161 Sermon Illustrations on Grace

A United States President asked a certain general a question about another officer. Overhearing his reply which praised the officer, a friend approached him afterwards and said, "General, do you know that the man of whom you spoke is one of your most bitter enemies and misses no opportunity to malign you?" "Yes," replied the officer, "but the President asked my opinion of him; he did not ask for his opinion of me." The Imperfect Saints We should be lenient in our judgment of those who accomplish so much in the vineyard of God. They are men of like infirmities and weaknesses as ourselves. Let us remember they are not perfect. Are we then to reject their message because of their imperfections? No. In a pipe which conveys water into a house, there may be a flaw that will sometimes permit rust or earth to mix with the water. Shall we, therefore, reject the water itself, and say, if we may not have it just as it comes out of the fountain or source, we will not have it at all? What if we live far from the fountain itself and can have no water but what is conveyed in pipes subject to such defects?

As thirsty men hasten to the fountain, but having quenched their thirst, and filled their vessels, turn their backs upon it; so those who are beset with perils and dangers fly to the fountain of grace; but, being relieved, they despise the living water. Caudray.

Dr. Franklin, when a child, found the long graces used by his father before and after meals very tedious. One day, after the winter's provisions had been salted, — "I think, father," said Benjamin, "if you were to say grace over the whole cask, once for all, it would be a vast saving of time." Percy.

etc. Note that what under law was conditional, under grace is freely given in Christ to every believer. God in a thick cloud, unapproachable. Under grace we "draw nigh to God."

When I read some sermons they remind me of a piece of common by the roadside, after a hungry horde of sheep have devoured every green thing; but when I read a solid gospel sermon of the Puritans, it reminds me of a field kept for hay, which a farmer is at last obliged to give up to the sheep. The grass has grown almost as high as themselves, and so they lie down in it, eating and resting too. Give me the doctrines of grace, and I am in clover.

Man needed an eye operation but was poor. Surgeon's fee was more than he had, so man figured he would have to go blind. The doctor answered, "You can't come up to my terms, and I can't come down to yours. But there is another course open to us. I can perform the operation for free. And that is what I am willing to do."

In the same way, Jesus paid the penalty for our sins.

Richard Hoefler’s book “Will Daylight Come” includes this homey story:

A little boy visiting his grandparents was given his first slingshot. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit his target. As he came back to Grandma’s backyard, he spied her pet duck. On impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit and the duck fell dead.

The boy panicked. Desperately he hid the dead duck in the woodpile, only to look up and see his sister Sally watching. Sally had seen it all, but said nothing. After lunch that day, Grandma said, “Sally, let’s wash the dishes.” But Sally said, “Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen today. Didn’t you, Johnny?” She quickly whispered, “Remember the duck!” So Johnny did the dishes.

Later Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing. Grandma said, “I’m sorry, but I need Sally to help make supper.” Sally smiled and said, “That’s all taken care of. Johnny wants to do it.” And again the whisper, “Remember the duck!” Johnny stayed while Sally went fishing.

After several days of doing both his chores and Sally’s, he couldn’t stand it. He confessed to Grandma that he killed the duck. “I know, Johnny,” she said, giving him a hug. “I saw the whole thing. I was angry, but because I love you, I forgave you. I was just wondering how long you would let Sally make a slave of you.”

Johnny, by way of his Grandmother, learned something of God’s grace that day. God’s grace is not earned, but it is given: freely, simply and abundantly. We can seek it, even expect it, but we are not in a position to demand it.

[also found in Leadership, Fall 1983, p.86]

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Current studies in Paul argue that the "works righteousness" of the Jews has been misunderstood. The Jews relied on a covenant of grace, with good works as the proper response.

1. Traditionalists have argued the Jews distorted the Law and Paul is answering their distortion.

2. E. P. Sanders says Paul was a contented Jew but was turned around in his Damascus Road experience. Paul then started this theology with the solution (Christ) and worked back to propose the problem. He is unsystematic and sometimes inconsistent in his treatment of the law. His chief objection to Judaism is that it rejects Christ. A secondary feature is the law-keeping stands in the way of converting Gentiles. Overall, Paul's theology and Judaism are very close in their conception of salvation.

3. James Dunn argues "works of the law" does not refer to works-righteousness but refers to the laws that maintain the Jews' national identity. This excludes the Gentiles. Jesus delivers the Jews from this curse (Gal 3:13). The Jews did not believe in works-righteousness but in grace, yet their exclusivist understanding of grace was wrong.

4. Stephen Westerholm believes Paul is against works of any kind, not just ones motivated by the Law. Paul is radical in his exclusive reliance on grace. "Law" in Paul refers to the Ten Commandments, not to Jewish perversion of the Law. The Law promised life but could not deliver it. Paul's gospel is law-free. The Spirit is the Christian's moral guide.

The mercy of God.

1. The Compassionate Mercy of God.

The word (rahum) and the words related to it focus on the aspect of God's

mercy that springs from His feelings of compassion for us. This family of

words in Hebrew may well be derived from the Hebrew for womb, which is very

similar. If so, one might almost translate with the sense of "mother

feeling".

2. The Sovereign Mercy of God.

The second word that God chose to use of Himself in His encounter with

Moses is the word (hannum,) from hen, meaning "grace" or "favor". God's

mercy is not only full of compassion and pity, it is full of grace.

It focuses on the fact that God's mercy is not evoked by any goodness or

deservedness on our part, it is of His own grace and goodness.

In the Roman arena, the defeated gladiator was killed by the victor. The

loser's only hope was that the emperor, as he watched from his rostrum,

would give him the "thumbs up", the sign that he was to be spared as an act

of imperial favor. If we picture ourselves as a vanquished gladiator

thrown to the ground, with our opponent's sword poised over our neck, and

if we imagine looking up in our despair and seeing against all hope that

imperial "thumbs up", we may begin to understand the meaning of this aspect

of God's mercy.

Those times when we feel most keenly our unworthiness to enter the presence

of God are the times when we gain the most insight into this aspect of

God's mercy.

3. The Covenant Mercy of God.

The third word describing God's mercy is the Hebrew word (hesed),

translated most often as the simple word "love". This is the great

covenant word of the Old Testament that spells out God's commitment to be

merciful to His people.

4. Testimonies of God's Mercy.

Pride and a deep awareness of God's mercy simply cannot coexist. None of

us can know what great success, deep trouble, or abject personal failure

may lie ahead of us, but we do know from the testimonies of these men of

old that God is merciful.

In “Context,” Martin Marty retells a parable from the “Eye of the Needle” newsletter:

“A holy man was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. He crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him.

An observer came along and said to the holy man, ‘Don’t you know that’s a scorpion, and it’s in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?’

“To which the holy man replied, ‘That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?’”

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Version by Rev. Brett Blair, 9/16/01:

Henri Nouwen told a parable about an old man who used to meditate each day be the Ganges River in India.

One morning he saw a scorpion floating on the water. When the scorpion drifted near the old man he reached to rescue it but was stung by the scorpion. A bit later he tried again and was stung again, the bite swelling his hand painfully and giving him much pain. Another man passing by saw what was happening and yelled at the mediator, "Hey, stupid old man, what's wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don't you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"

The old man calmly replied, "My friend, just because it is in the scorpion's nature to sting, does not change my nature to save."

It is in God's nature to save - because it is in God's nature to love. God seeks the lost, heals the wounded, forgives the offender, and gives hope to those who are in despair.

It is what God does.

_________________

Adapted by Brett Blair from a sermon by Richard Fairchild.

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The parable of the vineyard workers (Matt 20) offends our sense of fairness. Why should everyone get equal pay for unequal work?

Back in Ontario when the apples ripened. Mom would sit all seven of us down, Dad included. With pans and paring knives until the mountain of fruit was reduced to neat rows of filled canning jars. She never bothered keeping track of how many we did, though the younger ones undoubtedly proved more of a nuisance than a help: cut fingers, squabbles over who got which pan, apple core fights. But when the job was done, the reward for everyone was the same: the largest chocolate-dipped cone money could buy. A stickler might argue it wasn't quite fair since the older ones actually peeled apples. But I can't remember anyone complaining about it.

A family understands it operates under a different set of norms than a courtroom. In fact, when the store ran out of ice cream and my younger brother had to make do with a Popsicle, we felt sorry for him despite his lack of productivity (he'd eaten all the apples he'd peeled that day - both of them).

God wants all his children to enjoy the complete fullness of eternal life. No true child of God wants it any other way.

#2057

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A gentle old Scottish Presbyterian minister named George MacDonald died in 1858, but he left behind a collection of sermons that have taught much about grace. He preached the gospel of grace so strongly that one of his sons protested, “It all seems too good to be true!”

MacDonald replied, “Nay, it is just so good it must be true!”

“Why Me?” is the most natural human response to personal tragedy. But we might just as well ask: “Why Not Me?”

In the fall of 1991, Gerald Sittser and his family were returning from a weekend trip when a drunk driver struck their minivan head-on. As a result, he lost his mother, his wife of 20 years, and a four-year-old daughter. He and his three other children escaped relatively unharmed. The following excerpt, condensed from his book “A Grace Disguised” (Zondervan), chronicles a portion of his healing:

My wife, Lynda, and I had a conversation once about an accident reported in our local newspaper. A station wagon with six children and their mother had skidded off the freeway and sunk in six feet of water, killing three of the six children. We both commented nervously that the problem was not simply that something bad had happened to innocent people, but that something bad had happened so randomly. We shivered with fear before the disorderliness of tragedy. If there were going to be suffering, we at least wanted reason for it, predictability to it, and preparation to endure it.

That conversation comes back to me with bitter irony. For the last few years my dominant emotion has been a nervous and doleful bewilderment. A pause at a stop sign, a last-minute switch of seats before departure, a slower or faster acceleration after a turn would have spared us all unspeakable suffering.

I found myself questioning the orderliness of life. While nature displays an orderliness that scientists count on every day, order does not always prevail. At times the universe seems to make about as much sense as a little girl who thinks that her fleeting grudge against a brother is the reason he got measles.

THE TERROR OF RANDOMNESS

One of the worst aspects of my experience of loss has been this sense of sheer randomness. The event was completely outside my control — an “accident,” as we say. The threat of anomie was and still is almost unbearable to me. I began to look with cynicism on the absurdity of life. Maybe, I thought, there really is no God and no meaning to life. I was tormented by an inability to discover any explanation that made sense of the tragedy. An answer to the “Why?” question eluded me.

Suffering may be fiercest when it is random, for we are then stripped of even the cold comfort that comes when events, however cruel, occur for a reason. To fall while attempting a dangerous climb without ropes leads to one kind of suffering. We shake our heads at the tragedy but realize that the climber should have taken precautions or attempted a climb within his or her range of ability. But to be killed by a random bolt of lightning or a stray bullet engenders another kind of suffering, in which case we tremble because there is no satisfactory explanation, no sensible pattern. Death just happened. The victim was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

For a long time, I wanted to change the events of that fateful day so that I could alter the present reality the accident had thrust upon me. But my brother-in-law Jack challenged me to reconsider whether I really wanted that kind of power. Did I really want to know what was going to happen so that I could protect myself from the random accidents that inevitably occur in every life? And if I knew what accidents were ahead and could change the course of my life, would I want to know what new accidents would befall me? What I really wanted, he said, was to be God.

WHY ME?

I have asked the question “Why me?” often, as many people do after suffering loss. Most of us want control of our lives. And we succeed a great deal of the time, which is due in part to the enviable powers Western civilization has put at our disposal. The possibility of so much control makes us vulnerable to deep disappointment when we lose control.

Loss deprives us of control: Cancer ravages, violence erupts, divorce devastates, unemployment frustrates, and death strikes — often with little warning. Suddenly we are forced to face our limitations squarely. We resent the intrusion, the inconvenience, the derailment. We never plan on loss.

Loss also has little to do with fairness: There is often no reason for the misery of some and the happiness of others. Our universe is hardly a safe place; it is often mean, unpredictable, and unjust, resulting in our asking the question over and over, “Why me?”

Once I heard someone ask the opposite question: “Why not me?” It was not a fatalistic question. He asked it after his wife died of cancer, acknowledging that suffering is simply a part of life. They had been married for 30 years and had enjoyed many happy moments together. But then the time came to experience another, more painful side of life. He could no more explain why his life had turned bad than he could explain why his life had been so good up to that point. “Why not me?” is as good a question as any.

This man has perspective. Wars and plagues have claimed the lives of millions; poverty and deprivation abound among more millions. And millions of others endure abuse of one kind or another. “Why me?” seems to be the wrong question to ask. “Why not me?” is closer to the mark, once we consider how most people live.

My tragedy introduced me to a side of life that most people around the world know all too well. Even now I hardly qualify as a tragic figure, considering the good life I have been privileged to live for so many years and live even today. The accident was really a brief, albeit dramatic, interruption in an otherwise happy, secure, and prosperous life. To many people I am even heroic, which seems ironic to me, since I have only done what people around the world have done for centuries — making the most of a difficult situation. So why not me? Why should I expect to live an entire lifetime free of disappointment and suffering? That expectation strikes me as both unrealistic and arrogant.

GRACE UNDERSTOOD

Certainly, on a superficial level, living in a perfectly fair world appeals to me. But deeper reflection makes me wonder: In a fair world I might never experience tragedy; but neither would I experience grace. Grace is grace only when it is undeserved.

I prefer to live in a universe in which I get what I do not deserve — positive or negative. This means I will suffer loss, but I will also receive mercy. I dread undeserved pain, but it is worth it if I can also experience undeserved grace.

If I have learned anything over the past three years, it is that I desperately need and desire the grace of God — which has come to me in unexpected ways. Friends have remained loyal and supportive, in spite of my struggles. Quietness, contentment, and simplicity have gradually found a place in the center of my soul, though I have never been busier. I go to bed at night grateful for the events of the day, which I try to review and reflect on until I fall asleep, and I wake up in the morning eager to begin a new day. My life is rich and productive, like Iowa farmland in late summer.

And my children have become a constant source of joy to me, however demanding my role as a single parent. Almost every day I take a few moments to listen to them practice their instruments, play a game with them, shoot a few baskets, talk about the day, and read aloud to them. When they go to bed, I always follow them down to their rooms and tuck them in. And just before I crawl into bed, I sneak into their bedrooms and pray God’s blessing upon them, a practice I learned from Lynda. These are precious moments, made more so by the tragedy we have experienced together.

Despite my having been a Christian for many years before the accident, God has become a living reality to me as never before. My confidence in God is quieter but stronger. I feel little pressure to impress God or prove myself to him; yet I want to serve him with all my heart and strength. My life is bountiful, even as I continue to feel the loss. Grace is transforming me, and it is wonderful. I have slowly learned where God belongs and have allowed him to assume that place — at the center of life rather than at the periphery.

So, God, spare us a life of fairness! A world with grace gives us more than we deserve. It gives us life, even in our suffering.

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Gerald L. Sittser is professor of religion at Whitworth College and the author of “The Adventure” (InterVarsity).

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

ctmar96mrj6T30236222

#3549

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the "Prince of Preachers," summed up his philosophy of preaching this way: "Above all, [the preacher] must put heart work into his preaching. He must feel what he preaches. It must never be with him an easy thing to deliver a sermon. He must feel as if he could preach his very life away before the sermon is done." Gardner C. Taylor knows something about this kind of preaching. For more than 50 years he has "preached his life away." In 1980, Time named him "the dean of the nation's black preachers," and in a recent issue of the Christian Century, he was dubbed the "poet laureate of American Protestantism."

"Gardner Taylor is a consummate communicator," says William Pannell, professor of preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in Southern California. Timothy George, dean of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School, concurs: "More than anybody else I have heard in my life, Gardner Taylor combines eloquence and passion in the endeavor of preaching."

As pastor of the 14,000-member Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Taylor, 77, labored as shepherd and prophet in Brooklyn's rugged Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for 42 years until his retirement in 1990. Today, as Concord's pastor emeritus, Taylor is called upon to fill pulpits, give lectures, and provide keynote addresses at churches and educational institutions throughout the country. Though the legend of Gardner Taylor is great, those who know him readily admit the actual man is even greater.

Taylor is a grand, stately figure, so it is incongruous to see him behind the wheel of his late-model Ford rather than perched behind a pulpit. As he drives by Concord Baptist Church, I notice the street name on the corner: "Rev. Gardner C. Taylor Boulevard."

"Yes, it's a great honor," he chimes in. "But I come from Louisiana, where they named the state law school for former governor Richard Leche. His name was placed high up on the building, engraved in stone. However, when he went to the penitentiary, they took it down."

Such wry humor is customary with Taylor, who regularly uses anecdotes and personal remembrances to deflect attention away from himself and toward the business of preaching the gospel.

Born in 1918 to the Reverend Washington and Selina Taylor, Gardner Calvin Taylor inherited "Baptist genes" that many assumed would lead him to pastoral ministry. But he recalls, "I recoiled from the thought of being a preacher. I wanted to go to law school and become a criminal lawyer. My boyhood friends in Louisiana tried to discourage me from that idea, though; at that time, no black person had ever been admitted to the Louisiana bar."

Taylor, nevertheless, continued his plans and gained admission to the University of Michigan Law School. But in 1937, prior to leaving for Michigan, Taylor was involved in a tragic car accident. As he drove one night in rural Louisiana, a Model T Ford suddenly cut across his path. "I tried to avoid them, but I couldn't," he recalls. Both of the passengers in the other car died. And, though Taylor survived, he was left "shaken at my roots." Not only were two men dead, but they were two white men. And the only witnesses to the accident were a white farmer and a white oil refinery worker.

"In that day, for a white person to tell the truth about a black person in that situation was incredible; but those men told the truth. I would not be here today if they had not."

Through that jarring event, Taylor received his call to the ministry. "I was surprised by God's grace. I had been brooding about my future for a long time, but that was the defining moment."

Taylor went on to three "bright years" at the Oberlin (Ohio) School of Theology, where he developed a scholarly appreciation for a wide range of subjects. While at Oberlin, Taylor met his wife and pastored a church in Elyria, Ohio. Following Oberlin, he served pastorates in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and finally at Brooklyn's Concord Baptist Church. Taylor was only 30 years old when he arrived on the scene at Concord, which in 1948 was already a flourishing congregation of over 5,000.

Taylor deepened Concord's now 148-year tradition as a prestigious and vital presence in the heart of New York's inner city. He not only filled pews on Sunday morning, but he took faith out onto the streets. "One must get out of life and into the Bible," he says. "But there are also times when one must get out of the Bible and into people's lives."

Taylor's holistic grasp of the gospel has resulted in a church that serves as a model for urban congregations across the nation with its commitment to community outreach and development. With Taylor at the helm, Concord established a senior citizens' home, a fully accredited Christian grade school, a professionally staffed nursing home, and an economic-development program that draws on a $1 million endowment to provide grants to various social projects in the Brooklyn area.

But despite his tireless work in the roles of pastor and community activist, the wider world will likely see his oratorical gifts as his defining quality. Often, in spite of the preacher, the people are ministered to," he says. "The Word of God breaks through the preacher by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Taylor recounts a story from his days as a fledgling minister in Baton Rouge. In that Depression-ravaged era, he was in the midst of a sermon one Sunday evening when suddenly the electricity in his small church building flickered out. Encased in darkness, the young Taylor stood motionless, not knowing what to do. Finally, an elder deacon yelled out from the congregation, "Preach on, preacher, we can still see Jesus in the dark." And that's what Taylor has been doing ever since: proclaiming the Word into and amid the darkness.

Listening to Gardner Taylor preach is like "hearing the voice of God," a colleague of Taylor's has said. As quoted in "Time," Richard John Neuhaus, now editor-in-chief of First Things, expressed amazement at Taylor's ability to "[play] with a single word.... He whispers it, and then he shouts it; he pats, pinches and probes it."

Listening to Taylor speak over an informal meal, like our lunchtime meeting, or under any circumstance is akin to hearing him on a Sunday morning. Even his common language is colored with rich poetic rhythm and imagery. He is not a preacher by profession but by nature; it's who he is.

Richard Lischer, professor of homiletics at the Duke Divinity School, says Taylor can draw applause from his listeners by simply reading a text. In his book "The Preacher King," Lischer writes, "On one occasion as [Taylor] read some of the proper names in Luke 3 (Tiberius, Ituraiea, Trachonitis), members of the congregation began responding, 'My Lord, My Lord!' "

Noted preaching scholar James Earl Massey believes Taylor has "one of the best working vocabularies of any minister alive." Massey, who recently retired as dean of the Anderson (Ind.) School of Theology, has been a friend of Taylor's for more than 20 years. He says Taylor's command lies in his breadth of cultural knowledge. "He has a firm understanding of the best of both African-American and Anglo-Saxon culture," he explains. "The best preaching is that which can go beyond one's self and one's own culture to touch others who are from different backgrounds -- and that's what Dr. Taylor does."

"Dr. Taylor is a person who is able to move effortlessly across denominational and social boundaries to touch people's lives," adds Timothy George, who was introduced to Taylor as a student at Harvard Divinity School in the early seventies when the school flew Taylor in once a week to teach a homiletics course. But George remembers it being more of a course on life. "He has such great wisdom and tremendous theological depth and insight."

Indeed, "wisdom," "depth," and "insight" are woven through all of Taylor's preaching. The force of his sermons exercise both mind and emotion. Like many traditional African-American pulpiteers, Taylor applies a meandering introduction that is as much a mental warm-up for the preacher as it is a preface for the sermon topic. But once Taylor launches into the body of the message, the congregation is transfixed by his skillful handling of the scriptural text. Both sound and content combine to propel the sermon to its roaring climax.

One is immediately attuned to Taylor's flair for cunning exposition. He is at once storyteller and theologian. Thus the apostle Paul is presented as "a deformed wanderer with the label of Tarsus on his baggage." And familiar passages are reenvisioned with profound implication: "Paul was filled with competence and commitment, on his way to Damascus from Jerusalem....But on that road where he was, Somebody else was on that road. Because Somebody else is on every road. I don't know what road you're traveling today -- it may be a road of great joy, it may be a road of sorrow -- but Somebody else is on it."

Taylor himself is less certain about the mechanics of his preaching. "Black preachers used to have a formula for delivering a sermon," he told Leadership journal. "Start low, go slow, get high, strike fire, retire. But I can't offer a formula for how I deliver a sermon; it depends on the sermon, on the mood of the preacher, on the mood of the congregation."

Taylor insists that, whatever a sermon does, it must bring humanity in touch with its Creator. "There's no excuse for the preacher if he or she is not speaking to people for God," he asserts. "Preaching that does not bring in the vertical aspect of the sermon -- the impact of God upon human life -- cannot be called a sermon."

Preaching "the impact of God upon human life" is an admirable aim. But often the human life becomes so complex, so messy that pat theological answers seem inadequate for speaking to a congregation's concerns.

Taylor remembers countless instances when he was called upon to minister against the backdrop of both personal and national crises, such as World War II, the Cuban missile crisis, and the civil-rights revolution. "As I preached during those difficult days, I wanted people to know that God is still on the throne," he says. "I couldn't predict the future; I could only give them the assertion made by my old theology dean, Thomas Graham: 'Faith is reason gone courageous.' "

Taylor's own darkest night came earlier this year, when his wife of 52 years, Laura Scott Taylor, an accomplished intellectual and community leader in her own right, was tragically killed by a city vehicle while crossing a Brooklyn street. Laura Taylor was the founder of the Concord Baptist Elementary School, where she served as principal for 32 years without pay...

"She was a very sharp and classy woman," Taylor says of his wife. "At one point, I had gotten too involved in Brooklyn politics because of the size of the church. After a while, my wife said to me, 'Your preaching is getting very thin.' It was one of the most scathing things I've ever heard. I soon got out of preaching too much about politics."

Taylor has now lived through the pain and grief about which he has consoled so many others. "They told me, 'You have to listen to what you told us now, Pastor,'" he says. "The assurances that I passed out to people before -- I thought I was sincere, and I thought I understood what they were going through. But I did not."

In a recent address to his former parishioners at Concord, Taylor's sorrow was visibly evident. "We are grateful to you [for your kindness during our loss]," he prefaced his message. "But I must not dwell on that now, because sometimes the heart is so sore -- incurably so -- that it cannot stand the touch of memory. So I will go forward."

Through his forward journey, Taylor has gained an even greater appreciation of his faith. "When you come to personal crises in your life, as I have, I don't know what people do without faith," he observes. "I don't always have a calm assurance about it, but I believe in all my heart that God will not do us evil. And when I understand what he is doing, I will appreciate it."

Lately, Taylor speaks often of "the illusion of permanence." He says, "I don't think the young could live very well without that illusion. But as one gets older, this life begins to show its true quality of impermanence and unreliability. I believe God has ordained it so that as we must leave this world, it becomes less attractive."

Despite being so intimately tied to modern African-American history and despite his stature as a gifted orator, Taylor remains largely unknown within the evangelical community today. "It's just another sign," says Timothy George, "of the ghettoization of the church."

Perhaps Taylor's ability to move in and out of diverse Protestant circles -- both mainline and conservative -- has contributed to his lack of recognition among evangelicals. But, as Lischer notes, while Taylor "infuses his sermons with principles drawn from the liberal view of human nature and history," he "holds to an explicitly evangelical doctrine of salvation centered in the substitutionary atonement of Christ."

But does Taylor consider himself an evangelical? Only in "the European sense," he says. "European evangelicalism had a commitment to the gospel in its outreach toward human beings and the sufficient work of Jesus Christ," Taylor explains. "But it was not a rigid kind of doctrinaire position, as it has been among many evangelicals in America."

He adds, "I think evangelicals need a social conscience about the people who are least defended and most vulnerable in the society. If Christianity is not that, forget about it."

Still, Taylor is encouraged by the hopeful signs of racial reconciliation that are emerging in the church today. Although he regrets that Concord Baptist Church never achieved a greater level of racial diversity during his tenure there, he appreciates the new sensitivity among Christians to the issue. "It is impossible, I think, to estimate the enormous impact that the whole evangelical community could have on this nation if it would free itself of its bias of race."

When Taylor volunteers his ideas on what makes a "great preacher," the discussion turns to his list of personal heroes -- a multiracial aggregate of pulpiteers. He speaks fondly of what he considers a golden age of preaching in New York during his early days in Brooklyn, when preachers like George Buttrick, Robert McCracken, Sandy Ray, Paul Sherer, and Adam Clayton Powell filled local pulpits....

Taylor has no worries about the future of African-American preaching but does offer one cautionary note: "There is not too much emotion in the African- American church, but there is too much emotionalism. If what one is dealing with is so great, so gripping that it defies expression, then, yes, I can understand the emotional praise and preaching; but when it is done as a device, I think it's reprehensible."

He admits that he, too, had an obsession with emotion and calculated eloquence in his younger days. "At one point, I wanted to take elocution to train my voice," he told Leadership. "My wife discouraged me from it, so I never did it. Her reasoning was that preaching never ought to be a finished thing, a polished performance. She was right."

In these, his twilight years, Taylor speaks openly about the reality of old age: "You have only to look on my countenance to know that my years have faded into the light of the common day," he said in a recent address. "But I can say this to you: Every time I have felt at the end of my tether, the old promise has come true. There has been restoration; there has been renewal; there has been revival."

What makes a great preacher? "In the Book of Ruth, Naomi says, 'I went out full, and I've come back empty,'" Taylor says. "That's the story of life. It's also the story of preaching; we must keep ourselves full so we can empty ourselves in the pulpit."

At the end of Taylor's sermon "A Promise for Life's Long Pull," he offers a word on his life's ministry, drawing from his favorite black spiritual, "There Is a Balm in Gilead":

"'Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work's in vain'...But then,

just at the end of my tether; but then, when all of my strength seems

spent and gone; then, when I come almost to the borders of despair; then,

when I feel frustrated and confused and out of it; 'Then...the Holy

Spirit' comes and 'revives my soul again.'"

Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine

ctcurrmrj5TE0255B29

#3653

*

Very long paper that looks at God's sovereignty and grace, our response of legalism or faith, the possibility of a hardened heart and passages that speak of eternal (or conditional) security.

Sermon for pulpit exchange, on forgiveness. Matthew 18:23-35

=================

THE GIFT OF GRACE

=================

I. Would you be able to do this?

II. What's wrong with forgiveness.

A. It is unnatural.

B. It is unfair.

III. A little perspective helps. Matthew 18

A. A huge debt, an insurmountable dilemma, a stroke of grace.

B. Parable must go beyond human situation to Divine one.

C. What the parable is really about.

IV. The parable continues.

A. The table turns.

B. The response of the king.

C. Why is the king so forgiving, yet so ruthless?

V. How we can forgive others.

A. Forgiveness is hard, but unforgiveness is even harder.

B. God can help us forgive.

C. Forgiveness changes us.

VI. Have you experienced forgiveness?

#4268

*

Sermon in Philippians series. Legalism vs. grace. Philippians 3:1-11

=========================

WHERE IS YOUR CONFIDENCE?

=========================

(short, due to communion

I. What makes you feel important? and baptism)

II. The pitfall of legalism.

A. Paul had some rabid opponents.

B. Signs of legalism: rituals, race, religion, rules, reputation.

C. Christianity is not a matter of these things.

III. Getting a grip on your profits and losses.

A. What really matters in life?

B. You have to get rid of stuff to be a Christian.

C. Use God's finances.

IV. What you need to know.

A. We put a heavy stress on education.

B. Get to know Christ better.

V. Don't let religion get in the way.

A. Maybe some of you have missed out on the great truth here.

B. Maybe you've been like Paul, trusting rituals.

C. We can have confidence because of what CHRIST has done!

#4320

*

Bob was caught up in the spirit where he and the Lord stood by to observe a

baseball game. The Lord's team was playing Satan's team. The Lord's team

was at bat, the score was tied zero to zero, and it was the bottom of the 9th

inning with two outs.

They continued to watch as a batter stepped up to the plate whose name was

Love. Love swung at the first pitch and hit a single, because Love never

fails.

The next batter was named Faith, who also got a single because Faith works

with Love.

The next batter up was named Godly wisdom. Satan wound up and threw the

first pitch; Godly Wisdom looked it over and let it pass, because Godly

Wisdom does not swing at Satan's pitches. Ball one. Three more pitches and

Godly Wisdom walked, because Godly wisdom never swings at Satan's throws.

The bases were loaded.

The Lord then turned to Bob and told him He was now going to bring in His

star player. Up to the plate stepped Grace. Bob said he sure did not look

like much! Satan's whole team relaxed when they saw Grace. Thinking he had

won the game, Satan wound up and fired his first pitch. To the shock of

everyone, Grace hit the ball harder than anyone had ever seen.

But Satan was not worried; his center fielder, the Prince of the air, let

very few get by. He went up for the ball, but it went right through his

glove, hit him on the head and sent him crashing on the ground; then it

continued over the fence for a home run! The Lord's team won.

The Lord then asked Bob if he knew why Love, Faith, and Godly Wisdom could

get on base but could not win the game. Bob answered that he did not know

why. The Lord explained, "If your love, faith and wisdom had won the game

you would think you had done it by yourself. Love, faith and wisdom will get

you on base, but only My grace can get you home. My grace is the one thing

Satan cannot stop."

#4494

*

I went to college at Ohio Valley College --a small Christian school in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It was small -- about 200 hundred students. It was really like family. I'll never forget the day that dawned on me. I was observing a fellow who was unquestionably a World Class Creep. This guy was a Jerk, Twerp, and Nerd all rolled into one. Even had the audacity to marry and reproduce himself. Yet here he was accepted. Not uniformly liked, but accepted.

Imagine the police knocking on your door one day, accompanied by a scruffy ex-convict, whom only yesterday you befriended. As thanks for your generosity, the ex-con has stolen most of your silver. What do you do?

This is the opening question of of "Les Miserables," the magnificent Victor Hugo classic that has been made once again into a movie, this one starring Liam Neeson. The film, now out on video, is a stunning illustration of the way truly great art incorporates rich biblical themes.

The convict's name is Jean Valjean and the man he has stolen from is a bishop. But this is no ordinary bishop. He's a radical believer who takes the words of Jesus literally. So when Valjean is dragged before him holding the stolen silver, the bishop informs the startled police that the silver was a gift. He turns the other cheek by giving Valjean a pair of silver candlesticks as well, and then sets him free.

Later we learn that Valjean had spent nineteen years in prison merely for stealing a loaf of bread out of hunger, an injustice that left him deeply embittered. The bishop's act of generosity and grace breaks the cycle of anger and sin.

This is Valjean's first taste of grace, and it transforms him. The ex-convict later shows the same extraordinary forgiveness and grace to someone who wrongs him. I won't spoil the ending for you, but it's extraordinarily compelling, with a powerful Christian message.

Why exactly is this story so compelling? Victor Hugo's novel has been a classic for 136 years. It's been turned into a film several times, and it's also been a smash Broadway musical. Why does a story with a thoroughly biblical story line appeal to non- Christians just as much as it does to Christians?

The answer is that any story dealing with biblical themes is also dealing with the universal themes that are at the very core of human existence--themes that are inherently interesting. It's no accident that the account of Jesus' own life has been called "The Greatest Story Ever Told." As Ed Veith writes in his book "State of the Arts," "What can send the imagination reeling like the doctrine of the Incarnation, the infinite concealed in the finite, or the Atonement, the tragedy of sacrifice and the comedy of resurrection and the forgiveness of sin?"

Dorothy Sayers puts it is a single phrase: "The dogma is the drama," she writes, meaning that the story of salvation is, indeed, the story of all stories, the one that fascinates like no other. That's why Christian art can be more compelling than any other kind. Christian art alone can provide the answers to the questions we all have, whether we admit it or not.

Stories like "Les Miserables" tell us who we are and unavoidably lead us to the One Who made us and Who waits for us on the other side of our questions.

Why not rent this video. Patty and I just did and we were riveted watching it. Invite over some unbelieving friends, and use the story line to discuss ideas of forgiveness, grace, and transformation. Like following the rainbow to its source, you just might find that these universal themes lead you straight to the pot of gold we call the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Once upon a time there was a town whose inhabitants came to fear for their

lives because the land all around them was sinking into the ocean. It

became apparent that soon their own homes would also sink beneath the waves

and they would drown if they didn't get out.

One day two big shiny buses pulled into town and the word soon spread that

these buses had come to rescue all who would get on board and take a trip to

New Jerusalem..... a city five thousand miles away and the only place high

enough to stay above the rising sea level.

One of the buses (the "Good Works" bus) required passengers to purchase part

of the fuel that would be needed for the journey. They could use various

good deeds, rules they had kept, ranks they had attained and various other

credentials they had earned. This sort of transaction appealed greatly to

many of the folks in the town. soon they were lining up to purchase fuel

for the trip.

Mormons brought lists of all the family nights honored, baptisms for the

dead, and lists of all the days spent without drinking alcohol. Church of

Christ folks came with records of 3 church services per week, certifications

of correct doctrine, affidavits stating they had never sung in a church

with instruments, and baptismal accounts correctly defining the proper

method and only approved reason for baptism. Buddhists brought records of

progressive lifetimes spent working off their bad Karma. Each was given

quantities of fuel commensurate with their achievements. They gave their

containers of fuel to the bus driver and boarded the bus with their various

records of achievement. The massive tanks on the bus were soon filled to

capacity and the driver assured the healthy, confident passengers that there

was more than enough fuel for the journey. (He lied)

The transaction required for the second bus (the "Good Lord"bus) was a

little different. The fuel tank for this bus was already full when the

passengers arrived. In fact, it only had an 8 quart capacity, and it had

about 6 quarts of a red fluid in the tank. The rest of the fuel was in

medicine bottles on the bus. The red fluid was needed not only for fuel,

but for medicine for the various sick passengers on board.

The passengers on the second bus were, for the most part, quite a motley

crew.... or so they seemed to the passengers who got on the "Good works"

bus. None of them had enough good achievements to purchase fuel. They had

to resort to the charity of free bus tickets which they were given in

exchange for merely believing that the "Good Lord" bus could make it make it

all the way to New Jerusalem on the 8 quart tank of red fuel. Some were so

weak and pitiful that they couldn't even get on the bus without assistance.

The "Good Works" bus took on all the passengers who could afford the price

of admission and roared away leaving the "Good Lord" bus in a cloud of dust

to pick up stragglers. There were a good many people left scurrying around

trying to pile up enough good works to buy a ticket of their own. As these

presented their credentials to purchase their fare on the remaining bus, the

bus driver patiently explained that the only way they could get on the bus

was to leave all their hard earned credentials on a rubbish pile by the bus

and get on empty handed. Some reluctantly accepted the terms and got on

board for free. Others clutched their lists to their bosoms and said they'd

wait for another bus that would accept their currency. The bus driver told

them this was the last bus out of town but they wouldn't listen. Some of

the remaining folks stayed because they said they didn't believe in buses or

New Jerusalem, and they would just stay and enjoy the bounties of the town

until the sea took them beneath its waves.

Finally the second bus pulled out on to the highway to New Jerusalem. The

"Good Lord" bus had only gone about a thousand miles when it came upon the

motionless hulk of the of the "Good Works" bus on the side of the road. Its

passengers, now a pitiful, bedraggled lot, huddled outside in the scant

shadow of the big bus. They had found that the grade on the road to New

Jerusalem was much steeper than they had ever imagined, and they had been

driving into a stiff head wind the whole trip. They had run out of fuel a

few miles back, and in their panic, they had gotten out and pushed the bus

in hopes that they could get high enough to escape the rising tide until

help came.

The "Good Lord" bus pulled over and stopped. Many of its passengers were a

lot healthier after traveling on the bus. They got off and offered to help

the stranded passengers on to their bus. Every one from the "Good works"

bus scrambled back on to the stranded vehicle to retrieve their credentials.

They lined up by the door of the new bus to buy their tickets. Only those

who surrendered their lists were allowed to board. A sizable group stayed

behind clutching their prized achievements when the "Good Lord" bus pulled

out.

The good Lord bus made it all the way to New Jerusalem. By the time it got

there, passengers looked pretty much like the ones who first got on the

"Good works" bus. During the trip the passengers learned to accomplish good

works and practice good doctrine. They even all got baptized. But when

they got to New Jerusalem, none of them had the slightest doubts about what

got them there safely..... it was the red fluid in the 8 quart tank, and it

had absolutely nothing to do with what they accomplished on the journey.

The other bus was taken by the rising tide and it sunk beneath the waves.

Recently I have been asking a question of strangers -- for example, seatmates on an airplane -- whenever I strike up a conversation: "When I say the words evangelical Christian, what comes to mind?" In reply I hear about scandal-plagued televangelists and strident pro-life activists, or opposition to gay rights, or proposals for censoring the Internet. Not once -- not once! -- have I heard a description redolent of grace.

As a journalist, though, I have had the privilege of seeing many wonderful examples of Christians who dispense grace. These are the people I wish would come to mind when I poll my airplane seatmates. Although this group does not often make the newspapers, its members serve faithfully, seasoning our culture with the preservative of the gospel. I tremble to imagine what the modern United States would look like without the "salt of the earth" in its midst.

I know the hospice movement well, for my wife works in one as a chaplain. I once interviewed Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, at Saint Christopher's Hospice in London. A social worker and nurse, she was appalled at the way medical staff treated people who were about to die -- in essence, ignoring them, as tokens of failure. This attitude offended Saunders as a Christian, for she knew that care for the dying was traditionally one of the church's seven works of mercy.

Since no one would listen to a nurse, she returned to medical school in middle age and became a doctor before founding a place where people could come to die with dignity and without pain. Now there are 2,000 hospices in the United States alone, about half of which have a Christian base. Dame Cicely believed from the beginning that Christians offer the best combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual care for those facing death. Now she presents the hospice movement as a glowing alternative to Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his "right to die" movement.

I think of the thousands of chapters based on the Twelve Step program that meet in church basements, VFW halls, and living rooms all across the nation, any night of the week. The Christians who founded Alcoholics Anonymous faced the choice of whether to make it a restrictively Christian organization, or to found it on Christian principles and then set it free. They chose the latter option, and now millions of people in America look to that model -- based on dependence on a "Higher Power" and on a supportive community -- as a lifeline against addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, and food.

I think of Millard Fuller, a millionaire entrepreneur from Alabama, who still speaks with a cotton-fields twang. Rich but miserable, his marriage on the rocks, he headed to Americus, Georgia, where he fell under the spell of Clarence Jordan, the radical Christian who paraphrased the Cotton Patch versions of the Gospels. Before long, Fuller had given away his personal fortune and founded an organization on the simple premise that every person on the planet deserves a decent place to live. Today Habitat for Humanity organizes hundreds of thousands of volunteers to build houses all over the world.

I once heard Fuller attacked by an elderly Jewish lady who was scandalized to learn that her money was going to support a Christian mission. "Ma'am, we don't try to evangelize," Fuller patiently explained. "You don't have to be a Christian to live in one of our houses, or to help us build one. But the reason I do what I do, and so many of our volunteers do what they do, is that we're being obedient to Jesus."

I think of Bill Magee, a plastic surgeon who was shocked to find that in developing countries many children go through life with untreated cleft palates. They cannot smile, and their lips curl open in a constant sneer, making them the object of ridicule. Magee and his wife organized a program called Operation Smile: planeloads of doctors and support personnel travel to places like Vietnam, the Philippines, Kenya, Russia, and the Middle East in order to repair facial deformities. So far, they have operated on more than 36,000 children, leaving behind the legacy of smiles.

I think of Bread for the World, an agency founded by Christians who believed they could best help the hungry not by competing with World Vision but by lobbying Congress on behalf of the world's poor. Or of Joseph's House, a home for aids patients in Washington, D.C. Or of Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing that runs inner-city programs in 35 large cities, or of Jerry Falwell's "Save a Baby Homes," where pregnant women can go to a loving home if they choose to carry their babies to term rather than abort. (Sadly, both these programs get far less attention than do their founders' political views.)

Rousseau said the church set up an irresolvable loyalty dilemma. How can Christians be good citizens of this world if they are primarily concerned about the next world? The people I have mentioned, and millions like them, disprove his argument. As C. S. Lewis has noted, people most conscious of another world have made the most effective Christians in this one. "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

-----------------

Copyright(c) 1997 by Christianity Today, Inc/Christianity Today Magazine. February 3, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 2, Page 136 7T2wh7T2136726i

A YOUNG PASTOR DISCOVERS WHAT GRACE LOOKS LIKE WHILE BATTLING CANCER.

"WHILE WE WERE STILL WEAK, AT THE RIGHT TIME CHRIST DIED FOR THE UNGODLY... BUT GOD PROVES HIS LOVE FOR US IN THAT WHILE WE STILL WERE SINNERS CHRIST DIED FOR US." -- ROMANS 5:6,8, NRSV

In 1996 James Van Tholen, then 31, and his wife, Rachel, moved to Rochester, New York, where Jim became pastor of a Christian Reformed Church. Members of the church found themselves drawn to Jim’s ministry, especially to his preaching, which gleamed with biblical intelligence and humane understanding.

Then, the unthinkable occurred: in the late winter of 1998, physicians identified and surgically removed a liposarcoma from behind Jim’s right knee. Within weeks Jim had another tumor behind his chest wall, and then spots on both femurs and one kidney. Recent tests confirm cancer up and down Jim’s spine, with the result that he now thinks about how he moves, always conscious of the risk of spinal cord compression (and paralysis).

From March until October, Jim struggled to recover from surgery and to absorb forms of chemotherapy that offered no cure but could prolong his life somewhat. By October, the chemotherapy had suppressed Jim’s cancer enough that he was able to return to his pulpit.

What follows is the sermon Jim preached from Romans 5:1–11 on the morning of his return, October 18, 1998. As the members of the congregation listened to their young preacher’s sermon, they understood something about dying and rising with Christ that they hadn’t known just that way before.

-- Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.,

dean of the chapel at Calvin College

and a former teacher of Van Tholen’s at

Calvin Theological Seminary.

_____________________________________________________________

This is a strange day -- for all of us. Most of you know that today marks my return to this pulpit after seven months of dealing with an aggressive and deadly form of cancer. Now, with the cancer vacationing for a little while, I am back. And of course I’m glad to be back. But I can’t help feeling how strange this day is -- especially because I want to ignore my absence, and I want to pretend everybody has forgotten the reason for it.

But we can’t do that. We can’t ignore what has happened. We can rise above it; we can live through it; but we can’t ignore it. If we ignore the threat of death as too terrible to talk about, then the threat wins. Then we are overwhelmed by it, and our faith doesn’t apply to it. And if that happens, we lose hope.

We want to worship God in this church, and for our worship to be real, it doesn’t have to be fun, and it doesn’t have to be guilt-ridden. But it does have to be honest, and it does have to hope in God. We have to be honest about a world of violence and pain, a world that scorns faith and smashes hope and rebuts love. We have to be honest about the world, and honest about the difficulties of faith within it. And then we still have to hope in God.

So let me start with the honesty. The truth is that for seven months I have been scared. Not of the cancer, not really. Not even of death. Dying is another matter -- how long it will take and how it will go. Dying scares me. But when I say that I have been scared, I don’t mean that my thoughts have centered on dying. My real fear has centered somewhere else. Strange as it may sound, I have been scared of meeting God.

How could this be so? How could I have believed in the God of grace and still have dreaded to meet him? Why did I stand in this pulpit and preach grace to you over and over, and then, when I myself needed the grace so much, why did I discover fear where the grace should have been?

I think I know the answer now. As the wonderful preacher John Timmer has taught me over the years, the answer is that grace is a scandal. Grace is hard to believe. Grace goes against the grain. The gospel of grace says that there is nothing I can DO to get right with God, but that God has made himself right with me through Jesus’ bloody death. And that is a scandalous thing to believe.

God comes to us before we go to him. John Timmer used to say that this is God’s habit. God came to Abraham when there was nothing to come to, just an old man at a dead end. But that’s God for you. That’s the way God likes to work. He comes to old men and to infants, to sinners and to losers. That’s grace, and a sermon without it is no sermon at all.

So I’ve tried to preach grace, to fill my sermons up with grace, to persuade you to believe in grace. And it’s wonderful work to have -- that is, to stand here and preach grace to people. I got into this pulpit and talked about war and homosexuality and divorce. I talked about death before I knew what death really was. And I tried to bring the gospel of grace to these areas when I preached. I said that God goes to people in trouble, that God receives people in trouble, that God is a God who gets into trouble be cause of his grace. I said what our Heidelberg Catechism says: that our only comfort in life and in death is that we are not our own but belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

I said all those things, and I meant them. But that was before I faced death myself. So now I have a silly thing to admit: I don’t think I ever realized the shocking and radical nature of God’s grace -- even as I preached it. And the reason I didn’t get it where grace is concerned, I think, is that I assumed I still had about forty years left. Forty years to unlearn my bad habits. Forty years to let my sins thin down and blow away. Forty years to be good to animals and pick up my neighbors’ mail for them when they went on vacation.

But that’s not how it’s going to go. Now I have months, not years. And now I have to meet my creator who is also my judge -- I have to meet God not later, but sooner. I haven’t enough time to undo my wrongs, not enough time to straighten out what’s crooked, not enough time to clean up my life.

And that’s what has scared me.

So now, for the first time, I have to preach grace and know what I’m talking about. I have to preach grace and not only believe it, but rest on it, depend on it, stake my life on it. And as I faced the need to do this I remembered one of the simplest, most powerful statements in the entire Bible.

You may have thought that the reason for my choice of Romans 5 lay in the wonderful words about how suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Those are beautiful words, true words, but I’m not so sure they apply to me. I’m not sure I’ve suffered so much or so faithfully to claim that my hope has arisen through the medium of good character. No, many of you know far more about good character than I do, and more about suffering, too.

It wasn’t that beautiful chain with character as the main link that drew my attention to Romans 5; instead, it was just one little word in verses 6 and 8. It’s the Greek word ETI, and it has brought comfort to my soul. The word means "yet" or "still," and it makes all the difference between sin and grace. Paul writes that "while we were STILL weak Christ died for the ungodly." He wants us to marvel at the Christ of the gospel, who comes to us in our weakness and in our need. Making sure we get the point, Paul uses the word twice in verse 6 in a repetitious and ungrammatical piling up of his meaning: "STILL while we were STILL weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

I’m physically weak, but that’s not my main weakness, my most debilitating weakness. What the last half year has proved to me is that my weakness is more of the soul than the body. This is what I’ve come to understand as I have dwelled on one question: How will I explain myself to my God? How can I ever claim to have been what he called me to be?

And, of course, the scary truth is that I can’t. That’s the kind of weakness Paul is talking about. And that’s where ETI comes in -- while we were STILL weak, while we were STILL sinners, while we were STILL enemies of God, we were reconciled with him through the death of his Son. I find it unfathomable that God’s love propelled him to reach into our world with such scandalous grace, such a way out, such hope. No doubt God has done it, because there’s no hope anywhere else. I know. I’ve been looking. And I have come to see that the hope of the world lies only inside the cradle of God’s grace.

This truth has come home to me as I’ve been thinking what it will mean to die. The same friends I enjoy now will get together a year, and three years, and twenty years from now, and I will not be there, not even in the conversation. Life will go on. In this church you will call a new minister with new gifts and a new future, and eventually I’ll fade from your mind and memory. I understand. The same thing has happened to my own memories of others. When I was saying something like this a few months ago to a friend of mine, he reminded me of those poignant words of Psalm 103:15–16: "As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more." For the first time I felt those words in my gut; I understood that my place would know me no more.

In his poem "Adjusting to the Light," Miller Williams explores the sense of awkwardness among Lazarus’s friends and neighbors just after Jesus has resuscitated him. Four days after his death, Lazarus returns to the land of the living and finds that people have moved on from him. Now they have to scramble to fit him back in:

LAZARUS, LISTEN, WE HAVE THINGS TO TELL YOU. WE KILLED THE SHEEP YOU MEANT TO TAKE TO MARKET. WE COULDN’T KEEP THE OLD DOG, EITHER. HE MINDED YOU. THE REST OF US HE BARKED AT. REBECCA, WHO CRIED TWO DAYS, HAS GIVEN HER HAND TO THE SANDALMAKER’S SON. PLEASE UNDERSTAND -- WE DIDN’T KNOW THAT JESUS COULD DO THIS.

We’re glad you’re back. But give us time to think. Imagine our surprise...

We want to say we’re sorry for all of that. And one thing more. We threw

away the lyre. But listen, we’ll pay whatever the sheep was worth. The dog, too. And put your room the way it was before.

Miller Williams has it just right. After only a few days, Lazarus’s place knew him no more. Before cancer, I liked Williams’s poem, but now I’m living it. Believe me: hope doesn’t lie in our legacy; it doesn’t lie in our longevity; it doesn’t lie in our personality or our career or our politics or our children or, heaven knows, our goodness. Hope lies in ETI.

So please don’t be surprised when in the days ahead I don’t talk about my cancer very often. I’ve told a part of my story today, because it seemed right to do it on the first day back after seven months. But what we must talk about here is not me. I cannot be our focus, because the center of my story -- OUR story -- is that the grace of Jesus Christ carries us beyond every cancer, every divorce, every sin, every trouble that comes to us. The Christian gospel is the story of Jesus, and that’s the story I’m called to tell.

I’m dying. Maybe it will take longer instead of shorter; maybe I’ll preach for several months, and maybe for a bit more. But I am dying. I know it, and I hate it, and I’m still frightened by it. But there is hope, unwavering hope. I have hope not in something I’ve done, some purity I’ve maintained, or some sermon I’ve written. I hope in God -- the God who reaches out for an enemy, saves a sinner, dies for the weak.

That’s the gospel, and I can stake my life on it. I must. And so must you.

[In 2001, James R. Van Tholen lost his battle with cancer at the age of 36.]

_________

Copyright(c) 1999 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine. May 24, 1999, Vol. 43, No. 6, Page 57

*

During the June 4th 1944, WWII invasion of Normandy 25-year-old Pvt. Ray Aebischer’s parachute opened with such a jolt his heavy jump-pack was torn from his shoulders, plummeting to earth. Everything he needed (machine gun, carbine, ammo, canteen, food rations, personal items, etc.) was lost. Ray was so sure he’d never see his gear again he dismissed it from his mind.

Pvt. Aebischer didn’t count on Emmanuel Allain. Then in October 1997, a letter arrived from Mr. Allain, a WWII aficionado and collector. He wrote, "I found in a farm in Normandy all the stuff (belt pistol, carbine, suspenders belt, canteen, pocket first aid, etc.) of a soldier." The name on several of these items was Ray R. Aebischer.

Now 81, Aebischer said he was "dumbfounded." Last month he and his wife flew to England, where Allain met them with the wayward jump-pack in hand. "I could think of so many instances where I could have been killed," he said. "I thought to myself, except for the grace of God, I could be there. The real heroes are still over there."

*

FAITH FAITH PRAY

Forsaking Fantastic Praise of God

All Adventure Repentance of Our Sin

I In Asking for Others and

Trust Trusting Ourselves

Him Him Yielding to God's Will

------------- ------------- -------------

GRACE PUSH JOY

God's Pray Jesus (First)

Riches (Redemption) Until Others (Second)

At Something Yourself (Last)

Christ's Happens

Expense

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FAT DIE PhD

Faithful Delivered Past

Available Into Having

Teachable Eternity Doubts

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BIBLE

Basic

Instructions

Before

Leaving

Earth

*