Flashlight faith

God calls us to follow even when we can’t clearly see the path ahead.

 (A sermon delivered March 17, 2024, at Spring Hill United Methodist Church, from the Ephesians 2: 1, 4-5, 8-10.)

 We are nearing the end of our Lenten journey preparing us for the joyful season of Easter.

 Lent is a journey of transformation, from captivity to sin to freedom in grace. The journey always begins with repentance, turning away from who we were, toward who we hope to become. The point of repentance is not to make you feel bad but to change you.

 Even if you can’t feel it happening, every day of Lent can involve some movement, large or small, toward greater wholeness and closer relationship with God.  Whether you recognize it or not, you are on a similar spiritual journey every day of your life.

 I believe that a “golden thread” runs through your life. That golden thread is called grace, and It’s woven throughout your story, and it stitches your story together into a coherent whole. You may not recognize it at first, but it’s there.

 To show you a bit how this works, I’ll briefly explore a familiar moment from the life of John Wesley, the chief founder of the Methodist movement.

 I’ve got a new book out about it. It’s titled Change of Heart: A Wesleyan Spirituality. I’ll be happy to sell you a copy, at a substantial discount from the cover price, but my purpose this morning is not to sell books, but to sell that change of heart that God wants to make in each of us.

 If you look on the south side of our worship space you’ll see two faces that also are on the cover of my book.  This is the only church I know that has both Wesley brothers so prominently displayed in its sanctuary. That’s John Wesley on the left, Charles on the right.  John is the sterner of the two, Charles the more congenial.

My book has a lot of their biography in it, certainly more than I first thought would be necessary.

But the more I looked at their lives and their theology, the more I realized that so much of their theology grows out of their biography; the story of the golden thread running through their lives; the story of their personal experience of God through daily events, through reflection on Scripture, and through inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I’ll focus on John this morning. His change of heart involves moving from the false gospel of personal moral striving to the real gospel of God’s grace.

He grows up surrounded by a theology of grace, but like many others of his day, he completely misses the experience of grace. And until he actually experiences God’s grace first-hand, he is one confused and miserable human being.

Early in his life, he is certain that growing in Christ involves moral striving.

Like a lot of people, then and now, he pictures God as a loving ogre – that is, someone who loves you only if you do the right things. This is the kind of heavenly taskmaster that’s just waiting for you to make a mistake so it can clobber you – a giant jerk in the sky who likes to dish out painful lessons to stimulate your spiritual growth. That kind of monster is far from the God of the Bible – although, sadly, many people still suffer from ordering their lives around that awful illusion.

When the young John Wesley starts attending Oxford University, he is convinced that he must earn his salvation by being as good a person as possible.

He checks his spiritual temperature constantly, and he keeps a meticulous record in a journal. If he’d had a computer, he would have kept a spreadsheet with all the virtues listed, and several times a day he would check boxes “yay” or “nay” and 1 through 10 for how well he’s doing right then.

Even some of his friends think he’s a bit looney. But somehow he remains open to hearing the voice of God in his life, and several experiences convince him that there is a better way.

 Looking back, he sees that God works in his life “by degrees.” Several events are pivot points for him, points of repentance and conversion to a new way of thinking and living.

 And isn’t that the way it is for all of us? Looking back on your own life, can you see a straight path of spiritual growth – or, for that matter, a straight path for any other kind of growth?

 Don’t you see, as the writer Anne Lamott says, that we don’t move to faith by one giant leap of faith but by a series of staggers from one safe place to another. We don’t have leaps of faith so much as we have smaller staggers of faith.

 You can see some of that in the famous Aldersgate experience that we Methodists make so much of.

 John Wesley is 35 years old at the time, and in a state of great spiritual distress.

 In 1736, he and Charles sail off to America. They’re going to provide spiritual guidance to the English colonists in Georgia, and they’re going to convert the Indians.

 But neither the white settlers nor the Indians care much for their message. Charles is forced to leave when his health breaks. John flees just ahead of a mob that might string him up if they catch him.

 He is devastated. On the ship over, he befriended some other missionaries, German Lutherans called Moravians. He’s astonished by the depth of their faith, and he desperately wants the certainty of salvation that they have.

 “The faith I want,” he says, “is a sure trust and confidence in God that through the merits of Christ my sins are forgiven and I am reconciled to the favor of God.”

Back in Britain after the disaster in America, the brothers find themselves still out to sea, as it were. They both preach salvation by faith alone, not salvation by works, as most other preachers do. Salvation by faith alone is a long-established doctrine of the Church of England, but it’s not in style right then, and John and Charles get into deep trouble for preaching it.

In fact, they are barred from preaching in most churches. It gets so bad that John isn’t even allowed to preach in the church where his father had been pastor for nearly all of John’s life – so he preaches in the church graveyard, standing on his father’s gravestone.

It’s not so much what you preach, one friend says. It’s how you preach it! You’re so unconventional! You’re so emotional! You stir people up!

On the evening of May 25, 1738, John Wesley is the one who is stirred up.

He has a rough day spiritually, one of those days that you know must be preparing you for something – but it’s just as likely something bad as it is something good.

He’s in a small group on Aldersgate Street studying the book of Romans. About a quarter before nine, while they’re discussing the change that God works in the human heart through faith in Christ, God reaches out and touches Wesley’s heart.

 Suddenly, he recalls later, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

 He likely knew this all along, intellectually, but he’d never felt it. He’d never experienced it. Now, suddenly, he realizes that God not only loves everyone, God loves him specifically. Christ died not only for the whole world, but also specifically for John Wesley. And he can live in the confidence not only that God loves him but that God wants what is best for him.

It is a liberating experience. It changes everything. Of course, change of such depth takes awhile to sink in fully, so it’s months before he truly lives out his newfound sense of God’s grace. But he gets there.

And so can we, if we hang in there faithfully, rolling with the inevitable punches of life and looking to Jesus, the perfecter of our faith, as a guide to all things.

It takes John Wesley nearly half his life to learn that the grace that Jesus offer is not something you earn. It’s something you’ve given. It’s free to you, though it cost God dearly to offer it to you.

Truth is, you can’t make God love you any more than God already does. At the same time, you can’t make God love you any less than God already does.  God loves you, period. Loving is what God does because, as the first letter of John says, God is love.

Rudy Rasmus, a United Methodist pastor in Houston, has a wonderful way of putting it. He says, “God loves you, and there’s nothin’ you can do about it.”

Do you believe that? If you believe it, I’d ask you to turn to a neighbor near you and say, “God loves you, and there’s nothin’ you can do about it.” Now turn to another neighbor say, “God loves you, and there’s nothin’ you can do about it,”

 Does hearing that make you feel good? It ought to. Does telling that to another person make you feel good? It ought to.

 That little saying captures much of the heart of the gospel. But there’s a vital piece still missing. God surely loves you, and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more, or any less.

But you can grow closer to this loving God. You can grow closer to being the loving person God created you to be, by allowing God to change you from within, by daily putting on more of the likeness of Christ, by daily allowing yourself to be transformed into the image of Christ, who is the perfect image of God the Father.

It can be a long and sometimes painful journey. So often we fight it, clinging to a cherished past and turning away from an uncertain future.

The journey is hard because faith is a living thing, a breathing thing. Some days you feel fit to run a marathon or climb a mountain. Other days, you just can’t catch your breath. Some days you feel right on course. Other days, you wonder if you’re even going in the right direction.

. . .

I have reached that point in life where I don’t like to drive at night.

I’m sure some of you share the feeling. It seems like I’m always driving ahead of my headlights. They just don’t provide enough light for me to see the road far enough ahead for me to feel comfortable.

But I’ve learned that in many aspects of my life, I don’t need to see that far ahead.

Some 30 years ago, I decided to abandon my career as a journalist at The Kansas City Star and follow God’s call into ministry.

It was a scary time for both Linda and me, and for our two daughters, too. We weren’t at all sure how this was going to work out.

In more recent years, there was a time when Linda was working half-time in pastoral care at Church of the Resurrection and quarter-time as pastor of the United Methodist church in Linwood – and oh, yes, she was also completing her master’s project in seminary.

It was a tough time. We weren’t sure it would ever end – and if it did, how it would end. But we made it – not because we could see all the road ahead, but because we let God guide us day by day and step by step.

There’s a song in our hymnal by Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. It’s titled, “Thy Word.” It’s inspired by Psalm 119, verse 105. In King James language, it says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

God provides just enough light to guide our steps on the path ahead. No more, no less, just enough light for us to walk in faith.

I’ve heard it called “flashlight faith.” You know how narrow a beam of light that a flashlight throws. You can’t see much – just enough to pick a path to where you’re going.

But that’s enough, isn’t it?

I don’t need to see all the road ahead. I don’t need to see what’s over the hill or around the curve. I just need to see where I’m walking now. I just need to see where my next staggering step will take me.

God will order my steps and be with me every step of the way.

As Saint Patrick said, Christ with me and within me, before me, behind me, beneath me, above me, on my right, and on my left.

Flashlight faith is good enough. It will get you where you need to go. Because God loves you, no matter what. Because you are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ for all the good works and all the good things God has in mind for you.

Don’t ever forget it. Live it, one step at a time. I invite you: Let’s stagger into God’s future together, shall we?

Ephesians 2: 1, 4-5, 8-10 (NLT)

            Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.

            But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.

            It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!

            God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

            Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

            For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

A Jesus like me … sort of

From left: Tall Jesus, Pretty Jesus, Hot Jesus

You have to be very careful, especially in these touchy days, portraying Jesus visually.

  Witness the uproar in Seville over a Spanish artist’s painting of Jesus for a poster celebrating Easter.

  According to the Associated Press, “The poster by internationally recognized Seville artist Salustiano García Cruz shows a fresh-faced Jesus without a crown of thorns, no suffering face and minuscule wounds on the hands and ribcage.”

  Some critics say the Jesus shown in the poster is simply too handsome or too sensual. Others call the image effeminate or homoerotic.

  I agree it may be a bit much, but it shows a risen Jesus, not a suffering Jesus, and it’s a healthy contrast to some of the other grisly stuff we see this time of year.

  Images of Jesus are visible in parades throughout Seville during Holy Week, but most follow traditional conventions. This one, of course, is fully traditional in the sense that Jesus is European. How could he not be, when the artist used his own son as a model?

  (Follow that logic through. God’s Son, artist’s son. Get it?)

  Interestingly enough, I found a somewhat similar Jesus for sale at a Catholic store here in the states. This one is a statue, and it’s 10 feet tall.

  Both “Pretty Jesus” and “Tall Jesus” remind me of a Jesus portrayed in the movie “Son of God,” starring Diego Murgado.

  When I showed photos of this Jesus to my youth group at the time, the kids dubbed him “Hot Jesus.” They liked him a lot but agreed that he was somewhat over the top.

  Hot, pretty, or just tall, images of Jesus are always popular, and always controversial. We like our Jesus to be just like us. Nothing wrong with that. We just need to remember that Jesus also is just like others, and they are not at all like us.

  That’s why we can have European Jesus, Black Jesus, Asian Jesus, Native American Jesus and Mediterranean Jesus – and though the Mediterranean version may be the most historically accurate, the others also are relationally on target.

  While you may cringe at the Jesus who is not like you, you should not throw stones just because he’s different. Remember, as alike us as Jesus was (and is), he also was (and is) visibly unlike us.

Hawking religion on TV

You may have thought that the Super Bowl was about football, or maybe Taylor Swift, or maybe even those hyper-expensive ads hawking chips and beer.

 Nope. It’s really about those hyper-expensive ads hawking a different kind of religion, not the religion of consumerism but the real thing – you know, real religion that’s focused on your relationship to God and others.

 Super Bowl commercials cost about $7 million for 30 seconds. For that price, you get exposure to millions of TV viewers – this year a record 123.4 million viewers, by one count.

 Surveys show that for a mere $230,000 per second, plus production costs, these commercials can provide valuable exposure for new products, though in general they do a pretty poor job of moving product.

Obviously some religious organizations are willing to cough up huge bucks for such exposure, whatever result they expect.

Five religious commercials appeared during Super Bowl LVIII. One generated a lot of controversy. I’ll mention it last.

Strangely enough, to my mind anyway, the most compelling message may have been the 60-second pitch for the Church of Scientology. It starts with the dubious claim, “Every day millions of people ask, ‘What is scientology?’ ”

Millions? Really? At least the claim establishes the theme for the commercial. It never really says what Scientology is, of course. Rather, it encourages people to “Come take a look” and “Decide for yourself.”

Christian churches might do well to emulate such a low-key, “Our doors are open to all” approach, though it could be argued that not a lot of people are listening anymore.

Also effective was the 30-second pitch for Hallow, a Roman Catholic prayer app. “Join us for prayer this Lent,” movie star Mark Wahlberg urges. Of all the celebrity pitches during Super Bowl commercials, this one seemed the most personal and authentic.

Curiously, another personal and authentic message seemed to fall flat. This was the brief anti-hate ad featuring Clarence Jones, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. “Sometimes I imagine what I would write today for my dear friend, Martin,” Jones says.

To us, he says, “All hate thrives on one thing: silence.” He concludes: “When we stand up to silence, we stand up to all hate.”

A strong message, but somehow it didn’t connect with me. Maybe just me?

Two other messages were part of the “He Gets Us” campaign supported, in part, by the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain.

The ad in the second quarter, lasting only 15 seconds, asks, “Who is my neighbor?” After a series of photos of people who mostly look on the down and out, it says, “The one you don’t notice, the one you don’t value, the one you don’t welcome.”

Those are our neighbors! Great message! Though maybe it’s so short and punchy it gets lost in all the ad clutter.

A similar message gets blurred in the first-quarter “He Gets Us” ad, a 60-second look at foot washing.

Not surprisingly, some observers were simply baffled by this, a few even wondering if it involves a foot fetish. Others railed at the “woke” nature of it all and claimed satanic influence. Both responses show how ignorant of Christian basics many people are.

The ad is intended to be provocative. It hits on many of our hot button issues, without apology. It pairs apparently unlikely people: a cop washing the feet of a Black youth, for example, or an anti-abortion protester washing the feet of a pregnant woman about to enter an abortion clinic.

It concludes: “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”

The stated goal of the “He Gets Us” campaign is "sharing the life and love of Jesus in thought-provoking new ways." Maybe the message would be better received if some of the sponsors were not so vocal in their opposition to birth control, abortion, or the rights of LGBTQ people, among other things.

And maybe the millions of dollars somebody paid for these ads might be better spent actually working in the fields among those unnoticed, unvalued, unwelcome folk whom Jesus wants us to care about.

But, hey, at least somebody tried to slip in a little religion of some kind in a very long evening otherwise devoted to selling the excesses of pop culture and mindless chatter from football commentators.

All are welcome

Who knew you could pick up good theology from the back of a cereal box?

When I was a kid, I read the back of cereal boxes while munching breakfast. They made great reading because they were always selling cool stuff like sets of green army men and Tony the Tiger punching bags.

I once badgered my parents into ordering one of those punching bags for me. A century or so later (“allow up to six weeks for delivery”), I received a TINY plastic Tony the Tiger punching bag that didn’t survive more than a few six- or seven-year-old punches.

It was one of my first clues that the real world wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. If you can be bamboozled by Tony the Tiger, who can believe in heroes anymore?

The other day, while getting ready to make Chex Mix for Super Bowl munching, I read the back of a Kellogg’s cereal box. (The local Price Chopper suddenly dropped most Best Choice versions. Boo!)

Imagine my surprise when I read the main headline on the back of the box:

“EVERYONE DESERVES A PLACE AT THE TABLE.”

The first word, “everyone,” is in red. You can’t miss the emphasis.

Turns out, it’s part of a campaign to support NaviLens, a service for the visually impaired that uses color QR codes.

But it’s actually so much more than that. It’s a huge statement of faith.

Everyone deserves a place at the table that God sets for us in God’s kingdom, as well as in the miserable counterfeit thing we call “the real world.”

To be sure, no one actually deserves such a place. Not one of us. But God graciously invites all of us to the table anyway.

To be sure as well, many Christians want to limit access to God’s table. No, they say, God only invites the holy – you know, those folks just like you and me.

It’s a lie. God loves everyone, and God wants everyone to join in the banquet of grace. Sure, everyone – that is, every last one, of all theological stripes and all manner of sin and all degree of holiness or lack thereof – will be changed by the experience.

That’s part of the point. Sharing a meal with the Lord changes you. Or at least it ought to.

The next time you’re reading the back of a cereal box, remember the message from Kellogg’s: EVERYONE DESERVES A PLACE AT THE TABLE.

It’s a message from God, too. Come to the table and find out.

*   *  *  *  *

I’m still processing the messages of religious commercials from the Super Bowl. I’ll talk about them soon.

Children, grow up

As a standup comic might say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

  Begin with an NFL quarterback who claims that the colors in a Super Bowl promotion reveal the pre-ordained winners of the game, even before the playoffs have narrowed the choices of who will play.

  Move to some grousing about how the Kansas City Chiefs are becoming a football “dynasty” because they’ve played in the Super Bowl so often recently. Remember, this is a team that for years routinely won the “race to the cellar” award.

  Now pop music superstar Taylor Swift is linked romantically with football superstar Travis Kelce, and she starts attending Chiefs games. Because she is clearly (and maybe even deservedly) the most famous person on the planet, the TV cameras occasionally show her among other notables in the Chiefs viewing box.

  Now there’s grousing about how all this attention to her distracts from the purity of the game. Like the endless commercials, constant self-promotion and inane chatter from the broadcasters are not even remotely distracting.  

  Children, grow up.

  Now the political hacks get into it. Seems it’s all part of some huge conspiracy to swing voters to vote Democratic. Swift has jillions of fans who might do her slightest bidding. Kelce is known to drink Bud Lite, and he supports vaccinations. This all has cosmic implications.

  Children, grow up.

  It has been noted that real children are watching the behavior of the so-called adults in the room, and they are not likely to be impressed.

  The other day I noticed a long trail of beer cans along the side of an entrance ramp to a local highway. A very long line. This was no casual “aerial burial.” This was a deliberate act of vandalism.

  Children, grow up.

  Isn’t it past time for the cultural vandalism to stop?

  We who claim the name Christian say we are maturing in Christlikeness, growing into the image of Christ. Don’t we need to show the world this better way?

  I’m thinking beyond a snort and eye roll the next time you encounter a bizarre conspiracy theory being touted as truth.

  A simple, pointed, skeptical question might be enough. “How can you believe such a thing?”

  Arguing “facts” will only take you down the conspiracist rabbit hole. Don’t go there. Simply ask why the person believes such a thing can be true. This is about belief, not facts. It may be a superficial thing, or something far deeper and more personal. Push gently because you can’t know how much the person has invested in the lie.

  In the New Testament, we are told not to believe every spirit but to “test the spirits” to make sure they’re from God (1 John 4:1). In the context, John is arguing for the divinity of Jesus, against those who deny it. But there are many false spirits in the world, and there are many ways to be led astray.

  The best way to counteract any false path is to live faithfully and stay committed to the true Way without being distracted by the false spirits.

  Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will lead us to all truth (John 6:13). When you consider any assertion, ask what spirit might have led you to it. Can you be sure that you were led by the Spirit of Christ? Might some other agent have been at work?

  Here’s a basic litmus test. God is love, and the Spirit will always lead us to act in love. If the “truth” you proclaim is not loving, it cannot have come from God.

  Children, grow up.