William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Let us pray the prayer for illumination. | 0:06 |
Open our hearts | 0:11 | |
and minds, oh God, | 0:13 | |
- | and minds, oh God, | |
- | By the power | 0:14 |
- | By the power | |
- | Of your holy spirit | 0:15 |
- | Of your holy spirit | |
- | So that his word | 0:17 |
- | So that his word | |
- | Is read and proclaimed, | 0:18 |
- | Is read and proclaimed, | |
- | We may hear your message | 0:20 |
- | We may hear your message | |
- | To us this season of Lent. | 0:22 |
- | To us this season of Lent. | |
- | Amen. | 0:25 |
- | Amen. | |
- | The first reading is from the Book of Romans, | 0:28 |
the 4th Chapter. | 0:31 | |
For the promise that he would inherit the world | 0:34 | |
did not come to Abraham or to his descendants | 0:37 | |
through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. | 0:41 | |
If it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs, | 0:48 | |
faith is null and the promise is void, | 0:52 | |
for the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, | 0:58 | |
neither is there violation. | 1:03 | |
For this reason, it depends on faith in order | 1:07 | |
that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed | 1:12 | |
to all his descendants, not only to the adherence | 1:17 | |
of the law, but also to those who share | 1:22 | |
the faith of Abraham, for he is the father | 1:26 | |
of all of us. | 1:31 | |
As it is written, I have made you the father | 1:33 | |
of many nations. | 1:36 | |
In the presence of the God in whom he believed | 1:38 | |
who gives life to the dead and calls into existence | 1:42 | |
the things that do not exist, | 1:48 | |
hoping against hope, he believed that he would become | 1:52 | |
the father of many nations according to what was said, | 1:57 | |
so numerous shall your descendants be. | 2:03 | |
He did not weaken in faith when he considered | 2:07 | |
his own body, which was already as good as dead, | 2:10 | |
for he was about 100 years old, | 2:16 | |
or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. | 2:19 | |
No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, | 2:24 | |
but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, | 2:31 | |
being fully convinced that God was able to do | 2:36 | |
what God had promised. | 2:42 | |
Therefore, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. | 2:45 | |
Now the words, it was reckoned to him, were written | 2:52 | |
not for his sake alone, but for ours also. | 2:56 | |
It will be reckoned to us who believe in him | 3:02 | |
who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, | 3:06 | |
who was handed over to death for our trespasses | 3:12 | |
and was raised for our justification. | 3:17 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 3:24 | |
- | Thanks be to God. | 3:27 |
- | The second reading is from the Gospel | 3:31 |
according to St. Mark, the 8th Chapter. | 3:33 | |
Then he began to teach them that the son of man | 3:40 | |
must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, | 3:43 | |
the chief priests and the scribes and to be killed | 3:50 | |
and after three days, rise again. | 3:55 | |
He said all this quite openly and Peter took him aside | 3:59 | |
and began to rebuke him, but turning and looking | 4:05 | |
at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, | 4:09 | |
"Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind | 4:14 | |
"not on divine things, but on human things." | 4:19 | |
He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, | 4:26 | |
"If any want to become my followers, let them deny | 4:31 | |
"themselves and take up their cross and follow me, | 4:36 | |
"for those who want to save their life will lose it | 4:44 | |
"and those who will lose their life for my sake | 4:50 | |
"and for the sake of the Gospel will save it, | 4:55 | |
"for what will it profit them to gain the whole world | 5:01 | |
"and forfeit their life? | 5:06 | |
"Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? | 5:09 | |
"Those who are ashamed of me and of my words | 5:16 | |
"in this adulterous and sinful generation, | 5:20 | |
"of them the son of man will also be ashamed | 5:25 | |
"when he comes in the glory of his father | 5:31 | |
"with the holy angels." | 5:34 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 5:38 | |
- | Thanks be to the Lord. | 5:40 |
- | Pop psychotherapist Scott Peck says that one of the main | 5:49 |
reasons why we need other people is that other people | 5:56 | |
provide what Peck calls friction. | 6:01 | |
The solitary person has no one to rub up against, | 6:06 | |
therefore no one there to smooth out rough edges | 6:10 | |
of the personality, no one to promote the warmth, | 6:15 | |
the energy, the creativity that comes from rubbing | 6:19 | |
up against others. | 6:22 | |
People give us friction, and I'm hoping that maybe | 6:25 | |
that's one reason why you come to church, | 6:30 | |
not just to rub up against other people | 6:34 | |
because we discourage that here among the undergraduates, | 6:36 | |
(congregation laughing) | 6:40 | |
particularly in church, | ||
but to rub up against the word of God. | 6:44 | |
Church is a place not where we snuggle up close to God, | 6:50 | |
but where in being met by God, we get friction | 6:58 | |
and in those moments, we realize that there is a distance | 7:05 | |
between us and God. | 7:12 | |
That's not what I was taught in seminary about preaching. | 7:15 | |
There, somebody told us the preachers stand in the pulpit | 7:19 | |
with a Bible in one hand and today's newspaper in the other. | 7:23 | |
In 20 minutes, the preacher seeks to narrow that gap, | 7:26 | |
that great gap between our fresh, new, modern world | 7:30 | |
and the ancient world of Scripture. | 7:35 | |
We moderns tend to think that way. | 7:40 | |
We characterize the distance between us and the Bible | 7:44 | |
as one of time, of a great gap of history. | 7:48 | |
That's the way modern people think. | 7:53 | |
We are privileged to live at the very summit | 7:56 | |
of human development, namely Durham and there, | 7:59 | |
from these serene heights we look down on everybody | 8:03 | |
who got here before us. | 8:06 | |
Is our problem with God just a matter of time, | 8:09 | |
a gap of history, years between us and God? | 8:13 | |
Now a Scripture like today's Gospel that makes you think | 8:20 | |
the gap is just, it's simply because of who God is | 8:25 | |
and who we are, to be brought on a Sunday | 8:30 | |
into the presence of a living God is sometimes to be made | 8:36 | |
aware of the gap between us and God | 8:41 | |
that has little to do with 2,000 years, | 8:46 | |
the gap, the distance is because we're unaccustomed | 8:51 | |
to living with a free, sovereign God. | 8:58 | |
We preachers, often in the interest of a kind of misguided | 9:04 | |
evangelism, are forever guilty of inappropriately | 9:09 | |
attempting to bridge that gap, to domesticate the Gospel, | 9:13 | |
to housebreak God, to produce a Gospel which is honey | 9:19 | |
to make the world's solutions go down a bit easier | 9:23 | |
rather than salt, rather than light. | 9:27 | |
Poor old church, they sometimes say. | 9:32 | |
You're just so out of date, out of touch. | 9:36 | |
You need to get the Gospel down to something | 9:39 | |
that anybody can just walk in here off the street and get, | 9:41 | |
something you can put on a bumper sticker, | 9:44 | |
a slogan that can be put on a church billboard | 9:47 | |
out on the front lawn. | 9:51 | |
Years ago, Raoul Howl interviewed laypeople | 9:53 | |
and probed your ideas about preaching | 9:58 | |
and Howl's most frequent lay complaint in sermons | 10:01 | |
was that sermons were just too long on analysis, | 10:10 | |
too short on solutions. | 10:13 | |
Tell me what I now need to do. | 10:17 | |
20 minutes or so, I want a resolution of life's conflicts, | 10:20 | |
answers to questions, solutions. | 10:24 | |
True, the Gospel can be the answer to some of our deepest | 10:29 | |
questions, solution to pressing problems, | 10:32 | |
yet before it's an answer, it's a question. | 10:38 | |
The question if this be God in the presence of this Jew | 10:41 | |
from Nazareth, well then who are we? | 10:47 | |
How then ought we to live? | 10:53 | |
Too often popular American evangelism presents the Gospel | 10:57 | |
as the solution to all our problems, the resolution | 11:02 | |
of all conflict, a technique for making nice people | 11:06 | |
just a bit nicer, successful people even more successful. | 11:12 | |
My life was on drugs, I was a mess, I was addicted | 11:18 | |
to various, I ate high cholesterol snacks. | 11:22 | |
Then I found Jesus and everything got fixed. | 11:26 | |
But there are these wonderful moments in Scripture | 11:34 | |
when Jesus appears downright uninterested | 11:39 | |
in getting close to us, in meeting or needs. | 11:43 | |
He seems more interested in increasing the distance | 11:49 | |
between himself and us. | 11:53 | |
At times, when he seems more interested in widening the gap | 11:57 | |
between us and God rather than bridging the gap, | 12:01 | |
like today's Gospel. | 12:08 | |
By now in Mark's Gospel, Jesus' disciples have been with him | 12:11 | |
for some time and maybe they think they've sort of gotten | 12:14 | |
the hang of what he's about, they kinda got him down | 12:18 | |
fairly well and then right there at that point, | 12:22 | |
Mark says Jesus began to teach them | 12:28 | |
the son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected | 12:32 | |
and be killed. | 12:39 | |
The shock is great. | 12:42 | |
Is this any way for a Messiah to act? | 12:45 | |
Peter took Jesus aside and Peter urged Jesus | 12:48 | |
to stop talking like that. | 12:50 | |
Such talk will cause people to have negative thoughts. | 12:52 | |
They might get depressed. | 12:56 | |
How do you expect us to attract people to a movement | 12:57 | |
that's headed in that direction? | 13:00 | |
Jesus rebukes Peter, Peter's rebuke with well, if anybody | 13:06 | |
wants to become my follower, then he ought to deny himself | 13:14 | |
and take up his cross and follow, for those who want | 13:19 | |
to save their life will lose it and those who lose | 13:23 | |
their life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel | 13:29 | |
will save it. | 13:34 | |
Strange kind of talk. | 13:38 | |
No doubt there were many that day who were following Jesus | 13:42 | |
precisely because they thought that by following | 13:48 | |
that they would save their lives, they would make | 13:51 | |
their lives more rewarding and fulfilling, | 13:54 | |
and now these tough words from Jesus. | 13:58 | |
Mark doesn't say it, but you kinda wonder if maybe | 14:01 | |
the crowds got smaller that day. | 14:06 | |
After this conflicted teaching, the crowds around Jesus | 14:10 | |
got smaller as the gap between us and Jesus got greater. | 14:13 | |
And I tell ya, as a preacher, this is hard | 14:21 | |
'cause I think I probably got in my head the notion | 14:25 | |
that my job as a preacher was to take Jesus | 14:28 | |
when he is most difficult and distant | 14:32 | |
and work it up in such a way that you sit there | 14:36 | |
hearing my sermon and you say to yourself | 14:40 | |
well, that's kinda what I've always thought. | 14:45 | |
Yeah, that makes sense to me. | 14:48 | |
Yeah, got it, yeah, okay. | 14:50 | |
Yerard Abling once said, "Theology is necessary | 14:52 | |
"in order to make preaching as difficult as it should be." | 14:58 | |
Whenever preaching gets easy, a kind of over-simplification | 15:04 | |
of the Gospel, rules for better living, proverbial wisdom | 15:07 | |
with a dash of pop psychology, | 15:12 | |
Leo Buscaglia dressed up like Jesus. | 15:15 | |
Well then, theology comes along | 15:18 | |
and it pushes preaching toward petulancy. | 15:20 | |
What Abling claims for theology can be true | 15:25 | |
for us in Sunday worship. | 15:29 | |
To rub up against the Bible is often a reminder | 15:33 | |
that well, we don't own God. | 15:37 | |
Scripture keeps making Jesus available to us | 15:42 | |
and at the same time, keeps Jesus at some distance from us | 15:45 | |
in order that that space between us and the throne of God | 15:53 | |
might be kept free and untamed and threatening, | 15:57 | |
and thereby demanding and thereby, life giving. | 16:03 | |
Poor disciples in Mark. | 16:09 | |
They've been following Jesus, they've been listening | 16:11 | |
to every word and here toward the end, | 16:13 | |
they don't have the foggiest notion of where he's going | 16:17 | |
or what he's up to. | 16:21 | |
Poor us. | 16:24 | |
Second Sunday of Lent. | 16:26 | |
Yeah, that in order to get close to Jesus. | 16:28 | |
But then we get Scripture and we sense a growing gap | 16:32 | |
between us and the Lord. | 16:35 | |
Well, we've come here to get things kind of fixed, | 16:39 | |
to get our lives and hear Jesus speak | 16:43 | |
of losing our lives, of taking up a cross and following. | 16:47 | |
Things can get rough walking up such a narrow path. | 16:55 | |
Richard Hayes and I are teaching a class together | 17:02 | |
in the seminary and the other day, Hayes noted | 17:05 | |
that the common lectionary, that table of Scripture | 17:08 | |
that we get our lessons from here each Sunday, | 17:11 | |
that in the lectionary, if you have a Scripture lesson | 17:15 | |
and you're reading along in the Scripture lesson | 17:20 | |
and suddenly there's a break in verses | 17:22 | |
and there's a gap of a few verses, then you pick up | 17:24 | |
some other verses, check out those verses | 17:26 | |
that got discarded in the lectionary and invariably, | 17:29 | |
says Hayes, you'll find that in some way or another, | 17:34 | |
they are verses of judgment, they are verses | 17:37 | |
when God gets wrathful and judgmental, | 17:40 | |
and those are the kind of verses | 17:50 | |
it's sometimes hard to take. | 17:51 | |
That way, Hayes says, if you can just eliminate | 17:56 | |
a few of those verses, you can make Jesus over | 17:58 | |
in anything you please. | 18:02 | |
We can lessen the gap, we can remake Jesus | 18:04 | |
until he looks just like us. | 18:08 | |
As Malcolm Muggeridge said, "Genesis says God said, | 18:11 | |
"'Let us make man through our own image,' and down | 18:16 | |
"through history, man has been attempted to return | 18:21 | |
"the favor to God, remaking God in our image." | 18:24 | |
But those wonderful, delicious moments when Jesus rebukes, | 18:31 | |
stands against us, judges, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" | 18:36 | |
Jesus says to his own disciples. | 18:42 | |
Such moments, we realize that Jesus, though he is God | 18:47 | |
with us, he's still at some distance from us. | 18:52 | |
He resists us, patiently, firmly teaches us. | 18:58 | |
He is determined to have us on God's terms | 19:05 | |
rather than acquiesce to our terms | 19:09 | |
and one of the great adventures being a Christian | 19:15 | |
is to get to follow that God. | 19:20 | |
I think I told some of you who accosted me at the front door | 19:26 | |
at the end of the service after I'd preached | 19:31 | |
this sermon on forgiveness. | 19:34 | |
"Do you mean to tell me," that's what she said | 19:39 | |
to me back in the narthex, "Do you mean to tell me | 19:41 | |
"that God expects me to forgive my abusive husband | 19:43 | |
"who made my life hell for 10 years till I finally | 19:47 | |
"got up the nerve to walk out on him? | 19:49 | |
"I'm supposed to forgive him?" | 19:51 | |
And I was thinking, "Now I remember why we don't preach | 19:55 | |
"on that subject that often here." | 19:58 | |
(congregation laughing) | 19:59 | |
And immediately moved in to my homiletical defensive | 20:01 | |
posture and said, "Look, we've only got 20 minutes. | 20:05 | |
"I can't qualify all this the way it needs to be. | 20:09 | |
"Spouse abuse is a terrible evil and I, I, I, | 20:11 | |
but, I, I, I. | 20:14 | |
"He did say 70 times seven and that's a lot | 20:16 | |
"of forgiveness, and he did say forgive your enemies. | 20:18 | |
"I can't think of a bigger enemy than your ex-husband | 20:22 | |
(congregation laughing) | 20:24 | |
"and I don't know | ||
"that I would say this, but I do believe Jesus, | 20:27 | |
"it sounds like something he might say." | 20:30 | |
(congregation laughing) | 20:35 | |
She drew herself up to her full height and said, | 20:37 | |
"Good, just checking. | 20:40 | |
"Thank you!" | 20:41 | |
(congregation laughing) | 20:43 | |
And I thought to myself, now who ordained me to protect | 20:45 | |
her from Jesus? | 20:49 | |
(congregation laughing) | 20:50 | |
Who gave me the right to say I'm sorry, | 20:52 | |
when you got called for baptism, I guess God made a mistake. | 20:56 | |
You look just as deceitful and cowardly as I am. | 20:59 | |
I guess no, these demands of course don't apply to you. | 21:03 | |
You're off the hook. | 21:07 | |
You ought to demand that Scripture is read | 21:11 | |
and that the word is preached in such a way | 21:16 | |
that we restore the dignity to your baptism, | 21:19 | |
that while you may have just thought that being a disciple | 21:25 | |
of Jesus was just a matter of bringing out the best in you | 21:29 | |
and little minor, moral tinkering to make you | 21:33 | |
even nicer, in moments like, say wait a minute, | 21:36 | |
Jesus is walking down a narrow road here | 21:40 | |
that everybody doesn't want to go. | 21:45 | |
This thing is bigger than I first imagined. | 21:48 | |
If you don't want that kind of risk, | 21:53 | |
then just, it would be good to be here, somewhere else. | 21:56 | |
Get the consolations of pop psychology or wherever | 22:02 | |
you can get it to help your life | 22:05 | |
be a little less miserable, or you can stick | 22:08 | |
with Jesus and be part of the adventure. | 22:12 | |
This is some journey we're on with Jesus. | 22:18 | |
In just a few weeks, this Lenten journey | 22:24 | |
with Jesus will be over. | 22:27 | |
We're gonna see where this path finally leads. | 22:30 | |
The cost of the trip is going to be made painfully | 22:34 | |
apparent for all to see as everybody gets a good view | 22:38 | |
as he is lifted up, lifted up on a cross | 22:43 | |
and we gathered with him toward the end | 22:52 | |
at a meal, a meal of Jesus and his best friends. | 22:54 | |
The table, a place of warm conviviality and socialization, | 23:00 | |
and it was there at the table that he took a piece of bread | 23:08 | |
and he took hold of a cup and he said, "This is my body, | 23:11 | |
"broken for you. | 23:20 | |
"This is my blood, poured out for you." | 23:22 | |
And in moments like that, we realize this journey | 23:31 | |
with Jesus can get rough, and yet it is a journey | 23:35 | |
that leads to life everlasting. | 23:42 | |
Amen. | 23:46 |