If Christ is in You
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
Fifth of Lent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:1-11
Theme: “Life in Christ, dead to sin”
I still shudder a little remembering that night.
I was driving between Louisville and Lexington. I don’t remember what the purpose of the trip was, but it was late, and the weather was clear at the time, though it had been raining earlier in the evening. There’s a place along the highway, near Frankfort, where the roadway crosses the Kentucky River. Going from West to East, after crossing the river, you drive through a man-made gorge that was dug into the bluffs to accommodate the highway. As I crossed the bridge, I was looking ahead to see if there was any traffic heading up the incline inside that gorge. I saw what appeared to be the reflection of a pair of taillights on a truck pulled off on the right hand side of the road. As I got to the end of the bridge and started into the ravine, the reflectors seemed to move out into the roadway. For just a moment, I had this image of a medium size truck backing up and completely blocking the highway – and I started to slam on the brakes and swerve to try to miss it.
Had it been the case that a truck WAS there, it would have been too late. In the next second I was at the place and then beyond it. There was no truck. There WERE a couple of markers on either side of an access road off to the side, similar to the reflectors that are on either side of the driveway over here at the parsonage. The angle and speed at which I was approaching, along with the curve of the road on the far side of the bridge combined to create the illusion that there was something there that was not really there.
I still got the adrenalin rush, and stopped breathing, and then started shaking as I recovered from the shock of “seeing” and then NOT hitting that truck. But there for maybe a little more than a second, I was sure I was going to be involved in a terrible accident.
I was SURE. Absolutely positive.
There was no sense of the fact that what I was seeing was actually completely a product of light and shadows. To my knowledge I’ve never had a hallucination in my life, but this probably comes closest. I’ve known of people, and heard reports of what it is like to HAVE a hallucination. They are, as I understand it, very convincing. Even to the point of the person having one becoming belligerent in insisting on what they are seeing.
It’s not, after all, something you PLAN on happening. If you have lived your entire life trusting what you’ve seen with your eyes and heard with your ears, you have absolutely NO reason to begin to randomly question the accuracy of what you see and hear – especially if there are no other changes or symptoms to point you in that direction.
Paul is dealing with something along the same lines when he discusses this issue of living according to the flesh versus living according to the Spirit.
We can reach out, we can touch, we can feel, we can SENSE the physical world around us. Yesterday as the wind blew and the clouds scuttled across the sky, I was very aware of the movement of the air around me, and around this building. At one point, the wind caught one of the doors to the sanctuary and blew it open and back against the outside wall. I ran back and pulled it closed and turned the bolt to keep it from happening again. Though I couldn’t SEE the wind, I could certainly feel it and see the effect it was having on things around me.
It is the same when we talk about the physical world and the spiritual. They are to a degree, mutually exclusive. I say ‘to a degree’ because, we are in a constant struggle between the two. As human beings, and as new creations in Christ, we reside in both worlds. Ultimately, one will prevail. The question is WHICH one. Paul gives us a pretty clear indicator of which one will prevail in an objective sense – that being the life of the Spirit of God – the Spirit of Christ.
But our struggle is with what is in front of our eyes, with what we face day in and day out. We turn on the radio or the television, or the computer, and are made aware of senseless, seemingly random acts of terrible violence. A student in an Alabama high school walks into a gym and fires a shot into the ceiling and then into his head. Another man enters a seminary in Jerusalem and kills eight students before he himself is killed. Two suicide bombers detonate their charges in the middle of a crowded market in Baghdad, minutes apart – just long enough to create the most havoc among those emergency responders who come to help victims of the first bomb.
And it’s not all in far away places. Even in our own extended community, we deal with the tragedy of a young man taking his own life and we wonder what the world is coming to, to cause someone with seemingly so much to live for to cut it all so prematurely short.
We are reminded that we really don’t have any control, and don’t always know what is going on inside the person sitting next to us.
So what does it take to sense the world differently? What does it take to begin to understand the world on a different level? Paul argues that it is that Spirit of Christ in us that makes the difference. It is the presence of the person of the Holy Spirit that gives the ability to see beyond the flesh and blood, beyond the pain and the sometimes agony that can so easily cloud our vision, that can even distract us into thinking that this (touch pulpit) material world is all there is.
Friday afternoon I was listening to an interview with a British evolutionary biologist who has written several books from an Atheistic point of view against the existence of God. The interviewer asked him a question at one point – about life having meaning, or if it was just a simple combination of random events and reactions that form us and give us life. His response was that the universe doesn’t owe us meaning. While I actually understand his answer – the universe doesn’t, in fact, owe us meaning, the fact remains that we seek it. There is something in us that compels us to find meaning to our lives. It isn’t the universe’s place to owe us meaning, any more than it is an orange’s responsibility to be grateful to the tree from whose branches it grew. They are each part of one and the same. We are, along with the universe, part of creation. Our meaning is derived from that which is OTHER than created.
And we come face to face with that Other-than-created in the person of Jesus Christ. It is in relationship with HIM that we understand ourselves – not fully, because we are finite beings trying to understand the infinite grace of God, but we begin the journey that will lead us to that fulfillment. It is in the journey that we are confronted with the reality that transcends this physical realm.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
We need to understand ourselves as operating on multiple levels as a family of faith. We are called to tend to physical needs inasmuch as we are able. For those who are in need of food or assistance, we maintain a benevolence fund and a food pantry. We are, in addition, called to tend to emotional needs. For those who are suffering from loneliness, anxiety, grief or fear, we are called to be comforting presence. We are called to share our lives with each other in such a way as to serve as reminders, pointers, as it were, of the difference the presence of God can make in one’s life. Ultimately, we are called to minister to the spiritual needs around us, to provide a sense of direction, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of accountability, a sense of acceptance, of welcome, of care, to understand ourselves to be representative, in the incarnational sense, of the living presence of Christ in this world.
And if we do that well, if we do that effectively and on a relatively regular basis, we dispel the idea that this physical world is all there is. Just like moving up to and beyond that place in the highway changed my perception of what was going to happen – nothing short of what DID happen – actually being confronted with the reality that there WAS no truck there, would have dissuaded me from what my eyes, the shifting shadows, and reflected lights were leading me to believe.
We are surrounded by a world that goes on the unspoken and more importantly unchallenged assumption that there is nothing more to life that what we see and hear and can feel and sense. Our call is to point beyond, to the one who came into this world to show us that this is but a dim reflection of true life.
Let’s Pray.
Sunday, March 9th, 2008
Fifth of Lent
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 8:1-11
Theme: “Life in Christ, dead to sin”
1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
I still shudder a little remembering that night.
I was driving between Louisville and Lexington. I don’t remember what the purpose of the trip was, but it was late, and the weather was clear at the time, though it had been raining earlier in the evening. There’s a place along the highway, near Frankfort, where the roadway crosses the Kentucky River. Going from West to East, after crossing the river, you drive through a man-made gorge that was dug into the bluffs to accommodate the highway. As I crossed the bridge, I was looking ahead to see if there was any traffic heading up the incline inside that gorge. I saw what appeared to be the reflection of a pair of taillights on a truck pulled off on the right hand side of the road. As I got to the end of the bridge and started into the ravine, the reflectors seemed to move out into the roadway. For just a moment, I had this image of a medium size truck backing up and completely blocking the highway – and I started to slam on the brakes and swerve to try to miss it.
Had it been the case that a truck WAS there, it would have been too late. In the next second I was at the place and then beyond it. There was no truck. There WERE a couple of markers on either side of an access road off to the side, similar to the reflectors that are on either side of the driveway over here at the parsonage. The angle and speed at which I was approaching, along with the curve of the road on the far side of the bridge combined to create the illusion that there was something there that was not really there.
I still got the adrenalin rush, and stopped breathing, and then started shaking as I recovered from the shock of “seeing” and then NOT hitting that truck. But there for maybe a little more than a second, I was sure I was going to be involved in a terrible accident.
I was SURE. Absolutely positive.
There was no sense of the fact that what I was seeing was actually completely a product of light and shadows. To my knowledge I’ve never had a hallucination in my life, but this probably comes closest. I’ve known of people, and heard reports of what it is like to HAVE a hallucination. They are, as I understand it, very convincing. Even to the point of the person having one becoming belligerent in insisting on what they are seeing.
It’s not, after all, something you PLAN on happening. If you have lived your entire life trusting what you’ve seen with your eyes and heard with your ears, you have absolutely NO reason to begin to randomly question the accuracy of what you see and hear – especially if there are no other changes or symptoms to point you in that direction.
Paul is dealing with something along the same lines when he discusses this issue of living according to the flesh versus living according to the Spirit.
We can reach out, we can touch, we can feel, we can SENSE the physical world around us. Yesterday as the wind blew and the clouds scuttled across the sky, I was very aware of the movement of the air around me, and around this building. At one point, the wind caught one of the doors to the sanctuary and blew it open and back against the outside wall. I ran back and pulled it closed and turned the bolt to keep it from happening again. Though I couldn’t SEE the wind, I could certainly feel it and see the effect it was having on things around me.
It is the same when we talk about the physical world and the spiritual. They are to a degree, mutually exclusive. I say ‘to a degree’ because, we are in a constant struggle between the two. As human beings, and as new creations in Christ, we reside in both worlds. Ultimately, one will prevail. The question is WHICH one. Paul gives us a pretty clear indicator of which one will prevail in an objective sense – that being the life of the Spirit of God – the Spirit of Christ.
But our struggle is with what is in front of our eyes, with what we face day in and day out. We turn on the radio or the television, or the computer, and are made aware of senseless, seemingly random acts of terrible violence. A student in an Alabama high school walks into a gym and fires a shot into the ceiling and then into his head. Another man enters a seminary in Jerusalem and kills eight students before he himself is killed. Two suicide bombers detonate their charges in the middle of a crowded market in Baghdad, minutes apart – just long enough to create the most havoc among those emergency responders who come to help victims of the first bomb.
And it’s not all in far away places. Even in our own extended community, we deal with the tragedy of a young man taking his own life and we wonder what the world is coming to, to cause someone with seemingly so much to live for to cut it all so prematurely short.
We are reminded that we really don’t have any control, and don’t always know what is going on inside the person sitting next to us.
So what does it take to sense the world differently? What does it take to begin to understand the world on a different level? Paul argues that it is that Spirit of Christ in us that makes the difference. It is the presence of the person of the Holy Spirit that gives the ability to see beyond the flesh and blood, beyond the pain and the sometimes agony that can so easily cloud our vision, that can even distract us into thinking that this (touch pulpit) material world is all there is.
Friday afternoon I was listening to an interview with a British evolutionary biologist who has written several books from an Atheistic point of view against the existence of God. The interviewer asked him a question at one point – about life having meaning, or if it was just a simple combination of random events and reactions that form us and give us life. His response was that the universe doesn’t owe us meaning. While I actually understand his answer – the universe doesn’t, in fact, owe us meaning, the fact remains that we seek it. There is something in us that compels us to find meaning to our lives. It isn’t the universe’s place to owe us meaning, any more than it is an orange’s responsibility to be grateful to the tree from whose branches it grew. They are each part of one and the same. We are, along with the universe, part of creation. Our meaning is derived from that which is OTHER than created.
And we come face to face with that Other-than-created in the person of Jesus Christ. It is in relationship with HIM that we understand ourselves – not fully, because we are finite beings trying to understand the infinite grace of God, but we begin the journey that will lead us to that fulfillment. It is in the journey that we are confronted with the reality that transcends this physical realm.
What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?
We need to understand ourselves as operating on multiple levels as a family of faith. We are called to tend to physical needs inasmuch as we are able. For those who are in need of food or assistance, we maintain a benevolence fund and a food pantry. We are, in addition, called to tend to emotional needs. For those who are suffering from loneliness, anxiety, grief or fear, we are called to be comforting presence. We are called to share our lives with each other in such a way as to serve as reminders, pointers, as it were, of the difference the presence of God can make in one’s life. Ultimately, we are called to minister to the spiritual needs around us, to provide a sense of direction, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of accountability, a sense of acceptance, of welcome, of care, to understand ourselves to be representative, in the incarnational sense, of the living presence of Christ in this world.
And if we do that well, if we do that effectively and on a relatively regular basis, we dispel the idea that this physical world is all there is. Just like moving up to and beyond that place in the highway changed my perception of what was going to happen – nothing short of what DID happen – actually being confronted with the reality that there WAS no truck there, would have dissuaded me from what my eyes, the shifting shadows, and reflected lights were leading me to believe.
We are surrounded by a world that goes on the unspoken and more importantly unchallenged assumption that there is nothing more to life that what we see and hear and can feel and sense. Our call is to point beyond, to the one who came into this world to show us that this is but a dim reflection of true life.
Let’s Pray.
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