The Holy Spirit and Fire

The Orangeburg Series

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Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:15-17
January 15, 2012

Are you old enough to remember when the words “Baptist preaching” were nearly synonymous with the words “hellfire and damnation”? Do you remember the day when if the preacher wasn’t shoutin’, then he—and it was always “he”—wasn’t preachin’?

Several years ago, I supervised an African-American Baptist seminary student in an internship for his field education experience in seminary, and one of his internship opportunities was to preach in worship at First Baptist Greenville. As we were getting ready for worship the morning he was to preach, he said his wife had told him as he was leaving the house, “Now John, don’t you get to shoutin’ this mornin’. White people don’t like to be shouted at.”

But out and about on the highways and byways of white Baptist life in the American South, the enthusiastic revivalism of what Baptist historians call the “Sandy Creek tradition” birthed and bred generations of loud-shoutin’, high-whinin’, Baptist preachers dedicated to scaring the hell out of people in order to get them into heaven and into the church.

I confess that I don’t understand the psychology of coming to church Sunday after Sunday to be yelled at from the pulpit, but I also admit that I have never lived the hard-scrabble life of tooth-and-claw existence of so many of our Baptist forebears in the woods and on the farm and in the mill.

Not all Baptist preaching was that way, even “back in the day.” Among the genteel and cultured representatives of what Baptist historians call the “Charleston tradition,” modeled on the worship and preaching of the stately and orderly First Baptist Church of Charleston, shoutin’ preachers and hellfire and damnation sermons were the exception rather than the rule.

Over time, as we Baptists—especially we citified First Baptists—have left the woods and the farms and the mills, as we have become more educated and our lives have become more comfortable, we have become less and less comfortable with whinin’ and shoutin’ and hellfire and damnation. And along the way, we have lost something entirely biblical that we would do well to reclaim in our preaching and our teaching and our living.

It’s the Holy Spirit and fire. In this morning’s gospel lesson from the third chapter of Luke, John the Baptist says to the crowds who are coming to hear him preach, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16).

If I were a Pentecostal preacher, I would point out to you that when it comes to baptism, Baptists have spent a whole lot of time fussin’ and fumin’ over how much water is to be used and when it is to be applied when all the while, the Bible says that the baptism of John was a baptism of water; but the baptism of Jesus is a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire.

So how come we Baptists almost never talk about the Holy Spirit and fire, and especially so at baptism when Luke’s gospel, at least, suggests that the Holy Spirit and fire are distinguishing marks of the ministry of Jesus Christ?

At the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus says to the disciples, “This is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 1:5). So this morning, let’s talk about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit and fire.

First the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the constant and continuing presence of God in the world and in the church and in the life of every baptized believer.

In the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the “third person” in the distinctively Christian understanding of God as Three in One and One in Three: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit; Lover, Beloved, and Love.

Outside the enthusiastic confines of Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, the “third person” in the Trinity is routinely overlooked—or at least underemphasized—compared to the Father and the Son, the Creator and the Christ, the Lover and the Beloved. But the gospel of Luke doesn’t overlook or underemphasize the Holy Spirit at all.

At the baptism of Jesus, as Luke tells the story in chapter 3, “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” From the baptism of Jesus on, in the gospel of Luke, the ministry of Jesus himself is driven and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In Luke 4:1 we are told that following his baptism, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.” In Luke 4:14 we read, “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit returned to Galilee” where he began his ministry of teaching and preaching and healing. Luke 4 also tells us that when Jesus returned home to Nazareth to teach in the synagogue there, he read from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).

After the resurrection, Jesus said to the disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8), which is precisely what happens on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:2-4 when “suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

From Pentecost on in the book of Acts, individuals who minister in Jesus’ name are said again and again and again to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 4:8,31; 7:55; 9:17; 13:9,52) and “full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:24). In fact, the Holy Spirit plays so prominent a role in the life of the early church in the book of Acts that more than one commentator has suggested that instead of being called “The Book of the Acts of the Apostles,” as the church has traditionally named it, it should be called “The Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit.”

According to the gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit empowered life and ministry of Jesus Christ; and according to the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit empowers the life and ministry of the church and empowers the life of every baptized believer. One and the same empowering presence of God was at work in Jesus Christ, in the church of Jesus Christ, and in every baptized believer in Jesus Christ.

So don’t make the mistake that most non-Pentecostals and non-charismatics have made by reducing the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity.” Instead, “receive the Holy Spirit,” as Jesus puts in John 20:22. Embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, empowering presence of God in your life.

Now for the fire. Fire as a biblical sign and symbol of the presence of God is as old as the covenant of God with Abraham (Genesis 15:17), the appearance of God to Moses at the bush that was burning but not consumed (Exodus 3:2) and to all Israel at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:18). Consider this fire imagery on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24:17: “Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.” A devouring fire.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, fire is an image of judgment. John the Baptizer says that the one who is coming “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 2:16-17). There it is. “Unquenchable fire.” Can’t you just smell the sulfuric vapors of the brimstone? “Hellfire and damnation,” anyone?

The fire reminds us that in addition to being the constant, continuing, and empowering presence of God in our lives, the Holy Spirit is the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives. The fire that burns the chaff, the husk, the waste material of the wheat is like the “refiner’s fire” of our Old Testament lesson this morning from the prophet Malachi: “For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord” (Malachi 3:2-4).

Malachi speaks hard words of judgment with the imagery of fire, but notice that the point of that judgment is to purify rather than to destroy. The refiner’s fire burns away the dross, the impurities, and leaves behind only the pure metal. In our citified Baptist discomfort with hellfire-and-damnation preaching, we run from the refiner’s fire. And when we do, we are left with nothing to burn away the useless stuff, the wasteful stuff, the unnecessary, and impure stuff that weighs down our hearts and minds and souls and lives and separates us from God.

The image of the fire of judgment in this morning’s gospel lesson is a reminder that none of us is so pure that we don’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in our lives to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. No church is so pure that it doesn’t need the fire of judgment, the refiner’s fire, in its life to burn away what is useless, wasteful, unnecessary, and impure. As individuals and as a church, we must not reduce the Holy Spirit to the “third person of the Trinity” but embrace the Holy Spirit as the constant, continuing, and purifying presence of God in our lives and in our church.

The image of the refiner’s fire in Malachi 3 and fire of judgment in Luke 3 is also a reminder that your “Stop-Doing List” is every bit as important as your “To-Do List.” Do you have a “Stop-Doing List”? Probably not. If you don’t have a Stop-Doing list, then you need to start one. I learned about Stop-Doing lists several years ago from an article in Harvard Business Review.

Effective companies and organizations plan for and implement abandonment strategies for their products and services and processes every bit as carefully and thoroughly as they plan for and implement their launch strategies. Companies and organizations that survive and thrive understand that sooner or later their products and services and processes will diminish in their effectiveness, will become obsolete, will no longer meet the markets for which they were originally designed. The same is true for churches. Sooner or later the various ways we do worship and ministry and missions will no longer meet the needs for which they were originally designed. If you don’t plan to abandon and replace what you are doing and how you are doing it, sooner or later, it will abandon you.

It’s so obvious that we shouldn’t even have to say it, but we do. There is a time to abandon the womb and be born. No matter how warm and comfortable it may be in there, it can’t go on forever, can it? There is a time to abandon the only life we know for a life that is still to come. There is a time to abandon high school and your parents and to move on to college—and don’t come back! (Just kidding. Come back anytime; stay as long as you need to. I guess.) There is a time to abandon the house you have been living in and move into assisted living where you get the care that you can no longer provide for yourself. There is a time to abandon “the earthly tent we live in,” as the apostle Paul puts it, to move on to “a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (1 Corinthians 5:1). Our abandonment strategy is every bit as important as our launch strategy.

Start a “Stop-Doing List” today. Every individual and every congregation should have one. Plan for abandonment and replacement. The refiner’s fire of the Stop-Doing List is a reminder of the purifying presence of God among us and around us and in us that burns away the untimely, the unworthy, the useless and wasteful and unnecessary and impure stuff that holds us back as individuals and as a congregation from loving and serving God and from loving and serving our neighbor as we ought.

Whatever it is in your life, whatever it is in our congregational life together, that needs to be burned away like chaff, like the husk, like the waste material of the wheat, pray this day that the Holy Spirit and fire will refine and purify you. So receive the Holy Spirit, and receive the fire that comes with it. Embrace the constant, continuing, empowering, and purifying presence of God in your life and in our life together.

Let us pray.


Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice? Nails and Gold and Everything Bold!

The Orangeburg Series

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2 Kings 5:1-5; Luke 4:22-30
January 8, 2012

NOTE: This sermon is adapted from “Like a Child,” in Building a House for All God’s Children: Diversity Leadership in the Church (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), pp. 76-84.

“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s what little girls are made of.” These days, we know better than to put much stock in such old-fashioned, gender-biased adages, if for no other reason than the fact that our experience has introduced us to at least some girls and women who are obviously composed of anything but “sugar and spice and everything nice”—all present company excluded, of course.

Even so, we might be surprised to see in this morning’s Old Testament lesson a girl of an entirely different mettle than in the nursery rhyme. We never learn her name or anything more about her than what we read in 2 Kings 5:2-4. But from what we do learn about her in these three verses, I want to suggest an alternative adage to characterize this na‘ărâ qĕtannâ, this “little girl” from the land of Israel: Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what this girl is made of.

There is a cast of powerful people in the fifth chapter of 2 Kings. There is Naaman, the Syrian general. There is the king of Syria and the king of Israel. And there is the prophet Elisha who lives in Samaria, the capital of Israel. It would be all too easy for us to assume that we can learn the most from the most powerful people in the story. But it turns out that it’s the “little girl” from whom we can learn the most. Recognizing that the most important person in the story is the one who appears to be the least powerful person in it is a striking reminder that our assumptions and our expectations and our conventional interpretations frequently limit what we can learn from reading the Bible.

Perhaps you have read 1 Peter 3:7, which speaks of women as “the weaker sex.” Those three words in 1 Peter 3:7 have created centuries of assumptions and expectations and conventional interpretations in the church and in our culture. But 1 Peter ignores the biblical woman named Deborah who was a judge and a prophet over Israel without whom Barak, the commander of the Israelite army, refused to go to war unless she went with him (Judges 4:4,8). It ignores the biblical woman named Athaliah who was queen over Judah for six years when there was no king in the land (2 Kings 11:3). It ignores the biblical woman named Esther whose cunning and courage saved her people from a massacre (Esther). It ignores the biblical woman named Phoebe whom the apostle Paul refers to as “a deacon of the church” in Romans 16:1. And it ignores the biblical woman named Eve in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2:7 reads, “God formed a man from the dust of the ground.” The Hebrew verb in that verse is yatzar, “to mold” or “shape” or “form.” It’s what a potter does to make a clay vessel. Contrast that with verse 22, the creation of Eve: “the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man [God] made into a woman.” So the man is made of dust, and the woman is made of bone. Which one might be stronger? Dust or bone? The Bible says men are made of dust and women are made of bone. Who looks like “the weaker sex” now?

In fact, Bible translators don’t play fair with you or with Eve either one when they use the generic English word “made” to describe the creation of Eve. The Hebrew verb in that verse is banah, and it means “to build” or “to construct.” Eve was not just “made.” Eve was built. Elsewhere in the Bible, houses are built, city walls are built, towers are built, fortresses are built. There is nothing weak about this woman created in Genesis 2.

So when I say that the little girl in 2 Kings 5 is made of nails and gold and everything bold, you shouldn’t be surprised. Because 1 Peter 3:7 may call women “the weaker sex,” but the rest of the Bible pictures women very differently than 1 Peter does. Nails and gold and everything bold.

I say, “nails,” because she was “tough as.” Consider what we know about this girl’s situation. She was an Israelite captive who had been carried away from her village by Syrian raiders. Naaman the general must have selected her as part of the spoils of war to give to his wife as a household slave. So when this girl suggests in verse 3 that Naaman could be cured of his disease if he would pay a visit to “the prophet who lives in Samaria,” she reveals an amazing spiritual toughness. In spite of the terror, misfortune and dislocation she has experienced, she has not abandoned her confidence in her God and in the religious institutions of her upbringing. How could her faith be so tenacious as to survive and even thrive as a captive slave in a foreign land instead of a child at home? Tough as nails.

This “little girl from the land of Israel” models for us the toughness and the tenacity of faith that is required for citizenship in the kingdom of God. The author of the book of Revelation understood what it takes when he wrote, “as a follower of Jesus I am your partner in patiently enduring the suffering that comes to those who belong to his Kingdom” (Revelation 1:9). That’s not the kind of talk we like to hear about citizenship in the kingdom of God. When’s the last time you saw a sign outside a church that read, “Come suffer patiently with us”?

That’s not a gospel you and I want to hear or to preach, much less to live. We buy the conquering savior who vanquished sin and death and evil, and we sell the suffering servant because we want no part of servanthood or suffering either one. We preach a Christ who conquers, overcomes, protects and defends us against all comers, a national championship Jesus. And then we find ourselves and our theology utterly unprepared for the adversity that eventually comes our way in life when there is no triumph, only travail, when the losses in our lives pile up and the wins are few and far between at best or evidently all in the past. In adversity, our faith slips away like sand through our fingers, and we fall into despair or cynicism, unlike the girl from the land of Israel, who had not sold her soul to a theology of victory and success. Nails, I say, because she was tough as. Nails and gold.

I say “gold” because she had “a heart of.” Why it ever occurred to this child to be so astonishingly compassionate as to wish that her captor could be cured of his disease we will never know. Perhaps she is an ancient example of what is called the “Stockholm Syndrome” or “capture-bonding,” in which persons who are held hostage, such as prisoners of war, kidnap victims, battered wives and abused children, become emotionally attached and intensely loyal to their captors. Or maybe her circumstances as a household slave in the home of a wealthy and pampered Syrian woman was actually an easier and happier condition than she had known in the home of her rude, impoverished Israelite father who had no good use for a daughter who was no help to him in the fields. Or maybe it was her character. Maybe she was one of those unusually empathetic children you come across from time to time, that child with a sensitivity to others that takes everyone by surprise.

We can’t get behind the text in front of us to reconstruct her feelings, but what we can see in the text is an astonishing compassion that looks right past differences in nationality and religion and disparities in power and wealth to see the commonality of human suffering and need. And so she said, “I wish that my master could go to the prophet who lives in Samaria! He would cure him of his disease.” That is astonishing compassion on the part of a victim of conquest and coercion. And it is precisely the compassion that is required for citizenship in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus puts it in the sermon on the mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44). That’s another piece of the gospel for which it is hard to find a practitioner in these days of religious, political, and national partisanship, polemics and polarization. But we’ve found one in 2 Kings 5. This little girl from the land of Israel exhibits Kingdom-of-God compassion for her enemy and her oppressor. Nails and gold, I say, because she had a heart of.

Nails and gold and everything bold. I say, “everything bold,” because this girl makes an outrageously bold claim on the grace and mercy of God. We have no idea how she knew that the prophet Elisha and the God of Israel would cure the Syrian general of this disease. Perhaps she had suffered from it herself, or perhaps someone in her family had, or perhaps the reputation of this prophet was so widespread that she needed no personal experience with his gift of healing. However she knew it—or perhaps only believed it or hoped it or prayed it, she was outrageously bold in her offer to Naaman. She invited this foreigner to avail himself of the health and wellbeing that was available in her own community of faith. She invited the wolf into the sheepfold, for heaven’s sake. And when she did, she made an outrageous claim on the grace and mercy of God by suggesting that God would act to heal an enemy of God’s people, that God whom she worshiped was every bit as interested in and concerned for Naaman’s health and wellbeing as for her own.

Syrians were historic enemies of Israelites, so much so that more than 800 years later the good people of Nazareth in Luke’s gospel became so incensed at Jesus that they wanted to kill him when he reminded them of this passage that contradicted their assumptions and their expectations and their conventional interpretations. A leprous Syrian warrior is healed while Israelite men, women and children are not? They became furious with Jesus when he proclaimed as “the truth” (v 25) an understanding of God that insists that God does not discriminate against people we despise or detest.

In Luke 6, Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:32-36).

In the end, it’s not the sociological imperative—“love your enemies”—that infuriates Jesus’ audience then and now. It’s the theological declarative that angers us most: God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” Jesus says, and God is merciful to our enemies. As Jesus preaches and teaches it, citizenship in the Kingdom of God requires worshiping and serving a God who loves even people who do not love God, a God who is good even to people who are not. That’s what this “little girl from the land of Israel” understood about God that many of us have not yet been willing to understand or to accept or to live by. Nails and gold and everything bold. That’s what it takes to be a follower of Jesus and to belong to Jesus’ kingdom.

And as for “the weaker sex”? Only in 1 Peter 3:7. The visionary words of the apostle Paul characterize Jesus’ kingdom this way: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

May we never fail to live into and live up to Paul’s vision of Jesus’ kingdom. It’s nails and gold and everything bold.

Copyrighted © 2012 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.

New Beginnings

The Orangeburg Series

John 1:1-18

New Year’s Day 2012

Every year, more than a million people gather in Times Square in New York City for the annual Ball Drop that begins at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Many millions more watch on television, while others party in the new year in their respective downtowns, hotels, and homes. It’s the most raucous holiday of the year. If you look only at the surface of the New Year’s celebrations and New Year’s dissipations you might not recognize that underneath it all is a deep hunger and thirst in the human soul for a fresh start, a new beginning.

A couple years ago, a few days before Christmas, I was helping one of my sons change a flat tire on his truck in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. To tell you the truth, I was enjoying myself. I’m not a fan of flat tires, mind you; but once your son leaves home for college, even changing a flat tire together can feel like “quality time” with each other. We weren’t quite finished when we were approached by a man in his late 30s or early 40s asking for a meal. He said he was embarrassed to ask for help, and he didn’t want money. But he said he was an out-of-work construction worker, and he had four mouths to feed; and if I would buy him supper, he would sure be grateful to me. I confess to you that my first thought was “Can’t you see you’re interrupting a father-son thing here? Leave us alone.” Then I thought to myself, “Go scam someone else, man. I don’t have time for this, and your supper is not in my budget.” Not to mention the fact that we were in the parking lot of a burger joint and he wanted dinner for four from the chicken place a half a mile away. Right.

But it was a couple days before Christmas, and he sure enough looked as though he was down on his luck. And he didn’t ask for cash, and I thought about what I would want somebody to do for my son if he was ever out of work with four mouths to feed. And besides, it had only been about ten days or so since I had preached a sermon about God being in the business of filling the hungry with good things, as the gospel of Luke puts it (Luke 1:53; 6:21). So the next thing I knew, I was standing at the counter of that chicken place buying dinner to go for four. I still don’t know whether I got scammed or whether I actually helped someone; but on the way to the chicken place, the fellow I bought dinner for said this: “I’ll be glad when this year is over. I sure hope next year is better than this one was.”

Have you ever felt that way at the end of one year and the beginning of the next? At one time or another in our lives, every one of us experiences the deep need to turn the calendar to a new year. Sooner or later, every one of us comes to a place in our lives where we need a fresh start, a new beginning.

New beginnings are different from New Year’s resolutions. For one thing, the need for a new beginning doesn’t always coincide with a new year. The circumstances of our lives, the conditions of our hearts, and the movement of our souls—not the calendar—determine the timing of our need for a new beginning. For another thing, a new beginning is a fresh start, a clean slate. It’s not just a list of a few new things that you’re going to do or old things you’re going to stop doing. It’s starting all over again.

On the morning of my father’s funeral, my mother walked into the den of the church parsonage where my parents were living when my father died and asked those of us sitting there, “You know what song I’ve been singing since I woke up this morning?” We didn’t even try to name that tune. She said, “I’ve been singing, ‘I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair.’” Nellie’s song from the Broadway musical, South Pacific. That was more than 25 years ago, and there is still an occasional night when she calls his name in her sleep. But she recognized that morning that she had arrived at a “starting-all-over” moment in her life. A new beginning.

New beginnings are a lot harder than New Year’s resolutions, but they last a lot longer. New beginnings are also more biblical than New Year’s resolutions. God called Abraham and Sarah out of the Ur of the Chaldees to a new beginning in Canaan. God called the Israelites up out of Egypt to a new beginning in a land of promise. God called the exiles home from Babylon to a new beginning in Jerusalem. God called Peter away from his nets on the Sea of Galilee to a new beginning as an apostle fishing for people. God called Nicodemus away from his life as a Pharisee to a new beginning, “born from above” or “born again.” God called Saul of Tarsus from persecuting the Way to a new beginning as the greatest champion of the Way.

And then there’s the biblical new beginning in verse 14 of this morning’s gospel lesson: “The Word became flesh and lived among us . . . full of grace and truth.” The Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God and the Word that was God, the Word through whom all things were made, the source of all beginnings, began anew when the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. That new beginning—the “incarnation,” it’s called in theological jargon—is the ground of all our new beginnings. Incarnational new beginnings—not merely resolutions—are necessarily “full of grace and truth.”

Grace has to do with letting go of what has been. Grace is about letting go of what has been in order to embrace what yet can be. That’s what God’s grace does: God lets go of our has-been in order to embrace the yet-can-be in us. Let me be very clear about what grace is not. Grace is not a “do-over.” There is no such thing as a do-over. What you’ve done, you’ve done; and what you left undone, you’ve left undone. There is no such thing as a do-over; but there is do better. There is do wiser. There is do new. And in order to do better and wiser and new, you have to let go of what has been: good, bad, or indifferent. Just as by grace God let go of our sin, we must let go of our guilt, our loss, our pain, our grief, our anger, our disappointment—our own or others. Whatever it is about the past that you are dragging with you into the present, you must let that go. Grace is washing what has been out of your hair to start a new day or a new year fresh and clean and anew. That’s what new beginnings take: Grace.

And truth also. Truth has to do with recognizing in the present that nothing less than a new beginning will do. Tony Compolo tells the story (Let Me Tell You a Story, p. 96) of an old guy in the backwoods of Kentucky who could always be counted on to show up at revival meetings whenever an evangelist came to town. At the end of each service when the invitation was given, he would come down the aisle, get down on his knees, raise his arms to heaven and cry out, “Fill, Jesus! Fill me! Fill me, Jesus!” Then, within a week or two after the revival was over, he would slip back into his old ways of living. But when the next round of revival meetings was held, he would once again show up, walk down the aisle, and pray the same prayer over and over. One time, he was down on his knees yelling to the ceiling, “Fill me! Fill me, Jesus! Fill me, fill me! Fill me, Jesus!” when suddenly from the back of the church a lady called out, “Don’t do it, Lord! He leaks!” The truth is, of course, we all leak. If you only have a small leak, and all you need is a minor tune-up, then making a few New Year’s resolutions will do for you. But if what you need is an overhaul, a rebuild, a restoration, a spiritual “make-over,” if you will, then the truth is, nothing less than a new beginning will do.

It wasn’t enough for Abraham and Sarah to make a few New Year’s resolutions in Ur of the Chaldees and then a few weeks later just go on with things as they were where they were. It wasn’t enough for the Israelites in Egypt or Babylon, either one, to make a few New Year’s resolutions and keep on living where they were as they were. It wasn’t enough for Nicodemus or for Peter or for Saul to resolve to do a few things a little differently. In every case, it required an entirely new beginning. And truth is what it takes to recognize that the game you have been playing, the life you have been living, the circumstances of the present, are no longer viable as a vehicle to carry you to a healthy, sustainable, and redemptive future in right relationship with God, in right relationship with others, and in right relationship with yourself. Only a new beginning will do.

When “the Word became flesh and lived among us. . . full of grace and truth,” it opened up to you and to me and to the world the ever-present possibility of a new beginning. The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about new beginnings. The gospel is about “new life,” Paul says in Romans 7:6, and “a new creation,” he says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. The gospel is “new wine,” a “new garment,” a “new covenant” (Luke 5:36-37; 22:20). The gospel is about “a new self,” according to Ephesians 4:24. And God knows, every one of us needs a new self at least once in our lives; and some of us discover once is not enough for us.

No matter how many New Year’s resolutions we may make, our life remains soiled; our creation is spoiled; our covenant becomes tattered; our garment is torn; our wine becomes tasteless; and our self gets tarnished. The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they are a self-help enterprise. And the problem with “self-help” is that it just doesn’t work. Have you ever thought about why it is that “self-help” books are a billion-dollar business? It’s because self-help doesn’t work. If self-help worked, you could buy one good self-help book, and you’d be done. But have you noticed how those of us who buy self-help books can’t buy just one? It’s like those potato chips: you can’t eat just one. You have to have another and another and another because self-help can’t create a new self. It only nurtures the deep hunger and thirst of the human soul for a new beginning.

The new beginning that leads to a new self can only come when the hunger and thirst on our inside is met by the nourishment we need from the outside. Think about it. When you are hungry, your body can feed on itself. In the short-term, your body feeds on itself by burning the fat it has stored up in order to keep itself alive and functioning. And when you are hungry, your body can feed on itself by devouring the muscle you have built in order to keep itself alive and functioning. But your body cannot feed on itself forever. Sooner or later, your body must receive nourishment from the outside—protein and carbohydrates and nutrients—that will restore the muscle and replenish the fat reserves that your body can live on but for only so long. Like body, like soul.

The words of Jesus later in the gospel of John express this biological and spiritual reality when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (John 6:35). Jesus said, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). How can that be? Never hungry? Never thirsty? We don’t know any condition of the human body or the human soul in this life in which hunger and thirst are permanently satisfied.

But here’s the thing. It’s not one-and-done. It’s not eat and never eat again. It’s not drink and never drink again. It is the constant, saving presence of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God is with us,” feeding our hunger and satisfying our thirst, offering us again and again and again the bread of life and the cup of new life, the spiritual food that nourishes our souls the way physical food nourishes our bodies. New beginnings come from the outside in, not the inside out.

Look at John 1:12 in this morning’s gospel lesson. There are three biblical steps to a new beginning in John 1:12. “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” I want you to see the three steps in the three verbs in that sentence: received, believed, to become. The first step in a new beginning is to receive—to receive the constant, saving presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life, whether it is for the first time or for the hundredth time to receive—the bread of life and the spring of water gushing up to eternal life. It is God’s initiative, not ours, that opens us to the possibility of a new beginning when we open ourselves to God in Jesus Christ to receive God’s constant, saving presence in our life, guiding, sustaining, directing, correcting us on our way. The first step is to receive.

The second step is to believe. Notice that we don’t receive because we believe. A lot of people have it backwards. A lot of believers and unbelievers alike misrepresent the Christian faith as an act of believing that leads to receiving. From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, the Bible could not be more clear that we don’t receive because we believe. We believe because we have received. In Genesis 15:5-6, Abraham received the promise of a future from God: God brought Abraham outside his tent “and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then [God] said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And [Abraham] believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Abraham received, and then he believed. The apostle Paul put it this way in Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We all received the promise of salvation in Jesus Christ long before any of us believed it. Believing comes from receiving, not the other way around.

The redemptive new beginning of the Christian faith germinates and takes root and sprouts and grows in the darkness of doubt and sin and guilt and loss and pain and grief and anger and disappointment whenever and wherever we come to the recognition that God has already provided all we need to address the hunger and thirst on our inside, so that when we receive, we believe.

And when we believe, we become. “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” If grace is about letting go of the past, and truth is about recognizing in the present that nothing less than a new beginning will do, then “the power to become” is the God-given capacity to step into the future of a new beginning with God, in God, for God.

Oddly enough, it just might be that the people who understand best what a new beginning is are those folks among us who play video games. In a video game, there comes a point when the screen is filled by the words, “GAME OVER.” If you want to keep on playing, there’s nothing else to do but to start an entirely new game, begin an entirely new life. A new beginning is a “game over”/“start new game” moment. By the mercy of God, revealed in Jesus the Christ, by grace and truth, any new day can begin a brand new year when you decide to receive, to believe, and to become.

This New Year’s Day can be that day for you. Any day in this new year can be that day for you. The invitation of God in Jesus Christ is open now to you to receive, to believe, and to become.


Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.