I reread a sermon that I wrote in 2005 during seminary… funny how trite some of my imperatives and “guidance” seem now that I look back on them from a few years later. Maybe trite isn’t the right word… forced? perfunctory? more rhetorical than genuine?

Regardless, it does seem that in the context of a sermon, or even moreso in the midst of an argument between equal parties, the whole truth is often sacrificed for the sake of littler, less-significant truths which can be defended much more easily… hence wining the argument takes precedent over remembering the whole story as it actually was… potency replaces comprehensiveness… and “connecting” with your listeners from the pulpit over something true (but small) happens in place of communicating a complicated, but honest, statement of the depths of the matter.

The sermon I found was on the demon-possessed man that was chained up in the cave. I, of course, spoke to Jesus’ ability to rescue, to heal, to redeem, to restore. All truths. Much more difficult to speak with potency on the reality of the invisible, spiritual dimensions (Satan, demons) that Jesus confronted… and whether or not He continues to defend and deliver us from those forces now… and how badly that starts to scare me once I think about it for more than a few seconds.

Yeah, if I’m anything like the evangelists Neibuhr depicts, I’ll probably just stick with something simpler… and turn up the volume of my voice a bit to compensate.

A God outside of time is not dependent upon time to save your soul. It is beyond all of the nonsense of formulas or metaphors and it is beyond a personal conversion experience and even beyond the scope that our imagination conjures when we try to imagine the whole church washed in the blood, though a much more accurate picture than “I said this now, I’m saved.” Confess and believe are the prerequisites but no one knows or can see the Lamb’s book of life or the infinite mystery that unfolds behind every verse that attempts to describe it, however imperfect words are. Therefore, salvation is worked out, hoped for, believed in, but not bartered. “I’ll do this if you’ll do that.” It is worked out with fear and trembling – and its worked out together or not at all. “‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, And to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel’ ” It is clear that heaven won’t be empty waiting for me as if Jesus only died for me. And praise God for that.