- BORN AGAIN – A SERMON FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT
- JESUS ONLY – A SERMON FOR TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY
BORN AGAIN – A SERMON FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT
JOHN 3:1-17
FEBRUARY 17, 2008
First Presbyterian Church of Arcadia, Florida
Ted W. Land, D. Min., Pastor
We Presbyterians are a diverse group, have you noticed? We are people who come to church wearing a three piece suit, or blue jeans. We have shaved heads, and long hair. We wear mini-skirts and granny gowns. We drive brand new Cadillac and worn-out Fords. We listen to hard-rock and the Brahms Requiem and Gregorian chants and Johnny Cash.
Someone once described various churches as “tents” or “umbrellas.” And they said that we Presbyterians had the biggest one, with room for anyone and everyone under the tent.
It is true. I’ve seen liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, Florida State Seminoles and University of Florida Gators, New York Yankee fans and Boston Red Sox fans, all serving together, worshipping together, in the church.
There is an incredible theological diversity within the Presbyterian Church as well. There would almost have to be, because there are very few life-long Presbyterians. This church has a higher percentage of born-and-bred Presbyterians than most churches in Florida. But I was baptized in infancy in the Southern Methodist church, and I know we’ve got some recovering Southern Baptists and some former Lutherans among us as well.
And even if we were all born and raised in the Presbyterian Church, there would still be an incredible diversity of beliefs, because we are a blending of a variety of traditions.
For one thing, there is the former Northern Presbyterian stream, two of them, really, the old United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. And then there are those of us who grew up in the Southern Presbyterian Church, the PCUS that was originally founded as the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States.
And within those varied streams, there were different traditions. We Presbyterians are a part of the wonderful Reformed Tradition that goes back to John Calvin, John Knox, and Ulrich Zwingli, to Switzerland and Scotland. We’ve got Waldensians from Italy and Huguenots from France, and Puritans from England, and even some Reformed church folks from Holland and Germany as close kin.
Along the way, we’ve been a part of the great evangelical movements in the United States. The Great Awakenings and great revivals have included Presbyterian preachers and Presbyterian churches.
Billy Sunday, the prototype for the modern evangelist, was a Presbyterian. And a Northern Presbyterian at that! And of course, Ruth Bell Graham, Billy’s late wife, was a life long Presbyterian out of the evangelical branch of the Southern stream.
We Presbyterians are often referred to as “God’s frozen people” or the “frozen chosen.” The emotion, the fervor, of the revival movement, of the churches that are perceived as more evangelical, is missing in our worship and spiritual life.
There are some traditions where an altar call is included every Sunday, and the preacher is going to keep calling and the choir is going to keep singing until someone comes down to the front of the church, to repent of their sins, to renew their commitment, to be born again.
And that is foreign and strange to us. One of our members, who grew up in that tradition, grasped a great truth early in her association with our church. She said, “You don’t need an altar call when everyone stands and affirms their faith with the Apostles Creed. If you can say those words, and mean then, then you are professing your faith every Sunday.” I’d never thought of our affirmation of what we believe as a renewal of our commitment, but you know, it is, isn’t it?
Like a great many of you who gather here every Sunday to worship God, and like most folks in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, I really can’t remember a time when I did not know that Jesus Christ was my Lord and my Savior. I was literally raised up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, baptized in infancy (though in a Methodist Church) and taken to Sunday School and church from the time I was able to remember. My mother was ably assisted by my father’s five sisters, and they saw that I was in Sunday School and church every Sunday. When my younger brothers came along, they came along to Sunday School and church, too.
Our family pew was in the center row, the second pew, right behind where the elders sat when they served communion. And it was my Aunt Josephine, the oldest and the smallest of my father’s sisters, who took us to church. And we were expected to sit still and pay attention. And if we didn’t, well, Aunt Josephine had ways of making us behave. She had the strongest grip and when she pinched you, it didn’t leave a bruise. It paralyzed you. You couldn’t move. I don’t know whether it was like acupuncture or acupressure, or one of the lost martial arts, but if Aunt Josephine got ahold of you, she was like the snapping turtle: she didn’t let go till it thundered. And the thunder was her chastisement and correction for your misbehavior, and that occurred after church, while we were walking home for a big Sunday dinner. With lightning flashing from her eyes, the thunder of her voice rolled down!
Growing up in that household, surrounded by people who both loved me and disciplined me, I had no trouble accepting the truth of the songs that I learned in Sunday School, with May Beth Blackburn and Berita Thomas as my teachers.
“Jesus loves me, this I know…for the Bible tells me so.” “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world…Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” And there was another one I’d almost forgotten: “Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus. Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
I learned the stories of Christmas and Easter, and that Jesus was born in a stable and died on a cross for my sins and was risen for my salvation. I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know and understand, and believe that.
That church was steeped in the Southern Presbyterian Evangelical tradition. We had revivals spring and fall, often jointly with other churches.
Altar calls were not an every Sunday thing in that church, but once in a while the pastor would give one. On the second Sunday of November, 1955, when the Reverend John E. Stauffer gave an altar call, little Teddy Land, a few days shy of his ninth birthday, came down the aisle and made his public profession of faith, and joined the church.
Was that when I was “born again?” No, it was not. It was when I claimed my birthright. I’d never known a day without the love of God in my life, without knowing that Jesus was my savior. When a child grows up in a Christian home, that is the way it should be.
No person that Jesus ever spoke to in His life enjoyed the privilege of growing up in a Christian home. No person that Jesus ever spoke to had the Christian church, Christian parents, even the New Testament to guide and direct him or her. They needed to experience a kind of new birth that a child of the Covenant does not. And there are people in the world today, who have never known the church, and who have never known Christian parents, and who have never learned the Bible, and they maybe do need to be born again.
Don’t you have to be born again to be saved? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll leave that to God to figure out.
What does it mean to be saved? What I did, on that November Sunday in 1955, was to claim my salvation.
Was that when I was saved? No, it was not. I was saved, and so were you, on a Friday afternoon about 3 o’clock, when Jesus Christ cried out “It is finished.”
When He died for my sins, and yours, we were saved. I took possession of the gift of eternal life that had been mine all along when I professed my personal faith in Jesus Christ as my personal savior.
When our young teenagers join the church at the end of a confirmation class, they are doing what I did so long ago. They are confirming what they already know and believe. They are claiming for themselves what those who have raised them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord have claimed for them, and taught to them.
I heard someone say once that “Presbyterians aren’t born again Christians. ” I don’t think that is true. I’ve been born again, and again, and again. I undergo a spiritual rebirth, a recommitment of my life to Christ, a renewal in the Holy Spirit, and I am born again. And you are, too, if you allow God to change you, to melt you and mold you, and fill you and use you, as my old mentor Dan Iverson wrote in a chorus.
I feel sorry for those folks who have only been born again once. They don’t know what they’ve missed! I’ve been born again in the late ‘60’s when I was ordained as a deacon, and I felt the power of the Holy Spirit flooding me and filling me as those elders laid on their hands, and my pastor prayed for me.
I was born again just a few years later when the Presbytery of Saint Andrew ordained me to the gospel ministry.
I was born again every time God called me to another pastorate.
I was born again at a Youth Conference at Montreat, North Carolina in June of 2003.
And I may just have been born again at an Evangelism Conference in Nashville last September.
Listen to what old William Barclay had to say about this:
“To be born again is to be changed in such a way that it can only be described as re-birth and re-creation. The change comes when we love Jesus and allow Him into our hearts. Then we are forgiven our past and armed by the Spirit for the future. Then we can truly accept the will of God. And then we become citizens of the Kingdom; then we become (children) of God; then we enter into eternal life, which is the very life of God.” The Gospel of John, p. 119
One who knows that he or she is a child of God and who lives as a citizen of the kingdom still needs to repent of sins, and be forgiven, still needs to love Jesus and allow Him into our hearts.
One of the things I’m looking forward to, over the next couple of years as I wind down to retirement and this church winds up towards a brighter future with new and younger leadership, is this whole church being reborn, renewed, recreated. Maybe it will even be born again.
Let us pray.
Come into our hearts, come into our hearts, come into our hearts, Lord Jesus. Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into our hearts, Lord Jesus, and create in us clean hearts, and renew a right Spirit within us. Forgive us the past, and arm us for the future, that we can truly accept your will for our lives, be citizens of your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, be your children now and always, as we prepare for the eternal life that surely is ours, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
JESUS ONLY – A SERMON FOR TRANSFIGURATION SUNDAY
MATTHEW 17:1-9
FEBRUARY 3, 2008
First Presbyterian Church of Arcadia, Florida
Ted W. Land, Pastor
When they looked up, they saw Jesus only Matthew 17:9
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. Our text this morning is the story of the transfiguration of Jesus as it was told by Matthew, in his gospel. Mark tells the story a little differently, but the point in both accounts is the same: Jesus was transfigured, changed in His appearance, glowing with a light, His very garments bleached snowy white.
It was much like what had happened to Moses when he had gone up the mountain to meet with God, to receive the Ten Commandments.
It was as though the very glory of the Lord, the very light of God’s presence, had come upon Moses, and his face shone so brightly that he had to wear a veil or a mask to hide it.
Jesus face does not appear to need a veil or a mask to conceal the glory of the Lord. But Moses and Elijah, the law-giver and the prophet, appear with Jesus to demonstrate that He is indeed the fulfillment of all of the law and all of the prophecy of the Old Testament. He is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God, and for the second time, the first being at His baptism, a voice comes from heaven saying, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And this time the voice adds “Listen to Him!”
I love the reaction of Peter and James and John. They did exactly what most of us would do. They fell to the ground overcome by fear. No doubt, they hid their eyes. Certainly, they had them clichéd tight shut. They hit the deck, for who knew when the lightning would begin to strike and the thunder begin to roll.
But when they opened their eyes and looked around, they saw Jesus only.
Jesus had been transfigured. And now He stood before them, no longer the carpenter’s son from Galilee. He was now the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Oh, He always had been. But now, they saw the power and the might and the glory upon Him. But they didn’t see Moses and Elijah any more. They saw Jesus only.
I wish there were a way that we could show the world Jesus only.
There are a whole lot of folks out there in the world who never come to church.
They claim to believe in God. They claim to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. But they never darken the door of a church.
When I ask them why, their response is often something like, “Well, there’s nothing but a bunch of hypocrites in the church.”
When I ask them to define what a hypocrite is, they usually can’t, but what they mean is that there are a whole lot of people who don’t act like Christians six days a week that put on a coat and tie or a dress and high heels on Sunday, and try to act like Christians then.
There is some truth in those statements.
But none of us can ever measure up to what we claim to be when we claim to be a Christian.
The word means “Christ like”. We can never be enough “like Christ” to be worthy of comparison. Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life, and most of us would do well to live a perfect and sinless hour. Hour? How about a perfect and sinless minute?
My mentor from seminary days, Harry Goodykoontz, had a plaque on his office wall that said, “A church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.”
The church is where sinners come to get reassurance of their forgiveness in Jesus Christ. It is where those of us who are sick and tired of our sinful ways come to get forgiveness of our sins. It is where those of us who are sick and tired of being sinned against come to get sufficient grace to be able to forgive those who sin against us.
The problem is, when people look at the church from the outside in, they don’t see a colony of heaven. They don’t see the body of Christ in the world. They see a bunch of sinners just like themselves.
This is nothing new. George Eliot, the author who was really a woman named Mary Ann Evans, died in 1880. But you can read in her novels, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and see the faults and flaws of the church in the 19th century. Why, she even has one of her characters complain about Christians who make themselves as little like the Savior as possible, so that “If I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I must shut my eyes for fear I should see a Christian.” (Quoted by Carol Bechtel in the 2007-2008 Horizons Bible Study)
That wonderful old anthem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, contains a verse that reminds that in the beauty of the lilies, Christ was borne across the seas,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me…
It continues, “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free…”
Recent versions have changed that last verb so that we now “live to make men free,” and I am much more comfortable with that!
We can talk all day about the transfiguration of Jesus. It won’t change a whole lot of what is wrong with the world or the church today, if we ourselves are not transfigured. If the church, the body of Christ in the world, if those who claim to be Christians, don’t show Jesus Christ to the world, no one will want to be like us.
And sometimes it is the most visible Christians who do the worst job of presenting Christ.
Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and pastor of a Colorado mega-church, resigned in disgrace last year in the midst of charges of sexual immorality and use of illegal drugs.
But a few years ago, Alan Bosek, President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, stepped down after confessing an extra-marital affair.
And the charges of abuse and molestation against Roman Catholic priests have been newsworthy for more than a decade.
The Psalmist was right. There is indeed none that is righteous, no not one. (Psalms 14 and 53)
Somehow, we must find a way you show the world not our sinful selves, not our leaders who have feet of clay and are no better than we are, and maybe not as good.
We need to find that glory of Jesus Christ that can transfigure us. We need to let His light shine in the darkness. We need to let the world see Jesus only.
Now I am not wise enough or righteous enough to be able to tell you how to do that.
I had a man tell me once, that when he looked at me, he saw Jesus. I’ve never been so humbled in my life. But by saying that to me, he made me want to show him what Jesus looked like. He made me want to act like Jesus would act, to do what Jesus would do, to be like Jesus would be. I’ll never forget it, though I don’t always remember to live it.
All right, here is your homework. Go home and look at yourself in the mirror. Don’t look at your appearance. Look at your life. Look at how you live, and what you do. That great Scots poet Robert Burns wrote, “Would that God the gift would give us, to see ourselves as others see us.” Well, look at yourself the way others might see you. And everything that you see that doesn’t look like Jesus, get rid of it. Cast it out. Throw it away. Until when you look in the mirror, all you see is Jesus only.
You won’t be able to do it in a day. Not a week. Not a month. It will take a life time. But I promise that if you try, at the end of that life time, you will truly and surely see Jesus only.
Let us pray.
Lord, help us to show only You to all who see us. In Your precious name, Jesus we make this and all our prayers. Amen.