The Gospel: Flip the Script

 

I arrived at my first parish in the summertime. Churches in the area, including the one I was called to, hired summer students to mow their cemeteries, paint, and do other odd jobs. I enjoyed talking with the summer student and learning about the community through her eyes.

That summer there was a revivalist preacher who set up a big white tent on the main road, in front of parent’s her house. People from all around the province would come to the tent to hear the preacher. The student saw the people coming and going and could hear the extensive and robust singing at their evening gatherings. The student asked if I would go with her to satisfy a curiosity of ‘the show’ inside the tent. So, we went together. Her in leisure pants and a tank top with long hair in a ponytail. Me in pants and a full clergy collar.

The ushers directed us to chairs in the front row. The women around us had their hair pinned up in buns, some with netted hair covers; all had skirts and long-sleeved blouses. Needless to say, we stood out.

We enjoyed the singing, the clapping, and wished there was dancing.

As the preacher spoke, his message went from the general audience, to being directed at the two of us. It went on, and on, in the hope that we would have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment.’

A large presentation board was brought out on stage. The top corner was painted in a bright glossy-white, the light being heaven. There was a tiny footbridge in the shape of cross to get to the light. The rest - 90% of the board- was black and grey, filled with grotesque figures, scary faces, and flames across the bottom. This section of the board was clearly for people like the summer student and myself – it represented sin, death, agony – hell; which was for everyone who was on the outside of this group of revivalists.

After a few hours of trying to save us, the service ended, and we went on our merry way. Over the rest of the summer, we talked from time to time about the tent meeting. We acknowledged that our experience of faith and our theological understanding was far different from the presentation board meant to save us.

 

There is a problem if the focus is sin. Have you noticed the past few weeks, in our reading through the book of Romans, that Paul’s speeches are never just about sin and never end on the theme of sin? Sin is the precursor for Paul to preach the good news. Paul’s words this morning: Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. You having been set free from sin. If sin is preached without the good news, it is not the gospel. That night in the tent there was no gospel.

 

You may or may not realize that we have a liturgy for individual confession printed in our hymnbooks. Many do not know this because as a denomination we have placed a higher emphasis on corporate confession.  Together we confess our brokenness. Sin does not happen in isolation. It is relational. We live in the reality that sin is bigger than anyone of us and our individual indiscretions. In someways it is like the presentation board representing the distance of humanity from God, and thus the brokenness of the world. As a community we make confession of the reality in which we live our lives, and together, we receive forgiveness. Confession moves us as a group, a community, from a focus on sin to embracing good news and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is extremely important because to flip the presentation board, we live out the gospel through good news, not sin.

Paul states, When you were slaves to sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. The trouble is that being a slave to sin, focuses on sin – yours and that of others. You spend your time watching for mistakes, judging righteousness, and concerned about lawbreaking and rules. This inhibits one from directing one’s energy towards participating in reconciliation and wholeness. Sin binds one, leaving one to feel guilty, shame-filled, worthless and subservient to the drudgery and wickedness of not being good enough. Although technically free to act faithfully, righteously, and godly – to live God’s kindom - one focused on sin is so encumbered by sin that they are unable to see beyond sin, to imagine wholeness, to receive forgiveness, to feel absolution – God’s unconditional love, and then to share that good news with others.

 

The presentation board from the tent was backwards. Paul preaching to the Roman community encourages listeners to be focused on and about the fruit you have. Paul is saying to us to flip the script.

Imagine the presentation board with the majority of the space (90%) being bright, glossy, and white – where it looks like light. A beautifully pictured community reflecting inclusion and welcome, courage and strength that is born from the good news. A place where hope and love abound. A place where people have the courage to be intimate in their relationships. Where Jesus’ community extends peace, washes feet, eats with the outcast and marginalized, turns water to wine, multiples loaves and fish, shares bread, heals the sick, and welcomes the stranger.

The thing about this place – this presentation board – is that it is not about a future day; well it is as Paul wrote, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Bu living from freedom and gospel, the picture on the board is a future lived into the present – being focused on living whatever eternity looks and feels like, through an actual human lifetime. Giving and serving from the fruit we have benefits everyone around us and brings God’s wholeness to the world and all creation. The kindom of God is brought near in the creating, sustaining, and encouraging a living of grace that exists now in the essence of all that is good, and kind, and beautiful.

 

The biggest problem with the tent meeting presentation board was that the terror of the images and the mass chaos of sin, overpowered the central core of Christian belief. One could look at the poster and never see the cross; be pulled into fear and never hear Jesus’ peace be with you. One had to navigate through the smokescreen to get to Christ.

We live in structures that promote and operate in the realms of power, exclusion, judgement, fear, and hate.

By grace, as a community of faith, we live in freedom. Confessing sin corporately and receiving forgiveness as a whole, we are a community made whole. We experience the good news in the absolution. The script is flipped. Through the rest of the liturgy the smoke is lifted so that we rest and absorb good news, the gospel.

Christ comes in the cross, in scripture, in music to heal the sin-sick soul, in water, in the breaking of bread, in sharing Christ’s peace, in praying for each other and the world, in community, in coffee.

 

Thanks be to God we are not of the world projected in media, sold by corporations, structured by governments, manipulated by markets. We are free through the cross. The cross is a story of brightness and redemption that shines beyond who the world told Jesus he should be, and beyond who the world tells us that we should be. We do not start or stop in sin.  We start with the cross, telling the good news we share the gospel.

We flip the script to that which we hear and feel from the world -

Our presentation board  - our lives- are filled and overflowing with life, grace, love, welcome, peace, hope, joy, forgiveness and so on. All relational. All community. This is the fruit with which we bring wholeness to the brokenness of world.

 

As Paul draws towards the end of Romans, he writes this blessing – receive these words:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.