Foolish controversy

I discovered Kevin DeYoung some years ago, and since then I have always found him to be worth reading. Here, addressing fellow pastors, he argues that "We Are Not Political Pundits." He isn't contending that pastors don't have a right to their political opinions, but that, usually, the pulpit isn't the appropriate place to express them.

Political punditry is a legitimate calling. It’s just not the pastor’s calling. The man who comments constantly on the things “everyone is talking about” is almost assuredly not talking about the things the Bible is most interested in talking about. That word “constant” is important. It takes wisdom to know when jumping in the fray might be necessary, but we don’t need pastors looking like a poor man’s version of the Daily Wire or the New York Times.

Pastors are not called to comment on everything, nor are we equipped to comment on everything. Brothers, we must not plunge ourselves into subjects on which we do not have the right, nor the expertise, to speak as ministers of the gospel. Before you send out your instant analysis on the controversy du jour, ask yourself: Can I say what I’m about to say by virtue of my training as a minister or by my hard-won expertise in some related area? Yes, Christ is Lord over all. Yes, there is not one square inch in all creation over which Christ does not cry out, “This is mine!” But fellow pastor, you and I are not qualified to speak on all of those square inches over which Christ reigns.

I confess it boggles my mind to see ministry friends and acquaintances—both to the “left” of me and to the “right” of me—who are spending their time, their energy, and their authority by offering hot takes on everything under the sun and by descending into social media food fights that bear a striking resemblance to the “irreverent babble” that leads people into more and more ungodliness (2 Tim. 2:16). Brothers, we must steadfastly avoid foolish, ignorant controversies (2 Tim. 2:23) It is not acquiescence to the spirit of the age that demands that “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome” (2 Tim. 2:24), it is the command of Holy Scripture.

And frankly, most pastors have nothing particularly unique or insightful to say about politics. .... (more)

Kevin DeYoung, "Brothers, We Are Not Political Pundits," Clearly Reformed

"The echo of a tune we have not heard"

From a C.S. Lewis sermon delivered Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1942:

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. ....

C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory," 1942 (pdf)

Heroes and Saints

From a sermon preached on All Saints' in 2019 by Ben Dueholm:

People naturally get defensive and indignant when their heroes are shown to have had feet of clay. This can take the form of saying that we judge people in the past by an unfair standard. But there’s really only one standard where cruelty and viciousness are concerned, whether it’s in the 1970s, the 1860’s, or the first century A.D. ....

It’s hard to look at the full picture of a prominent, influential person because we want them to represent something for us. The mixture of good and evil, insight and foolishness, courage and villainy that can be found in almost every human life needs to be boiled down to something simpler in order to be useful, in order to be worthy of an admiration we need to feel toward someone. ....

In the end, that’s the difference between a hero and a saint: The saint does not need to be defended because the saint is the person who will take God’s side against him or herself. The saint does not need to be justified because the saint relies entirely on God’s righteousness. The saint does not validate us. The saint validates God. The saint does not need our admiration, because the saint is exactly the person who would rather be cursed or slandered or forgotten by all the world than to lose God. The saint does not need our pedestals, because the saint has been fully rewarded already. No one can give them anything or take anything away from them.

The hope of our faith, here in the readings today, is that in the end God will be all in all. Just as God was in the beginning, but with company. And in that company will be many we do not expect to see. There will be many lost and forgotten by the world who were held and treasured by God. There will be the veterans of struggles that looked final and hopeless. There will be the world of our own failures, our own inadequacies, our own inconstant following, made good only for the sake of Jesus Christ and his love for those who set out to hear him. And those who led us there, with their words and deeds, with their presence and love, with their continual prayers, will be overjoyed to be just part of the great cloud. (more)

Benjamin Dueholm, "In Search of a Useable Communion of Saints," The Parish Bulletin, November 2, 2023.

"Exceeding happy beyond compare"

From Jonathan Edwards, "Nothing Upon Earth Can Represent the Glories of Heaven (1724)":

Although all things upon earth are insufficient to represent to us these glories, nor are we capable of conceiving of it, yet God condescends, when he speaks of these things, to our way of apprehension, and because we are most apt to [be] affected by those things which we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and had experience of. Therefore God has taken his similitudes, by which he would shadow forth heaven to us, from those things which, although they are but faint shadows, have yet an analogy and, in those things wherein they are compared, a likeness; and the thing resembled differs no otherwise from the similitudes, in no more degrees, than as they are more excellent and glorious. ....

Thus we have taken notice of some of those similitudes by which God has been pleased to shadow forth the glories of heaven, even all the most glorious [that] can be found in the aspectable world. We are come, therefore, to show that none are sufficient to represent to us, or to give us an idea of, the glories of the blessed. Although perhaps they give us as bright a picture and image of it—or would do, if fully understood—as we are capable of receiving in this life, yet 'tis but a very faint shadow.' 'Tis but a glimpse, and a small glimpse too; they are things that are quite beyond our conception. Nothing that we see upon earth will serve to give us a notion; those things are so much more excellent, so much more pure, more refined, noble and exalted, we have never yet seen anything with our eyes, or heard anything with our ears, like it. 1 Corinthians 2:9, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him." ....

Reason tells us that man was created to be happy in the enjoyment of God's love, and therefore that those that enjoy this happiness must be inconceivably happy. We have showed already that it must needs be that God created the world only from goodness, and that the rational part of the world are the ultimate objects of all this goodness. Wherefore it follows that God created the whole world for the manifestation of his love and goodness to the rational part of the world. Therefore there will doubtless be a time wherein God will fully manifest his love to good men, to those that answer the end of their creation.

But reason tells us that they that fully enjoy the love of God must be exceeding happy beyond compare: for how happy are men sometimes in the love one of another. How much more happy, then, must they necessarily be in the enjoyment of the love of him who is infinitely greater, better and more excellent than any creature. ....

How much greater is the Christian's reward than the Christian's troubles. All the troubles of this [world] are truly worthy to be despised in comparison of the glories of the future....

Jonathan Edwards, "Nothing Upon Earth Can Represent the Glories of Heaven," 1724.

Simply listen

Joseph Ratzinger, teacher, understood a truth about a good lecture (or sermon, for that matter):

Before he was a pope, before he was a prefect or a cardinal or an archbishop, Joseph Ratzinger was a professor. In those years, Ratzinger would rivet crowded lecture halls in German universities with his theological acumen, his clarity of expression, and his grasp of the faith’s implications for the modern world. The professor aimed not just to inform the mind but also to warm the heart. His biographer, Peter Seewald, recounts Ratzinger’s words to his friend Alfred Läpple: “When you give a lecture, the students should lay down their pencils and simply listen to you. As long as they keep writing it down, you have not really got to them. But when they put down their pencils and look at you while you are speaking, then perhaps you have touched their hearts.”

And if not their hearts, perhaps their minds.

R. Lukas Stamps, "In Memoriam: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI," Mere Fidelity, Jan. 2, 2023.

A turtle on a fence post

From a very good article about the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention:

Have you ever wanted to be a turtle on a fence post?

If you answered “No,” that’s because you didn’t hear Pastor Ed Litton’s sermon at Redemption Church in Saraland, Ala., on June 6.

Pastor Litton was elaborating the third point in his three-point sermon entitled “After God’s Own Heart.” He said that author Alex Haley had a picture of a turtle on a fence post in his office. He said there was an inscription at the bottom of that picture that said, “If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he didn’t get up there by himself.”

Litton delivered that line in a soft voice and followed it with a pregnant pause. Then, with his finger pointed heavenward, he said, “Oh that God would put you [his finger now pointed at the congregation] on a fence post in this community! That people would look at your life and say, ‘How’s that possible?’” In typical Southern Baptist preaching style, he was winding up to exhort his flock with the Good News in parallel structure:

How’s joy possible in such grief? How’s love possible in a world of hate? How’s satisfaction possible when there’s so many needs? Man, I’m gonna tell you what I’ve learned: When I don’t have enough, He [pointing heavenward again] is enough. When I couldn’t go on, He goes on.

And in that moment, as his voice reaches your ears, and his impassioned hand gestures reach your eyes, even if you aren’t poetically inclined, you want to be a turtle on a fence post. You want what Pastor Litton has — and he wants you to have it. .... (more, very interesting and very much worth reading)

Dominic Pino, "Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton Is a Turtle on a Fence Post," National Review.

The truth, not "your truth"

From Samuel Johnson's Sermon 20:

We not only do what we approve, but there is danger lest in time we come to approve what we do, though for no other reason but that we do it. A man is always desirous of being at peace with himself; and when he cannot reconcile his passions to his conscience, he will attempt to reconcile his conscience to his passions; he will find reason for doing what he is resolved to do....

Let it be remembered, that the nature of things is not alterable by our conduct. We cannot make truth; it is our business only to find it. No proposition can become more or less certain or important, by being considered or neglected. It is to no purpose to wish, or to suppose, that to be false, which is in itself true, and therefore to acquiesce in our own wishes and suppositions, when the matter is of eternal consequence....

Samuel Johnson, "Sermon 20"

"The business of life is to work out our salvation..."

Samuel Johnson made his living by writing, and among his writings are sermons that, as with almost everything he produced, he wrote for pay for preachers who apparently were unwilling or unable to compose their own. There is no reason, however, to think he wrote anything he didn't believe. From the Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson: "Sermon 15": 

Man that is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble. JOB xiv.I

.... The business of life is to work out our salvation; and the days are few, in which provision must be made for eternity. We all stand upon the brink of the grave; of that state, in which there is no repentance. He, whose life is extended to its utmost natural boundaries, can live but a little while; and that he shall be one of those, who are comparatively said, to live long, no man can tell. Our days are not only few, but uncertain. The utmost that can be hoped, is little; and of that little, the greater part is denied to the majority of mankind.

Our time is short, and our work is great; it is therefore, with the kindest earnestness, enjoined by the Apostle, that we use all diligence to make our “calling and election sure.” But to an impartial surveyor of the ways of men, will it appear that the Apostle’s summons has been heard or regarded? Let the most candid and charitable observer take cognizance of the general practice of the world; and what can be discovered but gay thoughtlessness, or sordid industry? It seems that to secure their calling and election is the care of few. Of the greater part it may be said, that God is not in their thoughts. One forgets him in his business, another in his amusements; one in eager enjoyment of today, another in solicitous contrivance for tomorrow. Some die amidst the gratifications of luxury, and some in the tumults of contests undecided, and purposes uncompleated. Warnings are multiplied, but without notice. “Wisdom crieth in the streets,” but is rarely heard.

Among those that live thus wholly occupied by present things, there are some, in whom all sense of religion seems extinct or dormant; who acquiesce in their own modes of life, and never look forward into futurity, but gratify themselves within their own accustomed circle of amusements, or limit their thoughts by the attainment of their present pursuit; and, without suffering themselves to be interrupted by the unwelcome thoughts of death and judgement, congratulate themselves on their prudence or felicity, and rest satisfied with what the world can afford them; not that they doubt, but forget, a future state; not that they disbelieve their own immortality, but that they never consider it. ....

If reason forbids us to fix our hearts upon things which we are not certain of retaining, we violate a prohibition still stronger, when we suffer ourselves to place our happiness in that which must certainly be lost; yet such is all that this world affords us. Pleasures and honours must quickly perish, because life itself must soon be at an end.

But if it be folly to delight in advantages of uncertain tenure and short continuance, how great is the folly of preferring them to permanent and perpetual good! The man whose whole attention converges to this world, even if we suppose all his attempts prosperous, and all his wishes granted, gains only empty pleasure, which he cannot keep, at the cost of eternal happiness, which, if now neglected, he can never gain. .... (more)

“The Weight of Glory”

This week Russell Moore's Reading in Exile series of YouTube talks is taking up a collection of C.S. Lewis's essays — a different one each day. Yesterday it was one of the best, “The Weight of Glory.” I was curious whether that essay, actually a sermon preached in 1942, could be found online. It is here as a pdf.

"Those who hear will live"

Via Alan Jacobs, from "A sermon for Remembrance Day," (the day Americans call Veterans' Day):

.... Today we remember especially the dead who died with their lives and their promise unfinished and unfulfilled. They died by violence, and their loss is beyond our understanding. We see the waste of the lives they did not live as we look upon the tossing waste of waters between them and us, and we mourn for them even as we thank them for the actions of their often brief lives. As we do these things, we grieve that the dead cannot hear us.

But the dead can hear one voice. They can hear the voice of the one whom death could not hold, the one through whom death is joined back into life. In our Lord Jesus Christ, who knows our griefs and has carried our sorrows, the unspeakable joy of God’s life beyond loss is his gift to the dead and to those who die. He joins us, in himself, to the Creator of all things, redeeming all the lost time, and saving everything that is good and true. For the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. Amen.

A sermon by the Rev. Jessica Martin, for Remembrance Day – Snakes and Ladders

The blind pulled up and the shutters thrown open

This is a selection from a sermon titled "Transposition" that C.S. Lewis delivered at Mansfield College, Oxford, in 1944, collected in (among other places) They Asked for a Paper (1962):

Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that that outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross-purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ ‘What?’ says the boy. ‘No pencil marks there?’ And instantly, his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition—the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.

So with us. ‘We know not what we shall be;’ but we may be sure we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth. Our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, they will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape; not as a candle flame that is put out but as a candle flame which becomes invisible because someone has pulled up the blind, thrown open the shutters, and let in the blaze of the risen sun.

C.S. Lewis, They Asked for a Paper, Geoffrey Bles, 1962, pp. 177-78.

"Religion is not a melancholy"

God and the Church:

John Donne (1572-1631)

Our first step then in this first part, is, the sociablenesse, the cornmunicablenesse of God; He loves holy meetings, he loves the communion of Saints, the household of the faithfull: Deliciae ejus, says Solomon, his delight is to be with the Sons of men, and that the Sons of men should be with him: Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a dampe; the Church is not a grave: it is a fold, it is an Arke, it is a net, it is a city, it is a kingdome, not only a house, but a house that hath many mansions in it: still it is a plurall thing, consisting of many: and very good grammarians amongst the Hebrews, have thought, and said that that name, by which God notifies himself to the world, in the very beginning of Genesis, which is Elohim, as it is a plurall word there, so it hath no singular: they say we cannot name God, but plurally: so sociable, so communicable, so extensive, so derivative of himself, is God, and so manifold are the beames, and the emanations that flow out from him.

John Donne: Sermons

As quoted in Affirmations of God and Man, Association Press, 1967.

Something worse than death

Ben Dueholm, a Lutheran pastor, and a friend, recently attended a conference for Christian writers. One of those he heard speak was a television writer and producer who works in Hollywood. From Ben's sermon: "For the Sheep":

.... And the moderator of this panel asked her, “what’s it like to be Catholic in the entertainment industry?” My friend answered with something that I thought was very obvious and yet kind of profound. She said “I’m the only one in the writers’ room who thinks that dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.” She went on to talk about how, in movies and television shows, if a character is faced with the possibility of dying, writers and audiences will accept that the character can do anything to avoid it. That dying is the worst fate, and nothing you do to avoid it is immoral or unjustified.

My friend talked about growing up with stories of saints who were martyred rather than giving up their faith, and that left her with the idea that some things really are worse than death. You can lose your life, but it’s worse to lose your soul. ....

...It’s not that we, as modern Americans, are so in love with our own lives—that we are so overflowing with joy and satisfaction that we lash out at the slightest hint of possible danger. It’s that we do not believe in or value our eternal souls. As if so many of us believe we are not prepared to bring our sins before God. Or maybe worse, as if we think there is no such thing, and there will be no accounting of our actions.

In today’s Gospel we hear something entirely different. Today Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. What makes him good? He lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hands run when they see the wolf coming. They leave the sheep on their own. But Jesus, the good shepherd, does not run. He does not seek first to preserve his own life. He lays it down for the sheep. ....

He laid down his life for us, so we lay down our lives for each other. The resurrection of Jesus breaks the chains of death and hell, first in himself, and then in his church. He speaks of a life that is greater than death because he is the Life that is greater than death. When he gives us this life, through words and sacrament and preaching and faith, we share in his life beyond death too.

So a good rule of thumb: if a voice in the world is telling you to be more afraid—if a voice is cultivating your fear, using your fear, enjoying your fear—that is not the voice of the Good Shepherd. That is at best the voice of a hired hand. None of us can save our own lives, in the end, and no one can do it for us, either. Instead, we are told to listen for the voice of Jesus, and to hold to it even when we may be fearful.

That is what John’s letter calls “our victory over the world”: our faith. We worship one who points us beyond fear of death into love of life. Not the brief experience of life that we try so hard to keep from slipping through our fingers, but the life that stretches out before and after everything we can see. We worship one who teaches us with his words, and then shows us with his resurrection, that death has not won. Amen.

For the Sheep | Brutally Ordinary Things

Left unsaid and undone

From "The Missing Elements of Modern Worship" by Tim Challies:

I once paid a visit to one of the most mega of America’s megachurches. .... I went in with as open a mind as I could muster. I left perplexed. I was perplexed not by what was said or done in the service as much as what was left unsaid and undone.

Since that visit I’ve had the opportunity to attend many more churches and, as often as not, they have been similar, missing a lot of the elements that used to be hallmarks of Christian worship. ....

Among the missing elements (he elaborates on each):

• Prayer
• Scripture Reading
• Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon
• Expositional Preaching
• Congregational Singing

Two of his sections:

Scripture Reading

Another element that has gone missing in modern worship is the scripture reading. There was a time when most services included a couple of lengthy readings, often one from the Old Testament and one from the New. But then it was trimmed to one and then the reading disappeared altogether in favor of mentioning individual verses as they came up in the sermon. But what of Paul’s command to Timothy that he devote himself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Timothy 4:13)? In too many churches this element has gone missing. In too many churches the Word of God is almost an afterthought. ....

Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon

Traditionally, Protestant worship services included a confession of sin and an assurance of pardon. Sometimes the congregation would confess their sins by reading a text or a liturgy or by silent prayer. Other times the pastor would confess the sins of the congregation on their behalf. It was a solemn moment. But then there would be the assurance of pardon, where the pastor would bring God’s own assurance that those who confess their sins are forgiven. Solemnity was replaced by joy. This pattern of confession and assurance naturally led to thankful worship and a desire to grow in holiness by hearing from God through his Word as it was read and preached. These elements came early and set up the rest of the service. Yet it is rare to encounter them today. ....

Challies concludes:

I am convinced that most of these elements have gone missing for pragmatic reasons—they do not accomplish something the church leaders wish to accomplish in their services. Instead of searching God’s Word to determine what elements should or must be present in a worship service, leaders are judging elements by whether or not they work (according to their own standard of what works). Yet each of these elements represents a significant loss because each in its own way expresses obedience to God and brings encouragement to his people.

The Missing Elements of Modern Worship

"This world is not my home..."

Who would true Valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be, Come Wind, come Weather. There's no Discouragement, Shall make him once relent, His first avow'd intent, To be a Pilgrim.	Hobgoblin nor foul Fiend Can daunt his spirit; He knows he at the end Shall Life inherit. Then Fancies fly away, He'll fear not what men say, He'll labour night and day To be a Pilgrim.
Who so beset him round With dismal Stories, Do but themselves confound, His Strength the more is; No Lion can him fright, He'll with a Giant fight, But he will have a right, To be a Pilgrim.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

God is the highest good of the reasonable creature; and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.— To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean.— Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for, or set our hearts on, any thing else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness? 

Jonathan Edwards, The Christian Pilgrim (1733)

"The truly infinite importance..."

Chesterton supposes (see below) that "in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly." Much earlier, in the Revolutionary era, John Witherspoon (1723-94) was anxious that not be the case. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian clergyman and president of what became Princeton University. He was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. On May 17, 1776 he preached a sermon titled "The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men." A portion of that sermon via Kevin DeYoung:

I do not blame your ardor in preparing for the resolute defense of your temporal rights. But consider I beseech you, the truly infinite importance of the salvation of your souls.

Is it of much moment whether you and your children shall be rich or poor, at liberty or in bonds?

Is it of much moment whether this beautiful country shall increase in fruitfulness from year to year, being cultivated by active industry, and possessed by independent freemen, or the scanty produce of the neglected fields shall be eaten up by hungry publicans, while the timid owner trembles at the tax gatherers approach?

And is it of less moment my brethren, whether you shall be the heirs of glory or the heirs of hell?

Is your state on earth for a few fleeting years of so much moment?

And is it of less moment, what shall be your state through endless ages?

Have you assembled together willingly to hear what shall be said on public affairs, and to join in imploring the blessing of God on the counsels and arms of the united colonies, and can you be unconcerned, what shall become of you for ever, when all the monuments of human greatness shall be laid in ashes, for “the earth itself and all the works that are therein shall be burnt up.” ....

A sermon

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the delivery of a sermon. The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis, was preached in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1942. From Justin Taylor's essay:

As Lewis ascended the pulpit that evening, he looked out at the Oxford students and dons to witness what Walter Hooper later described as “one of the largest congregations ever assembled there in modern times.”

The anticipation to hear Lewis must have been significant, but the listeners could hardly have predicted that they were about to hear what would become one of the most famous sermons of the twentieth century, still being read and appreciated seventy five years hence.

Lewis’s announced text for the address was Revelation 2:26, 28, a passage different from the day’s New Testament reading in the Book of Common Prayer: “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations...And I will give him the morning star” (KJV). Lewis does not quote from the passage directly or refer to it by its reference, though he does discuss near the end of the sermon what it means to be given “the morning star.”

The title of the sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” comes from 2 Corinthians 4:17: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” ....

“The Weight of Glory” can be read online in its entirety. (You can also read my summary of each section here.) As the length of this post might suggest, it is worth the investment of your time to read and consider the whole thing. For it was 75 years ago tonight that the church received one of the great sermons of the 20^th century. [much more, including why the sermon has remained so important and photographs of the locations]

The sermon link in the final paragraph above will supply a pdf of the entire sermon and one can also be found here.

75 Years Ago Tonight: C. S. Lewis Delivers a Sermon in Oxford on “The Weight of Glory” | TGC

"You of little faith, why are you so fearful?"

Reading this article in Christianity Today moved me to find Bonhoeffer's sermon, “Overcoming Fear." Our times are not as parlous as Bonhoeffer's — Hitler was about to take power in Germany — but what he preaches here is always relevant. Despair is the opposite of hope and Christians know hope. The Biblical text for the sermon is the passage from Matthew that I quoted yesterday. Bonhoeffer:

.... Fear is, somehow or other, the archen­emy itself. It crouches in people’s hearts. It hollows out their insides, until their resistance and strength are spent and they suddenly break down. Fear secretly gnaws and eats away at all the ties that bind a person to God and to others, and when in a time of need that person reaches for those ties and clings to them, they break and the individual sinks back into himself or herself, helpless and despairing, while hell rejoices.

Now fear leers that person in the face, saying: Here we are all by our­selves, you and I, now I’m showing you my true face. And anyone who has seen naked fear revealed, who has been its victim in terrifying loneliness — fear of an important decision; fear of a heavy stroke of fate, losing one’s job, an illness; fear of a vice that one can no longer resist, to which one is enslaved; fear of disgrace; fear of another person; fear of dying — that per­son knows that fear is only one of the faces of evil itself, one form by which the world, at enmity with God, grasps for someone. Nothing can make a human being so conscious of the reality of powers opposed to God in our lives as this loneliness, this helplessness, this fog spreading over everything, this sense that there is no way out, and this raving impulse to get oneself out of this hell of hopelessness. ....

But the human being doesn’t have to be afraid; we should not be afraid! That is what makes humans different from all other creatures. In the midst of every situation where there is no way out, where nothing is clear, where it is our fault, we know that there is hope, and this hope is called: Thy will be done, yes, thy will is being done. “This world must fall, God stands above all, his thoughts unswayed, his Word unstayed, his will forever our ground and hope.” Do you ask: How do you know? Then we name the name of the One who makes the evil inside us recoil, who makes fear and anxiety themselves tremble with fear and puts them to flight. We name the One who overcame fear and led it captive in the victory proces­sion, who nailed it to the cross and committed it to oblivion; we name the One who is the shout of victory of humankind redeemed from the fear of death — Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Living One. He alone is Lord over fear; it knows him as its master; it gives way to him alone. So look to Christ when you are afraid, think of Christ, keep him before your eyes, call upon Christ and pray to him, believe that he is with you now, helping you ... Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let’s say there is a ship on the high sea, having a fierce struggle with the waves. The storm wind is blowing harder by the minute. The boat is small, tossed about like a toy; the sky is dark; the sailors’ strength is failing. Then one of them is gripped by ... whom? what? ... he cannot tell him­self. But someone is there in the boat who wasn’t there before. Someone comes close to him and lays cold hands on his arms as he pulls wildly on his oar. He feels his muscles freeze, feels the strength go out of them. Then the unknown one reaches into his heart and mind and magically brings forth the strangest pictures. He sees his family, his children crying. What will become of them if he is no more? Then he seems to be back where he once was when he followed evil ways, in long years of bondage to evil, and he sees the faces of his companions in that bondage. He sees a neighbor whom he wounded, only yesterday, with an angry word. Suddenly he can no longer see or hear anything, can no longer row, a wave overwhelms him, and in final desperation he shrieks: Stranger in this boat, who are you? And the other answers, I am Fear. Now the cry goes up from the whole crew; Fear is in the boat; all arms are frozen and drop their oars; all hope is lost, Fear is in the boat.

Then it is as if the heavens opened, as if the heavenly hosts themselves raised a shout of victory in the midst of hopelessness: Christ is in the boat. Christ is in the boat, and no sooner has the call gone out and been heard than Fear shrinks back, and the waves subside. The sea becomes calm and the boat rests on its quiet surface. Christ was in the boat! ....

“Overcoming Fear,” A Sermon by Dietrich Bonhoeffer | Political Theology Today

"The great duty...is repentance...."

A few posts ago I referred to the Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Included in that collection are sermons that Johnson composed, presumably, for preachers unwilling or unable to write their own. These were not published until after Samuel Johnson's death. This is from the second sermon in the collection:

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,
and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Isaiah 55:7

...[T]here is mercy with him, therefore shall he be feared. It is reasonable, that we should endeavour to please him, because we know that every sincere endeavour will be rewarded by him; that we should use all the means in our power, to enlighten our minds, and regulate our lives, because our errours, if involuntary, will not be imputed to us; and our conduct, though not exactly agreeable to the divine ideas of rectitude, yet if approved, after honest and diligent enquiries, by our own consciences, will not be condemned by that God, who judges of the heart, weighs every circumstance of our lives, and admits every real extenuation of our failings and transgressions.

Were there not mercy with him, were he not to be reconciled after the commission of a crime, what must be the state of those, who are conscious of having once offended him? A state of gloomy melancholy, or outrageous desperation; a dismal weariness of life, and inexpressible agonies at the thought of death; for what affright or affliction could equal the horrours of that mind, which expected every moment to fall into the hands of implacable omnipotence?

But the mercy of God extends not only to those that have made his will, in some degree, the rule of their actions, and have only deviated from it by inadvertency, surprize, inattention, or negligence, but even to those that have polluted themselves with studied and premeditated wickedness; that have violated his commands in opposition to conviction, and gone on, from crime to crime, under a sense of the divine disapprobation.

Even these are not for ever excluded from his favour, but have in their hands means, appointed by himself, of reconciliation to him; means by which pardon may be obtained, and by which they may be restored to those hopes of happiness, from which they have fallen by their own fault.

The great duty, to the performance of which these benefits are promised, is repentance; a duty, which it is of the utmost importance to every man to understand and practise....

Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson

Ordinary people

Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, his influence is evident from the many who have chosen to write about him. I've been reading posts and articles all morning, about his critical work, his poetry, the fiction, and the apologetics. Just now, Brett McCracken on "Things I've Learned From C.S. Lewis" with particular attention to Lewis's 1941 sermon, "The Weight of Glory," from which this:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

Things I've Learned From C.S. Lewis | Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture