This Sunday Share is from David Garrison, pastor of Northminster Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Madison Heights, Virginia. David also happens to be an old friend of mine, and I’m delighted to share this Easter-appropriate post – “The Only Difference That Matters” – from his Pastor’s Corner blog. From 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, he explains why the resurrection is essential to Christianity.
You’ll find it at the link below – it’s worth the short read!
How often have prominent public figures had to walk back, clarify, or disown public comments in response to a social media protest? A recent Pew Research poll showed that only about 25% of American adults use Twitter, and about 25% of those people write 97% of all Tweets. Yet, journalists, politicians, executives, individuals, and others often feel they need to bow to Twitter and other social media or be “cancelled.” I’m not sure which is more worrisome, that so few largely anonymous Twitter users have so much power, or that even U.S. presidents sometimes yield to them.
Paradoxically, while the pandemic has shaken many people’s confidence in authority, at the same time some worldly authorities are claiming more power, having failed so miserably to manage the pandemic and its ripple effects. To me, a lesson of the pandemic was: “See all these things people trust in? They can all be torn down overnight.” It has left a lot of people shaken. Those we used to trust aren’t trustworthy, but where else can we turn?
The authorities respond: “Just give us more power and we will try again, but harder. Ignore the evidence and trust us.”
The authorities of Jesus’ time were pretty lousy themselves. In the greatest abuse of authority in history, they killed Him on a cross on Good Friday, humiliating Him publicly for all of history to see. The rebel Barabbas was released by Roman political authorities instead of Jesus because of the cries of an angry mob stirred up by a few Jewish religious authorities jealous of Jesus’ appeal and resentful of His claims of authority. Astonishingly, it’s not entirely unlike Twitter. In modern times, the mob wouldn’t even need to show up to have Jesus killed, the “influencers” would just have to start #CrucifyHim trending and people would follow along just to be seen holding the popular view. If Jesus’ message of love and hope for mankind died with Him, where can we turn?
Fortunately, we have Easter, where Jesus responds: “You hit me with all the power you have, and it wasn’t enough. Even the grave cannot hold Me. I rose from the dead and now sit at the right hand of the Father, in the place of ultimate authority. The tomb is empty. Observe the evidence and trust Me!”
Jesus is risen indeed!
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is the LORD’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Save us, we pray, O LORD!
O LORD, we pray, give us success!” – Psalm 118:22-25
[Originally published after Good Friday in 2022]
The idea that the Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther nailing the ninety-five theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany is fairly well known. Less known is that the spark for Reformation in nearby Switzerland was a controversy over sausages.
March 9th was the first day of Lent in 1522, and Huldrych Zwingli, a pastor in Zurich, Switzerland, was the guest of printer Christoph Froschauer, who published some of Zwingli’s sermons and later his translation of the Bible into German. Froschauer, working long hours with his staff, invited Zwingli to dinner on March 9th and served slices of smoked sausage to fortify everyone for the work ahead. However, during Lent eating meat was illegal under the Catholic church-run government at the time, and Zwingli was arrested along with others at the dinner.
Zwingli said he did not eat any sausage and so was spared the indignity of arrest, but the event was a turning point for him, and about one month later he preached a sermon titled “Freedom of Choice and Selection of Food” where he argued for freedom of conscience regarding observance of Lent. The sum of the sermon was: “if you want to fast, do so; if you do not want to eat meat, don’t eat it; but allow Christians a free choice.”[1]
Zwingli, having previously been only loosely connected to Martin Luther and other Reformation figures and ideas, was appalled by the prioritization of state and priestly authority over the authority of God in each person’s heart:
“If you would be a Christian at heart, act in this way. If the spirit of your belief teaches you thus, then fast, but grant also your neighbor the privilege of Christian liberty, and fear God greatly, if you have transgressed his laws, nor make what man has invented greater before God than what God himself has commanded…You should neither scorn nor approve anyone for any reason connected with food or with feast days whether observed or not.”
Also in the sermon, Zwingli emphasizes the “why” a Christian does what he does over the “what”:
“Here is another sign of the times. I think that there is danger of this age being evil and corrupt rather than reaching out towards everlasting righteousness. Further, simple people think everything is all right if they go to confession in Lent only, observe the fast, take Communion and thus account for the whole year. God should, however, be acknowledged at all times and our life should be one of piety, whereas we act to the contrary when we think that it is quite enough if we pay attention only to the times of fasting whereas Christ says, ‘Be vigilant: for you know not the day or the hour’”
In an earlier post on Lent, I wrote that whatever our liturgy, it is useless as a “bargaining chip” with God, and that “if we do not value the prize – God Himself – nothing we give up for Lent will make us – or God Himself – happy.” Zwingli became a forceful voice during the Reformation arguing that external pressure from church and state can strip us of grace and enslave us to legalism, but he also recognized with Paul that “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things”[2] Self-control cannot be forced by others, but in search of an “imperishable” prize, each should prayerfully consider the disciplines that help them better serve God, in accordance with His word, while showing grace towards others who God may ask to behave differently. Not all athletes compete in the same events and train the same way.
Closing Note
I once considered naming this blog “Lenten Sausages” after the events described above, but that might have defined the blog as what it’s against. Instead, the current name emphasizes the common destiny of all for whom Christ was crucified. Every Christian became one because of Christ. Before there were Protestants there were Christians. Many of them. After there were Protestants there are Catholic believers and Protestant nonbelievers, and vice versa. One man’s liturgy is sometimes another man’s legalism. Regardless of what’s on the sign in front of your church, it’s what’s inside that matters.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] Zwingli, Huldrych. “Freedom of Choice and Selection of Food.” (1522)
[2] 1 Corinthians 9:25
On January 15, 1929, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. A leader in the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 60’s, he is the only non-president to have a national holiday in his name, celebrated on the 3rd Monday of every January. During this holiday, many will cite positives and negatives from King’s life and legacy, and here I will focus on one, specific positive.
His father and maternal grandfather had both been pastors of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and he carried this religious heritage into his own studies and activism. In pastor Tim Keller’s book “Making Sense of God” he writes that the strength of King’s arguments comes from his knowledge “that human rights have no power if they are simply created by a majority or imposed by judicial fiat. They have power only if they are really ‘there,’ existing on their own, dependent only on the fact that the wronged person before you making the claim against you is a human being.”[1]
King applied the teaching that “God created man in His own image” from Genesis 1:26-27 to argue that this image gives every person: “a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him a dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God.”[2]
In one of my favorite quotes from King, he cites the American institutions of democracy and its founding documents, but knows that even these must be rooted in religious truth to be effective: “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”[3]
Keller continues in his chapter titled “A Justice That Does Not Create Oppressors” that “Martin Luther King Jr. did not ask white America to make African Americans free to pursue rational self-interest, their own individual definitions of a fulfilling life. Rather, quoting Amos 5:24, he called them to not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”[4] God provides, and demands, more than “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
While His justice and righteousness will only be made fully manifest in eternity, when we bring a bit of it into this world, we provide something available no other way to our neighbors, communities and beyond. We should not be satisfied with anything less.
[1] Keller, Timothy. Making Sense of God (2016). P. 199.
[2] From a sermon King preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia on July 4, 1965. Cited in Making Sense of God, P. 199.
[3] From “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, dated April 16, 1963.
[4] From King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC on August 28, 1963. Cited in Making Sense of God, P. 199.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Thank you for reading my series about what we need for Christmas.
Remember that whatever mess we find ourselves and the world in, Christmas is a reminder that God has not given up on us and on the world. Isaiah 9:6, a prophecy from around 700 BC describes the Christ we celebrate each Christmas:
“And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
To meet our deepest, most significant needs, this Christ is provided for us.
As Wonderful Counselor, He is our source of wisdom; (covered in this post)
As Mighty God, He will empower us to live as He did; (this post)
As Everlasting Father, He invites us with unconditional love into His family; (this post)
As Prince of Peace, He buys peace between us and Him, and between us and others. (this post)
“Four gifts for Christmas. They are the greatest gifts that anybody can give or we can have, and they are all in Jesus. They are for us. They are for you, if you will have them.” – James Montgomery Boice
Celebrate these gifts today!
In closing here is a video of the Royal Choral Society performing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, for He, the Christ of Christmas, shall reign forever and ever:
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 