lies. I’m talking about humble service to others.

In the past few months and longer, we’ve heard of various protests going on in our country. I think of two: the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. In today’s Gospel reading, it looks as though Jesus and His followers occupying Jerusalem. There He stands, during Passover week and just days before His execution, speaking to the crowds as if He had a bullhorn in His hands. He dresses down the religious establishment, calls them on the carpet, and exposes their hypocrisy. Best of all, He give us his own glimpse of what real reformation looks like. Jesus says: “You are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Saved by the grace of God and surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, we are free to lead lives of humble service. This is what reformation looks like.

Amen.

7UP: Lust

Text: Matthew 22:34-46
Theme: “7UP: Lust” (8th in a series)
19th Sunday after Pentecost
October 23, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
“The son of David,” they replied.
43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44 “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’[e]
45 If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46 No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

A few years back, during the halftime show of the Super Bowl game, popular singer Janet Jackson had what has been called a “wardrobe malfunction.” Something happened there on that stage with Justin Timberlake that caused quite a ruckus across the fruited plain – such a ruckus, in fact, that it was discussed in the halls of the United States Congress. In one week, our lawmakers spent more energy discussing over Janet Jackson’s exposure on TV than it did with American involvement and activity in the war with Iraq. America is at war, but leadership at our highest civic level is apparently more interested in discussing a matter not unrelated to the last of the seven deadly sins that we consider today. I’m talking about lust.
Dictionary.com defines lust as “an intense sexual desire or appetite”, a “passionate or overmastering desire or craving,” and “an ardent enthusiasm, zest, or relish for life.”

Once again, we learn – as we have in considering all the deadly sins – that lust has positive aspects. Remember the motion picture, a few years back, by Roberto Begnini? It was called Life is Beautiful. It was evident, at the Academy Awards and on other occasions, that Mr. Begnini had a lust for a life, a zest for living if you will, that was really something to see.

But there is, of course, that dark side to every one of these sins. Jesus picked up on it, as it relates to lust, in his famous Sermon on the Mount. He said to the crowd: “You have heard it said: ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that if you even look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery with her.” That’s pretty intense. Jesus had a nagging tendency to stiffen the legal and moral code of the old covenant that was already impossible to keep.

In the Song of Solomon, an Old Testament book, you have a celebration of that intense desire and passionate craving of the lover for the beloved. There are sections of that book that if they don’t qualify as being erotic, then they should. But we Christians, at least publicly amongst ourselves, tend to be rather puritanical about lust as it relates to things erotic or sexual. I have yet to see a selection from the Song of Solomon as a lectionary reading during the church year, and I’ve preached on the lectionary for years.

When it comes to sex, which is in some ways connected to lust, the Bible really doesn’t have a whole lot to say. The fact is, some Christian denominations – our own included – have discussed it at far greater length than it is due given the attention paid to it in Holy Scripture. Maybe we’re just mimicking our culture in a thirty year attempt to be “relevant”; I don’t know. The subject of sex, and, yet more specifically, sexual orientation, has buffeted and beat up Christian denominations for decades. For over thirty years, the PCUSA, among other denominations, has played theological and political ping-pong with the subject of sex. We’ve had discussions on all kinds of levels – General Assembly level, synod level, presbytery level, session level and on. Presbyterian parachurch newsletters have weighed in with their various points of view pretty much all claiming to be the right one. But meanwhile, as debates regarding sex and sexual orientation go on (formal or otherwise), something else has been happening for the last thirty to fifty years or more.

It’s my considered view, looking back over the span of years so far allotted to me, that the church has been so distracted with other matters that it has all but overlooked the obvious. And the devil (or the “power of evil in the world”, or whatever you wish to call it) is sitting back and saying, “Okay, let’s just watch them shoot themselves in the foot!”

Let me put it this way. The arguments over sex, which in some ways has ripped at the seams of the church and tore it open, are little more than a thunderstorm compared to the religious “tsunami” that is starting to hit our nation. And I’m not sure, given how distracted the church has been, that we’ve even seen it coming. Sadly, in and of ourselves, we are not equipped to deal with it.

Christianity is being faced with a new form of religion. It is so pervasive that it has wriggled its way into our own churches. Dr. Michael Horton is onto it. In his writings, he is persuaded that we nearly have come to the point of having a “Christ-less” Christianity. Another author, thinker, writer, and youth worker by the name of Kenda Creasy Dean has published a book called Almost Christian: What the Faith of American Teenagers is Telling the Church. American teens, she claims, have a faith. They’ve picked up on it from their parents, their churches, their youth groups, and their friends. She has named this religion. She calls it “moralistic, therapeutic, deism,” and it’s as simple as it is sinister. It comes down to the following: 1) be kind; 2) take care of one another; and 3) believe that there is a force for good in the world (your conception of God) that is greater than yourself.

Now who could argue with that? At first blush, it sounds pretty good to me. But do you see what is missing? Better yet, do you see Who is missing from that? That’s right. There is no Jesus. And if there is no Jesus, then there is no church which is His body. You don’t need Christ or Christianity to be a kind person. One of kindest people I’ve met since coming to Denton lives right across the street from me. He’s a wonderful parent, too. Their family is not Christian. They are practitioners of the Bahai’ religion.

Likewise, you don’t need Christ or Christianity in order to know that it’s important to care for one another. Join Rotary or another service club. Last week, at Rotary, I learned that the world-wide organization, with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has eradicated 99% of polio throughout the world. The 1% where it is not eradicated is in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan where, apparently, some leaders think that anything that comes from western civilization, including vaccine, is evil. In any case, this attempt by Rotary to care for people is writ large and it’s great! But my point is that you don’t need Christ and His church for that.

As far as a power greater than yourself is concerned, even the most brash atheist would likely claim that he or she has laid awake at nights wondering if there is, in fact, some kind of rhyme or reason behind the life we lead and the world and universe we live in. You don’t need Christ and the church to believe that there may just be a power greater than yourself.

The thing about “Be kind, take care of one another, and believe in a power greater than yourself” (which is to say, moralistic, therapeutic deism) is this: it’s like a recreational drug. It can make people feel better for the moment, but it does not reconcile sinners to God. You can even find churches – many of which are packed to the rafters, some of them even Presbyterian – that can make you feel better for the moment, but they won’t reconcile sinners to God. For that, my friends, it takes not you, not me, not the Presbyterian Church, not our cherished points of view on lust or sexual sin or any sin for that matter, it takes Jesus Christ alone! For hundreds of years, we reformed Christians have talked about grace alone and faith alone and Scripture alone – the great “solas”, we call them in tones of polished, Protestant, piety. It’s time to bring back the “sola” that tops them all: Solus Christus --“Christ alone!”

Whether it knows it or not, it is my view that the world is crying out for it. A few years back, there was an incredible scene on the NBC TV program ER. A retired police officer was lying in a hospital bed dying from cancer. He confessed to the chaplain his long-held guilt over allowing an innocent man to be framed and executed for a crime that he didn’t commit. He asks the chaplain, “How can I even hope for forgiveness?” The chaplain replies, “I think sometimes it’s easier to feel guilty than forgiven.” “Which means what?” replies the dying man. The chaplain continues: “That maybe your guilt over his death has become your reason for living. May you need a new reason to go on.” The man said, “I don’t want to go on. Can’t you see I’m dying? The only thing that is holding me back is that I’m afraid – I’m afraid of what comes next.” “What do you think that is?” the chaplain inquires. Growing impatient, the man answers, “You tell me. Is atonement possible? What does God want from me?” The chaplain paused and then went on: “I think it’s up to each one of us to interpret for ourselves what God wants.” The man stared at her in amazement. “So people can do anything? They can rape, they can murder, they can steal – all in the name of God and it’s OK?” “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” the chaplain responds. “Then want ARE you saying?” asks the man. “Because all I’m hearing is some new Age, God-is-love, have-it-your-way crap! … No, I don’t have time for this now.” “You don’t understand,” the chaplain went on. “No, YOU don’t understand,” the dying man said. “I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell!”

Missing the point of this man’s entire struggle, the chaplain collects herself and says in that familiar tone of condescension disguised as understanding, “I hear that you’re frustrated, but you need to ask yourself –“ “No,” the man interrupts, “I don’t need to ask myself anything. I need answers and all of your questions and all your uncertainty are only making things worse.”

The chaplain then tried to encourage calm. She said, “I know you’re upset,” she says. That provoked the man’s final outburst: “God, I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to find forgiveness, because I am running out of time.”
It is at this point – please, dear God! -- that the church can become Christian again. God has a message that is given us to deliver to human beings and to a world all of which are dying and running out of time. That message is the Gospel, the good news that there is that blood-bought forgiveness of Jesus Christ. It is the message of reconciliation in Christ alone which declares to us that our sins – amid all their damning variety and the confusion and despair that they create – are forgiven.

It is time to close this series on the seven deadly sins by borrowing a leaf from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. The passage is only two verses and it fits best in Advent, the season before Christmas, which is only two months away. Isaiah says:

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.

“Double for all her sins!” Our Lord, crucifed on Calvary’s cross and risen victorious from the grave, has twice as much forgiveness as the world has sins.
Thanks be to God!

Amen.