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Text of the page (random words):
g in it this is the word of the lord thanks be to god february 26 a video is uploaded to youtube that same day a blog is written in response to the video on february 27 a well known and respected pastor tweets 15 characters a link to the blog that was a responding to the video and by the end of february 28th the quickly penned blog had received over 250 000 unique page views and yes i was one of them and so the fight had begun countless blogs and tweets and facebook posts and sermons were written about the church s soteriological doctrines and because this is a seminary i can use the word soteriological in a sermon and you all now know if you hadn t already figured it out that the video that set this whole firestorm off was rob bell s promo video for his new book love wins a book about heaven hell and the fate of every person who ever lived the blog called bell a heretic and the tweet bid him farewell presumably from the church universal or from what is getting called orthodoxy in america these days either way he was out of something according to someone what is orthodoxy anyways is it a term that only applies to doctrine or does it apply to behavior as well is it always clearly defined in a way that any given statement of belief can be declared right or wrong black or white in or out is it something that needs to be defended with a sword with fences or both does it need to be defended at all and who get s to stake out the plot and build the fence who gets to wield the sword in this example when a new book questioned a popularly held doctrine of hell we got to hear from or read a number of people who unashamedly answered these questions from a firmly rooted position inside their fence some of them indeed clutching their weapons of choice now we ve got a newly declared heretic we ve got all kinds of articles about the importance of hell and we ve got at least one really confused seminarian even if we do want to say that rob bell is a sinner for his thoughts questions and teaching i thought that where sin increased grace abounded all the more i thought we were supposed to ask questions i thought we were supposed to wrestle with god and explore the free gift of new life in christ it seems instead like much of our church has responded to one man s probing and questioning and wrestling not with justification and life but with anger and with fear we don t denounce someone s teaching or throw someone out unless we think that they are a threat and the church has been doing it sincebefore there was a church and maybe we ve been right to cast certain people out at certain times when he was sleeping with his father s wife or when they believed that the holy spirit descended from the father but not from the son or when she served communion that one time before she was ordained or blah blah blah i really don t know when we ve been right bad behavior questionable doctrines improper sacramental reverence is this really a list of the things that we should fear and further do we really believe that those things are at the core of our fear or is it something deeper maybe our fear is that sin really does still have dominion and so we need to always be prepared for battle with our tyrannical lord maybe our fear is that if we haven t figured out how god brings about this good news that we might not get to participate it in and so we logic our way to whatever doctrinal statements make the most sense and we root ourselves in these doctrinal statements and we declare even the slightest departure from them or questioning of them to be heretical because what would happen if we were wrong about god maybe our fear is that the body and blood of christ might fall into the wrong hands wouldn t that be horrible and so we take this piece of bullet proof plate glass and distribute bread and juice through a hand sized hole exclaiming proudly that everyone is welcome at my table you ve just got to stay on that side of it i get it i really do those are really scary things and there are really scary people in the world whose presence really does merit fear and fences i don t want to be exploited or taken advantage of i don t want to get to the pearly gates and find out that i misunderstood god s purposes and hurt god and god s children and i have literally made myself nauseous by deciding that someone else mishandled the lord s supper but it is in my fears that i really believe that i must join my voice with the father from mark who says i believe help my unbelief how often do we hear in scripture the commandment do not fear or do not fear only believe after all it certainly sounds like paul thinks that the gospel of jesus christ is infinitely more good than any bad news is bad and it is precisely because the gospel allows itself to be exploited and taken advantage of it is a free gift i don t know if the bad news is trespass or if it is sin having dominion or if it is that we are being dangled over a hell of eternal torment but i do know that whatever the bad news was it doesn t matter it s obsolete because the good news that jesus is the christ trumps the bad news paul even though he just got through eloquently proclaiming the freedom of the gospel also seems to share our fears because he knows that nothing that we can do will trump god s good work that it is so good and so freeing that it needs to be packaged with a warning label what then should we go on sinning that grace may abound because make no mistake grace will abound it s really that good and there is room in this gospel for even the worst sinners and heretics out there so let s go on sinning right of course not exclaims paul your life as a slave to that tyrant is over dead why would you keep living like you re a slave that is a ridiculous response but it s not ridiculous because the freedom of the gospel is only an illusion that freedom is real the bad news is no longer to be feared sin is no longer our lord the law is no longer our lord the fences have come down and everyone is invited in and has been given the free gift of grace and of new life and it is a life where we can and should live and make mistakes be creative in seeking to know and be known by god smash our idols replace them with new still incomplete ones ask questions that we don t have answers to dislike and challenge the answers that we have been given and finally get nailed to and hoisted up on a cross maybe even by the ironic hand of leaders of our churches the pastors and leaders who are verbally excommunicating rob bell aren t really concerned with getting rid of rob bell they are really concerned with trying with every ounce of strength and spittle they can muster to contain god but god will not be put in a box god is free and we have been given the free gift of getting to share in that very freedom of god and trust that it is god who has given us that gift and that it is god s love not our rightness or our morality that will finally usher us into eternity whatever that may end up looking like so what the hell are we so afraid of the body of jesus has already fallen into the wrong hands the blood of christ has already been shed on the shameful and foolish cross the veil has been torn the presence of god is on the loose and the free gift has finally trumped the trespass in an earlier letter paul quotes a hymn that the early church had been singing in worship and it goes like this let the same mind be in you that was in christ jesus who though he was in the form of god did not regard equality with god as something to be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross let the same mind be in us that was in christ who gave himself over to be accused betrayed abused mocked and finally to be killed all so that we might walk with our creator in the newness of life this is the charge go preach a gospel that is so good it needs a warning label that is so freeing and selfless that it can and will be taken advantage of go preach a christ who is so good he needs a warning label who is so freeing and selfless that he can be and has been and will be taken advantage of to say that the bad news it bad enough to keep us in line is no gospel at all but the free gift is greater than the bad news thanks be to god amen posted in uncategorized death moving in reverse bremen 1st presbyterian church november 28 2010 1 comment i ve recently had the opportunity to preach a few sundays at a small church in bremen ga to a congregation of less than 30 people they are wonderfully welcoming and intelligent people who need a full time pastor but in the mean time are incredibly gracious and grateful to even have a 1st year seminary student this is a transcript loosely of my sermon from the first sunday in advent 1 the word that isaiah son of amoz saw concerning judah and jerusalem 2 in days to come the mountain of the lord s house will be established as the highest of the mountains and will be raised above the hills all the nations will stream to it 3 many peoples shall come and say come let us go up to the mountain of the lord to the house of the god of jacob that yhwh may teach us the ways of god and that we may walk in god s paths for out of zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the lord from jerusalem 4 yhwh shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more 5 o house of jacob come let us walk in the light of the lord this is the word of the lord historical background so just a brief historical background for this text israel has divided into two kingdoms north and south and isaiah is a prophet in the southern kingdom of judah whose capital is jerusalem right around the time that isaiah would have begun his prophetic career israel is conquered by the nation of assyria now assyria in the 8 th century is the world s superpower and is creating the largest empire the world has ever seen so the small little nation of judah you can imagine is simply waiting for the massive army to march south and conquer them just as they have conquered israel its important to understand that to be conquered by a foreign nation is to lose all certainty you may be exiled to another land you may lose the freedom to worship your god or you may simply be killed no matter what it ends up looking like though its not going to be good now i want you to keep keep that history in mind as we listen to these word from elie weisel s night illustration of expectant waiting at four o clock in the afternoon of the same day as usual the bell summoned all the heads of the blocks to go and report they came back shattered they could only just open their lips enough to say the word evacuation the camp was to be emptied and we were to be sent farther back where to to somewhere right in the depths of germany to other camps there was no shortage of them when tomorrow evening perhaps the russians will arrive first perhaps we knew perfectly well that they would not the camp had become a hive people ran about shouting at one another in all the blocks preparations for the journey were going on i had forgotten about my bad foot a doctor came into the room and announced tomorrow immediately after nightfall the camp will set out block after block patients will stay in the infirmary they will not be evacuated this news made us think were the ss going to leave hundreds of prisoners to strut about in the hospital blocks waiting for their liberators were they going to let the jews hear the twelfth stroke sound obviously not all of the invalids will be summarily killed said the faceless one and sent to the crematory in a final batch the camp is certain to be mined said another the moment the evacuation s over it ll blow up as for me i was not thinking about death but i did not want to be separated from my father we had already suffered so much borne so much together this was not the time to be separated i ran outside to look for him the snow was thick and the windows of the blocks were veiled with frost one shoe in my hand because it would not go onto my right foot i ran on feeling neither pain nor cold what shall we do connect to text this is one of the milder scenes from the novel and yet it conjures up the depths of human fear and anxiety in a way that may help us feel the weight of what israel and judah were going through when isaiah comes on the scene a few comparisons in auschwitz there is the threat of evacuation in judah there is the threat of being conquered and exiled while in israel those things have already happened in auschwitz there is a faint hope that a waiting a life and death need for the russians to show up and liberate the captives in israel that same hope and waiting and need is put on yhwh for weisel above all else he is afraid of being separated from his father and at the heart of the fear of exile from jerusalem is the fear of being separated from the temple and from the promised land these things are the identity of the jewish people and to be separated from them is to be separated from yhwh from their father it can leave you numb only able to ask the question what shall we do what can we do connect text to present now in the christian church we believe that the hebrew bible the old testament is holy scripture and therefore we should be able to glean wisdom from these stories and yet it can be incredibly difficult to relate right we are not living in or even under the threat of conquest and exile i doubt if any of us in this room have endured the conditions that were endured by weisel and his father who was eventually beaten to death in auschwitz and i actually think that it would be wrong to assume that we can fully understand their perspective unless we ve actually been there ourselves i think that there is a common christian understanding that defines advent as the season in which we remember our understanding of this part of the story in other words advent is remembering israel or even the world as it waited on jesus and while that is true in some ways it would do us well to remember that the jews weren t waiting on jesus they were waiting on the day of the lord the day when all things would be made right and humanity would live in harmony with creation and creator and that s not how jesus showed up at least not yet it s difficult for me to believe that an understanding of advent that is only about what has already happened sometime in the past isn t also an understanding of the scriptures that doesn t give its stories any freedom to speak into our lives today maybe we think this way because we ve been told that jesus resurrection marked the end of the race and that our waiting is over or maybe we just don t like waiting and its easi...