(Actually in the spirit of honesty, this is really more of a paraphrase, I am working from memory.  You can find the original somewhere in the middle of The Great Divorce.)
C.S. Lewis once said something like this:

Anything no matter how good, if it is not given to Jesus, can drag you down into hell.  Likewise, nothing, no matter how evil, if it is given over to Christ can keep you out of heaven.

The truth of that quote sustains me in my darkest times and challenges me in my brightest.

Today in the sermon we all had a rock.  The rock represented those things that are obstacles to our following after Jesus.  Things that we will nto release into his control but instead cling to on our own.

When I  went to church I was pretty sure that I knew what my rock was going to be.  It was as if I was pre-scripting the encounter I was going to have with God based upon the script I have used so many times before.

But as I stood in line holding my rock, I was startled.  I got off script.  I asked God, “What is holding me back from following you?”  And with surprising clarity, I knew.  It wasn’t a sin issue.  That was what I planned to do with my rock.  But that wasn’t it.  I have long ago surrendered the evil in my life over to Jesus and I trust he can handle it.  Instead I was confronted with something good.  Good plans that I have for my life.  Plans that are admirable and important.  But nevertheless they were plan that I had not surrendered to God.  They were my big plans.   How many half-deals I have struck with God offering him most of my life as long as I still get to pursue these big important plans of mine.

And suddenly to my great greif, that was my rock.  Those good plans, those plans so precious to me were my rock.  I was glad that the line moved slow.  It took me a while get up the nerve to set my rock on the stage.

I’m still not exactly happy about it, but I feel a great peace.  I don’t pretend that the temptation to those plans won’t return, but for the moment, I feel a great release of conflict.  I feel like I am following.

on the walk

-Ethan

Here it is.

If you asked twenty men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to the desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desire, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. We must not be troubled by the unbelievers when they say that this promise of rewards makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of rewards. There is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desire that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man a mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not a mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is a mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

Doesn’t that make such wonderful sense. The rewards for life God’s way are simply the fullness of that life. When we love as God calls us we are rewarded with relationships full of love. When we give up our own desires we are rewarded with a spirit of contentment.

We are offered a chance to choose life and instead we choose junk.

on the walk

-Ethan

This Sunday we are discussing 1:18 – 3:20. This section is all about idolatry sin and death. It is great stuff.

In particular, Paul wants his readers to see that the foundation of all sin is a decision to turn away from submission to God and instead fashioning God’s in our own image. It is this fundamental decision that start all of humanity down the road away from the power of God’s righteousness and into a head on collision with the purposes and will of God.

Luke Timothy Johnson has a wonderful commentary on Romans that I find so very compelling. In his comments on this section, he suggests that Paul’s conception of sin is not just as a moral category but also a relational one. (Ie. We are not just breaking the rules, we are rebelling against God.) Based upon this he suggests that for Paul, sin is not the opposite of virtue (which is our common understanding), but rather sin is the opposite of faith. In that section, LTJ writes this:

Idolatry begins where faith begins, in the perception of human existence as contingent and needy. But whereas faith accepts such contingency as also a gift from a loving creator from whom both existence and worth derive, idolatry refuses a dependent relationship on God. It seeks to establish one’s own existence and worth apart from the claim of God by effort and striving (“works”) of one’s own.

That is great stuff. You may want to read it again.

How will I respond to the reality of my frailty? My first impulse is very Greek. I want to be important – to write important books, to impress people and change history so that I will be remembered. I know that some of my readers are classics scholars so you can correct me but I remember learning about this ancient Greek notion called arête which meant something like excellence but it also implied a sort of greatness that lived beyond this life. I wanted that. In fact sometimes I still want it.

I think that in our culture the most popular response is denial. By scrambling for as much control as possible we insist, “I am not frail, I am the master of my universe.” I suppose this is the response of secular humanism.

At least for the last 200 years, the opposite option has been available in nihilism. We can decide that our frailty is emblematic of our ultimate meaninglessness.

There are other responses I suppose.

How will you respond to the reality of your own frailty?

Are you trying to establish your value and permanence through striving on your own?

Will you accept this reality as a “gift from a loving creator from whom both existence and worth derive?”

on the walk

-Ethan

My first reflection this week does not come specifically from the sermon or even the specific topic. (Although I have a few of those coming.) Rather I have a general reflection on recycling. Most recycling involves destruction. Turning an old tire into a tire swing is not very destructive, but to turn it into a play surface involves at the very least, shredding the tire into little pieces. Recycling paper involves shredding it, and soaking it in water and mixing it with chemicals and mashing it back together.

In Douglas Adams wonderful book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect describes traveling through hyperspace as “Unpleasantly like being drunk.” Aurthur dent replies, “What is so unpleasant about being drunk?” Prefect deadpans, “Ask a glass of water.”

That is funny stuff.

Back to our topic, I find myself thinking, “Recycling feels great if you are the recycler, but I doubt it feels good to the piece of paper. And in this metaphor, we are the paper, not the recycler.”

Jesus uses similar metaphors to describe our role in God’s plan to redeem us and the whole world.  We must “die to ourselves and take up our cross.” He uses the image of seed that “dies” before it can grow again.  Jesus says that he plans to prune all those attached to him. Paul talk a lot about our need to get the dying part over with so that we can get busy living. (Check out Romans 1 – 16 for more on this.)

In my reading, no modern author captures the role of death and sacrifice in redemption better than C.S. Lewis in the Great Divorce.  The premise (for those who haven’t read it but should):  A bus trip from the less-than-real world of hell has come to the outskirts of the more-than-real world of heaven and ambassadors from heaven come to urge people to give up their life in rebellion to God and instead submit and enter heaven.

I will not try to summarize the story, for there are some stories whose power is in their telling and not in their outline.  This is certainly one of them.  I will urge you to read it and quote a paragraph that gets to our point. I will add in brackets some things that are obvious from the context but may need explaining here.

Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on [into the kingdom of God] as it is.  Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death.  It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains [that is God's land].  Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with the richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.

I cannot recommend highly enough the whole book, but this paragraph represents the climax of a my favorite section.  Nothing I have or am is fit for God’s kingdom.  Everything about me is weak and impure and tainted with some selfishness or petty insecurity.  Even my best traits are unfit.  My worst traits are downright despicable.  But if I will die and be born again, God can do something with all of it.

This reality helps me to understand so much that Jesus teaches about “hating family” and taking up crosses.”  If a tire wants to become a playground, it must be willing to die to its reality as tire and trust that on the far side of death, a new reality awaits.

on the walk

-Ethan

So to all my readers, I pray this blessing for you.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart. Amen.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. Amen.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,starvation and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. Amen.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen.

And the Blessing of God, who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies,
be upon you and all you love an pray for this day, and forever more. Amen.

on the walk

-Ethan

Ps. For those of you that are in a discipling relationship, either as a mentor or group leader, I would encourage you to discuss and pray this blessing for those you are discipling. Some of you are parents, and you may want to pray this blessing over your children.

So I grabbed a hymnal.

[For those readers who don't know what that is, a hymnal is a books of songs.  In the past there was a way to write down the music to a song using lines and dots indicating pitch and tempo.  In between these lines the lyrics would be printed.  Writing the music down with the dots was important because at that time many churches sang in what was once called four-part harmony. Printing the lyrics was necessary because there were a great many of them and they rarely repeated. And of course the digital projector had not been invented.]

I just sat there and sang 10 or 15 songs.  I mainly sang through the crucifixtion hymns and remembered what God has done for me through Christ.  I’ll share the lyrics to one.  If you remember the tune why don’t you find sometime today to sing it. In its original version, these lyrics are attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux.

O sacred head now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
now scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown:
O sacred head what glory, what bliss till now was thine;
yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call thee mine.

What thou my Lord has suffered was all for sinners’ gain;
mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall my Savior! Tis I deserve thy place;
look on me with thy favor, and grant to me thy grace.

What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend,
for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord let me never, never outlive my love for thee.

on the walk

-Ethan