This coming Sunday, I get to do something I love to do – preach!! The good folks at Second Baptist Church in Lubbock are having me back to preach once again while they are without a pastor. I am honored.
It is interesting how sermons “happen” for a preacher. I tend to preach out of my experiences or those of persons I know . . . sometimes, even world events that make for a timely sermon. This sermon that’s taking shape in my mind right now . . . I’d like to share with you the story of how I got started on it.
This past Sunday night, I couldn’t sleep. Around 12:30, I got up to get a glass of orange juice and do some reading. I don’t read as many books as I used to read, but I still find time to do some reading.
Chad, my youngest son, is experiencing some very deep spiritual growth right now, and I am very proud. For my birthday, December 3, he gave me a copy of a book by Donald Miller, entitled Blue Like Jazz. I had laid it aside . . . until Sunday, when I started reading it and read for 90 minutes. I was amazed and touched and thrilled. What thrilled me the most was an incredible story about how Penny, a friend of Miller, became a Christian.
She said that she and a Christian friend began reading the book of Matthew. Now here is the quote that moved me:
“And I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I met Him, He would really like me. Don, I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus.”
In the margin, I wrote “wow”; I recalled my freshman year at Howard Payne, when Dr. Nat Tracy, in Old Testament class, said early on, “No matter how much you think of yourself, it is not as much as God does.” I have never forgotten that, and neither has Gary, my friend from day one of college, who was sitting next to me in class. I rejoice to see what a lay leader Gary has become in the BGCT. Dr. Tracy is a tie that binds many of us together who went to HPU. Friends, our BGCT-related universities are special places!!! They touch people’s lives for eternity.
Well, Dr. Tracy’s one statement of a very simple theological truth changed my life, helping me to realize that God was not an angry God as much as a loving God who cared deeply for me – just as I was – and wanted to share life with me. As you can tell, his words touched my life in a way that I’ll never forget. Yes, I still sometimes struggle with believing them as much as I should, but I’ve never forgotten them.
On Monday, I read an online article that was headlined “More Americans say they have no religion.” It reported the results of a recent study conducted on American religious life. One of its findings was that the percentage of Americans calling themselves Christians had fallen from 86% in 1990 to only 76% in 2008.
The researchers blamed much of the decline on the loss of membership among the mainline Protestant denominations, particularly Methodists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians.
But that doesn’t really tell us why, does it? Personally, I think one of the major reasons is the domination of Christian media by leaders of the Religious Right, who have represented Christianity with a mean-spirited message of judgment and condemnation rather than love and grace. These people – who many in this country see as the face of Christianity – have shown a concern primarily for political power rather than the Gospel. This saddens me, because, if the Gospel of the Living Christ means anything at all, it means “Jesus would like you if He met you.” Would He approve of all of your activities and actions? No, probably not, but that wouldn’t keep Him from liking you, because that’s Jesus’ nature – and don’t forget, Jesus is the only complete revelation of the Father and His nature. As Dr. Tracy said over and over, “God’s character is unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness.”
It appears to me that, possibly, more and more people in America do not want to have anything to do with Jesus because of the Jesus they hear preached all too often. Frankly, I can’t say that I blame them. If I seriously thought Jesus sees me as a scumbag . . . that He looks down His nose at me . . . shakes His finger at me . . . and refuses to have anything to do with me until I clean myself up . . . then I wouldn’t want to know Him, either. Yes, we human beings are a sorry lot . . . we don’t deserve Jesus’ love. But the good news is that He loves us, anyway. That’s why they call it grace. And that’s the kind of Jesus I want to know . . . and the kind of Jesus that is presented to us throughout the Gospels.
Which, finally in some roundabout way, brings me to my sermon title for this Sunday: “Making Foolishness Real.”
Second Baptist Church asked for my sermon title by Tuesday and sent me this week’s Scriptures from the Lectionary. Something tells me that most of you already know I am not a Lectionary sort of guy. In fact, I am not exactly sure what it is, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the Church Calendar.
Anyway, I read one of the recommended Scriptures – I Corinthians 1:18-25. Verse 18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
And I remember how Penny said she was saved because God became real to her when she realized “Jesus would like me if he met me.”
And I emailed the church the sermon title, “Making Foolishness Real.” I then had a title before I had a sermon. The fact is, I still do not have a sermon as I write this column, but I do know it will involve how we as the Church – that is, the people of God – must share a message about the foolishness of the Gospel in such a way that it becomes “real” for people, that people realize Jesus would like them if He met them. And if Christians were to start both preaching and living this message – making it real to the people in their own world at home, work, etc. – it would, I believe, turn things around in America for the cause of Christ.
We all need to start letting people know that Jesus would like them if He met them. In fact, that's really a pretty good first step in introducing them to Him. Let them find out how real He can be in their lives.