May 2009 Pastor's Highlander Column

May 2009 Pastor’s Column

Brothers and sisters,

It’s May: the school year winds down; outdoor temperatures rise and greening lawns begin to grow again as the flowers commence to bloom; the community, and nation await and prepare for Spring to really get under way as people start to dream about and plan their summers.

The budding, blooming life-cycles in the world around us cheer our hearts and minds and renew our sense of hope and well-being.

And yet, we miss the genuine sense of hope we should have if we confine our mental and emotional gaze to the physical signs around us. In fact, to do so almost inevitably leads to parched and burned-over fields of the mind and spirit as daily events unfold around us, searing the eyes of the heart and turning those greens, reds and yellows into dismal tans and browns.

It does not need to be that way, though!
Our genuine hope at this time of the year should be grounded in the Gospel hope. As Christians, we celebrate not just the tangible season of Spring, but the ecclesiastical season of Easter — rich with the promise of Christ’s Resurrection and the promise of our own eventual rising from the dead.

Life is frequently difficult as we face the conflicting demands of family, school, community, church and work. In the present fiscal climate, some face serious threats to employment, while others see their horizons dimmed and limited by the requirements of war or disaster. Still others face grim diagnoses and physical discomfort caused by difficult treatments and uncertain recovery times.

That, sadly, is the nature of life in a fallen world. But such travails need not be so dispiriting as they often seem to be. Economies rise and wane, wars flare and sputter, scandals unfold and explode, but the tangible hope of the Christian surmounts all such catastrophes because it is rooted in God’s gracious and definite action.

Sadly, may reject this hope as nothing more than “pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye”. They are convinced that there is no such thing as a definite God-given message and that He does not act directly in the affairs of humanity. With lamentable frequency, such beliefs filter not just through the culture around us, but also into the Church as a whole. And when they do, they sap the life from our proclamation, message and hope.

The current prevailing cultural view of philosophy and theology is called Post-Modernism and it tends to rely on a movement called Deconstructionism. Deconstructionism views all texts as free-floating, without context or a principal meaning (even the author’s intent and purpose). The only important thing in such interpretations is the “meaning” that the readers or commentators take from what has been written.

We, as Christians believe that God actually did create all that exists, and that humans rebelled against God, that we are now fallen, sinful, subject to death and condemnation. Yet God, in His great grace and mercy has provided for our redemption. He has spoken His words to us through numerous prophets, through the scriptures and ultimately through His own Son’s life, ministry, sacrificial death and Resurrection.

The central difference, then, between the Gospel of Life we cling to and the theological speculations of the Deconstructionists is this:
∙ The Gospel tells us a true story full of definite and permanent meaning which is perceived by the world to mean nothing.
∙ Postmodernism tells no story, criticizes all other stories, and believes in no fixed meaning in an attempt to find meaning.

In short then, if nothing can mean literally anything, then everything means nothing.
And death and this “nothingness” are ultimately what the human race fears above all else. We struggle and rail against them, seeking futilely to hold them at bay for as long as humanly possible. Billions, if not trillions, of dollars are spent annually on every conceivable method, formula or nostrum to make us feel and appear younger. And yet, all of these ultimately futile “treatments” and practices prescribed and provided by doctors, scientists, quacks and charlatans do absolutely nothing to actively promote life lived in fullness. Instead they engage in frenetic movements that merely extend one’s existence in the here-and-now without ever grappling with a hereafter in which they don’t believe.

British writer G.K. Chesterton beautifully and presciently described this situation through the voice of his fictional hero Father Brown (the priest/detective in Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries stories):
“It’s something I’ve noticed more and more in the modern world, appearing in all sorts of newspaper rumours and conversational catchwords; something that’s arbitrary without being authoritative. People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that or the other. It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like the sea; and the name of it is superstition. . . . It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can’t see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there’s a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. And a dog is an omen, and a cat is a mystery, and a pig is a mascot and a beetle is a scarab, calling all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India; Dog Anubis and great green-eyed Pasht and all the holy howling bulls of Bashan; reeling back to the bestial gods of the beginning, escaping into elephants and snakes and crocodiles; and all because you are frightened of four words: “He was made Man.”

This is the contemporary tragedy. Humanity is in desperate need of the redemption that only God can provide, but runs helter-skelter from the very One Who does provide it, because grace can be scary and we are mortally afraid of the One who extends it.

But, as frightening as the Messiah is or can be, as uncomfortable as grace is because it leaves us bare, fresh and new, this is our one and eternal hope and deliverance.
In addressing this theme, the Apostle Paul put it this way in I Corinthians 1:18-31:
I Corinthians 1:18 - 31 [esv]
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Let us cling to this central truth of our faith. Let us allow it to shape and mold us as we live out our lives. Indeed, we will and do undergo hardship, peril and sometimes even the sword. However, even as we do so — even when we die — we are living into the Gospel promise. We embrace our temporal lives here with new purpose and genuine meaning while simultaneously looking and clinging to the eternal life that Christ has won for us.

Life is not about simple existence for us. It is about the substantial and significant healing that Christ brings to us and to our relationship with God the Father, who adopts us as His own children and upholds, refreshes and guides us through even our most dark and difficult times.

Let us live the Easter hope. Christ is Risen! He Is Risen, Indeed!

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Rusty+

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