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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Beginning of the Gospel |
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Mark
1:1 Second
Sunday after Trinity January
18, 2009 I got a new phone the other day; a new cell phone. Not that I thought I needed a new phone. I still didn’t know how to work the other one that I’d had for years, but we got a new plan, which required a new phone. You know how that works. My old phone did things I never knew it did, let alone how to use. The new one is even worse, or some would say, better. Of course it has a clock and an answering machine. I think it also has games that I don’t want to play, even if I knew how. And it has many other functions on it. It does so many things that it comes with an instruction manual. Now I’m one of those people who thinks that when phones come with instruction manuals life is getting too complicated. I already have a watch. I already have a calculator. I already have games to play. I already have a camera, my phone doesn’t take pictures, I just know some do. My point is that I already have these other things, so when it comes to what I want in a phone, the answer is, I want a phone. George Washington reportedly said that all he asked of a horse is that it go along. Likewise, all I ask from a phone is that it enables me to call someone. I know that is hopelessly old-fashioned, but that is what I want in a phone. There may be a lot of other benefits to having my new phone, but if it doesn’t work as a telephone, it is of no use to me. I think there is some confusion over just what a cell phone is supposed to do. I’ve noticed that there is some confusion these days about just what the Gospel of Christ is all about. Now I know there are many, many, countless benefits to those who, in the words of our Prayer Book, “truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel.” It helps you become a better person. It gives meaning and purpose to life. It helps you understand good and evil, and to know why these things exist and how they affect your life. It brings joy and peace to your soul that cannot ultimately be shaken. It makes you a part of the family of God, especially the local congregation of brothers and sisters in Christ. It gives you a host of friends and a support group, which we all need more than we are willing to admit. These are good things. But I think we begin to have problems when we pick and choose some of these blessings, and make them the heart of the Gospel. And I fear that many of the organizations out there calling themselves churches have done just that. It’s like making calling people the secondary purpose of a phone. As my Greek professor used to say, they have “put the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble.” They have taken one or more of these blessings and made them the sum total of the Gospel, and the result is a distorted gospel, which is really not the Gospel of the New Testament. Mark is giving us the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is the Gospel we need. There are two major groups of distortions that have taken over those who call themselves Christians today. First is what I call the “feelingfest” group. They have reduced the Gospel to a good feeling that enables them to endure the harsh realities of life by ignoring them. When they face trials, they simply retreat into their world of good feelings and pretend the problems don’t exist. Their worship is all about themselves; all designed to make them feel good, get an emotional high, and tell them that God is on their side and everything is going to be O.K. We usually think about the megachurches when we talk about this, and indeed they are megachurches because they specialize in making people feel good. But it can take other forms as well. It can be just as much of the foundation of a highly liturgical church as it can of a highly contemporary church. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the music is Bach or the Beatles, or whether the service is based on smells and bells or thrills and chills, or anything in between, if the focus is on feelings and entertainment it has missed the point. The second group that distorts the Gospel is what I call the “here and now” people. Their concern is about what the Gospel can do for them here and now. How can it make my life better in this world? How can it make me a better me, overcome obstacles, make me happy? These people usually preach what we call the gospel of “health and wealth.” In their most obvious form they tell you that giving money to the Lord’s work, specifically to their TV or radio ministries, is like planting seed money because God will return it to you with interest. Or they tell you that if you only have enough faith, God will heal you of your infirmities and give you a life of mountain peak experiences of joy. I am sure you are aware that there is much overlapping of these two distortions. Each usually incorporates much of the other into itself. My point is that this is not the Gospel. I have spent much of your time talking about what the Gospel is not, let me take a few moments to talk about what the Gospel is. The Gospel starts with God; glorious, incomprehensible, unbounded in holiness, wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and truth. He created us to enjoy Him. That means we were created to have Him as the joy of life, with everything else that is good as part of the blessings coming from Him. But we turned away from Him and elevated ourselves to His place and made the enjoyment of things and passions the goal of life. We can think of this in terms of the oft used analogy of having a hole in our lives that we recognize but can’t seem to fill because we try to fill it with the wrong things. In the beginning God filled the hole, but mankind, through Adam, removed God and began trying to fill the hole with other things. The problem is that the other things don’t fit. It’s like the children’s toys that have various shapes to go in various holes. The star only fits in the star shaped hole. The rainbow only fits in the rainbow hole. Only God fits in the God hole, and no matter what else we try to put in His place, it doesn’t fill the hole, it doesn’t fill the void in our lives. That means we run around the world looking for fulfillment in things that cannot fulfill. That means we waste the precious moments of life away without ever knowing the true joy and meaning and purpose only God can give. That is a terrible thing, but it is not as terrible as the predicament it puts us in with God. Our sin is a rejection of Him. It is evil, it is wicked, it hurts us and it hurts others, but most of all it is an utter and complete rejection of God and the good things for which He created us. If you look honestly at your own life I believe you can see this. Think of the times you know you should have been husbanding and fathering, but were pursuing your own interests instead. Think of those time when you should have been wifeing or mothering but you were too busy with your own interests. Think of the times you should have been brothering or sistering or soning or daughtering or friending or neighboring, but you were too busy with you own interests. Think of the times you should have been in Church, or at prayer, or in the Bible, but you let other things keep you away. You notice that I have been talking about the things we have left undone that we ought to have done, the sins of omission. I haven’t even gotten to the sins of commission, the things we have done that we ought not to have done. In every one of these sins you have kicked God out of your life, as God, and placed yourself in His place. How do you think God feels about that? The Bible says He is angry. He is not just a little upset. He is not just disappointed in us. He is angry at us, with an anger that burns as hot as the fires of hell. We are under His wrath and curse. That’s how God feels about our sin. But, and here is where the Gospel begins, because “Gospel” means “Good News,” God became a human being, born in the animal shed in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago. We called Him Jesus, which means, Saviour, because He came to save us from our sins. He did not come to tell us everything is fine, continue on as we were going. He came to give Himself as the sacrifice for your sins and mine. The devil told you those sins were fun, but he didn’t tell you each one was like a piece of gravel that was being placed in a bag on your back, and would become a crushing load crushing you down to the ground, crushing the life out of you, crushing you down, down, down to the pit of hell. But that’s what it does, and there is nothing you can do about it. You can’t ever do enough good deeds, or say enough prayers, or give enough money to earn God’s forgiveness. The Good News is; you don’t have to. The Good News of the Gospel is that Christ took every one of those stones on Himself and nailed them to the cross with Him. Your sins were crucified with Christ on the cross. They were buried with Him in the grave, and they are dead and gone forever in the mind of God, because, unlike Jesus, they will never rise again. And you are free of them. You will never have to pay for them, because Christ has already paid your debt to God. I must say, because the Bible makes this point very clear, that this is not true of every person. Forgiveness is not a general amnesty. It is true for those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel. That simply means it is for those who accept it as a free gift from God. You do this by faith, which simply means trusting God to forgive you. I know I talk about this a lot, but I do it because this is the heart of the Bible. This is the Good News. This is the Gospel. It is our life, our hope, our salvation. Telling it Sunday after Sunday in Scripture, Holy Communion, and sermons is the heart of worship. As we remember what great things God has done and is doing for us we naturally worship and adore Him. Worship is our response to the grace of God in the Gospel. But there is another reason for saying this so often. Perhaps some day people will come to church with us who have never heard it. We would hate for them to leave here without hearing it. Maybe people will come who have heard it all their lives, but have never really listened. And maybe this time, when they visit us, it will all make sense to them, and they will believe and be saved. Finally, we need to hear it over and over, for in hearing it we are strengthened in the faith, and drawn more deeply into the life of God. Thanks be to God. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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