May 24, 2004

Sunday Sermons

Donald Sensing, the blogging pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn., points out the yesterday was Ascension Sunday, the seventh Sunday of Easter, celebrating Christ's ascension into heaven 40 days after his resurrection. Sensing says the Ascension is the elephant in the living room of 21st-century, North American Christian faith.

The 21st-century Western mind pretends the miracle isn't there. We search for the moral of the story or its implied meaning for our day and ignore the miracle. Lay people are taught, by implication, to do that in our secular school systems and colleges. Clergy are taught to do that in mainline seminaries and divinity schools. Every mention of biblical miracles in my classes at Vanderbilt Divinity School was to show how the event itself wasn't really important and wasn't the real point of the story, anyway. Don't dwell on the miracle - with the unspoken implication being that the miracle didn't really happen or that the event was really an ordinary event that occurred in unordinary circumstances and was mistaken for a miracle. Besides, the people who wrote the Bible were educated for their day, but not for ours, and did not enjoy the benefit of the scientific method as a way of understanding reality.

But we have to face the elephant in the living room of 21st-century, North American Christian faith, the fact that the entire Christian religion inescapably rests on miracles. And whatever other points the Ascension stories may have for us in our day, the central part of the story is that Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven.

There is a lot more to the Ascension story than the Ascension itself, but without the Ascension itself, there isn't much else about the story that matters.

Not enough Sunday Sermon for you? Okay. Check out this second part of a sermon series on Whole-Life Discipleship, ongoing at the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, .

And there's a very good series, Servanthood 101, exploring the theology of Christian service, that you can follow on the Internet. (Ya gotta love the Net, which makes it possible to be a member of one congregation and also watch, hear or read good lessons from a number of other churches...) Servanthood 101 comes to you from The People's Church in Franklin, TN., a church that really understands how to use the Internet. You can watch the service live, or after-the-fact, or listen to just the sermon, or even download the sermon outline. Sunday's lesson focuses on Philippians 2, where the apostle Paul urges Christians to emulate the servant attitude of Jesus. Philippians 2: 12-13 has long been used by some to claim that salvation is accomplished through human work rather than by the supreme act of God's grace, but read in context it actually says the opposite.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed - not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence - continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.