What's Goin' On?

A sermon preached by The Reverend Scott Dennis Nowack on March 25, 2012

at the First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas

What’s Goin’ On?

Jeremiah 31: 31-34

            Our Old Testament reading lands us in the middle of a traumatic time in the history of ancient Israel.  Most of the Israelites had been taken into exile by the Babylonians.  The once glorious city of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple, the centerpiece of the Jewish faith, were destroyed and lay in ruin.  Homes and marketplaces once filled with life are no more.  I can’t begin to imagine the shock of such a tragic event.  I can hear the people saying, “What’s goin’ on?  What's has happened?  Has God deserted us?  What’s goin’ on?” 

Up to this point the prophet Jeremiah had spoken of the judgement and wrath of God.  In our verses today, Jeremiah does not proclaim the judgement of God, but rather the hope God has for all people, even those who were left behind amongst the ruins of Jerusalem.

            The Israelites time and time again broke the old covenant God had established through Moses when God brought them out of slavery in Egypt.  The significance of this broken covenant is compared to breaking the covenant of marriage.  Because of Israel’s continued unfaithfulness, the old covenant is null and void.

            Why does God stick with them?  What is God doing?  God wants to do a new thing with God’s people.  He wants to follow a new approach.  God wants to make a new covenant, but he’s going to do it differently this time.  Jeremiah tells us that the new covenant will not be like the old one.  The new covenant will bring about an inward transformation of the human heart that will allow people to know God intimately.  Also included in the new deal is the complete forgiveness of the people’s sins, starting each of them off with a clean slate.

            God’s covenant with humanity would go from the law written on tablets of stone and stored in the Ark of the Covenant, to the law written on the heart of each person so that they would know God in a whole new way.  Through the new covenant, God wants to “brand” our hearts with the love, compassion, and knowledge of God.  God’s spirit will move the hearts of Israel to be obedient to God.  They will turn to God and obey God, not because they have to according to the law, but because they desire to do so.  The intent of the new covenant is that God’s people would have an obedient attitude towards the law of God.

            In other words, by forming a new covenant with humanity, God has boldly declared that he is not going anywhere.  He’s sticking around because he wants to do a new thing in the midst of all the hopelessness and uncertainty.  Despite the bleak conditions in Jerusalem, God is still there.  He hasn’t given up on his people.  God is offering the Israelites a message of hope and faith that in spite of all the traumatic changes in their lives, God will be there with them, but in a new way that they have never seen before. 

            We, too, live in a time of history that is undergoing major shifts and significant change.  New things are happening all around us, large and small, that may leave us asking the question, “What’s goin’ on?” 

            Our world is not the same today as it was 10 or 20 years ago.  Those who have jobs today are working harder for less money and working longer hours to make ends meet.  More and more women are working outside the home each year.  I heard on the news that the average employee today works 138 hours more per year than a generation ago.  That works out to be on average 4 weeks per year.  That’s a lot of time. 

            Things have loosened up on the TV, too.  Since the rating system was instituted along with the use of parental warnings at the beginning and during shows, there has been an increase in the use of foul language and an increased use of graphic, violent scenes and sexually explicit footage.  Our moral, ethical standards are being challenged and questioned everyday as you and I struggle against these destructive cultural forces.

            It’s no secret that we no longer live in a Christian-dominated culture.  There is a wide variety of spiritual belief systems to be embraced other than Christianity.  This is especially true among my generation and the youth and young adults of today.  We live in a spiritual marketplace where individuals are picking and choosing what aspects they like from various religions and spiritual practices.  There is a spiritual longing amongst young people today unlike any other time in history.  They are yearning for a spirituality that is authentic, rooted, and inclusive.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s tied to an institutional church or not.  It must be relevant and transformative.

            New technologies are developing at an accelerated rate.  The internet continues to bring about a revolution in how we communicate and relate to each other.  I bought a new car a few weeks ago.  Before I stepped into a single dealer showroom, I did my research on the Internet.  I checked kbb.com (Kelly’s Blue Book) for the value of my old car.  I subscribed to consumerreports.org to read up on the ratings they give cars.  I visited the websites of car makers to get the specs of vehicles, the options available and more.  I picked the make, model, options, my price range, indicated financing, and they told me whether or not my dream car existed and if so, where I could find it.  No more driving around from dealer to dealer, but I still had to haggle the sales rep about the price. 

We buy everything on the internet: diapers, clothing, gift cards, airline tickets, books, music, tools, and beauty products all right on your computer.  We do our banking and pay our bills on the Internet.  We connect to old and new friends and loved ones through social media websites such as facebook, twitter and others.  We carry smartphones that do just about anything a computer can do.  The tablet computer, iPads, Kindles, and the Nook, have started a revolution in the publishing industry; one that hasn’t been seen since the invention of the printing press.  It is certainly possible we will all use a tablet by 2015 and use less paper, too.  We are in the midst of a technological and cultural revolution where nothing is sacred.

            With all of these changes, we have new things happening here at FPC.  The youth of our church held a fundraiser in February to raise money for their mission trip to Louisville, Kentucky in June.  What’s the big deal?  Common practice for many years has been the prohibition of fundraisers in the church for anything.  Also, this mission trip is the first mission trip our church has sponsored in many years.  I am so excited for this trip and the amazing ministry our youth will bring to many people in need. 

            Our Mission Ministry Team and other church members are discerning what God is doing through the Saturday Bread ministry and our participation in Longview Interfaith Housing Network.  Good questions are being asked in an attempt to discern God’s plan for these special ministries and how to address the challenges they place before us.

God wants to lead us into a new future with new possibilities for ministry with a new hope found in God’s new covenant with us in Jesus Christ.

            God offers us this new covenant because God wants to do a new thing with you and me; a new covenant that will lead us to a new life with Him; one that will lead us through new possibilities, challenges, and obstacles.  It is a covenant that is bigger than any two stone tablets could hold.  It is higher than the highest mountain, wider than the widest valley, deeper than the deepest sea.  For the purpose of this new covenant is to revolutionize our existence and how we relate to God, to transform our human heart from the inside out that will allow us to know God more intimately and more fully. 

It is a transformation that will give us an obedient attitude towards the law of God.  The prophet Isaiah writes, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  God wants to do a new thing in your life and mine.  He wants to get into our hearts and transform them from within.  Will you let God do a new thing in your life?

            I welcome the future with open arms and a discerning heart.  You and I can face the future with the assurance that we do not face it alone.  We have a firm foundation upon which we can stand.  And that foundation is the new covenant, Jesus the Christ.  May God give us the strength and the courage to embrace the new things God will do in the days, months, and years to come.  Amen.

The Way Out

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on March 18, 2012

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

The Way Out

Numbers 21:4-9

John 3:14-21

We didn’t make it to the Danville corn maze this fall.  I know.  It’s right around the corner from our house.  Still, we didn’t get there.  I have some familiarity with corn mazes.  I like the challenge of finding my way through the numerous paths cut through corn stalk walls that tower over even the tallest amongst us. 

There’s one in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, just off the Pennsylvania turnpike in Lancaster County.  You may have seen it on “John and Kate Plus Eight”.  They visited this corn maze on one of their episodes several years ago.

I took our youth group there on a Friday night in early fall to go through the corn maze.  We all had maps of the maze.  We split up into groups and entered into the maze. After an hour or so, we were lost, even with a map.  It wasn’t a precise map.  It was hand drawn, so some of it was a little bit off.  I eventually lost my group and proceeded to get through the maze to the finish line.  I was the only one to get through the whole thing.  In fact, I could hear my kids screaming, “how do I get out of here?” and “where’s the exit?  Where’s the entrance?”  They were so turned around and mixed up they couldn’t find their way out.  One of the other adults and I went in to round them up and show them the way out.  As hard as they tried, they couldn’t save themselves from the maze.  They needed someone to show them the way out.

Have you ever gotten so lost that you couldn’t find your way out?  Have you ever gotten so mixed up, turned around upside down that you couldn’t find the right way to go?  Unless I’ve missed my guess, at one time or another, we have all found ourselves stuck in a moment that we couldn’t get out of on our own; one we couldn’t solve by ourselves.  Times when we needed help; when we needed someone we could trust and rely on.  We need a savior.

Our Old Testament reading this morning draws from the story of Israel’s wandering through the Sinai wilderness.  It depicts yet another complaint story; an incident in which the people of Israel become their own worst enemy by rebelling against God. With their complaints against God and against Moses, they succeed in provoking God to punishment. When they repent of their behavior, God in turn provides them with the means for escaping the consequences of their own deeds. God’s mercy delivers those who turn to God.[1]

God provides the people a way out of their situation – the bronze serpent; a serpent-on-a-stick.  What’s up with that?  A serpent-on-a-stick?  Anthropologists would have a field day with this one! They'd flip open their notebooks and write it up as a totem, a fetish, a talisman. "Such things are prized by primitive cultures," they would pontificate. "These sticks were used to ward off plagues and evil spirits. Displaying an image of the thing one most fears unleashes a certain sympathetic magic that causes its maker to feel protected." If you want to keep the lions away, you carve a statue of a lion and hang it outside your tent. Primitive peoples the world over practice this sort of sympathetic magic -- but it's a shocker to discover it here, in the Bible.

Serpent worship was found throughout in the ancient world.  Many ancient peoples believed there was a direct relationship between snakes and healing.  It was widely believed in ancient times that snake venom was a substance that, when injected into the bloodstream in sufficient quantities, could kill, yet which in smaller doses could have a therapeutic effect.

To this day, the anti-venom used to combat snake bites is prepared from the actual venom of snakes, diluted and injected into a domesticated animal such as a horse or sheep.  The animal develops an immune reaction to the venom, producing antibodies that are then harvested from the animal’s blood and turned into medicine.  Fight fire with fire, as the old saying goes; the bronze serpent was used to fight off the poisonous living serpents.

Moses raises the bronze serpent in the wilderness so the people have a way out.  If they looked upon it, they would live.  The people needed only to have faith in God’s instruction and commands regarding the statue.  When we have faith in God, we are lifted up from our despair, our sins, our insecurities, our wretchedness, our secrets, our anxieties, our need to be perfect, our expectations of ourselves and those placed upon us.  We get trapped, we get stuck, and we need a way out.  And the way is faith in Jesus Christ.

God is always willing to act to save us from ourselves and from the places we find ourselves in.  Let’s face it, life is hard, very hard. You make one wrong turn and you’re headed in the wrong direction.  Make one wrong decision and opportunities are lost and squandered. 

Just one more bet, you justify to yourself, because you know you’ll win it all back and more.  Just one more time viewing porn on the internet because you know you’re not addicted to it.  Are you?  Just one more donut, one more beef brisket, one more chicken burrito; I’ll start my new diet tomorrow.  Just one more is all it takes to a lot more; when we begin heading down the wrong path in life; to get stuck in a place you can’t get out of yourself. 

Every time we head down the wrong path, every time we find ourselves hiding our evil actions, thoughts and feelings, every time we sin against God and one another, we live in darkness.  We are in the darkness so our sinful actions are not exposed or seen by God or others.

But every time we do what is right, what is true, we shine the light of Christ.  When we love God and our neighbor as ourselves we shine the light of Christ.  When we give our money, our time and our talents to help the church and others in need, we shine the light of Christ.  When we shine the light of Christ, the light breaks through the darkness, turns our mourning turns to dancing, our tears into a new song and God’s love in Christ Jesus shows us the way out of darkness, for he is the way out.  Jesus is the way out.

The forcefulness with which these passages recall God’s actions for human salvation evokes the question, “Why?” Why does God persist in saving humankind, when humankind will itself persist in rebellion and sin? The answer comes in the familiar language of John 3:16: God acts again and again for the benefit of human beings because God loves the world in spite of itself and God is the only one who can give us the way out. Even as the world resists and opposes God’s Son, God persists in loving the world.[2]

Maybe God raises Jesus on the cross for all to see, so the people of the world may look on him and live. Maybe if the bronze serpent is a way for ancient peoples to deal with their fear of snakebite, then maybe the cross of Jesus Christ is the way believers of every era deal with their fear of death. In the wilderness, Moses elevates an image of the thing ancient Israel most fears. On Calvary's hill, God raises up an image of the thing we most fear. Somehow, in gazing upon God's crucified Son, we understand, in a way beyond words, that there is no pit we can fall into; no condition we can suffer from; no suffering of any kind, beyond the reach of our Lord's healing and sustaining love. 

God has given us the way out of our sinful life to a new life in Christ because God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love.[3]

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[1] Texts for Preaching – Year B. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press pp.220.

[2] Texts for Preaching – Year B. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press pp.220-221.

[3] Barclay, William. The Gospel of John vol.1, Daily Study Bible Series. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977) p. 138.

Sola Fide

A sermon preached by The Reverend Scott D. Nowack on March 4, 2012

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“Sola Fide”

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Romans 4:13-25

If you awoke in the middle of the night to discover that your house were burning, and every second remaining in the inferno put your own life at risk, what would you grab -- not counting people or pets -- on your way out? Your answer can shed light on your personality and core values.

Anyway, what would you say? What would you grab? Do you gather your most costly items: Jewelry, a laptop, antiques, bonds or cash from the safe? Do you grab what is most sentimental to you: Pictures of the children, grandma's quilt, your journals, a letter written from your father before he passed away? Or do you focus on the most practical items: Passport, phone, backup hard drive, wallet, backing the car out of the garage?

To all our parents, what would your kids take on the way out? Small children may grab their favorite toy and their favorite stuffed animal or blanket. Older youth may grab their mobile phone, their Wii or XBOX or PlayStation, or their favorite jeans.

There is a community photo blog called www.theburninghouse.com, created by photographer Foster Huntington that is based on this very question. People post a picture of all the things they would grab laid out on the floor or table somewhere and provide a written description of what is in the picture. Anyone is allowed to comment on these posted pictures. Some unusual things listed include a childhood toy robot, a mounted deer hoof, an ABBA record, a feather collection and a slice of pizza.

You can learn a lot about a person from this simple question. You get a snapshot of ones core values and personality traits. And our text in Romans poses a similar question to us: If it was your life that was coming to an end and not your house, what would you carry with you into eternity?

Billy Graham used to pose the question: "If you were to die tonight and stand before God, and God were to say to you, 'Why should I let you into heaven?' what would you say?" What is Paul’s answer? Not a thing, except the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Throughout his letter to the Roman church, Paul has argued that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, are separated from God (Romans 3:23). But now Paul also suggests that the grace and mercy of God has been extended to all, Jew and Gentile alike, including the very righteousness of Christ to all who believe. This change of heart and mind comes to us through sola fide, faith alone. It secures a judgment that we're not guilty, an acquittal, if you will. And this astonishing verdict is the result of nothing humans have done, but is the gift of God, given freely to us.

Paul is also refuting theoretical objections from Jewish opposition who might claim their ancestry or adherence to the law as worthy of notice, or as qualifying at the very least for special consideration. God’s promise to Abraham was based on faith and not on the Law. Old Testament law cannot bridge the gap between us and God, only Christ can do that. Paul stresses that the law was given not to bring about redemption, but to point out to us our great need for it.

Based strictly on the Law, Abraham had a great résumé that could certainly earn him favor with God: he obediently agreed to move his family to new lands, hoped in God to fulfill the promise regarding his offspring (v. 18), he was faithful during his test with Issac, buried his wife in Canaan before seeing the fulfillment of all God's promises and became the father of many nations.

Despite these great, amazing works, "his faith 'was reckoned to him as righteousness'" (v. 22). It was through his faith that he was made right with God, that he was redeemed and made righteous. And likewise for all of us after Abraham, our right standing with God "will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead" (v. 24).

So what about us? If our life were coming to an end and not our house, what should we bring in our arms to present to God? Our good works? Our religious laws? The Christian legacy of our family? Our denominational affiliation? The correct doctrine of our faith tradition? Or a lifetime of prayer and love of the Scriptures? All we need to bring is simply faith in Jesus Christ.

In view of his sola fide understanding of justification in Romans, Luther stated that "faith takes hold of Christ." Faith does not claim merit. It does not self-justify through good works. For Luther, this taking hold of Christ was truly being seized by him. Like a strong arm extended over the cliff edge to one precariously clinging to his endangered life, we reach for Christ who has grabbed and pulled us out of our sinfulness and into a new relationship in himself.

The implication for each of us of a right relationship with God through faith in Christ alone is that there is nothing we can do that will make God love us more than he already does. At the same time, we can’t do anything that will cause God to love us any less than he already does. Recognizing the massive gap between what most of us believe about the love of God and live regarding it, Brennan Manning said, "The most difficult part of mature faith is allowing yourself in your brokenness to be the object of the vast delight of the risen Jesus." Since we are justified by Christ, we must do the hard work of believing God loves us, allowing ourselves to feel loved by him, and then living in his amazing love.

A second implication is living our life of faith that goes beyond performance. In his book The Search for Significance, author Robert McGee suggests that for many Christians, there is a subtle and unexamined equation to our faith: Spiritual Self-Worth = Performance + Others' Opinions.[1] To feel good about our relationship with God, we need to pray more, sin less, love hard people, serve in hard ministries. The performance list goes on. McGee's answer to this dysfunctional formula is simply the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

He asks confrontational questions to those trapped living a life based on works and not faith: "When God considers you, does God deceive himself in some way or does God know who you truly are? If you think of yourself differently than God thinks of you, who is mistaken, you or God?" Through justification by faith, Christ's redemptive work replaces our work, and gets us to see ourselves as God does.

A third implication of justification by faith alone comes from author Neil Anderson. He presents to us an interesting experiment. Ask a Christian who they are in relation to their faith, and they'll probably answer with denominational affiliation or doctrinal statement, or they'll speak about their gifts or roles in the church. But is this who they are? How we live our faith does not determine who we are. Who we are determines what we do, think, and feel.[2]

Paul argues elsewhere that Christians are new creations; we are justified by Christ as children of God. Christ is not ashamed to call us "brothers and sisters." We are sheep of his pasture and the work of his hand. We are saints, not sinners. That which God says is true of us, is true of us, whether we believe those truths or not. It doesn't matter how we feel about them. It doesn't matter how our past prepares us to be able to trust in them.

As we look at Paul's message of justification by faith, one major point stands out: "That which God requires, God provides." If we want to emerge from the dark depths of false beliefs and expectations, we only need to pack one thing to take with us. It’s the one thing that God provides us through faith in Jesus Christ: amazing grace as we stand and walk with God, for now and all eternity. Amen.

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[1] McGee, Robert S. The Search for Significance. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

[2] Anderson, Neil T. Victory Over the Darkness.  Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1990.

Occupy Temple Court

A sermon preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on March 11, 2012

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

Occupy Temple Court

Exodus 20:1-17

John 2:13-22

A lot can change in the blink of a decade.

In 2001, business author Jim Collins wrote the book, Good to Great, as a sequel to his other groundbreaking work, Built to Last. Both books were aimed at profiling companies that had "made the leap" to greatness and were "built to last" well into the future.[i]  One example from these books was Circuit City.  Ten years ago Circuit City was the leader in the retail electronics industry.  It blew ahead of General Electric, the long-time standard bearer.  The stock value for Fannie Mae was well ahead of companies like Coca-Cola.  Blockbuster Video, Borders, and Circuit City were running on all cylinders; the future looked so bright that there was no limit on how far they would go. 

Ten years later, these thriving companies, the standard bearers of their industries, went far, very far, so far that they went over the cliff and crashed in the valley below.  Blockbuster, Borders, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Pontiac, Hummer, Newsweek and Circuit City have all closed up shop.  Other companies have been bailed out hoping to adapt and change, while others are still heading straight for the great abyss of bankruptcy and closure.

In 2009, Jim Collins, with a humble spirit, wrote a new book entitled, “How the Mighty Have Fallen”.  He re-examined his research to find any warning signs that indicate what happened to these companies, what caused their fall from prominence.

In this book, Collins proposes five stages that mark the decline of once-great companies.  As I share these stages with you, I think it’s fair to say that parallels can be drawn to the decline of the Christian church in Western culture.

Stage 1: Hubris born from success. A successful company begins to believe its own press and becomes enamored with itself. The company becomes dogmatic about its products and practices and fails to question their relevance when conditions change.
Stage 2: The undisciplined pursuit of more. The company strays from the disciplined creativity that made it great in the first place, making leaps into places outside the original realm of success and growing so fast that excellence is sacrificed for expediency.
Stage 3: Denial of risk and peril. Leaders begin to deny that anything is wrong, and refuse to hear bad news, putting a positive spin on everything. They blame external factors instead of taking responsibility.
Stage 4: Grasping for salvation. The company begins to look for a quick fix to its problems, and begins grasping at straws to stop the decline. Common "saviors" for a company in this position are the hiring of a charismatic leader, radical restructuring, focusing on a revolutionary new product, or other reactive behaviors and strategies.
Stage 5: Capitulation to irrelevance or death. In this stage, the company's spirit and financial strength have eroded to the point of despair. Leaders and team members give up hope and the institution slides into insignificance and eventual death.[ii]

These five factors can eventually put any business out of business.  But leaders can stop any decline by taking drastic action to get the company back to its core principles, values and practices.  The best leaders and the best companies are able to come back because they are invested in a vision for creating something great.  They never give up hope for a brighter future.

            Mr. Collins could easily be describing the troubles of the temple of Jesus’ day or the condition of the church in our own town.  Jesus has come to work and he means business.  His entrance is an ultimatum to the powers that be: the mighty will fall. 

            This episode in the scriptures about Jesus appears in all four Gospels.  While the others place the story in the context of Holy Week, John includes at the beginning of his gospel.  The fact that it is in all four gospels tells us that this was a key event of Jesus’ life.  It served as a powerful reminder to the early church that “any institution that claims to be of God is doomed to failure if it refuses to pay attention to God’s own core purposes and values”.[iii]  The business of the temple had gotten away from its core purposes and values.  They were following the same steps of decline followed by the companies that failed in the past decade.  The temple had lost its luster.  It had lost its purpose.

The sacrificial system in the temple had evolved, over the centuries, into an efficient machine for fleecing rich and poor alike, earning a great deal of money for the insiders who ran it. If you went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, your goal was to sacrifice an animal, according to the law of Moses. You could bring your own sacrificial animal, of course, but many who had journeyed from afar found it easier to purchase a beast locally, at a steep markup.

The law said you had to present a perfect animal, without mark or blemish. Unless you purchased a pre-approved animal within the temple precincts, you had to bring your offering before an inspector, who would tell you whether or not it made the grade. The inspectors were in cahoots with the animal-sellers, who knew how to grease their palms with silver. Rarely did they grant approval for a sacrificial animal brought in from the outside.

There was something else. If you had journeyed from one of the lands of the Jewish diaspora -- Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, even distant Rome -- the coins jingling in your purse would have been imperial coins, engraved with the Emperor's likeness. Such graven images violated the Second Commandment, and so were forbidden within the temple precincts. In order to buy yourself a sacrificial animal, you had to first exchange your Roman money for image-free Judean coins. The money changers, who had a monopoly, charged exorbitant commissions, but the poor pilgrims had no recourse. They got them coming and going, those temple merchants.

The reason Jesus raged through the temple had nothing to do with the proximity of money to a place of worship, as some modern commentators have assumed. His anger was sparked by injustice: the fact that the temple had been transformed into a corrupt machine for cheating pilgrims out of their life savings.  What enraged Jesus was that pilgrims to the Passover who could ill afford it, were being fleeced at an outrageous rate by the money-changers.  The exploitation of the pilgrims by men without a conscience moved Jesus to immediate wrath.

So Jesus walks right in and drives out the sellers who have turned the temple court into a shopping mall.  “Jesus was occupying Wall Street, as it were.  He announced a foreclosure on the temple but, like a passionate and visionary leader, announced that a new initiative would take its place.  The temple would be destroyed, but a new one would be raised up: the temple of his own body.”[iv]  Jesus came to do for us what the temple could not.  Jesus gave life away rather than collect power for himself.  With his actions in the temple, he took on the prevailing religious worldview of his day risking death on the cross knowing that this was the only way to save the world.  Jesus displays for us that to go from good to great is the path of suffering and self-denial and not the exploitation of others.

Jesus’ actions challenge us as a church today as to “whether we are faithful to his call or ready for a fall.”[v] 

If Jesus were to come occupy our church, what would he want to drive out in order to accomplish his purposes through us?  What practices or programs or perceptions do we need to discontinue in order to be Christ in our time?  What would it mean for Jesus to put our church out of business in order to start something new?

Jesus wants to challenge us as a church family to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit in this time and place.  We can no longer afford ‘business as usual’.  What patterns and traditions are getting in our way from being Christ’s church in 2012?  What is Christ’s main focus for our ministry here?  By what core purpose and values do we serve?  How we answer these questions will determine our viability as the body of Christ in our town and the world?

             May we be the leaders and disciples of Christ willing to take drastic action to get back to our church’s core principles, values and practices.  May we be willing to invest in a vision for creating something great.  We will never give up hope for a brighter future.  Amen.

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[i] Collins, Jim. Good to Great. New York: Collins, 2001.

[ii] Collins, Jim. "How the Mighty Fall: A Primer on the Warning Signs." Book Excerpt. Bloomberg Businessweek website. May 14, 2009.

[iii] Jesus Puts Business Out of Business. March/April 2012, vol. 24, No.2. of Homileticsonline.com (Canton: Communication Resources, Inc. 2012) p.16.

[iv] [iv] Jesus Puts Business Out of Business. March/April 2012, vol. 24, No.2. of Homileticsonline.com (Canton: Communication Resources, Inc. 2012) p.17.

[v] [v] Jesus Puts Business Out of Business. March/April 2012, vol. 24, No.2. of Homileticsonline.com (Canton: Communication Resources, Inc. 2012) p.17.

Ash Wednesday: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A sermon preached by The Reverend Scott D. Nowack

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas

on Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18

I think it is fair to say that nobody likes a show-off.  You know whom I’m talking about.  There was the kid from grade school who bragged about how fast he or she could run.  Or the kid who always talked about how great he or she was playing the piano.  Or the kid who never seemed to be able to tell you enough times about how many goals he or she scored last season in soccer. 

Indeed, there are adults who love to show-off.  There is the neighbor bragging about their new car; or the corporate executive bragging about how once again they have broken the company sales record.  And there are the parents who speak incessantly about how perfect their children are, bragging about all their numerous achievements and how their children do no wrong.  Nobody likes a show-off.

            Tonight we discover Jesus has an important message for all of us “show offs”.  Jesus is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount teaching us what it means to be an obedient Christian and what it means to be right with God.  In chapter 5, Jesus gave us the WHAT of the Christian life and now in chapter 6, Jesus teaches us the HOW: how we are to be righteous.

            Jesus illustrates this with the “three pillars” of Jewish piety: almsgiving, prayer and fasting.  These three pillars are not a part of the Jew’s public or corporate worship, but rather they are examples of ones personal devotion.  These were religious obligations used to make up for breaking a Commandment or if one wished to go beyond the commandments to earn extra merit and gain more righteousness for oneself.

            What do these pillars mean and what do they represent?  First, almsgiving, or to give alms, means to give money to the poor.  In Jesus’ day, this was seen as a religious obligation and not merely a humanitarian one.  Giving away significant amounts of money was also seen as a sign of power.  Many of those who could give away money wanted everyone to see and know that they could, so often the places where alms were given were in highly visible public places.  Busy streets and raging marketplaces were the locations of choice.  It would be like standing on the 50-yard line at the Cowboys Stadium during the halftime of a football game announcing to the world you are going to give away a million dollars to a family in need. 

It is not that Jesus condemns helping others.  In fact, he encourages us to do so and to do so generously.  What Jesus does condemn is “showing off” to the world your generosity.  Jesus also says, “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”  What Jesus is saying here is that when you give alms, when you give money, gifts, or your time to those in need, don’t be a show-off!!!  Don’t brag about it!!!  Do it in secret.  Do it anonymously.  For the invisible God that sees and knows all things will reward you in full.

            And with prayer, Jesus is not condemning public or corporate prayer.  His concern is not with prayer done inside the synagogue.  His concern is with private prayers done outside the synagogue.  It was customary for Jews in ancient Palestine to pause in whatever they were doing in mid-afternoon each day in order to offer prayers in conjunction with the evening sacrifice in the temple.  The “show-offs” or the “hypocrites” of Jesus’ day would recite their private prayers in the most visible way like they would with almsgiving.  They often would stand on wide, busy streets filled with lots of people making sure they were seen being holy.  They were looking for and seeking human approval.  Thus, their prayers are directed not to God, but to their human audience.  It is from their human audience, not God in heaven, that the hypocrites will receive their reward.  Jesus’ point is clear: all private prayer must be directed to God alone.

            In the time of Jesus, fasting was not only a Jewish religious obligation on high holy days, but a cultural norm as well.  Many who engaged in fasting would try to look tired, exhausted, worn out, and appear as though they were in great pain.  These “hypocrites” wanted to show the world that because they were fasting, they were holy and righteous people. 

            Jesus teaches us that if you are going to fast, keep it between you and God.  The Bible says, “Put oil on your head and wash your face.”  The rest of the world doesn’t need to know.  And what is done in secret, will be seen by your Father in heaven and he will reward you in full.

            So what does all this mean for each of us today?     

We are like those hypocrites in that what people see on the outside isn’t always the same as what is on the inside.  We essentially live two lives.  Each of us has an outside life and an inside life.  I refer to this phenomenon as “The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Syndrome”.  The outside life is what everybody sees, hears, and knows about us.  It is the mask we wear.  We are concerned with what clothes we wear, the size of our house, the type of car we own, and where we go on vacation year in and year out.  In time, our outside life becomes a shield of sorts completely covering our inside life.

            Now, our inside life is what only you and God can see and know.  All your unexpressed thoughts, fears, dreams, and secrets are known by God.  God knows whether you are telling a lie, or telling the truth.  God knows all your problems, and all your troubles.  Most of all, God knows the real you.  God knows the real you.  God knows how you truly feel about yourself and what is truly in your heart.  This includes all those secrets that we don’t want anyone else to know and all those times we speak negatively about someone in our heart.  God knows every letter of every word we think and say.

            I can’t begin to count the number of times that I have found myself, a caring, sensitive, loving man of God, in my car alone in traffic jams getting mad and yelling at the cars around me.  When I am alone, I don’t always take the time to pray to God like I would with all of you here in church.  On the outside I may appear to have it all together and under control, but on the inside I am all too often struggling to keep the various parts of my life in order and in tact.

            And nobody is immune from this.  Each of us has the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Syndrome”.  We live two lives, which all too often exist in opposition to each other.  How can we do away with this nasty syndrome by which we have found ourselves infected? Where do we begin?

            We begin from within.  We must look at ourselves, and realize that we are indeed living two lives; two lives, which do not exist in harmony with each other.  We must then desire a change of heart in our relationship with God because this lack of harmony leads us to sin against God and our neighbor.  For Christ loves us the way we are, but too much to let us stay that way.

            And once we have recognized that we have sinned, we must repent or turn away from our sinful and corrupt lives.  We must come before Our God Our Creator with a humble spirit, expressing our desire to sin no more, to stop living two separate lives, to change our hearts and to transform our whole selves.  It is only when we come before God, when we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, through the workings of the Holy Spirit that Christ will enter our hearts and begin to transform our inside and our outside lives to live in harmony.  And as we are transformed, we become re-oriented and re-focused with Christ at the center of our lives.  Every time this happens, we become closer and closer to God.  We enter into a deepened communion with God.  This is the reward that Jesus talks about in our text.  Every time we repent of our sins and ask God for forgiveness with humble hearts, we are transformed into the people that God intends us to be: holy and righteous people.  Brothers and sisters, this is the Good News!  This is the Gospel!  This is what Jesus was sent to proclaim, “The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe the good news.”

            Today is Ash Wednesday, the day of repentance, so let us remember that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We all need to ask God to create in each of us a clean heart and to renew a right spirit within us.  We all need to turn away from our sins and shortcomings in order to restore in us the joy of Christ’s salvation and to sustain in us a willing spirit.  If not, we will be nothing more than the hypocrites of our text; the hypocrites striving for human approval, rather than God’s saving love and grace. 

Jesus proclaims to us, “Repent or perish.”  So what do we do?  Are we going to be a show-off?  Or are we going to repent of our sinful natures, accept Christ into our hearts, and come into a deeper, closer relationship with God?  My friends, for all who exalt themselves before others will be humbled, and all those who humble themselves before God will be exalted.

Turn away from sin and seek the love of God with humble hearts.  Amen.

To Hell and Back

A sermon preached by The Reverend Scott D. Nowack on February 26, 2012

at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.

“To Hell and Back”

Genesis 9:8-17

1 Peter 3:18-22

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth and took it home so he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. One day a small opening appeared. The man sat and watched the moth for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. To the man it appeared as if the moth had gotten as far as it could in breaking out of the cocoon and was stuck.

Out of kindness the man decided to help the moth. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon so that the moth could get out. Soon the moth emerged, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the moth, expecting that in time the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would simultaneously contract to its proper size.

Neither happened. In fact, that little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.

The man in his kindness and haste didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings so that the moth would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Just as the moth could only achieve freedom and flight as a result of struggling, we often need to struggle to become all God intends for us to be. Sometimes we wish that God would remove our struggles and take away all the obstacles; but just as the man crippled the emperor moth, so we would be crippled if God did that for us. 

The suffering mentioned in 1 Peter is not the meaningless suffering and anguish that comes to victims of accidents and natural disasters or to sufferers from birth defects and cancerous cells; it’s not the unavoidable tragedies against which there is no immunity. 

The suffering here is caused how others react to you doing what is good and right and pleasing to God.  It is the suffering one could easily avoid by choosing not to swim against the current, to go against the flow of the culture.

Our lesson in First Peter provides the basis for Christians not to conform to this world; to go against the flow.  First, Christ’s suffering becomes THE example for all Christians.  If we are true disciples of the crucified Jesus then we should not expect anything less than opposition from a hostile culture.  We are called to live with gentleness and reverence, so we should not go looking for trouble or provoke persecution but neither should it come as a surprise.

This may sound strange to us who live in a nation that is relatively tolerant of religion and where only fanatics voice and promote passionate opposition.  The text pushes you and me to see ourselves as “resident aliens”, living in the culture but not of the culture; to be in the world but not of the world.

Second, the text speaks of Christ’s unique action, suffering “for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous,” dying, preaching to the spirits in prison, being raised from the dead, ascending into heaven and in control of angels and heavenly powers.  I think what enables us as nonconformist Christians not to fear what the Gentiles fear, and not to be intimidated in the face of opposition, is the redemptive journey of Jesus through suffering to exaltation, a journey that brings all people to God.  Being grounded and planted in the Gospel not only makes us vulnerable to suffering; it also sustains us to push through in reverent fear of the one who made us.  We conform to the one who sits in the seat of ultimate authority.

Part of the redemptive journey of Christ includes preaching to the spirits in prison.  Exactly what this means is not totally clear.  It appears to affirm that Christ’s redemptive work on the cross applies to all who died before his coming; nobody is cut off from the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ, not even the horrible, wicked generation of Noah’s lifetime.  They are not separated from the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

To hell and back: Can you remember a time in your life when you experienced suffering and hardship that can only be described, “I’ve been to hell and back again?”  Ask the recovering alcoholic or drug addict who have suffered a great deal because of their illness and they’ll tell you: “I’ve been to hell and back again.”  Ask the parent who watched their little girl suffer through leukemia for many years be declared cancer free and they’ll tell you: “I’ve been to hell and back again.”  Ask the woman who was raped and she’ll tell you about her ordeal: “I’ve been to hell and back again.”  We’ve all been through times of great suffering that feel like we’ve been to hell and back.

“In Denver, Colorado, two brothers embraced before going into surgery for a liver transplant.  Ryan Arnold was donating a part of his liver so that his older brother Chad Arnold, who had an incurable liver disease, could live.  This type of surgery is rare and not without risk.  After what seemed to be a successful surgery, complications arose.  Within four days, the donor Ryan Arnold died while his brother Chad lived…In a world in which faith is often ridiculed and marginalized, Ryan Arnold, husband and father of three children, simply lived out his faith.  His words, spoken minutes before his surgery to his brother telling him that he was “worth it”, causes us to catch a glimpse of how God views us.  His faith told him that love has the power to forever change the life of another.”[1]

God doesn’t take away our problems, sufferings, and difficulties, but he promises to be with us, to walk beside us, in the midst of them and to use our sufferings to restore us, making us into better, stronger people.  God gives us a hope that we have been saved by grace in Jesus Christ.  God gives us a hope that there is no place that far that Christ can’t reach us.  God gives us a hope that we’ve been given God’s grace through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  God gives us a hope that somehow, someway the quality of life among us “resident aliens” will transform the world.  Amen.

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[1] Shuler, Rev. Bill. A Brother’s Ultimate Sacrifice – A Story of Faith Amidst Suffering. FoxNews.com; August 21,2010.