Advent: The Call To Holiness
Sermon
Sermons on the Second Readings
Series II, Cycle C
Object:
Anytime we center on First Thessalonians in our devotional reading or in a study group or read a passage from it in worship or hear a sermon preached on it, we're dealing with the earliest of all the New Testament's witness. First Thessalonians, written by Paul in the early 50s C.E. to this congregation in Macedonia, of which he was the founder, pre-dates all the rest of the New Testament writings. It may be the reason that such a text has been chosen by our Common Lectionary for the first Sunday of Advent. The primacy of Thessalonians matches well with our worship today. Thessalonians stands alone at the beginning of the New Testament's take on the gospel; likewise we come together today at the beginning of a new worship year.
We know that Paul gathered his converts into congregations mostly in the urban centers of the Roman world -- Philippi, Corinth, and Rome. Only his letter to the Galatians was sent to several churches in that region, and if Ephesians and Colossians are also authentic letters of Paul, then these cities may be added to the places to which he sent his correspondence. It may be worth a passing thought that our faith originated in first-century urban settings, not in rural areas. In those cities, especially in the parts we would call slums, Christianity began its life and history. Today, when we are so tempted to run away from the violence and oppression of our cities, preferring the suburbs or countryside, we need to remember this. We do not show the courage and guts (just below love, said Francis Allshorn) that was the new faith's edge, attracting a multitude of have-nots, and a few of the haves. Most of our hymnals include Frank Mason North's hymn, about Christ calling us to join him in mission to the city which few of our modern congregations can sing without dropping a veil of disconnect over the plain meaning and challenge of its lyrics:
Where cross the crowded ways of life,Where cross the crowded ways of life, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Above the noise of selfish strife,Above the noise of selfish strife, We hear your voice, Son of Man.We hear your voice, Son of Man.
We just don't like to think about our cities as a call from Christ as we zip into the office by car or train, and back out in the evening. Of course, our urban troubles are almost beyond opening to any serious solution. But we are far from our Christian forebears. Without denying the need for spiritual consolations for the many pains and tragedies of life -- even those of us in insulated suburbia -- it could be that we have too often been singing "softly and tenderly Jesus is calling." We like, and occasionally need, the Jesus who comes to us as a gentle shepherd, becoming the balm from Gilead. Yet we so easily forget that our Jesus faith also calls us out into danger, risk, controversy, and standing for causes and truths that may not have their fulfillment in our lifetime.
So what's today's compelling word in our passage from First Thessalonians? Well, such a choice is up to any who choose to preach from this selection. But here is one pastor's choice, almost hidden in the wonderful benediction, closing the third chapter: "And may he (the Lord) so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" (3:13). This sermon is aimed at that hope that we may become holy so that when Jesus comes -- in whatever theological style we prefer -- he will say, "I know you!"
Advent, taking our cue from this text, can be a call to holiness in all its wide and deep meanings. Now modern Christians are often a bit wary of any talk about personal holiness. This is in spite of the so-called holiness and the Pentecostal movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In various ways, these movements have taken seriously the issue of holiness. While many modern traditions were veering away from speaking in any fashion about holiness, the Holiness and Pentecostal folks were preaching and teaching personal holiness as a fundamental ingredient of the Christian life. They have had the courage as well as the spiritual insight to sense that a concern for holiness is not some accessory that we may or may not prefer to deal with.
Of course, any call to seek the blessing of holiness comes with dangers and distortions. The downside of Christian holiness is the reason that it has been discarded or disregarded by much modern Christian teaching, preaching, and personal devotion. These unholy things that sometimes cling to our experience of what may be termed "spurious Christian holiness" are separation from the public world and its struggles, a sense of spiritual superiority, and the lack of an understanding that holiness is gifted, not the result of personal achievement. These distortions give any call to a life of Christian holiness a bad name.
Holiness that cuts us off from the sufferings in our world tells others that we do not believe that God is found in the world and in our pains to make it more godly. Holiness that creates an elite cadre of holy gents and gentesses should make us remember George Orwell's Animal Farm, where "all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others." This doesn't sell well in the church anymore than it sells in politics. Finally, holiness misses the point when it forgets that holiness is more like humble thanksgiving than a cause for bragging.
Our sense of holiness today must be worldly, as Bishop John A. T. Robinson said in his little book, Honest to God. Modern holiness must be free of any spiritual prerogatives, and profoundly aware that it has little to do with our modern spirit of frantic striving after our self-generated goals. So what would valid holiness look like for today's Christians -- progressive, evangelical, or fundamentalist? The late Albert Outler offers some comments on Christian holiness from his study of the writings of John Wesley. Outler says that Christian holiness is linked to the gifts of the Spirit enumerated in Paul's later letter to the churches in Ephesus.
But there is a crucial distinction between what extraordinary gifts holiness brings to some Christians -- healing, tongues, prophecy, discernment of spirits and teaching; and the ordinary gifts of holiness that may be given to all Christians -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. All this means is that those who think they have been given the extraordinary gifts of spiritual holiness are not exempt from the common gifts of spiritual holiness. Furthermore, they can be called before the church for not exhibiting these common holiness gifts, no matter how impressive their extraordinary gifts are.
So where is all this leading us -- this Advent call to open ourselves to Christ's life of holiness? We have already suggested one way. First, there is a holiness that grasps our personal lives as well as the public life all around us. There's an old saying that says, "When a person becomes a Christian, his dog ought to be the better for it." Sometimes business executives or government officials are criticized for abusing their colleagues and underlings. Christians, in our homes, our work, in the church, and in the world, exhibit holiness when we display the common gifts of holiness. We must love those close to us in these relationships. We must relish life's joys, certainly having a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at ourselves. We must be patient and kind, we are to be good to a fault; we must keep vows and promises; we are to be gentle -- no blustering about; and we must have self-control over our relationships, especially those troublesome ones. Part of holiness would be any and all of these.
Secondly, holiness is also our vital involvement in the public world from which we can never be separated. A pastor brought some realism to a family grieving over the death of their teenage child, by linking his fatal, contagious disease to the possibility that the child contracted the disease by hanging onto the straps in the New York City subway. On his way home to the city's suburbs, their son may have grabbed the strap that had been touched by a child from the slums where this disease was rampant. We may fault the pastor for his timing and insensitivity to the family's grief, but he was dead right that we cannot insulate ourselves from the terrible conditions under which so many in our world are condemned to live. And, the conditions that force them to live in such misery can spill over into the lives of those who think they are well insulated from their oppression, as it did with the son of this affluent family. Modern holiness also entails getting entangled in the problems and possibilities of public issues. Jesus will judge us severely for trying to escape through feel-good private religion; through being continually entertained by the media; in political affiliations that encourage selfishness at the expense of the poor and powerless; and in our pleading that we don't know what to do.
This final comment drives to the heart of the Christian experience in all things: we open ourselves to be grasped by the power of God enabling us to live an authentic holiness. So much of our contemporary Christianity falls into two distorted emphases. One is to see our faith only as giving us forgiveness and the peace of God beyond life's anxieties. Certainly, we are grateful for the grace of God that restores the presence of God in our lives, helping us to manage those personal threats of sin, fate, and death. Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity usually fall into this distortion. Here, faith in Christ is highly personal and few such Christians see the wider picture of the call to discipleship as imbedded in Jesus' announcement of God's earthly kingdom. Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion Of The Christ, is largely in this style. It gathers everything of the faith into that last week in Jesus' life, implying that the forgiveness and mercy of God are available only through the passion, suffering, and death of Jesus. But there is more to the faith than this, important as forgiveness, mercy, and the courage to live beyond our anxieties. Biblical holiness leaves us dissatisfied with this narrow sort of holiness.
A second type of holiness that demands our rejection is the worldly holiness that sets out single-handedly to refashion the world without realizing that our zeal can be corrupted by our sin and our frantic pace so that we take little time to listen to God. An old hymn of the church imploring us to "Take Time To Be Holy," demands a hearing for those of the mainstream and liberal congregations. However, this hymn has little to drive us to think about public issues and their need for change. Contrast for example, stanza 2 in another hymn, "Love Divine All Loves Excelling":
Take away our bent to sinning;Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith as its beginning,End of faith as its beginning,
Set our hearts as liberty.Set our hearts as liberty.
We who are inclined to practice our holiness, find that our hustle and intense activity can make us guilty of insensitivity and arrogance. We label any who object to our plans and conclusions about improving everything as uneducated Christians whose distress at our activity must not be taken seriously. We are not inclined to deal with them at any level as Christian brothers and sisters. Certainly in the challenge to long-standing moral convictions such as gay rights, we tend to shout rather than talk, dismiss rather than listen, and demonize rather than see them as under God and Christ just like ourselves.
Something called "Progressive Radio" attempts to make a voice for the progressives and liberals on the issues of the day. It brings some light and truth to the complicated reality of modern life. However, progressive radio also evidences much of the narrow and distorted broadcasting voiced by the Rush Limbaughs of the rightist radio. It, too, can defame its challengers, and lace its broadcasts with ridicule and outright lack of courtesy and decency. Progressives in the church, like the radical right can easily contribute to unnecessary social and political divisiveness, requiring lengthy periods of cooling down so that the important issues may be addressed. Holiness does mandate serious worldly action. Nothing denies this.
Holiness does call us to discern and nourish the kingdom of God in the world. Yet real biblical holiness means allowing God's Spirit to change us at the core of our being. We find ourselves invited to a point of radical trust in God's mercy, along with the gift of courage. This deeper holiness delivers us from arrogantly thinking that we are privy to the major and minor plans of God ordaining us to crusade against all that are not part of our entourage. Advent is a great time to remember how high and how deep our call is to biblical holiness. In some rather contemporary language, biblical holiness is not messing around with the type of holiness disconnected from the world, nor is it taking over from God the management of the world. It is a call to listen to God, be continually converted, and to bring light to God's world where there now is darkness.
We know that Paul gathered his converts into congregations mostly in the urban centers of the Roman world -- Philippi, Corinth, and Rome. Only his letter to the Galatians was sent to several churches in that region, and if Ephesians and Colossians are also authentic letters of Paul, then these cities may be added to the places to which he sent his correspondence. It may be worth a passing thought that our faith originated in first-century urban settings, not in rural areas. In those cities, especially in the parts we would call slums, Christianity began its life and history. Today, when we are so tempted to run away from the violence and oppression of our cities, preferring the suburbs or countryside, we need to remember this. We do not show the courage and guts (just below love, said Francis Allshorn) that was the new faith's edge, attracting a multitude of have-nots, and a few of the haves. Most of our hymnals include Frank Mason North's hymn, about Christ calling us to join him in mission to the city which few of our modern congregations can sing without dropping a veil of disconnect over the plain meaning and challenge of its lyrics:
Where cross the crowded ways of life,Where cross the crowded ways of life, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Above the noise of selfish strife,Above the noise of selfish strife, We hear your voice, Son of Man.We hear your voice, Son of Man.
We just don't like to think about our cities as a call from Christ as we zip into the office by car or train, and back out in the evening. Of course, our urban troubles are almost beyond opening to any serious solution. But we are far from our Christian forebears. Without denying the need for spiritual consolations for the many pains and tragedies of life -- even those of us in insulated suburbia -- it could be that we have too often been singing "softly and tenderly Jesus is calling." We like, and occasionally need, the Jesus who comes to us as a gentle shepherd, becoming the balm from Gilead. Yet we so easily forget that our Jesus faith also calls us out into danger, risk, controversy, and standing for causes and truths that may not have their fulfillment in our lifetime.
So what's today's compelling word in our passage from First Thessalonians? Well, such a choice is up to any who choose to preach from this selection. But here is one pastor's choice, almost hidden in the wonderful benediction, closing the third chapter: "And may he (the Lord) so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints" (3:13). This sermon is aimed at that hope that we may become holy so that when Jesus comes -- in whatever theological style we prefer -- he will say, "I know you!"
Advent, taking our cue from this text, can be a call to holiness in all its wide and deep meanings. Now modern Christians are often a bit wary of any talk about personal holiness. This is in spite of the so-called holiness and the Pentecostal movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In various ways, these movements have taken seriously the issue of holiness. While many modern traditions were veering away from speaking in any fashion about holiness, the Holiness and Pentecostal folks were preaching and teaching personal holiness as a fundamental ingredient of the Christian life. They have had the courage as well as the spiritual insight to sense that a concern for holiness is not some accessory that we may or may not prefer to deal with.
Of course, any call to seek the blessing of holiness comes with dangers and distortions. The downside of Christian holiness is the reason that it has been discarded or disregarded by much modern Christian teaching, preaching, and personal devotion. These unholy things that sometimes cling to our experience of what may be termed "spurious Christian holiness" are separation from the public world and its struggles, a sense of spiritual superiority, and the lack of an understanding that holiness is gifted, not the result of personal achievement. These distortions give any call to a life of Christian holiness a bad name.
Holiness that cuts us off from the sufferings in our world tells others that we do not believe that God is found in the world and in our pains to make it more godly. Holiness that creates an elite cadre of holy gents and gentesses should make us remember George Orwell's Animal Farm, where "all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others." This doesn't sell well in the church anymore than it sells in politics. Finally, holiness misses the point when it forgets that holiness is more like humble thanksgiving than a cause for bragging.
Our sense of holiness today must be worldly, as Bishop John A. T. Robinson said in his little book, Honest to God. Modern holiness must be free of any spiritual prerogatives, and profoundly aware that it has little to do with our modern spirit of frantic striving after our self-generated goals. So what would valid holiness look like for today's Christians -- progressive, evangelical, or fundamentalist? The late Albert Outler offers some comments on Christian holiness from his study of the writings of John Wesley. Outler says that Christian holiness is linked to the gifts of the Spirit enumerated in Paul's later letter to the churches in Ephesus.
But there is a crucial distinction between what extraordinary gifts holiness brings to some Christians -- healing, tongues, prophecy, discernment of spirits and teaching; and the ordinary gifts of holiness that may be given to all Christians -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. All this means is that those who think they have been given the extraordinary gifts of spiritual holiness are not exempt from the common gifts of spiritual holiness. Furthermore, they can be called before the church for not exhibiting these common holiness gifts, no matter how impressive their extraordinary gifts are.
So where is all this leading us -- this Advent call to open ourselves to Christ's life of holiness? We have already suggested one way. First, there is a holiness that grasps our personal lives as well as the public life all around us. There's an old saying that says, "When a person becomes a Christian, his dog ought to be the better for it." Sometimes business executives or government officials are criticized for abusing their colleagues and underlings. Christians, in our homes, our work, in the church, and in the world, exhibit holiness when we display the common gifts of holiness. We must love those close to us in these relationships. We must relish life's joys, certainly having a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at ourselves. We must be patient and kind, we are to be good to a fault; we must keep vows and promises; we are to be gentle -- no blustering about; and we must have self-control over our relationships, especially those troublesome ones. Part of holiness would be any and all of these.
Secondly, holiness is also our vital involvement in the public world from which we can never be separated. A pastor brought some realism to a family grieving over the death of their teenage child, by linking his fatal, contagious disease to the possibility that the child contracted the disease by hanging onto the straps in the New York City subway. On his way home to the city's suburbs, their son may have grabbed the strap that had been touched by a child from the slums where this disease was rampant. We may fault the pastor for his timing and insensitivity to the family's grief, but he was dead right that we cannot insulate ourselves from the terrible conditions under which so many in our world are condemned to live. And, the conditions that force them to live in such misery can spill over into the lives of those who think they are well insulated from their oppression, as it did with the son of this affluent family. Modern holiness also entails getting entangled in the problems and possibilities of public issues. Jesus will judge us severely for trying to escape through feel-good private religion; through being continually entertained by the media; in political affiliations that encourage selfishness at the expense of the poor and powerless; and in our pleading that we don't know what to do.
This final comment drives to the heart of the Christian experience in all things: we open ourselves to be grasped by the power of God enabling us to live an authentic holiness. So much of our contemporary Christianity falls into two distorted emphases. One is to see our faith only as giving us forgiveness and the peace of God beyond life's anxieties. Certainly, we are grateful for the grace of God that restores the presence of God in our lives, helping us to manage those personal threats of sin, fate, and death. Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christianity usually fall into this distortion. Here, faith in Christ is highly personal and few such Christians see the wider picture of the call to discipleship as imbedded in Jesus' announcement of God's earthly kingdom. Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion Of The Christ, is largely in this style. It gathers everything of the faith into that last week in Jesus' life, implying that the forgiveness and mercy of God are available only through the passion, suffering, and death of Jesus. But there is more to the faith than this, important as forgiveness, mercy, and the courage to live beyond our anxieties. Biblical holiness leaves us dissatisfied with this narrow sort of holiness.
A second type of holiness that demands our rejection is the worldly holiness that sets out single-handedly to refashion the world without realizing that our zeal can be corrupted by our sin and our frantic pace so that we take little time to listen to God. An old hymn of the church imploring us to "Take Time To Be Holy," demands a hearing for those of the mainstream and liberal congregations. However, this hymn has little to drive us to think about public issues and their need for change. Contrast for example, stanza 2 in another hymn, "Love Divine All Loves Excelling":
Take away our bent to sinning;Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith as its beginning,End of faith as its beginning,
Set our hearts as liberty.Set our hearts as liberty.
We who are inclined to practice our holiness, find that our hustle and intense activity can make us guilty of insensitivity and arrogance. We label any who object to our plans and conclusions about improving everything as uneducated Christians whose distress at our activity must not be taken seriously. We are not inclined to deal with them at any level as Christian brothers and sisters. Certainly in the challenge to long-standing moral convictions such as gay rights, we tend to shout rather than talk, dismiss rather than listen, and demonize rather than see them as under God and Christ just like ourselves.
Something called "Progressive Radio" attempts to make a voice for the progressives and liberals on the issues of the day. It brings some light and truth to the complicated reality of modern life. However, progressive radio also evidences much of the narrow and distorted broadcasting voiced by the Rush Limbaughs of the rightist radio. It, too, can defame its challengers, and lace its broadcasts with ridicule and outright lack of courtesy and decency. Progressives in the church, like the radical right can easily contribute to unnecessary social and political divisiveness, requiring lengthy periods of cooling down so that the important issues may be addressed. Holiness does mandate serious worldly action. Nothing denies this.
Holiness does call us to discern and nourish the kingdom of God in the world. Yet real biblical holiness means allowing God's Spirit to change us at the core of our being. We find ourselves invited to a point of radical trust in God's mercy, along with the gift of courage. This deeper holiness delivers us from arrogantly thinking that we are privy to the major and minor plans of God ordaining us to crusade against all that are not part of our entourage. Advent is a great time to remember how high and how deep our call is to biblical holiness. In some rather contemporary language, biblical holiness is not messing around with the type of holiness disconnected from the world, nor is it taking over from God the management of the world. It is a call to listen to God, be continually converted, and to bring light to God's world where there now is darkness.
