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"Lord,
I Want to Be a Christian" September
14, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Let's pray together. Just as we are, without one plea,
But that we know Your Word to be Our light, our our life, our liberty,
O Lamb of God, we come. Amen. This morning we're going to begin a three-part sermon series.
The series is called "Christian, Protestant, and Presbyterian,"
and I'm going to invite us to look at being a Presbyterian--as being a Christian
and a Protestant and a Presbyterian--kind of like this:
If you live in Minnetonka, do you also have to live in Minnesota as you
do? I think most of us, most of the
time, would say, "Well, yes. . ."
And do you also have to live in America--in the United States of America?
Most of us most of the time would go, "Yes. . ." And if someone would say, "Well, I want to live in Minnetonka
(or Hopkins, or Eden Prairie) but I don't want to live in Minnesota and I
definitely don't want to live in the United States of America."
And you kind of go, "Well, I'm sorry!
I mean, it's a package deal!" And the same thing is true. This
is the way I'm going to ask us to look at being a Christian, and being a
Protestant, and being a Presbyterian. If
you were to say, "Well, I want to be a Presbyterian, but I don't want to be
a Christian," I'd say, "Well, I'm sorry.
Being a Presbyterian is one of the ways to be a Protestant and one of the
ways to be a Christian. And to be a
Presbyterian, you have to be within the bigger Protestant circle and the
even-bigger-then-that Christian circle." Well, I want to introduce us to Presbyterianism in that frame of
reference--just like America and Minnesota.
You know, are there places to live in America other than Minnesota?
(Some of you would say, "Absolutely not!")
But, just for argument sake, you know, there's America, there's
Minnesota, and there's our part of Minnesota.
So there's Christian, Protestant, Presbyterian.
Are there other ways to be a Christian, other than being a Presbyterian?
Well, yes, obviously there are, and other ways of being a Protestant. But there are not other ways to be a Presbyterian other than to
affirm the things that Protestants and that Christians believe.
So that's what I'm going to ask us to look at.
I want you to remember that a week ago we confronted an issue that I
thought was very, very important in advance of the two-year anniversary, the
second anniversary, of the attack on America on 9/11.
And we looked at that very substantially last week.
We're going to touch on a related theme, something that does have to do
this morning with the anniversary of 9/11, but mostly we're going to introduce
this series of Christian, Protestant and Presbyterian, and I do look forward to
the next two weeks as we define those. But this morning I'm going to say that one of the things that being
a Christian means (and if you're a Presbyterian and if you're a Protestant) it
means for you sharing a particular world-view, sharing a particular outlook on
life. There is something that
Christians have when they look at the world, when they look at life--there's a
picture we have of what life is like that all Christians share.
And if you were to say, "Well, I want to be a Presbyterian, but I
don't share that particular outlook," then I would say, "Well, I think
that disqualifies you not only from being a Christian, but in any sense a
Protestant and a Presbyterian." So
I want us to look very carefully at that outlook.
We're going to look in our Bibles in just a minute, but first let me tell
you a story. This is from Bruce Larson. Bruce
Larson used to tell a story a number of years ago about one of his aunts.
He had an aunt who, for Christmas, would go down to the puzzle store and
buy lots and lots of jigsaw puzzles. And
then she would take a razor blade and slice through the plastic wrap around it.
She would open up the box so that you couldn't tell and she would empty
out the puzzle pieces from that box and put the puzzle pieces in from a
different box and then put the lid on and seal it back up so that you couldn't
tell. He remembers that being a
present from his aunt. Now, why
would she do that? Well, on the top
of the box (which is to say, on the cover) there is the picture that you are
supposed to set in front of you as you begin taking out the puzzle pieces and
spreading them around. And she
thought it was great, great fun to have people have to do this with the wrong
picture! So that the picture you're looking at is no help whatsoever with the
puzzle pieces. Do you understand?
The puzzles pieces, yes, every one of them is from a different box so
they will all fit together. It's
just that when you're all done, whatever you've got is not going to correspond
to the picture. The picture might be, say, Mount Rushmore and you have something
entirely different. Maybe you've
got the Grand Canyon. And you're
trying to get the Grand Canyon to look like Mount Rushmore, and darn it all,
that's tough to do! It's hard to
get the Grand Canyon to look like Abraham Lincoln and . . . the other guys.
Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and . . . Teddy
Roosevelt! See, Nancy and I went to
Mount Rushmore this past summer. We
had never been there before. But,
you know what? If your puzzle
pieces are Mount Rushmore puzzle pieces, you want to have the picture on your
box to be Mount Rushmore. And if
the puzzle pieces are Grand Canyon, you want the picture that you're looking at
to guide you to actually correspond. Well, what I'm going to argue this morning is that
Christianity--and Christianity alone--gives us the picture of how life really
goes, of how life really works. And
that one of the things that you get as a Christian is a picture of life that
actually corresponds to the deepest needs of the human heart, for instance.
Now, as you look at that, I want you to find in your Bibles a little
letter of Jude. And that's going to
be easy because go all the way to the back of your Bible and find the book of
Revelation and then go one in front of that.
Revelation is the last book in the New Testament and we're going to look
at the very small letter of Jude that is right before the book of Revelation.
Poor Jude! I mean, this is a
letter we usually skip when we're doing our New Testament overviews.
And one of the reasons is it's so short it only has one chapter, and
therefore I can't tell you chapter this and verse that, because it's only
verses. And we're going to look at
the first four verses together. Verses
1 through 4, where we find this: Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of
James. To those who are called, who are beloved in God
the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ:
May mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.
Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write you
about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to
contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.
For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were
designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God
into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now I want to, in context, focus on that phrase "to contend
for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."
And I'm going to say that to be a Presbyterian is to be one variety of
being a Protestant and one variety of being a Christian, but the thing that all
Christians have as part of our assignment is this one right here:
"to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the
saints." And what is that?
What is the faith that is being talked about right there? Well, faith in the New Testament is used in different ways.
Most typically, most often (not here, but most usually) faith means the
trusting, the relying on God, the act of entrusting yourself.
It's "trust" that "faith" means. Here it means "those things that you trust in."
"Those things that we believe."
It means the "belief system."
We're being told to contend for the belief system that was once for all
entrusted to the saints. Now, how
would we know that he doesn't mean the trusting part of faith--that he means the
"belief system" rather than the "believing"? Well, for one thing, you can't entrust "believing" once
for all to the Church and then go away and forget about it.
You know why not? Because every generation has to trust God for itself.
Every person coming into the Church has to have their own faith in God.
And the fact that your grandparents, say, believed in Jesus and trusted
in God because of Jesus Christ--that wouldn't necessarily mean that your parents
would grow up with that faith and trust. No,
your parents needed to trust God for themselves.
And, similarly, now that it's your and my turn, the fact that you may
have grown up in a very Christian family, that doesn't mean that once for all
time, faith was entrusted to your family and now you can sort of turn and forget
about it. No.
The faith each generation has to come to on it's own, the trusting part
of it. Louis Evans, Sr., had a famous sermon long ago in the 1950s when he
was at First Pres, Hollywood, and the title of the sermon was, "God Has No
Grandchildren" --meaning, trusting in your parents' faith does not give you
a relationship with God. God has
children. God has sons and
daughters. Each one of us has to
rely not on our family's faith, not on the Church's faith.
If you happen to attend services at a very, very believing congregation
like this one, does that absolve you of the responsibility of having your own
faith? No, it does not. So he can't mean the "believing."
He has to mean the "belief system."
And as we look down in the next verse, we see that's confirmed where he
says certain intruders have stolen in and they've perverted the grace of our God
into licentiousness and denied our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, they are distorting the belief system.
They're distorting the picture. They're
bringing into the church a different picture of what life is like.
The true Christian picture, the one that really corresponds to our lives
together as we live them under God's blessing--the true picture is one where
there is grace and where Jesus Christ is understood as Lord and Master.
But to come in and provide a different picture is to try to throw us off.
It's contending for the right picture that is being talked about here.
And as we think about what it means to be Christians, and next week what
it means to be Protestants, and then the following week what it means to be
Presbyterians, I'm going to ask us to start at the broadest, with an
understanding of what the Christian world-view is, especially in contrast to
alternatives at the present time. The first part that I want us to understand is that we have been
entrusted--and the belief system entrusted to the saints once for all is a
belief system that says that history is real.
History is real. A few days
ago we had the anniversary of the attack on America that took place two years
before. And to honor anniversaries,
our very, very significant events that have taken place, it's something
wonderfully Christian, and something that if America were to lose Christian
influences altogether, in time it would stop making sense to honor
anniversaries. Husbands and wives,
I hope that you celebrate birthdays in your family, and wedding anniversaries
and other significant events of that sort.
Well, did you know that there are some pictures of life that would
tell you that celebrating anniversaries is not an important thing to do?
And at the present time, the two leading alternatives to the Christian
world-view in America--each of those would sort of down-play the significance of
anniversaries because history is not regarded as having anything significant.
And one of the two alternatives that I have in mind is the secular
humanist alternative. In the
secular humanist alternative, the only thing that matters is today, is right
now. Now, if the only thing that matters is today and is right
now, then why would you want to mark a two-year anniversary of an attack on
America? That's over.
That's gone. Do you
understand? So I imagine that there were friends and neighbors of ours (and
possibly even some of us) that when the two-year anniversary came around, we
didn't like the fact that the news media were making extra of it. "Oh,
that was two years ago. We can
forget about it." There is
that philosophy prevalent in our culture that says things from yesterday can be
ignored, can be rejected, can be denied, can just be set aside.
We don't need to sort of bring them out and remember them. Now why is that? Because
today is the only day that matters. Now, the other alternative--and it shares (this is a fascinating
thing because you would think that this has nothing to do with the secular
humanist view, but actually they are almost one and the same)--the New Age
spirituality. "Cosmic
humanism" is another phrase for it. I
think you know what I mean. That
view says, "History is not important, that only the eternal is important
and everything in this life is really an illusion because you and me, these
pews, this room, because they're not eternal, because they rise up and have
their day and then cease to be, they're not real."
And it's very, very interesting.
If you emphasize the eternal, or in secular humanism if you emphasize the
momentary, the right now--either way, history is not important to you.
Things from the past are not important to you.
And so anniversaries are not important to you.
Well, Christianity says that history is very, very important--so
important that God sent His Son into the historical process.
Jesus Christ is not an idea that sort of, you know, kind of bumped onto
the noggins of the disciples for a while and then floated back up to heaven.
No. Jesus Christ was born on
a particular day, and lived during a particular generation, and died at a
particular time. Those are all
historical events. They really took
place in real-world places and times. And
Christianity says that salvation comes because of what God sent into history. Now, if your salvation depends on it, does that make history kind
of important to you? The right
answer would be, "Yes!" Yes,
if our salvation depends on it, then what happens in history is very, very
important. And part of the
Christian world-view, part of the picture that helps us put the puzzle together,
is that this life, and this world, and the things that happen in this life and
this world are immensely significant because Jesus Christ's salvation came into
and is made available to us because it was in this life and it was in this
world. Second thing in the Christian world-view:
Relationships are very important. Our
relationships in the church, as the body of Christ, are presented to us in the
Bible as part of God's original plan. God's
original plan was sending Jesus into the world.
It wasn't just to save you as an individual and take you up to heaven. It was so that we would be restored into right relationship
with God, with ourself, and with one another. Now we may not be perfect in the way that we related to one
another (well, some of you might be perfect . . . but some of us are not quite
made perfect in how we relate to others). But
the point is, that's very important. It's important that we have learned to love one another and
it's important to notice, "You know what?
We're not done yet. We're
not complete yet. We're still in
process." If we are imperfect
in love, then we can't rest easy and go, "The relationships that I have
with the people at the church down there--they don't matter.
All that matters is me and Jesus."
Well, no, that's not what Jesus says to you.
What Jesus says to you is, the first command, "Love the Lord thy God
with all your heart and mind and strength and a second like unto it, love
your neighbor as yourself." Relationships
are very, very important in the Christian world-view. Now, in the two alternatives that we're looking at, secular
humanism says, "No. It's just
you. The only thing that needs to
matter to you is you. And if you
want to let other people matter, if you want to allow people to become important
to you, it's your choice because you don't have to if you don't want to.
And once you're done, once you're tired of them--hey, it's your option to
just say, 'Yes, we got married and made those promises, but see, history is not
important. What I promised at some
other time is not binding on me now.' "
And, so, relationships of significance are completely dissolvable.
That's secular humanism. New Age spirituality actually picks up in the same place.
You wouldn't think that it does, but it does because the belief is that
everyone who has ever existed shares the exact same divine spark.
New Age spirituality can say, "You and I share this same divine
spark. But I share that spark with everybody all around the world,
and with people that are no longer living, and people that aren't even born
yet," which is to say that if the thing that I have in common with you is
the thing that I also have in common with all sorts of people that I've never
even met, then the encounters that you and I have fall into insignificance, you
see, because you might think that I'm not sufficiently loving you, but I love
everybody! You know, it's really
easy to love everyone. It's
actually the same thing as loving nobody! Do
you understand? Love means you have
to love somebody, and loving everybody is the same as loving nobody, which is
why cosmic New Age spirituality and secular humanism, you know, are such good
buddies and why we have them in America right now at the same time.
It's just two different sides of the same approach. OK. Christianity says
history is real. Christianity says
relationships are real. Christianity
says the distinction between good and evil is real. And it probably won't surprise you to hear that secular
humanism denies that there is a difference between good and evil.
There really is. And New Age spirituality denies the same thing.
You know, "There's no such thing as good and evil.
Everything that happens in this life is an illusion anyway, so why would
it matter?" Now, let me just direct our attention to one particular
incident--this is going to be really fun--to try to illustrate the importance of
world-views. And this will be
really fun because we're going to talk about somebody from our area, and this is
going to be spooky to me because you may be best-friends with the person in news
significance recently: Sarah Jane
Olsen. Remember Sarah Jane Olsen
from St. Paul? Who is Sarah Jane
Olsen? Well, she was a doctor's
wife, and mother of two daughters, and active in the community.
She got arrested, not for any of that, but remember how the story was?
She was arrested for planting pipe bombs underneath police cars in Los
Angeles long ago and far away. And
then subsequently also charged in the death of the woman customer at the Crocker
National Bank in Carmichael, California when the SLA (and some of us--God bless
you if you don't remember any of this that actually happened!).
There was a terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army.
(It would be a wonderful thing to be so young as to never have heard of
the Symbionese Liberation Army . .
. but some of us remember those days.) And
because I'm talking about a local gal, please understand, I don't want to be
saying bad things about Sarah Jane Olsen at all.
And if you're a buddy of hers, please hear me.
What I want to say is that some things that people said in her defense
are fascinating when you look at them. Because
one of the things that was said (not necessarily by Sarah Jane, but by her
defense). And actually, the Pioneer
Press interviewed lawyers about her defense.
Roger Keene, Dean of a Law School in San Francisco, California said this
is the defense she should have mounted. She
should have said (and this was said on her behalf at the time of her
arrest)--she should have said, "Yes, I did it, but that was me a long time
ago. That's not me any more."
And the lawyer was saying, "You know what?
If that was her defense, she would have gotten off." Now, that's spooky! And
I'm not saying that I want us to regard her guilt. I'm not saying I want us to regard her as guilty, but I want
us to look at what might get you off from planting pipe bombs under police cars,
and from robbing banks, and shooting people.
What might get you off? In
America, time. Go hide long enough
and then stand up and say, "Yeah, it was me.
I did it. But you know what?
I'm a different person now." And the combination of the secular humanism at the present
time--that "things in the past are not real, things in the past don't
matter, all that matters is if you are a nice person today."
Do you understand? "The distinctions between good and evil--those aren't
real. Those don't matter."
You see, I'm saying that the contrast between the Christian world-view
and the alternatives at the present time is very, very much with us and very,
very much influences our society. Now, to be a Christian and not to say "history doesn't
matter" and "relationships aren't real" and "right and wrong
are not different from each other, they're just like two sides of the same
coin"--No. To be a Christian
is to have that belief system that once for all was entrusted to the saints.
And that belief system has a picture of how life goes.
And you know what? That
picture--we do need to contend for it because that picture and that picture
alone corresponds with the puzzle pieces that we end up having to put together. So let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you would keep fresh in our minds
what the belief system we have been entrusted with actually is.
Lord, keep us looking in your Word for reminders of what the picture that
we really need to see really is. And
it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray.
Amen. Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00
a.m. worship service on September 14, 2003.] |
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