Has anyone here ever been a lifeguard? Man, I really respect you guys. I remember as a kid growing up in Long Branch, I used to walk to the beach every day during the summer with my mom and my brothers. My mother would always say things such as, “Let’s sit near the lifeguards, because they can always help you” and “If you go in the water, stay in front of the lifeguards because they’ll keep you safe.”
I would sit near their towering lifeguard stand and sometimes just watch them in awe. They sat there majestically, keeping a watchful eye on the swimmers, like eagles searching for prey. They wore the coolest sunglasses, and wore this mysterious greasy white stuff on their noses like a medal of honor. When they walked, they would almost strut. And the coolest thing was, I guess when they were bored, they would pull the lifeguard boat into the surf, hop in and start rowing up and down the shoreline, almost as if to let the ocean know, “This is my house—you don’t get any of my swimmers.”
Lifeguards would command the beach, too, with a “you’d better not do that” staredown better than my mother’s; and when they blew their whistle, everything stopped, and all eyes went first to the lifeguard stand and then to where they were pointing, so that we could see who was in trouble for violating the lifeguard laws. As I recall, believe it or not, I was the subject of that whistle more than once.
Lifeguards are so cool that they even made a TV show about them, Baywatch. (Holding up floatation device) What do you think, do I fit right in? It’s odd, but as much as I admire lifeguards, and for all of the lovely, uh, scenery they had in the show, I never really watched Baywatch. Maybe I was just intimidated by the Hoff.
But lifeguards are amazing. I mean, just listen to their title, their job: life-guard. They guard your life! How awesome and how important is that? To know that there is someone whose sole purpose is to guard your life. I would even go so far as to say that a lifeguard would risk his or her life in order to guard your life.
But what do they guard us from? Well, in the ocean, there are inherent dangers such as rip currents, which can pull you out to sea. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading way too often about persons who went swimming where there was no lifeguard on duty, and they were lost to the sea. If a lifeguard were on duty, these persons most likely would have been saved.
Then there are the dangers we bring upon ourselves, the foolish things we do which the lifeguards guard us from. A man named Paul Mason writes, “When I was very young, I remember swimming at a lake during a family reunion. At the lake, there was a dock. I would walk a little ways out on the dock, jump in the water, and then walk back to shore. Each time I was inching further and further out on the dock. Finally, it happened. I jumped into water that was over my head. I began floundering. I couldn’t breathe. It was then that the lifeguard jumped in and pulled me to safety. Up until then, I depended on my own abilities. Finally I reached the point where I needed someone else.”
Did you ever do something like that? We begin to feel self-sufficient, and so we literally “test the waters,” to see just how far we can go, what we can get away with. But ultimately, we end up in a situation where we need to be saved by someone else. Jason and Ryan do this all the time.
That which is true regarding the water is also true regarding our salvation, our acceptance by God into heaven. Hey, it’s easy to talk about how great God is when we think that we’ve got it made. It is easy to talk about how we trust Him, but it’s also easy for us to believe we need nothing and no one, that we are self-sufficient—that is, until disaster comes our way. It is then, when we can no longer handle things ourselves, that we often find ourselves forced to turn to the God we’ve ignored. It is often then, that we begin to pray with words we really mean, because we realize that we need help.
Listen, something started, way back in the beginning of human history, that we cannot finish or make right, although we desperately want to – our relationship with God. As a result of sin, we have experienced and continue to experience a separation from God, a separation which will follow us into eternity.
We cannot fix this; we cannot live a righteous life, keep enough laws, pray hard enough, or get another life and try again to rectify the problem ourselves. We’re drowning and we can’t save ourselves—we need a lifeguard. And our lifeguard is Christ, who is watching over us, waiting for us to wave our hands in the air and call for help.
If you have your Bible with you, look at today’s scripture from Romans 5. In verse 6 Paul writes, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
The ungodly. That’s us, humanity. Look back through history, humans have and continue to act sinfully, ungodly. We’re powerless to stop it! But God acted when we were powerless. The word powerless has the sense of a powerlessness that is debilitating – slowly taking all hope and strength away. The inability to accomplish our own salvation. We could not deliver ourselves and we were ready to perish, so God acted for our benefit. The love of Jesus Christ saved us.
And Christ’s love for us is grounded in God’s free grace so we don’t have to try to earn it, only to fall short. God’s plan of redemption is better than that. We don’t deserve it, but it is lavished on us in spite of our undesirable character.
But why would God do this for us? Paul himself tells us that very rarely will anyone die, even for a righteous person. I can see it now: someone is floundering out in the ocean, calling for help while being sucked away by a rip current on their way to England; and the lifeguard stands up and says, “Wait a minute. I have to check something.” And then the lifeguard looks on his Kindle to see if the person in the water is good enough to risk his life trying to save him.
But that’s not our lifeguard. In Isaiah 43:2, God says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” Our lifeguard, Jesus Christ, is there for us, regardless of who we are, and has laid down his very life for us.
Paul reminds us of this in verse 8, our memory verse for the day. And I sincerely hope that if you get nothing else out of today or even out of the entire summer if you were with us that long, I hope that you will memorize this. Let’s read our memory verse together again, shall we? “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We didn’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it. But God, through Jesus, as an act of love, kept His promise and died for us in order to save us from ourselves, and to be reconciled with Him in order that we could have an eternal home in His kingdom.
And you know what else is great about this? The word “demonstrates” is present tense– God is always and continuously in the business of demonstrating His love for us!
It doesn’t matter what beach you started on or if this is your first time on a beach; or what color or what style swimsuit you’re wearing; it doesn’t matter how often you’ve tried to swim beyond the lifeguard stand on your own, because our Lifeguard is always on duty, always on the lookout for you. And when you earnestly call for help with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, the Lifeguard will be there for you. Always.
And so today, on this Labor Day weekend 2010, at this final summer service, and as we prepare to join together at the Lord’s Table for Communion, let us all recommit our lives to our Lifeguard, Jesus Christ; let us remember the price he paid for you and for me so that we could be reconciled with God: the price of his broken body and his spilled blood; the price of his very life. Won’t you bow your heads and pray with me please:
Life-giving God: we humbly come before you this morning, acknowledging how unworthy we are to be rescued by you; we admit that we often prefer to swim our own way and in our own time, disregarding your Word which is our safety device, even though we know that we cannot make it on our own, and that your Word is there to help us and to guide us from danger.
Forgive us, we pray; and we once again cry out from our hearts and ask Jesus to be our Lifeguard, our Savior, to rescue us from the perils of the deep. We, either for the first time or once again, recommit our lives to you, our Redeemer and King.
We claim your promise that when we wholeheartedly confess our willfulness and sin, that you are faithful and just and forgive our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
And for that, we thank you, and give you our eternal praise, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
A lesson in humility
Luke 14:1, 7-14
August 29, 2010
Have you ever called “shotgun” before? You know, you’re going on a road trip with a bunch of friends, and you all want the front seat, so the first person to call “shotgun” gets to sit up front with the driver. It’s the place of honor, the place where you are noticed by pedestrians and by people in other cars, the place where you get to play with the radio.
In case you ever wondered what the official rules for calling shotgun are, I found them on the web site shotgunrules.com. Here’s a couple of the highlights:
- The first person to yell "SHOTGUN" gets to ride in the front seat.
- Early calls are strictly prohibited. All occupants of the vehicle (including the driver) must be outside of the building and directly on the way to the vehicle before shotgun may be called. Under no circumstances may a person call shotgun inside a building.
- A person may only call shotgun for one way of a trip.
- The driver has final say in all ties and disputes. The driver has the right to suspend or remove all shotgun privileges from one or more persons.
And it goes on, getting very technical, with another dozen or so rules.
But I like this section the best. It’s called The Survival Of The Fittest Rules:
If the driver so wishes, he/she may institute the Survival Of The Fittest Rules on the process of calling Shotgun. In this case all rules…are suspended and the passenger seat is occupied by whoever can take it by force.
However, the driver must announce the institution of the Survival Of The Fittest Rules with reasonable warning to all passengers. This clause reduces the amount of blood lost by passengers and the damage done to the vehicle.
Great stuff, isn’t it? Well, it’s appropriate, because in our scripture reading today, Jesus gives us some rules about calling “shotgun.” At this particular feast he was at, there was a rather noticeable undignified scramble for the places of honor. Verse seven of our reading tells us, “When [Jesus] noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them [a] parable.” Jesus goes on to tell the Pharisees a story about a wedding banquet.
As I mentioned during joys and concerns, today is only the sixth anniversary of my engagement to Karen, so the wedding was not that long ago. Thankfully, for us, Karen’s mom planned the whole thing out, all I did was show up two months later. But I’ve been involved in enough weddings to know that when you are organizing a wedding there is a lot to think about.
One of the things you MUST do is have assigned seating at the reception—there’s no calling “shotgun.” That’s because usually right after the ceremony the wedding party has to go back to the sanctuary or to the beach for pictures. While they are there the rest of the guests make their way over to the reception hall to await their arrival. If you don’t have name cards on the table, the riff raff of the family will fill up the front of the hall and the wedding party and the immediate family will have to sit at the back. And in some families, even with place names, it is actually a good idea to have a security guard posted because they might come and start rearranging the name tags when no one is looking.
It’s only human nature for us to want to sit in the best seat in the house. At sporting events it’s the skybox seat, or the seat on the 50-yard line or the seat directly behind home plate, or a ringside seat at a boxing match. Those are the places that have the best view and carry the highest price. They also carry the greatest bragging potential. It impresses people when we tell them we have those seats. We want the best place, the place of honor.
This desire for the best seat in the house shows up in other places as well. Watch people in a store parking lot sometime. The best parking places are the ones closest to the front door. I’ve seen people nearly collide at Stop n Shop, competing for that one open spot near the store! Nobody wants the parking spaces out on the far end of the lot.
The Jews had “best seats” in the synagogues. Jesus made mention of it when he said of the Pharisees, “they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues” (Matthew 23:6).
We also have a “best seat” in our church buildings. It’s the row on the back. I know that’s the best seat because that’s the one that fills up first.
At banquets in Jesus’ day, the basic arrangement of furniture was the triclinium, a number of couches arranged in a U-shape around a low table. Guests reclined on their left elbows and ate with their right hands. The place of highest honor was the central position on the couch on one side of the U. The second and third places were those to the left and right of the guest of honor’s place.
The most important guests arrived fashionably late for banquets, no doubt to be noticed and, perhaps, take pleasure in unseating an earlier but less important arrival.
Jesus says this to the Pharisees, 8"When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
That reminds me of another saying: “He who gets too big for his britches will eventually be exposed in the end.”
People have been correcting one another’s table manners for centuries. Erasmus of Rotterdam determined that manners were the best instilled at an early age. Here are some samples his best seller, “On Civility in Children” written around the year 1530. Ponder if these are the “polite” guests you want at your next dinner party:
• "Turn away when spitting lest your saliva fall on someone. If anything purulent falls on the ground, it should be trodden upon, lest it nauseate someone."
• "To lick greasy fingers or to wipe them on your coat is impolite. It is better to use the table cloth."
• "Some people put their hands in the dishes [of food] the moment they have sat down. Don’t do that."
• "You should not offer your handkerchief to anyone unless it has been freshly washed. Nor is it seemly, after wiping your nose, to spread out your handkerchief and peer into it as if pearl and rubies might have fallen out of your head."
• "If you cannot swallow a piece of food, turn around discreetly and throw it somewhere."
Nice. Well, at least Ryan has that one down!
When Jesus criticizes the guests for staking out positions of prestige he is teaching much more than social etiquette. Worldly wisdom, even common sense, would dictate that one should avoid the possible public shame of being demoted because of promoting oneself prematurely. However, for Jesus there is more to it than that. He is less interested in “worldly” advice and much more interested in “other-worldly” advice. His point will apply to all of life’s situations, not merely banquets for the rich and foolish.
Jesus is saying that a person’s real position—in this life and in the life to come--depends on God’s opinion of him or her, not on one’s own self-seeking. From good manners at the table he draws conclusions about the Kingdom of God. Attendance at God’s banquet depends upon God’s invitation, not upon a person’s qualities, achievements or social standing. We can’t earn a place at the King’s side, for it is by grace we have been saved, through faith. It is not by our own doing, but is a gift from God, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
We don’t get to the best seat on our own, and those who try, in their arrogance, are ultimately humbled. Is this saying that acting humble will get us the seat of honor or whatever we want? No. It’s hard to ask someone if they are humble. If they say “yes” then it looks like they’re proud of their humility. If they say “no” maybe they’re right.
What implication does this have on our lives? I mean, all of this contradicts what values we often hold. We value people who are assertive. Seminars are held to help people who are assertive. How many seminars have you seen to help people be humble? “Come to the Humble Seminar and learn how to be more humble.” I did a search on the Internet for “humble seminar” and “humility seminar” and got nothing. Do a search on “assertiveness seminar” and you get all kinds of hits.
But, if you and I are willing to humble ourselves - God can fill us with grace that will bring forth fruit. We can be too high for God to use us – but we can never be too low. Remember, one of the most fundamental commands God gives us is to love our neighbor, to consider others before ourselves, especially the marginalized: the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; those whom society looks down upon, those we feel don’t deserve a place at the table. We are not to call “shotgun” but are to offer them Christ.
And when we can do that, scripture says, we will be blessed.
World Religions- Christianity
John 3:16-21
August 15, 2010
Welcome to the final week in our summer series, Christianity and World Religions, based on the small group study by Adam Hamilton. Over the past five weeks we’ve explored similarities and differences between Christianity and Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. Today we will focus on the faith of many of us here today, Christianity.
The point of this series was to learn more about other religions, in the hopes that it would strengthen our own faith, and to help us to share our faith with others so that we could fulfill the great commission given to us by Jesus himself in Matthew 28, to make disciples of all nations. The problem with the way many Christians share their faith is that folks end up trying to repel us like vampires as we are trying to thump them over the head with a Bible.
It’s like Lucy in the old Peanuts cartoon: Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "I would have made a great evangelist." Charlie Brown answers, "Is that so?" She says, "Yes, I convinced that boy in front of me in school that my religion is better than his religion." Charlie Brown asked, "Well, how did you do that?" And Lucy answers, "I hit him over the head with my lunch box." So if we could learn something of other religions, then perhaps we would be able to be in conversation with people of other faiths, and then with humility and sensitivity, be able to offer them Christ. And if we can do that, perhaps they might actually listen.
Okay, so today, however, we will focus on what is the essence of Christianity, the basics of Christian theology and belief. Now, if you were to attempt to distill the Christian faith down into one verse of scripture, it would have to be John 3:16. I’d like for you to pull out your memory verse and read it with me once again: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Let’s take a moment and unpack that.
The Christian gospel begins with an affirmation of a God who created the world, the cosmos, and everything in it. Now, this is very much like the other religions we’ve studied, aside from perhaps Buddhism. So we all pretty much agree that there is a creator. But Christians take it one step further, and we declare that God’s essential nature is love: For God so loved the world.
Now, you have to understand who we are as human beings. We are, of course, created by God in God’s image. So we have then the capacity to love, to be selfless and to do good. However, each one of us has an inherent flaw: sin. This sin flaw, this brokenness is in every single one of us. Now, because God loves us, he sees our human condition and wants to do something about it. God in his great love sees us and wants to change our human condition.
Now how does God do that? Well, it’s like God said that perhaps, since humans didn’t quite get it through laws and prophets, maybe if I walked and lived among them, they would see and understand my will for their lives. And more than that, maybe they’d be able to understand me more, too, and then they’d be able to understand the depth of my love for them. And maybe, if I showed them how costly their sin is, and if I gave them a gift without price, it might so turn their hearts that they would long to follow me. God must have really thought hard about this.
And so Jesus is born: God gave his one and only Son. Now, God’s salvation plan was meant not only to teach us about God’s love and God’s character, and to teach us about ourselves, so that when we look at Jesus we see what we might be; but we are also meant to understand this: that with his death on the cross, God was giving us the gift of salvation. He was giving us forgiveness, not something we had to earn. He gave it to us without price.
And that’s very different from what other religions offer us. In Buddhism, salvation, a release to nirvana, which is extinction, is obtained by living thousands of lifetimes over and over again, in an attempt at disconnecting from any desires for longing for anything, then the moment you extinguish all desires you are set free—and you are literally, extinguished. Poof! You cease to exist.
Or in Hinduism, where you need to build up good karma, and eliminate bad karma, so you try hard to be a good person. And you think good thoughts and you do good things, and if you get good karma, your next life will be a little bit better than your last life. And in Islam, if you follow the Koranic law close enough, you work hard enough, then perhaps God will accept you, if you just try hard enough to fully integrate the faith into your life. That’s a hard thing to do. And in Judaism, where you have 613 laws, with thousands of others added to them in the Talmud; and if you do wrong, then you must do ten good things to make up for the one bad thing. That’s an awful hard road to salvation. And you can never be sure.
So what God did was he turned it all upside down. God said, let’s do it this way: what if I do everything necessary for your salvation; what if I pay the price? If I give you a priceless gift, maybe you’ll accept it, and it will so change your heart, that you’ll finally follow me out of gratitude and out of love. That’s what God offers you: that whoever believes in him (Jesus) shall not perish, but have eternal life.
You see, that’s the Christian road to salvation: a love, a gift, and an eternity.
Now having said that, I would like to share with you, very briefly, why I am a Christian—and it’s not because my parents were Christians or because I go to church. Just because I go to Dunkin Donuts doesn’t make me a Coolata! I agree with Adam Hamilton on many of these points, and perhaps this could help you as a model on how to share your own faith.
I am a Christian because I believe the accounts of the eyewitnesses. Now the eyewitnesses were the apostles, and they lived with Jesus for three years, and they stood by while he was crucified, and they said they touched him and felt him after he rose from the dead. And when I read the accounts of these apostles, I am moved by the credibility of their lives. I have also read and find credible non-biblical and non-Christian accounts of their lives. The historical facts speak for themselves. A great book to read in this regard is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.
Next, I am a Christian because of the Christian ethic in life. Christianity offers the most compelling and authentically human way to live. Following Christ moves us to love our neighbors. But not only to love our neighbors, it compels us to love our enemies as well. The people of his day were angry with Jesus because he spent all of his time with non-religious and nominally religious people, who were called sinners and tax collectors. Outcasts, enemies.
I’m a Christian because Jesus, on the last night of his life, gets on his knees and washes his disciples’ feet like a slave. And as Jesus hangs on the cross, naked and bleeding, with a crown of thorns upon his brow, he says, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”
And when he rose from the grave, having triumphed over evil and death and sin, and had shown that God’s will and way will ultimately triumph over evil, that is a compelling picture of God. I am a Christian, because in Jesus I find the most compelling picture of God that I have seen in any religion, anywhere.
I am a Christian, because of the hope we have in Christ. He said in John 14, “Listen, this life is not all there is. And I go to prepare a place for you. And I’ll show you, I’m going to prove to you, that this is not all there is. And then one day you’ll get to join me where I am.” You know, I have performed probably close to a hundred funerals, and I don’t know what I’d say if not for the Christian hope that we have in eternal life.
Finally, I am a Christian because of what Jesus did on the cross, and its power for our lives today—to give new life to people whose lives have been spoiled by sin and brokenness. In my life I have experienced that power, and the way that I looked at the world began to change, and the way I saw myself began to change. I knew that he paid a price for me, and that compelled me and called me to change myself, even as his Holy Spirit was changing me.
And those times when I have experienced the greatest peace or the greatest joy, or the most significance, or the greatest amount of meaning in my life, those richest moments in my life all somehow related back to my faith. I am a better husband because I am a follower of Jesus. I don’t think I’d even be married today, if not for Christ’s presence in my life. You know I ran long enough! I’m a better father, because I’m a follower of Jesus and his work in my life. I’m a better person, because of what he has done daily, and what he continues to do, working in my life.
All of this is why I am a Christian. And I think that it’s why you should be a Christian, too. Of all the religions we’ve studied, nothing comes close.
You know, Jesus tells the story which says the kingdom of heaven is like a party, a wedding banquet, and the King—God—sends out invitations. Now, there were some people who got the invitations, and they were just too busy to go, or had other things to do; so it is possible to reject God’s grace.
But the fact is that every one of you here today has received the invitation, in as compelling a way as I can present it. And so my question for you is this: What will you do with the priceless gift Jesus wants to give you today? Will you say, “Well, you know, I really don’t need it. Thanks anyway.” Or, “I’m too busy to take it right now; I have more important things to do.” Or would you say, “Thank you. I accept what you’ve done for me. Help me to follow you.”
