How Now Do We Live
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday,June 3, 2012
Romans 8:9-17
“for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Romans 8:13
It was wonderful, in April to host Tom Caldwell at our Annual Prayer Breakfast. As many of you know, Tom has toiled away in the financial industry for most of his adult life and it was interesting to hear him speak of his Christian faith and his need for God. There were times, he said, when he would try to do things in his own strength but eventually something would happen and life would get messed up, such that his need for God was laid out before him like never before. His candour caught many of us off-guard. Tom was very willing to talk about his own life, his successes and his failings. Many a person will speak candidly about their successes, few, however, will lay out in public some of their silliest misdeeds and failures; but Tom put it all out before us, telling us that we all need God and pointing us toward the benefits of walking with God in the midst of the world.
It is not easy these days to find a godly path in the world. It's not easy knowing how we should live. Some seven or eight years ago, a man in his early 30s from my congregation asked if we could have a cup of coffee together. “Sure,” I said and off we went to the local coffee shop. Ed told me about his life and how over the preceding couple of years, he had become serious about the Christian faith. He said that he was struggling, however, in terms of how he should live. “I've been reading the Bible,” he said, “and this Christian thing isn't easy. As a matter of fact, I'm at a bit of a loss in terms of how to live because when I speak to my friends, they think I'm nuts and that I should be out there doing “the wine, women, and song” thing. I speak to church people and some of them say the same. From others, I get mixed messages… and then I read the Bible. I'm confused. How are we supposed to live?
That is indeed a good question. How is one supposed to live Christianly in the world? Many of us over the course of our lifetimes have seen tremendous change in how people live and what is acceptable behaviour. We have gone from almost a Victorian morality to an age of permissiveness and beyond and we wonder did they have it right in the past? Or, do we have it right now? We see change all around us.
We see change, for instance, in the mores around marriage and cohabitation. They have changed so dramatically. Without judgment, we can note a recent study of trends in Ireland, which until recently was a conservative country, revealed that over twice as many 20-somethings cohabit rather than get married. In Scandanavian countries and Quebec, the percentage of cohabiters versus married couples at any age is significantly higher than the Irish statistics. More and more, cohabitation is an accepted practice and we see that in the growth of children born to couples who are cohabiting. Over the course of 20 years in the United States children born to cohabiting couples has increased dramatically to now 30 per cent of all births. Clergy have witnessed the change in the weddings that we do. Whereas, when I began ministry, most people getting married were still living with their parents or living alone. Today, not only has the average age of people getting married increased but many couples, perhaps, and I hate to say 90 per cent, but certainly over 75 per cent, are already cohabiting when they come to see us. We have seen a great change in social mores in this and other areas in our lifetime.
One thinks of the changes in television and media also as we think of how to live in the world. Television is a tremendous influence upon people and how that has changed. When I was young, Mary Tyler Moore was about the most riské thing on television and a steady diet of Leave it to Beaver, The Lucy Show, and Gilligan's Island influenced us (actually, maybe it was Ginger on Gilligan's Island, that was the most riské thing on the screen). But compare the lifestyles in those sitcoms with those we have today, Two and a Half Men. Compare the odd boxing match of the past with Ultimate Fighting. Compare the Frankenstein thrillers of old with the Hallowe'ens and Jasons, and “chainsaw massacres” on our screens and one wonders where we are going.
You've probably been following the story of the horrific killing and dismemberment that took place in Montreal this week. My children were talking about it and the material on YouTube connected with the case. I asked, “Who can watch that stuff?” One of my children responded, “People are completely de-sensitized these days, Dad. We see so much of it.” And there are those out there who are concerned, particularly for our children and youth who are so greatly influenced. Perhaps, we will see the pendulum swing back for even the young, Black-Eyed Peas recognized it when they wrote the words:
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting the young minds faster than bacteria
Kids want to act like what they see in the cinemas
Whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality
Instead of spreading love
We spreading animosity
… “Where is the love,” they ask.
So much change, so much change … and it has even entered the church and how Christians perceive life and how we should live. In my lifetime, the mainline church has drifted from a relatively traditional, reformed, Social Gospel, set of beliefs to doing faith With or Without God or at least tolerating that mindset. In matters of practice, we have gone from the relative piety of former 1960s moderator, The Rev. James Mutchmore, to an acceptance of almost any lifestyle under the sun except for that of fundamentalists. Perhaps you remember the 1981 Academy Award winning film, Chariots of Fire. One of the scenes that I remember well, because it was so indicative of the culture that I grew up in, reveals Eric Liddell, the athlete and missionary, telling off a young boy for playing with a ball “on the Sabbath day.” “What day is it, son?” Liddell asked.
“Sunday, sir,” replied the young man.
“Shouldn't be playing with a ball on the Lord's Day, should we?”
And the young lad saunters off duly corrected. Try doing that these days, with Sunday mornings become the favoured time for sporting practices and events. Perhaps we could try it on the organizers of the various marathons that stop us from getting to church on several Sundays in the year … even a Christian organizer would think that we were lunatics! Times have changed. Society has changed. The church has changed and it is becoming more and more difficult to determine what is right and how we should live as Christians.
Certainly, in every age there has to be a degree of contextualization of the Christian faith, but does that entail that we have no firm direction for life? In the midst of the swinging pendulum of societal and Christian practice, maybe we can learn again from the word of God through the apostle Paul. Paul comes to us as a person who had such an incredible encounter with the risen Christ that his whole life was turned upside down. Everything he had learned as a Jew and an educated Pharisee now had to be viewed now through the lens of the resurrection and the fact that God had come to him, even to him, an enemy of the first Christians, made Paul acutely aware of God's grace and love. What had happened to him was not a result of anything he had done, God had given him a wonderful gift, and so, Paul went out preaching about God's free grace, God's forgiveness in Christ, and the faith that will bring one into God's eternal kingdom.
There were those who took Paul's message to an extreme. They said, if it's all about grace and faith, then it really doesn't matter what we do or how we live. We can do what we want and still gain God's rewards. Scholars call this group, anti-nomians, from the Greek, “against law,” or those with no law, no guidelines for life whatsoever, and in a few chapters in Romans, Paul takes aim at those who have misunderstood his gospel. “Shall we (who have found Christ) continue to sin, then, so grace may abound?” he asks. “By no means, how can we who died to sin still live in it (6:1ff; cf. 6:15ff.)?” And he would say to us today, in the midst of the crashing seas of change, pluralism and relativism, “but you are no longer in the flesh, you are in the Spirit … and you are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh,” (and by implication) but to the Spirit, to live according to the Spirit (8:9a. 12).
Paul may have spoken about freedoms from law and grace but he was speaking from the context of his own experience and the legalism that had gripped elements of Jewish thought. When Paul speaks of living in accordance with the Spirit, he had no concept of lawlessness in mind, he wasn't saying that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater, he wasn't saying, “Go, do what you want!” He was thinking of moving beyond legalism, to the spirit of the Law and living in God's love with respect for others. Paul still very much believed with the Psalmist that, “the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple (Ps.19:7).” Paul himself, as another Psalmist put it, “delighted in the ways of the Lord (Ps.37:4). There was significant continuity between the life in the Spirit that Paul was speaking of and the wisdom that God had shared with his people in the past, the wisdom that comes to us in the scriptures. When one thinks about God's law, God wasn't out to stop everybody from having a good time, he wanted to help us live with him and each other. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” - put God in life and have a rest once a week, and the medical profession and farmers have told us of the wisdom of taking a break for rest or letting a field lie fallow. “Honour your father and your mother” - how many would be saved from their own stupidity if they had only listened more to their parents or good adults in their lives. “Do not kill” - respect life and humanity as you would have others respect your life. “Do not commit adultery” - respect the vows that others have made to each other as they respect those you make to another. “Do not steal” - respect the property of others as they respect yours; and we can go on and on, it's just common sense really and how to live in community with love and respect. Then Jesus came along and pushed our notions of love further and further. “Love,” he says, “even your enemies,” and then he gives us his Spirit to help us go the second mile.
Dr. Stirling has been exhorting us over the past couple of weeks, as we have entered into Pentecost, to be open to the Spirit and be filled with the Spirit of God. Having the Spirit is like having a new animating force that stirs and empowers our lives like never before to walk in the ways of the Lord.
One of the film series that I have enjoyed a great deal is Star Wars. I love the stories of the Empire and the power that would bring them down led by Darth Vader. I especially like the semi-religious concept that keeps rising in the mix, Luke and Princess Leah are empowered by “the Force.” Yoda tells Obi-Wan Kenobi, “The force is strong in this one.” They wish each other a good journey and “may the Force be with you.” I see some parallels here with what Paul says about the Spirit. The Spirit is in us like an animating force. The Spirit stirs us. The Spirit empowers us to be God's people, God's followers, to live faithfully in the ways of God.
We see that sort of power in the life of Uwe Holmer. When the Soviets took over East Germany after the Second World War, they began to force people out of work, Holmer started to complain to the Communist authorities. The antagonism made him unpopular so that he and his family were ostracised. His opposition in the early years was never forgotten. His family was never able to get ahead in life. They were always blocked by the Communist leadership. Even his children, who were academically brilliant, on account of the past and their Christian faith were denied entrance to university by, none other than, the then Head of Education, Margot Honecker, wife of East German leader Erich Honecker. The children were forced to work in menial jobs.
Years later, when the Communist regime fell and Erich Honecker was ostracized, nobody would touch Honecker. They threw him out of his residence. Honecker was ill, he was out on the street, no one would take him in. Even though he had held back the church in the GDR, he eventually found his way to a church where he asked for help. The Lutheran pastor was Uwe Holmer. Holmer couldn't place him anywhere so he did what he felt he had to do, he took Erich and Margot Honecker into his own home. In the ways of the world, no one would have blamed him if he had said, “Serves them right, they deserves what they get.” But instead, he took them in. Then he started getting hate mail from the German people. Honecker was seen as the one who had authorized the killing of Germans for trying to escape over the wall to the West. Uwe Holmer just replied, “We are Christians. How can we pray the Our Father and say that we forgive all but not the Honeckers?” The Holmers housed the Honeckers for ten weeks until a deal took the Honeckers to Russia.
As a fellow pastor, I am sure that that was a tough road for the Holmers. It was a tough set of choices to be given, but Holmer lived “Christian-ly” in the world. What he did went against the grain of this world, but it was an action founded in the wisdom of God, a love founded in the sacrifice of Christ, an act of compassion only undertaken through the power of the Spirit.
So as we seek out answers to the question: “How are we to live in the world today?” I am not sure that we should go back to the legalisms of the my grandparents world, but our forefathers and foremothers were certainly on to something as they grappled with the truth of God's word for their lives. Paul calls us to learn from what God has already revealed in his word, to be empowered by the Spirit, and then to show that we truly are children of God, co-heirs with Christ (8:17), ready for the one who is coming to raise us to be with him in glory (8:11, 17).
The take-home is this. The book of Proverbs is filled with wisdom. One of the gems that comes from it, my aunt used to write on every card she sent me, “In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs is something you should read and interestingly enough, it has 31 chapters, the same number of days as in most months. If you were to read one chapter a day, you can learn a great deal in just one month. It's only 20 or 30 verses a day. Not that hard! We take in so much from other things, like the media. Why not learn a little from the word … and may the force, the Spirit of God, be with you as you live in the world.