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This week has been pretty amazing. Susan (my wife) and I were out for live music three nights. I have put tons of pictures up on my Facebook page and some on my MySpace page from The Show on Wednesday night. It was amazing!
Inspiration Inspirational
If you were here in February and remember the gist from my preaching then, you might recognize that I am have some fairly strong book-of-James tendencies.
14What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.The book of James, particularly chapter 2, speaks so strongly about living out your faith that Martin Luther felt it undermined the fact that our salvation is a product of grace, not by any work we can do. But I believe the idea of living out the gospel is extremely important in post-modern twenty-first century America. We live in an age where our faith and our culture have parted. We have made faith a private matter that, in some case, we dare not let impact how we interact with the world. Dr. Barry Bryant, formerly a church history professor at Memphis Theological Seminary, has said that a major turn in American History came when we extended the language in the constitution meant to prevent government from meddling with religious practice to take on new meaning effectively removing Christ from our culture. Those of us in middle age have grown up in a culture that views religion as a deeply personal thing, and views anything public to be in the dominion of the government. My grandmother is soon turning 100. She, and others in her age cohort, know of a time when it was not the government who rallied to help people down on their luck—it was the churches. Just glancing back over history before the twentieth century places the church in the center of education, health care, and taking care of the needs of the poor. Now, we have given all that over to the government and have pushed Christianity out of the mainstream and into our private, personal lives. The world at large no longer sees Christianity as vital and invigorating because we are a generation that has gone to great lengths separate Christ from culture at large. In doing so, we sometimes mask our faith altogether such that, even when we do act as God would have us act, the reason we are acting goes unknown. Sometimes, we attribute our being people of integrity to Steven Covey instead of to the fact that we are Christians. We discipline our bodies because it is healthy to do son—not because our bodies are the temple of God. We give to the poor for the tax break, not because we are instructed to do so in the Bible. Even when we do act in the way God would have us act, the world fails to see God’s love in it. The time has long past for us to infuse our faith into the world around us. C. S. Lewis discussed this idea in the middle of the last century: "What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects -- with their Christianity latent... Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today and tomorrow) in the particular language of our own age.”How then, do we infuse our faith into our world? How do we live out the Gospel? Matthew 25 34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'Today’s sermon actually began with the liturgy last week from the Prayer of Confession. As we prayed together last week, I was surprised, because the topics of the prayer had been on the list of topics I considered for last week’s sermon. You have heard that sermon, today. Let me read the confession from last week: Forgiving God, we are hardly worthy of the bounteous blessings You have bestowed upon us. We sincerely confess that we have often been self-righteous and self-centered and, as a result, have not lived out the Gospel. There have been far too many times when the hungry have remained unfed, when we could have fed them. Hunger: In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"There have been far too many times when the thirsty have remained parched, when we could have quenched their dryness. Water-related disease is the single largest killer of infants in developing countries—diarrhea alone causes 1.8 million child deaths each year—and access to safe water is the most important factor in the survival of children under the age of five. Nearly half of all people in developing countries are suffering from water-related health problems. The annual number of deaths from water-related diseases is six times greater than the number of deaths from armed violence. There have been far too many times when a stranger has remained outside, when we could have invited them in. During 2001, no fewer than 7,000 unduplicated people were literally homeless for some period of time, receiving shelter, housing, and/or services from the local network of service providers. Included in this number were 741 families with approximately 1,700 children -- enough children to fill three large elementary schools. In addition to these numbers, another 1,309 individuals and 2,349 families with an estimated 5,400 children requested, but did not access, emergency shelter or transitional housing. On any given night in Memphis/Shelby County, Tennessee, approximately 2,000 people are literally homeless--in emergency shelters, transitional or permanent supportive housing facilities for homeless people, or on the streets. Approximately 250 of those men and women can be found sleeping on park benches, under bridges and viaducts, behind dumpsters, in doorways of businesses, or in nooks and crannies called —“catholes” by homeless people who know far too well how dangerous it can be to sleep outdoors in urban areas. Forgive us, Compassionate God, for claiming that we are not aware of the needs of others when we could have looked a bit further. Forgive us for knowing about injustice and misery and still not putting our faith into action. The Matthew text goes on to mention people in need of clothes, those who are sick, and those in prison, but I don’t think there is any need to explore those issues in depth. We already know there are huge opportunities to do God’s work in those areas, too. I would not presume it to be my place to stand here, a guest in your church, and to prescribe how you might react to this as a church. However, I am comfortable inviting you as individuals to consider how the texts today apply to you—how last week’s prayer of confession might be a call to action. CALL: In the week to come, consider how you might live out the Gospel to the world around you. Copyright 2008, Bill Snodgrass. All rights reserved.
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