12.24.2017         Preaching Text: “[According] to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed…” (Romans 16:25-26)

The theme that stands out in our readings this morning is a prominent feature of biblical theology, yet one ignored by many modern-day Christians.

It has to do with covenant. A covenant, biblically speaking, is like a contract, but different. It’s analogous to the kinds of pacts found in the ancient Near East whereby a powerful king would enter into an agreement with a lesser power to protect them and provide for their welfare.

In return, the lesser power would agree to observe the conditions set by this greater power. Thus it was like a contract except that it wasn’t a contract among equals. It was not a quid pro quo in which one party gives something desired by the other in return for something of commensurate value.

A biblical covenant, thus, is an agreement initiated by the greater power, God, who agrees to care and protect, first, the nation of Israel, and then, by extension, the church and world. In return, we agree to abide by God’s expectations for us, which, we understand, are meant for our good.

This is at the heart of the Bible. Beginning with Abraham, God makes a covenant, an oath, a promise, to save the whole world from the perils and predations of sin and brokenness, things begun in the Garden of Eden, things having despoiled the perfection God intended for Creation.

This covenant, renewed along the way with various biblical figures, remains the subtext of the entire document and, as such, our faith.

The Christian church, of course, as we see in Romans, understands Jesus Christ as the final covenant made with humanity. It is through Christ that God shall effect, finally, the renewal and restoration of Eden’s perfection.

As I’ve said many times, the idea of the covenant, or the Promise, forms the basis of virtually every story in the Bible. In the Old Testament, perhaps especially, the entire narrative revolves around whether God’s covenant will stand against human assault.

Time and again, Israel appears to jeopardize this covenant by failing their end of the bargain. Their lack of faith repeatedly endangers the covenant. Yet when all seems lost, God reasserts his covenant and his Promise, and achieves the impossible. For what is impossible for humans is not impossible for God.

Implicit in this covenant is the belief that God has a plan for you and me. In a world that often appears random and chaotic, the hidden truth is that God is forever with us, all the while faithfully effecting his plan.

This is difficult to accept. Our perception of the world, after all, is increasingly defined as random and without meaning. Modern philosophy says there’s no underlying core to life. Things just happen. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Everything’s in flux. Nothing is stable or perennial.

This mirrors ancient pagan beliefs which Israel and their God, Jahweh, stood forthrightly against. Until Israel came along, the events of life were thought to have been caused by the random actions of the gods, who, be it noted, were both capricious and utterly indifferent to human well-being. At best, one might attempt to placate these gods in ritualistic fashion in the faint hope that the worst just might not happen.

The Israelites believed differently. Their genius was in discovering that God not only created the world as good, but that this same God was also intimately involved in all human affairs, in history. What happens in your life matters. God is not some distant or dispassionate divine being but passionately interested in you. God has a plan for each and every life.

This belief, as I say, is a hard sell given all that goes on in our world today. Add to this the claim that science has explained everything, or is about to anyway. Such a concept appears both antiquated and nonsensical.

Last week I talked about how Christianity differs from Stoic thought in that Christianity does not believe that everything that happens is God’s will. This is because God has given us free will.

So how do we square this circle? I mean, how do we make sense of these two competing ideas – God’s sovereign plan vs. human free will?

Over the years I’ve suggested that Christian life is a kind of “fate with a choice.” God indeed has a detailed plan for each of our lives, yet we can freely choose to ignore that plan.

Take, for example, our vocation, or calling. Each of us is imbued with specific, God-given gifts, ones intended to play a specialized role in God’s overall plan for life. When used in godly fashion, these gifts bless life. When used wrongly, they, not surprisingly, produce the opposite.

When I was growing up my father used to annoy all four of his children by repeatedly saying: “You should look forward to going to work on Mondays.” Our response, as best I can recall, was to roll our eyes. Yet how correct he was. If you’re using the gifts God gave you, your work should be a blessing and a joy.

Recently I was talking to my oldest brother who retired from banking a couple of years ago. I told him I had to end the conversation because I needed to be at my very last official church meeting across the street.

His response was telling. One would have thought that I was about to be released from prison. Having never really enjoying his work (though he was good at it), his perception of retirement is that of an unalloyed good.

But for me, as I explained, retirement is bittersweet. As much as I’m ready to enter the next phase of life, I’m sad to let go of certain people and things. Retirement, for me, is not the freedom that comes after serving time!

Years ago, at the ecclesiastical council convened to assess my fitness for ordination, I was asked how I knew I had a calling from God.

“I know this,” I said, “because I backed through every door. I never chose to become a pastor. In fact, I tried to avoid it like the plague. I resisted it every step of the way. I went kicking and screaming.” God, in other words, had a plan.

Today I can’t imagine having done anything else.

Over the years people have commented on how difficult being a pastor must be. My pat answer is that it’s no more difficult for me to do my job than it is for you to do yours. That’s because God gave me certain gifts for ministry. Had I stubbornly pursued some of the other things I once thought I really wanted, I’d have been miserable. For instance, I’d have made the absolute worst businessman…ever! Why? Because I simply don’t have the gifts for it.

Then again, our biblical faith also tells us that despite how effectively we follow the plan God has for us, God will intercede and save us, even from ourselves!

God’s plan, in other words, is not ultimately dependent on how faithfully we live it out. Does our faithlessness, like Israel’s, cause hardship and suffering? Surely. But God uses all of life, both our successes and failures, to ultimately draw life closer unto himself.

We might fail, but God? Never.

In looking back over the years, I am grateful for the ways God was able to use me. On the other hand, I’m also aware of those times I failed both God and others. This is the fate of every human life.

But the Good News is that God uses every aspect of our lives, both the good and the bad, in effecting his overarching plan. God shall not be moved.

As we assess our lives through the lens of timeless God’s plan, we take comfort knowing that God in the end will make all things right. It is this that helps us place our shortcomings in proper perspective, even as it encourages us to place an ever-renewing trust in God’s steadfast, holy beneficence.

This past week, Linda and I signed papers to have our cremains buried in the Memorial Garden (only to discover that the Cabinet had already voted to give these plots to us as a gift!).

In this we are staking a claim on God’s future for Christ’s church here in Harwich Center, confident that God will continue to bless this congregation and its faithful witness to our world, even as we await God’s final act in Christ.

In the end, we all are staking a claim on this one basic truth – Immanuel – God is with us.

And forever shall be. Amen.

12.17.2017     Preaching Text: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 16-18)

If you ask me, there just may be a single motto that defines contemporary American “spirituality”: “Don’t worry, be happy.”

I know what you’re thinking, “He’s finally lost his razor-thin hold on reality! I mean, now that he’s only got a week left, maybe he’s just letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak.”

But hear me out. Years ago (1952) a pastor in New York City lit the country on fire with his landmark book, The Power of Positive Thinking. His name, of course, was Norman Vincent Peale.

I’ve referenced him several times in other sermons. In general, and not necessarily in a good way, I tend to think of him as the patron saint of American religious thinking.

In today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians, we read this: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

That almost sounds as if Peale could have written it himself, right? On other words, don’t worry, be happy. Be positive. It’s God’s will, after all. Just look at life and think positive thoughts, and everything will be great.

Yet is this what Paul is actually saying? Is “don’t worry, be happy” or positive thinking really a Christian outlook? Should life be lived this way?

You’ve heard it said that there’s nothing really new under the sun. Even so, it may surprise you to consider that positive thinking and its corollary, “don’t worry, be happy,” is really an updated, warmed-over kind of Stoicism.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that holds that everything that happens in life is willed by God. Everything. So if it happens, it’s what God wanted to happen.

If you accept this premise, you’re left with but two responses. Either you choose to fight against the vagaries and injustices of this life (and be miserable), or accept everything, both good and bad, as God’s will (and thus be happy, since there’s nothing you can do about it). “Don’t worry, be happy” fits the latter to a “T”.

Classic Christianity, however, completely rejects the idea that God causes everything to happen, especially sin, evil, suffering, and pain.

Years ago my mother and I were having a conversation about some event or another when she blurted out, “Well, it was meant to be!”

Being the argumentative type, I challenged her.

I asked whether God is responsible for giving someone cancer. As I recall, she didn’t particularly like the question. Yet isn’t it true that we tend to say such things only when life circumstances go well? But what about those times when they don’t, when great evil arises?

As I say, classic Christianity sees things differently. While it acknowledges that bad things happen, it never ascribes them to God. That’s because we’re created with free will. It is we who choose to reject God’s ways and thus cause sin, not God. So when things go south, humanity owns it.

Classic Christianity also advocates for a different response from us when bad things happen, as they inevitably will. It does not ask us to ignore bad things, or not worry about them in order to be happy. That’s because Christianity actively charges us to do something, to help mitigate or prevent such things.

The Quakers are known for “quietism.” Quietism, in short, sees God as the main actor, so much so that the human task risks becoming one of simply waiting for God to act. Taken to an extreme, this leaves little room for human agency, confining us to a far more passive role than does classical Christianity.

For biblical Christianity encourages us to participate in life, to try to do good in the time we have here on earth. Without this, we abdicate the active role God wishes for us to play.

Broadly, to not worry and be happy (to leave things up to God) strikes me as, in some sense, selfish. It risks our tuning out the suffering of the world in order for us to feel good. Worse still, it absolves us from any real responsibility.

The other extreme, its direct opposite, is to think we are in total control, that we somehow can perfect life without God. One sees a lot of this in contemporary culture, even in our churches. The conceit here is that we can fix the world ourselves, forgetting the more fundamental truth that we need to fix ourselves first. Each of us is a sinner after all, and without exception.

The paradox of Christian faith is that while we are called to be engaged in making the world a better place, we are forced simultaneously to admit we can achieve only so much. For ultimately only God can fix what truly ails us.

Thus 1 Thessalonians is not a call to ignore reality in order that we might be happy, but an assertion of clear-eyed hope in the midst of life’s very real brokenness, a hope that waits steadfastly upon God’s unalterable promise to cleanse and recreate our lives and world, in God’s time.

What Paul is saying in 1 Thessalonians is that we can know authentic joy (as opposed to the fake or contrived kind) even in the midst of events and circumstances that otherwise do not recommend it. This kind of joy betrays the fact that we can endure and even thrive amid life’s travails, but only if such travails are placed in proper perspective.

Knowing this, Paul exhorts us that while we wait for God’s decisive future in Christ we are called to make the most of the present. We are to seek peace with everybody, admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with all. We are not to repay evil for evil, but to seek to do good to one another.

And, yes, we are to rejoice always, praying without ceasing; knowing that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.

G.K. Chesterton, the great Christian writer, once lamented how Christian virtues, once decoupled from religion, can take on monstrous form.

“When a religious scheme is shattered,” he once wrote, “it is not merely the vices that are let loose…But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.

“The modern world is full of old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they are isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth, and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity, and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

Thus when the virtues that produce Christian joy or happiness are taken in isolation, and away from their proper context, that is, the Gospel, which alone gives them their sole meaning, the “happiness” produced becomes divorced from reality. And that’s never a good thing.

So in conclusion I say, worry. Not in abject hopelessness, but with appropriate and loving concern for the world around you.

But be happy also, not because there’s nothing to worry about and, as such, nothing to do, but because God has promised, in and through Jesus Christ, to fix our lives utterly, and with a godly perfection. Amen.