It Takes A Church...

Another "President" Post

Another post for "Presidents' Weekend" but this one is from the President of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard Mouw, musing on whether Gandhi was saved and responding to a Baptist who is "damn sure" that he wasn't (pardon the expression, but pun definitely intended).

I am no universalist. I believe that refusing to put your faith in Jesus is something that imperils your soul for all eternity. There is no salvation apart from Christ. But how Jesus gets ahold of people and how he brings them into his heavenly Kingdom is surrounded–for me at least–by a lot of mystery. I’m glad the verdict on who is in and who is out is not up to me, but to the Spirit who is described by the Westminster Confession as the One who “who worketh when and where, and how he pleaseth.”

You'll want to read the whole post.

With My Body, I Thee Worship

This last post before lent brings the conclusion to my recent sermon series through the Song of Songs. Tomorrow, I will start a new lenten series on communal spiritual disciplines.

In the movie, The Story of Us, Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis play a married couple’s whose marriage is unraveling in painful disappointment. There is a scene in the movie, when Willis’ says “No matter what we went through, I knew we’d be alright if at the end of the day, we could just find each other’s feet under the covers.” Then one day, we see the perspective just from their feet, when he reaches his foot over, she moves her's away. And the effect is devastating. At that moment of the movie, it seems as if there is no hope for them.

Marriage experts like John Gottman have said that most enduring marriages are simply those where both partners continue to turn back toward each other, usually with simple gestures and gentle words. My friends, let us be a community of people who develop the character to continue to endure.

Our marriages depend on it. Keep turning toward each other. Keep reconnecting, keep building the bonds of affection, respect and forgiveness. And above all, if things are going badly, get help early.

Let me give you a frightening statistic that I have mentioned before. In science, there is something called “the delay effect”. That is the amount of time from when a person sense that there is something wrong in their lives and they seek help. The delay effect for heart disease is 4 weeks. The delay effect for cancer symptoms is 6 weeks. Do you know what the delay effect is for people who have sensed that there is something wrong in their marriage? Do you know how long people wait before they seek help for the one relationship that makes the greatest difference in life? 6 years. We have built our entire approach to pre-marital counseling on interrupting the delay-effect.

When a couple comes to us to get wedding, the single greatest expense is mandatory marriage counseling with our Parish Associate and pastoral counselor, Charlie Campbell. Now, not only does the couple learn a lot of good stuff about themselves, their partners and marriage, but they also develop a relationship with Charlie.

As I tell every couple, the single greatest mistake couples make in their marriages is trying to do it alone. If you know Charlie, then when things get tough, and they get tough for everyone, you won’t have to say, “Do you think we should go to a counselor?” But instead you’ll say, “Let’s go talk to Charlie.” And believe me that’s a lot easier.

The pleasure of love, as God intended it, reveals a simple, shared pattern for a lifetime of love; he adores, she invites, they endure.

Conclusion: Nat was right.

My friends, as we bring this series to a close we can see that God has great interest in our love lives. He made us with bodies that delight in the good things of the world and feel pleasure and crave intimacy. He made us so that we could bond for a lifetime through good times and bad. He gave us his word to guide our living and right in the middle of it is a whole series of erotic poems to guide our loving.

All because he wants us to have love for each other that looks like his love for us. A love of promises, protection, passion and a shared pattern.

At our wedding, the first song that Beth and I danced to was an old song by Nat King Cole. The first line was then a promise and is now a reminder. “When I fall in love, it will be forever, or I’ll never fall in love.” Nat was right my friends, love is meant to last.

Throughout this series we have been trying to learn what means to fall in love forever, for a lifetime, until death parts us. In the old English marriage liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, in addition to vows of love, honor and cherish there is another line, that maybe we need to recover. It is a line that makes the explicit connection that what we are doing when we give ourselves to another, is inextricable to what we are doing when we offer ourselves to God.

“With this ring, I thee wed, with my body, I thee worship…”

And in essence that is what we have been learning to do through this series. We are learning that love and passion, romance and affection was never meant to be expressed to casually, given to cheaply. Our bodies so tender, our emotions so fragile and our hearts so vulnerable are meant to be protected and honored. We are learning to give our bodies as an act of worship, of devotion, love and service to one person until death parts us.

This is what the wisdom of the Song of Songs is trying to display for us, to show us. This is the instruction for those who have yet to marry, it’s the correction for those of us who have taken wayward paths, its encouragement for those of us in the middle of marriage where kids and carpools, and climbing the corporate ladder can pull us from each other, and it’s the affirmation for those who fulfilled their vows and loved another until death parted them.

It is also, my friends, the great gift of God for us. The God who created us with souls that hunger for him, also created us with bodies and emotions that hunger for healthy touch and honest affection. May we be a community that together helps every person enjoy the kind of love that God intended.

Song of Songs #4: The Pattern of Real Romance

This post and a conclusion tomorrow brings this mini-series on the Song of Songs to a close.  I have said all along that it really is a worldview series.  And it has been. I have been trying to demonstrate that the key to a life of sexual pleasure is having it the way God intended.  All along the key lesson has been: What touches your body, touches your soul.

Today some thoughts especially for the married folks.

The Six Most Destructive Words for Real Romance

It is tempting to feel with all of this emphasis on sex and love and passion and purity this past month that we have been reading a romantic fairy tale and not the word of God.  Let me assure you, that this series really hasn’t been about trying to prepare you for Valentine ’s Day or make you feel like you have been caught up in an Andre Bocelli song.  Indeed, it’s not a fairy tale at all.   

Indeed, if this had been a fairy tale, it would have ended after chapter 5, verse 2.  The lovers would have come together on their wedding night, the friends would have sang, “Oh lover and beloved…drink deeply of this love!” 

The violins would play, the screen would go black and the final words would say, “And they lived happily ever after.”   

But that’s not what we have here.  You know why?  I think it’s very likely that “And they lived happily ever after” are perhaps the six most destructive words for real romance, for genuine love, for happy marriages. 

Since childhood we have all grown up expecting that someday regardless of our problems, situations, or backgrounds we would get married to Mr. or Miss “Right” and would go off into the sunset leaving all of our past issues, family of origin problems, insecurities and brokenness behind to “live happily ever after.”  Psychologists call this the Cinderella Syndrome. 

With the exception perhaps of Shrek 2, we rarely have seen the rest of the story,  the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the pain and the deeper bliss that comes through a lifetime of love.  And so, when pain hits, when problems come, when disappointment occurs and when the ordinary obstacles of real life occurs, we are unprepared for what it takes for love to last a life time, for passion to be permanent, for pleasure and promises to both endure. 

For the rest of the sermon click here.

Or Download song_of_songs_4_pattern.doc

Song of Songs #3: Passion Fierce as the Grave

This is the third of four sermons offered to you from my last sermon series: Divine Romance: Lessons from the Song of Songs.  If you try to look up sermons on the Song of Songs, you'll find that most of them are really old...and allegorical.  It seems to me that as scholarship improved and pastors had to acknowledge the graphic reality of erotic literature in the Old Testament, the sermons slowed to a trickle. Way too bad.  These passages are proof that Hugh Hefner had nothing on God.  And true sexual pleasure is found only in the most radical of souls (that is "radical" in the sense of "going back to the root.")  Here is the teaser for sermon #3...

My favorite old movie is Casablanca.  A classic film with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, where Bogie owns Rick’s Café American bar in Casablanca, Morroco.  It takes place during World War 2 in Casablanca, which was then a French territory that was under German occupation.  One of my favorite scenes when a group of Nazi soldiers gathered at Rick’s start singing German songs loudly and without consideration. 

It is a rude gesture.  Here they are in occupied territory, a conquering army and they are spitting in the face of the French citizens.  The down cast French people sit glumly.  Then Victor Lazlo, a brave resistance fighter, stands, walks over to the band and says, “Play La Marseilles” the French National anthem.  The band members are tentative, they fear the German officers. 

But Bogie nods his approval and Lazlo begins to sing at the top of his lungs.  The band comes to their feet, playing their instruments with gusto.  The music soars, and the crowd comes to life.  They do not protest the Nazis.  They do not shout them down in anger.  They just simply so loudly this song of their hearts, that they drown out the German soldiers who then close the bar in disgust.  With that one strong positive voice, they drowned out the destructive voices for that brief moment.

In many ways, what Victor Lazlo did in the midst of the destructive voice in that nightclub in Casablanca is what I believe we are doing through this series in the midst of a culture where so many voices are proclaiming a view of sexuality and passion that is also so powerfully destructive. 

We are raising our voices in a positive proclamation of love, sexuality, and passion that gives life and pleasure the way God intended it.  We are trying to restore the idea and practice of romance and commitment that lasts a lifetime and offers us fulfillment and pleasure.  Love and pleasure the way God intended it.

By learning the Song of Songs, we are seeking to affirm those who have the character to commit their lives to the teachings of the Scriptures when so many around them compromise so quickly.  To appreciate and hold up married people who are attempting each day to keep their vows, to encourage single people who are living with integrity and so often feel so alone, and to cheer on those who are attempting to recover, or rediscover the way of God after wayward steps.

We are not trying to protest or picket or condemn, but instead trying to hold up another way. 

To read the rest of the sermon click here...

Or Download song_of_songs_3_passion.doc

Song of Songs #2: Delighting in a Walled Garden

For the next of couple of days, I am offering links to my most recent sermon series called "Divine Romance: Lessons from the Song of Songs."  Many people have never heard a sermon on this passage because pastors aren't sure what to do with it.  Believe me, even with cleaning it up for a bunch of Presbyterians, it's still PG-13.

Delighting in a Walled Garden

One day, some years ago when Beth and I were in Prague, we were told of a wonderful garden that we had to visit.  So, we headed off in the direction that we were pointed until, confused, we figured we were lost.  You see, the address was correct, but we were nowhere near a place where one would expect a garden.  There wasn’t a tree or bush or plant in sight.  We were in an urban neighborhood of streets and buses and old buildings and the address we were given took us to a large door in the middle of a huge imposing compound wall that lined the street.  But we weren’t lost.  The garden was right in front of us.  It was just on the other side of the huge wall that lined the street.  When we sheepishly opened the gate and walked through, we found it: An old beautiful garden protected from the urban blight by the large wall.

The garden needed the wall as protection from the city around it, and the garden, once through the door in the wall, became a wonderful little edenic spot in the city.  And all throughout it on benches and under shade trees were lovers enjoying a moment together, children running and playing, and old friends just sitting and being.   

In the movie, Notting Hill, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts play a young couple out on a date. Roberts, herself a famous movie star, plays a famous movie star in the movie, Grant plays a simple book shop owner who meets her and through a strange serious of events ends up having dinner with her.

As this budding romance begins to take off they realize that her fame, and the constant paparazzi that follow her will make it almost impossible to find any privacy at all.  In what seems like a chance encounter, but becomes a metaphor for what they most need, Grant and Roberts come to a locked gate of a garden wall.  And that wall becomes their refuge.

(And a walled garden becomes the best description of the kind of sex life God intended us to have.)

For the rest of the sermon, click here.  Or you can download it here: Download song_of_songs_2_protection.doc .

Sex and Worldview: Overlooked Lessons on Love

In the most recent Leadership Journal, congregants report that they wished their pastors preached more on sex. Recent articles in Christianity Today and the recent special by Katie Couric point to a more dire situation than even we conservative evangelical types may have realized.  Providentially, I decided to preach a four week series on the Song of Songs during this past month as a way to kick off the year.  My church members didn't know this, but every January I try to preach on one aspect of a Christian worldview.  Of course, I never mentioned "worldview" because if I did, they would have been snoring. Instead I just said that I was going to preach an exposition of Song of Songs.  From the attendance standpoint, it was certainly a big hit.  But more than that, it has sold more tapes than any series since the one that became Showtime.

I really believe that people are hungering to hear God's intention for sexuality and preaching the Song of Songs is way more interesting (and unexpected) than the well-known NT passages. 

So, over the next few days, I'll be offering you a chance to link to my most recent sermon series called Divine Romance: Lessons from the Song of Songs.  I suggest you may want to read it with someone you love. Of course, married folks, homework is optional. So here goes.

The Nobility of Fidelity

This morning we start a sermon series on love.  Now, I know that when I say that, we all expect an exposition on the love of God, on unconditional love, sacrificial love, servant love, even the love we should express to each other in Christ. 

But that’s not what this is.  This series is on goose-bump love.  It’s lump-in-your-throat love, flip-flopping-heart and blushing-smile love.  It’s about the warm softness of the lumpy body that’s laid next to you for decades.  And the cold back that is turned toward you when you lie awake in the middle of the night after an argument.  It’s about teasing and giggling and mostly laughing at yourself. 

It’s about insecurity and feeling powerful, about wanting and being wanted, about desiring and feeling desirable.  It’s about bad poetry and the names we wrote on Pee-Chee folders during class at school.  It’s about shaking your father-in-laws hand when you come back from your honeymoon, and giving your daughter away in marriage.   

It’s about rainy weekends when the kids are away.  About long lonely nights when your beloved is no longer lying next to you. 

It’s about yearning and longing and desire.  About passion and purity, fidelity and frustration.  It’s about marriage, yes.  But even more than—much more than that--it’s about hearts and souls and bodies.  And since we all have hearts and souls and bodies, its about all of us.

And believe it or not, this series comes right out of the Bible.  Right in the middle of the Old Testament, is a book called the Song of Songs. and it is collection of love poems.  They are poems that tell the story of a girl and the boy she loves and the king who is trying to come between them.  And at times they are pretty steamy. 

For years, pastors and teachers have taught them as allegory, a story of God’s love for us and the church’s love for God.  Ok, that works.  You can certainly read them that way.  And it’s even pretty interesting.  But just pick them up and start reading them this week, and you’ll know for sure what they are. 

To read the rest of the sermon click here.

Or you can also get it here: Download song_of_songs_1_promises.doc