The Old, Old Story
Romans 5: 12 ff., Luke 18: 9 –14
Dennis Union Church
February 15, 2009
Well it’s wonderful to be here with you at Dennis Union Church and on the
I am an ordained United Church of Christ Minister, but presently teaching at the Toronto School of Theology in
Greg is the Dean of the
They were concerned about what was the appropriate title to put in the Order of Worship for their guest preacher. You see, Greg has an abundance of titles. He is a “Reverend,” and a “Doctor,” a professor and a Dean. You can understand their dilemma.
Finally, one intrepid person got up her courage and phoned the Dean. “We were wondering,” she said, “about your title?” As it happened, Greg was at that very moment hard at work on his sermon and assumed that what his caller wished to know was the title of his sermon. Working with the Biblical story of the woman who so lavishly anointed Jesus’ feet, Greg said, “Oh, title . . . ‘Extravagant Holiness.’”
“Extravagant Holiness” said the dear woman on the other end, sounding a bit surprised. “Yes, yes, that’s right, ‘Extravagant Holiness,’” said the Dean, who saying, “See you Sunday” hung up the phone. Imagine Greg’s surprise upon opening the Order of Worship to see himself listed as “His Extravagant Holiness Gregory L. Jones.”
I want to congratulate you on your recently completed building program. Your new building blends the historic and the contemporary in wonderful combination of beauty, efficiency and utility. I especially congratulate you for receiving a national award for environmental stewardship in this project.
I’ve been around your church for only the shortest of times, but clearly you have many good things going on. Your Eventide Community theater program is impressive. Your growing music program is outstanding. You have excellent pastoral leaders and the staff members I’ve met seem wonderfully gifted and committed. I know there is a much more that I would discover to be vital and attractive if I had the opportunity to stay longer.
The title of my sermon is, as you can see, “The Old, Old Story.” Let me tell you what I had in mind with this title. As you know, I teach congregational leadership, I work with congregations on renewal, and I write books with bold, possibly audacious, perhaps even foolish, titles like, “Transforming Congregational Culture” and “Changing the Conversation.” You might reasonably conclude that I am, so to speak, an apostle of some “New, New Story.”
And, in fact, I suspect that some of you may have thought, perhaps some have even been apprehensive, wondering if I were coming here to announce “all that you’ve known and done in the past is now irrelevant and you must embrace a new way and a new day.”
There is a grain of truth in that, as those of you who attended my talks on either Friday evening or Saturday might agree. I do argue that much in our society has changed and that churches need to take account of that and respond with thoughtfulness, creativity and intentionality.
But beyond whatever I have to say of this nature, there are all manner of people, books, groups and movements these days that claim, in one way or another that paradigms have shifted, consciousness has changed, minds must be transformed, and that a whole new world is upon us. If only we get over outmoded models, out of date constructs, and our old consciousness, then all will be well.
There’s a lot of that kind of rhetoric in current teaching area, leadership. In one of my classes we just finished reading the book “Leadership and the New Science.” The author tells us that we’ve been living in the world of Newtonian physics but that’s over; it’s a new world of Quantum Physics and Chaos Theory. We must therefore embrace a new consciousness and when we do we shall be on the verge of a brave, new world. “Leadership and the New Science” is actually a very good book, but the claims for “revolutionary new modes of consciousness” may be a little overblown.
Similar sorts of claims are put forth in the world of theology, Scripture and religion. Various groups, books, teachers and authors tell us that the original and true meaning of Christianity was subverted, eclipsed, hidden or undermined by the power politics of church hierarchies preoccupied with hoary concepts like sin, atonement and sacrifice but they tell us that nothing could have been further from the mind of Jesus who was really a wandering sage, itinerant mystic, and compelling person who invites us on a spiritual journey. Such is “the New, New Story.” “For, now we,” the story goes “see that all such talk of original sin or the Old Adam was the result of bad toilet training, and we are now free to enter a new, wide-open future, invited by Jesus to a spiritual journey of our own devising.
As I say, you may have thought it was some such message as this that I was conveying, some “New, New Story.” But you can tell by my descriptions of these various new enlightenments that I am skeptical of much of what presents itself to us as a “New, New Story.”
I want, perhaps surprisingly, to commend to you, and to myself, “The Old, Old Story,” which Paul lays out in his astonishing Letter to the Romans. Paul writes, “For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” And a few verses earlier, “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift.” (Romans 3: 21 ff.)
This is indeed “The Old, Old Story.” It is a story that challenges us in a deep way. The old, old story runs contrary to conventional wisdom with its promises of humanity come of age. The message of the New, New Story has often boiled down to this: we are essentially good people in need of education. The message of the Old, Old Story is a harder but I believe truer one. It is that we are sinners in need of redemption. This “Old, Old Story,” dares to tell us, what the daily newspaper confirms, that there is something seriously wrong with human nature. Moreover, human nature is such that are unable to make it right on our own or by ourselves. We need, the “Old, Old Story” dares to tell us, a Savior.
All of that is just a little embarrassing to we who would like to think that we can really handle things ourselves, don’t you agree? I was recently on a plane and got to talking with the man next to me. He told me the story of a death to new life journey through AA. At some point, he mentioned a sign he now keeps on his refrigerator as a reminder to himself. It reads, “There is a God, John, and it’s not you.”
As I said, what the “Old, Old Story” tells us may be disturbing. Not a few of us thought we were done with talk of sin and salvation, evil and redemption, that we part of a “New, New Story.” The only difficulty with saying we are done with such matters or that we have outgrown such ideas and entered a brave, new and progressive world is that the realities of Sin and Death are not done with us. They stalk our lives in addictions, broken lives, shattered families, lost children, and in institutions whose resources and energy are squandered in political in-fighting and turf wars, and by businesses absent even the most elementary sort of ethical guide or compass.
Perhaps some of you have been following the stories of contaminated products in the peanut industry? You’d like to think that peanuts are a sort of sin-free zone, wouldn’t you? Think again. The contamination of the products of the Peanut Corporation of
One Robert Tauxe, an official of the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention working on the peanut contamination problem, said something to the New York Times that seemed to me very revealing. Tauxe said that American food inspectors had focused elsewhere. “It’s easy,” said Tauxe, “to fall into the trap of seeing our food safety problems as coming from other countries.” Like the Pharisee in the
One might draw a similar conclusion from the banking and credit crisis, which has now paralyzed our economy and led to more suffering than we know, especially among the most vulnerable. One of the big players in all this was the Seattle-based (my hometown) Washington Mutual Bank.
Kerry Killinger, the CEO of Washington Mutual who carried home $22 million in 2003, and $88 million over six years, said when he was flying high in 2003, “We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe’s-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we’ve done our job, five years from now you’re not going to call us a bank.” He was saying that the Old, Old Story of due diligence and caution was all over. It was a New, New Story of banks as money stores where the old word was “Yes.” Sounded good. Well, it turned out that in saying that by 2008 Washington Mutual Bank would no longer be called a bank Mr. Killinger was prophetic, though not quite in the way he imagined.
We do not come together here for worship in order to herald a New, New Story of humanity that has outgrown either Sin or a need for God. Instead, we are recalled to an “Old, Old Story.” Not a trendy new story about a paradigm shift but an old, old story that tells us how we entered into the recurring cycle of folly, cruelty, destruction, disease and death.
It is a story that tells us, contrary to the Pharisee in the
That’s what the old, old story tells us. We would like to think differently, to imagine ourselves, as did the Pharisee, as having achieved righteousness through our own efforts and in some sense no longer in need of God.
Not long ago I had the opportunity to speak at an historic church in
But in the second half of the twentieth century the church fell, increasingly, on hard times. The congregation dwindled and grew older. By the end of the century, the once proud church with a sanctuary that seated 1,000 had a weekly turnout of barely fifty people, most quite elderly. The emblems of their past greatness haunted them. No fewer than 37 portraits or statues of Henry Ward Beecher may to be found in the Church. Sometimes greatness isn’t so great for churches!
But in the first decade of this new century, something has changed. Some renewal has begun to stir. Some Spirit has begun to move. Today a congregation of 300 to 400 gathers weekly. There is a rich mix of ages and races. The congregation is newly engaged in its community. A lay leader showed me around the church and told me the story of near death and resurrection I am telling you. He said that in the 1980’s he thought it only a matter of time until the once great church closed its doors for good.
“What,” I asked, “accounts for the change, the renewal?” “Well,” he answered, “our new Pastor didn’t do it all, but he has been important.” I pressed for more. “What’s your Pastor done?” “He got us studying the Bible,” said the layman, with the clear implication that biblical study had not been a feature of their life prior to their new Pastor. “Yes, he gives a wonderful Bible study,” continued this man. “In fact, our Pastor can put the whole message of the Bible in just six words.” Now, he really had my attention. I thought either this guy is a genius or a charlatan. I couldn’t not ask. “And what might those six words be?” I asked.
Grinning the man said, “The six words that summarize the message of the entire Bible? ‘I am God and you’re not.’” There it was, “the old, old story.” In the old, old story,
All religion is forever in danger of slipping, like that of the self-righteous Pharisee in the Temple, into being self-congratulatory. “I thank thee God that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”
“But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you,” said Jesus, “this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.”
The “Old, Old Story” tells us a hard truth, that we are not just good people in need of education; we are sinners in need of a Savior. And that simply eliminating Sin from our vocabulary doesn’t eliminate it from our lives or our world. But the old, old story tells us something else, something more, something that makes all the difference in the world and which has the potential to turn every old story into something new.
While we cannot free ourselves and when we cannot forgive ourselves, there is for us a free gift of grace from God in Jesus Christ.
While Adam’s sin meant death for all human beings, so now one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all.
During the fast credit days, Washington Mutual Bank became one of the nation’s largest banks riding on the slogan, “The Power of Yes.” What that meant, in practice, was that Washington Mutual would write any mortgage, no matter how risky, no matter how clearly the background information had been trumped up. Write those mortgages and re-sell them just as fast as possible, leaving someone else holding the bag. All of it dressed up and justified as “The Power of Yes.” It was a lie.
The only, real power of “Yes” is that which has been spoken by God in Jesus Christ. Hear what Paul says to the Corinthians. “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” (II Corinthians 1: 17 – 19).
Perhaps you come here today under the weight of some heavy “No”? Possibly you wonder, who am I, am I anybody, now that I am retired? Or perhaps you have lost touch with a son or daughter, a sister or brother, and the only word you hear seems a “no.” Maybe, the economy’s troubles have left you wondering where you will land, or if you own children will find a safe harbor and productive life? There are a hundred ways the world, under the dominion of Sin and Death, says “No” to us.
But there is one way in which God says “yes” to you and to me today and that is Jesus Christ. “For in him every one of God’s promises of God is a Yes.” And God’s “Yes” is stronger than the world’s “No.”
Paul asked, “If Christ is for us, who can be against us?”
Scripture promises, “But in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who has loved us.”
Experience teaches the first man, Adam, is strong; faith confesses, the second man, Christ, is stronger still.
It’s true, Sin is persistent, but Christ shall prevail.
Death’s power is real, but God power unto salvation shall reign triumphant.
This is “The Old, Old Story,” and whenever we tell it again and tell it right, all things are made new. Thanks be to God who gives us this inexpressible gift in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
