Know Tea

The word “retarded” means “slow.” You buy flame-retardant sleepwear for your children, which means the fabric is very slow to catch fire, unlike cotton or linen.  In printed music, if you see “ritardando” or its abbreviation “ritard.” it means you are to slow down.  Retarded=slow.  End of story.  A long time ago, people with mental and/or physical disabilities were labeled as “slow” or “retarded” because they were slower to learn some things than their peers, slower to walk, etc.

But even  back then “retarded” did not mean “stupid.” It is not synonymous with “beneath contempt” or “sub-human.” That is how it is used today.  It is used as a cruel insult:  one of the cruelest ones at that, because the cruelty of this insult is leveled at those who, more so than most others, will not or cannot retaliate or speak up for themselves.

Someone at work a while back did something stupid and said, “Wow, that was retarded.” I stopped him and said, “You know, I have a disabled child, and that sort of language is very hurtful.” He replied with, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that!” Umm, yes you did.  Did you mean it as a compliment?  I didn’t think so.

Making fun of a disability is unspeakably cruel.  It is the definition of inhuman, and it is completely inexcusable.

I encourage you to watch this video by Peter, Paul, and Mary, and then to check out the good work of Operation Respect and of  r-word.org .

Don’t Laugh at Me

I was going to post this last night, but then I thought it would be better to put Part II of the two-part post on forgiveness up.  I didn’t think a serious post about forgiveness should be interrupted with a post about making a good shandy.

But I have been on a quest for the perfect American shandy.  Shandies are quite well-known in the UK and in Europe, but virtually unheard of here in the States.  A typical shandy is one part beer and one part carbonated (or “sparkling”) lemonade.  You can make a shandy with ginger ale or citrus soda (such as orange Fanta or Squirt, a grapefruit-based soda), but of course that makes for a completely different taste.  I like the basic, lemonade-flavored shandy the best.  And therein lies the problem.

Carbonated lemonade is as scarce as hen’s teeth in the U.S.  Sunkist’s web site says they make one, but in the stores I have only seen their orange and mandarin sodas (aside:  “mandarin”  oranges refers to clementines, tangerines, and satsumas).  I found one sparkling lemonade at the grocery store, but it was from France and cost over $3.00 for one liter.  OK for an occasional treat but not something I could justify spending more than, say, once in a blue moon.

After some searching, I found a good recipe for sparkling lemonade that can also be used for regular lemonade:  take  1/2 cup of water and put it in a small pan on the stove.  Add 1 cup of granulated sugar (I used Florida Crystals unrefined sugar) and boil for about 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, squeeze between 3/4 cup and 1 full cup of lemon juice (depending on your taste).  That took 4 lemons for me, but they were rather large.  (Some people say add 1/4 tsp. of finely chopped lemon zest, but there are people here with texture issues.  I strained the pulp out of the lemon juice for the same reason, but that’s up to you.)  After the syrup has finished cooking, allow it to cool a little and then add the lemon juice to it.  Put the lemon syrup in a jar and refrigerate.

To make a glass of lemonade, put 3 tablespoons of the lemon syrup in a glass and add 1 cup of cold water (and ice cubes if you like).  For sparkling lemonade, add 1 cup of cold club soda or sparkling water (such as Perrier) instead.

NOW, for a shandy, make sure the beer, lemon syrup, and club soda are all nice and cold.  (I like to put my glass in the freezer for a while too.)  Add the syrup to the glass, then a cup of the cold club soda (if you get the small bottles of club soda, add a whole bottle), and then slowly pour the beer in until the glass is full.

I think a shandy is best when made with a light-colored lager (yes, hipsters, that would include PBR), but you can experiment with different varieties to find the combo you like best.  Just be sure to comment back on here what you used and how it turned out!

(I’m thinking now that a shandy made with Izze Clementine soda would be worth trying . . .)

If there is a “righteous” woundedness, just as there is a “righteous” anger (as I mentioned in Part I), where do we draw the line?  After all, we saw these verses last time:

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.   Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:31-32).”

It says to “put away” bitterness.  So when is my hurt, my woundedness, just a natural part of the healing process, and when is it bitterness?  Some would say that anytime someone says, “I hurt,” that is an indication that he or she has not forgiven the offender, or at the very least has not forgiven “all the way.”  I disagree.

Still, it is possible for us to hold on to our hurt, refusing to allow it to heal.  The purpose of nursing a wound is to help the wound get better, but sometimes I have been guilty of nursing an emotional wound to keep it open:  I’ll be you’ve done the same.

The difference between hurt and bitterness is illustrated for me by something my mom used to do sometimes when I fell down and got hurt as a child.  If I tripped on the brick steps, for example, and scraped my leg, she would try to take my mind off the pain by saying, “Oh, that bad step!  Let me spank that step!  Bad step!”  Now, she was just trying to lighten the situation, trying to get me to laugh and forget how badly my leg hurt at the moment.  No harm done.  But I have read many parenting books that urge parents not to do that sort of thing, because it may teach the child that anytime something bad happens, someone needs to be blamed for it.

(Aside:  this is a huge problem sometimes in our house.  If someone misplaces an item, it immediately becomes, “Who took my hairbrush!” or, worse yet, “Who stole my hairbrush?”  It is hard to accept that sometimes we misplace things, and sometimes things just go missing.  Why must we automatically assume that someone has taken something from us?)

I knew my mom was only joking when she would pretend to spank the brick step.  But what if I didn’t?  There’s a big difference between crying because my leg hurts and being angry at a brick step for hurting me, between “Ow, I really wish my leg didn’t hurt anymore,”  and “I really hope someone makes that step pay for what he did to me!”

That’s where hurt becomes bitterness:  when we insist on blaiming, when we want the offender to “get what’s coming to him.”  (Please note this does not mean we should not be concerned with justice.  But we can seek justice without harboring hatred.)  If you skin your knee on the bricks, it is going to hurt.  But spanking the step is not going to make your knee get better.  If forgiveness is accepting the hurt upon ourselves, we reason, wouldn’t it make us feel better to throw the hurt back at the one who has hurt us?  “Revenge is a dish best served cold,”  they say.

That may be satisfying in the movies, but in real life it never works that way.  Our bitterness, our refusing to let go, only eats away at us.  In the long run, it hurts us far worse than we can imagine.  When we forgive, yes, we hurt for a while, but we heal.  Bitterness and grudge-bearing are the best ways to assure that those wounds will never heal.

We hear all the time that we are to “forgive and forget.” After all, the logic goes, God says that when he forgives us, he “remembers our sins no more.”  And Scripture says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).  Open and shut.  Case closed.  Say no more.  Right?

Is it that easy?

For some people, with some people, yes.  Those “some people” are usually the people we love: the people to whom we are the closest.  With such people in my life, I am such a pleaser at heart that I want to make up quickly.  This is so true of me that I have been accused of being a “doormat” more than once, and more than once I’m sure it’s been true.  But it is also true that I have, wrongly, completely written off people who have wronged me in the past, if I was not particularly close to those people and/or didn’t see the relationship as something of value.

With some people, forgiveness may occur, but the wounds take longer to heal.  For the longest time, I could not fathom this.  I reasoned that if someone was still hurting, then that person had not truly forgiven.  And I am not alone in this:  I’ve read more than one “Christian counselor” who has said the very same thing.  Hurting equals bitterness.  Hurting equals holding a grudge.  Hurting equals “keeping a record of wrongs.”  That can certainly be the case, but I no longer believe that it is always the case.  Just as Scripture says “in your anger do not sin,” indicating that there is righteous anger and unrighteous anger, I also believe there can be righteous woundedness (a natural part of the healing process) and unrighteous woundedness (bitterness, grudge-holding, etc.).

The lights came on for me a couple of years ago.   It was right before Easter (or Ascension), and I wondered, “Why does Jesus still have the wounds in his hands, feet, and side?  If God could raise him from the dead, could he not also completely fix those wounds so they didn’t show anymore?”

Then it dawned on me:  those wounds are there for me, and for you.  Those wounds are there to remind us that he was hurt.  And it was by his being hurt that forgiveness is possible.

Like so many other Christians, I had always focused on “Forgive as God forgave you,” i.e., God forgives proactively, not waiting around for us to be sorry first:  “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8).”  But the thing I had missed for so long was “in Christ.”  Jesus did forgive proactively.  He said “Father, forgive them” of those who were nailing him to the Cross (Luke 23:34).  But he accomplished forgiveness by being nailed to the Cross.  It’s not just “forgive as God forgave you,” but forgive as God in Christ forgave you.”  And the way our forgiveness was accomplished in Christ was by his accepting the pain upon himself.  “He was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5).”  And after he rose, he showed them the scars (John 21:27).  He had been hurt.  And the scars were/are the proof that he has forgiven us.  He accepted the hurt upon himself.

So forgiveness doesn’t make the hurt go away all at once.  The hurt has got to go somewhere.  It may be flung back on the offender in revenge, it may bounce back and forth between the offended party and the offender in bitterness and grudge-holding, or it may be accepted onto the offended party in forgiveness.  That is how forgiveness works.  We do heal, but some wounds take time to heal.  Christ was truly wounded for us.  The wounds healed, and he still bears the scars of those wounds in eternity (Rev. 5:6).  They are reminders to us of what it cost him to forgive us.  Spurgeon says they are now “trophies of his love,” declaring what he was willing to go through for us, causing us to love him even more.  “He who is forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:47).”

So when someone forgives you, it is quite possible that, far from them hurting less, the act of forgiveness may initially cause them to hurt more, as they accept that hurt upon themselves.  That fact alone should cause you to love those who have forgiven you even more.  Just as Christ’s wounds healed, the wounds caused by the offense and often intensified by forgiveness will heal too, but there may be scars.  Those scars, just as the scars Jesus bears, should serve as trophies of the love the forgiver has for the forgiven.

So where do we draw the line between being hurt and being bitter (holding a grudge)?  That is the subject of Part II.

When Matthew Paul Turner was five, his parents informed him that they were becoming Baptists.  And not just your regular-old, run-of-the-mill, Just-As-I-Am, Billy-Graham-type Baptists, either.  Independent Fundamental Baptists.  The kind that think the Southern Baptists are liberal.  The kind that don’t like Billy Graham because he’s “too ecumenical”.  Think Bob Jones University.  Think Pensacola Christian College.  OK, you’ve got the picture now.

Matthew gives us, in his own voice, what it was like growing up in an environment in which going to movies (even “Bambi”) was a sin, as was listening to any kind of “secular” music (which would include any “worldly” music with a rock beat, even–or perhaps especially–if it had Christian lyrics).  He tells us of Pastor Nolan, at turns ridiculously weird and frighteningly oppressive, whose sermons were more harangues than reflections on biblical passages.  Pastor Nolan tells his flock, for example, that it is an abomination for men to have long hair, so Matthew’s dad takes him to a barber shop to get his hair cut “like a Baptist.” Whatever Pastor Nolan says is law among his flock.  And boy are there laws:  lots and lots of laws.  Oh yes, Pastor Nolan also gets in a wrestling ring once a year and fights the devil.  (I am not making this up, and neither is Matthew.)

I did not grow up Independent Fundamental Baptist, or any kind of Baptist for that matter, but I found many points of contact with Matthew’s world, and I have known enough people in that world over the years to know that Matthew is not exaggerating.  Reading Churched was, for me, a little like reading Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain.  Not that the books, or the religious cultures they depict, are similar, but because of the effect they had on me.  Before reading Salvation, the “snake handlers” were just a rumor I’d heard:  something they do in some country churches “out towards Jasper” or “up there past Oneonta.”   Now, thanks to Dennis, I’ve experienced a part of that world, and it frightens me.  Matthew does for the Fundamentalist crowd what Dennis did for the snake handlers.  Except where Dennis Covington’s tone is intense, emotional, and even sympathetic at points, Matthew Paul Turner’s is laugh-out-loud funny.

Even though Matthew’s upbringing was in what we would call “evangelical” Christianity, there is precious little “evangel” (Gospel) in his life.  Instead of justification by faith, there is justification by moralism.  Being a true Christian, in Pastor Nolan’s church, had little, if anything, to do with loving God, much less with being loved by God.  Instead, a true Christian was someone who dressed a certain way, listened to certain music, “separated” from the world by avoiding such things as movies, etc.  Sometimes, true Christians even have to call their mom into the living room so she can place her hands on the TV screen to cover an actress’ cleavage.  Ah, the dedication of the true believer!

The most amazing thing of all is that Turner is able to relate this without once sounding mean or bitter.  That is miraculous, considering he was denied the most amazing treasure–grace–throughout his childhood.  I’m glad that, once he discovered that grace, he decided to extend grace to those who had withheld it from him all those years.

Churched:  One Kid’s Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess is now available in paperback.  It’s an easy, hilarious, and memorable read.

As promised, I chose an entry at random using random.org (screen shot at the left), and the winning entry, out of 28 entries, was entry 2, belonging to Justa!  Congratulations, Justa.  I’ll be contacting you via e-mail to get your information so I can send your book to you.

Everyone, stay tuned for another book review coming soon!

Matthew Turner is a friend of mine whom I’ve never met, something that is possible in this day of social media. Not long after I “met” Matthew, a series of conversations revealed that we had much in common: we both grew up in a Fundamentalist culture, both went to Christian schools that used the same legalistic/fascist curriculum (and we can both tell you stories), both majored in music at liberal arts colleges in the South with ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, and on the list goes.

From reading Hear No Evil, however, I learned that Matthew’s upbringing, and therefore his experience with Christian music, was/is far different from mine. Sure, we could both have sung as young people (to the tune SOLID ROCK) “My hope is built on nothing less/Than Scofield’s notes and Moody Press,” but Matthew’s Fundamentalist experience was in Maryland, not in the Deep South, and therefore has some edges to it that mine did not. He tells of a world in which going to a movie–any movie–was a sin. Movies were dubbed, in all seriousness by his Independent Fundamental Baptist church, “the devil’s excrement.”

When it came to music, Matthew’s church similarly taught him that any pop music was evil, especially if it featured a (GASP) syncopated beat! We in the South, in contrast, were handed sound-alike charts by youth leaders and chapel speakers: “Like Journey? Listen to Petra! They sound just like Journey, only Christian!” (Yes, these sound-alike charts did, and probably still do, exist, as many of my readers will attest.) When he arrived at college to study music, he was a blank slate. The episode he relates of hearing Bob Dylan for the first time in class, and then raising his hand to ask who Dylan is, is heartbreaking, cringe-worthy, and hilarious all at the same time. It reminded me of so many music majors I met in school who dreamed of a career in “Christian music” but who had been sheltered from the vast majority of any kind of music. The only categories of music they knew were “Christian” and “secular” rather than “good” and “bad.”

There are many such “I want to cry and laugh out loud at the same time” moments in Hear No Evil, such as the story of a group of rebels from his church who conspire to arrange a clandestine trip to a (GASP again) Sandi Patty concert, his buying, throwing away, and re-buying (a total of four times) a contraband Amy Grant cassette, his “inspiration” to rewrite George Michael’s “Faith” with Jesus-y lyrics, and many others.  The combination of “this wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t so true” and Matthew’s keen self-awareness and honesty (I found myself repeatedly embarrassed for him) is a winning one.

As a person in the Reformed tradition, I found it particularly heartbreaking that Matthew’s introduction to that tradition was through a group of “cage-stage” Calvinists at college.  Jesus may need new PR (to borrow the title of Matthew’s blog) but if his college friends are any indication, Calvin needs even more.  Those of us who should be known for our celebration of grace come off as simply a group of people who love to argue.  Not too far off the mark, I’m afraid.  Writing as one on the outside of the Reformed world looking in, Matthew hits the nail on the head in describing a certain element within that world:  “. . . at Belmont, the cool Christians, the ones who wore flip flops, played acoustic guitars, and stole song ideas from U2 albums really seemed infatuated with John Calvin.” For those of us who do like Calvin yet who are not among the “cool kids,” who do not play guitar or think U2-wannabe sounding songs with Puritan hymns for lyrics are the bee’s knees, Matthew, let me be the first to say, “Thank you!”

My only complaint is that Hear No Evil was not long enough.  I wanted more embarrassing stories, more descriptions of people whom I swear I’ve met before too, more humor that manages to be oh-so-pointed without ever being mean (truly a gift).  I can only hope that we hear much, much more of Matthew Paul Turner in the coming years.

UPDATE:  WIN A FREE COPY OF HEAR NO EVIL.

You can have up to three entries:

1) Leave a comment on this post.  (You will need to enter your e-mail address to comment, but it is not displayed to the public.  I will use the e-mail with which you register to inform you if you’ve won.)

2) Put a post on your own blog about this review.  Be sure to include a link to this post.

3) Tweet about the contest and post a link to your Tweet here.

Deadline for entries is Wednesday, June 2.  The winner will be selected at random, using random.org.

I visited a dead church the other night.

Not spiritually dead, but dead nonetheless.

The church had a large worship space, but with a low, dropped ceiling covered with some kind of soft, sound-absorbing material. Every square inch of floor was covered in wall-to-wall carpet.  The seats and backrests of the pews were padded.  Even the actual backs of the pews (you know, the part with the little pockets for the hymnals and the little holey things for the Communion cups) were covered in carpet.

As I said before, a dead church.

What was truly sad was that we were there for a choral concert.  Our children’s spring choral concert.  Since the room was absolutely dead, they miked the choirs.  They miked the grand piano.  They miked the violinist.  We didn’t get to hear the choirs the way they really sounded:  we only heard them as they were artificially amplified (complete with artificial reverberation) by the sound equipment.  We didn’t get to hear the music as it was intended to be heard, with variations of soft and loud, because the sound guy would boost the soft parts, evening everything out (and sometimes creating uncomfortable feedback when the music got louder or higher than he was ready for).

Why, why, oh why do we build churches this way?  Why do we guarantee artifice in our singing by making it absolutely dependent on artificial amplification?  It’s not only disastrous for choral singing:  it’s even more disastrous for congregational singing.  Remember, the congregation doesn’t get microphones.  Most congregants just give up and listen instead.

I was discussing this on Twitter (yes, I was tweeting about the appalling acoustics during the concert) and someone said something like “Don’t you have to have amplification if you have a church that holds more than 25 people?  Um, no.  I’ve sat in the really, really cheap seats in really, really large concert halls (mostly as a college student) and heard orchestras, choruses, solo singers, pianists, and others perfectly well, from pianissimo to fortissimo.  I’ve been in very, very large churches, with pitched wooden ceilings, wood or stone floors, and brick, wood, or stone walls, and heard the choir, the organ, the piano, and the pastor perfectly from the back pew.  And I’ve sung along from the congregation and not felt like my throat was closing up from trying to sing in a dead room.  Instead, the music rang.  It reverberated with no help from artificial means.  I’ve sung in monasteries and cathedrals where the music wanted to go on and on long after I’ve stopped singing.  It sounded as it were climbing heavenward, like our prayers arising as incence.

And we wonder why so many people feel as if their prayers never get past the ceiling.

Artifice in worship should be avoided at all costs.  Sure, the pastor may like a little amplification, especially if it’s a large room and he doesn’t want to go full throttle the whole time.  (I’m not a pulpit-pounder myself.)  But why build a worship space in such a way that makes us depend on artificial amplification to hear anything?  Especially the music?  I think God wants our praise to come from us, to be truly from us, to sound like us.   Does everything have to be carpeted, even the back of the pew where the hymnal racks are?

Even if we are in less-than desirable spaces acoustically, what’s wrong with turning the amps down a bit (even if they do go to 11)?  What?  Make people listen?  Cause them to stop chatting?  To “be still and know that I am God?” You’ve got to be kidding.

We need more live churches and fewer dead ones, no matter how you define it.

(The three sections of the sermon are based on the stanzas of the hymn “Look There! The Christ our Brother Comes” by John Bennett.)

Look there! The Christ, our Brother, comes
Resplendent from the gallows tree,
And what he brings in his hurt hands is life on life for you and me.

On Easter we beautify the Cross.  We drape it in white and surround it with lilies.  That’s because on Easter we rejoice in Christ’s victory over sin. We rejoice that he is the one who has trampled down death by death.  But the Cross is not simply a decorative motif in Christian art.  The Cross was an instrument of capital punishment.  Crucifixion was a criminal’s death, one of the most cruel means of torture and execution ever devised.  The Cross was the gallows-tree.  Jesus endured the most humiliating, painful sort of death imaginable, and we are the ones who nailed him there.  But look!  Now Christ, who died in such an ignoble way, returns—resplendent!  And because he has returned from death, because he is the victor over death and sin, we know now that what he promised—eternal life, abundant life—is not an empty promise.  If you trust in Christ today, that abundant life is yours.  Life upon life, through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Paul tells us the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Victory over what?  Over death and sin, but also over the law!  The law that condemned each one of us.  The law that you and I could never hope to keep, Christ kept perfectly.  And by his righteous life and sacrificial death, through which he shows us the full extent of his love, he now gives us life on life.  Abundant life.  Living water.  Not just the promise of heaven when we die, as beautiful and comforting as that is.  But life now.  Joy now.  Peace now.  Love now.

Good Jesus Christ, inside his pain
Looked down Golgotha’s stony slope
And let the blood flow from his flesh to fill the springs of living hope.

I Peter 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, God has caused us to be born again to a living hope.  What is a living hope?  Well, St. Paul tells us that the hope that God gives us in Christ is a hope that does not disappoint.  I’ve hoped for things that never came to pass.  I’m sure you have too.  I have hoped and then been disappointed.  Plans fall through.  People cancel on us.  Promises get broken.  Disappointment is one of the most painful experiences we know.  But this living hope never disappoints.  The hope we have in Christ is not a tentative hope:  it is a living hope.  It is alive because Christ is alive.  Because he is risen from the dead, we too will be raised from death.  Because he has ascended to the Father, we too will go to the Father’s house.  There was a time when you could take a paper dollar and exchange it, any time you wanted, for a gold dollar.  That paper dollar represented something solid:  a piece of gold.  The dollar was a guarantee of gold in the vault.  It’s not that way anymore when it comes to money, but that’s how the resurrection of Christ works.  It is a guarantee of our resurrection.  His life is a guarantee of our eternal life.  The blood that flowed from his flesh fills the springs of living hope.

Good Jesus Christ, our Brother, died
In darkest hurt upon the tree
To offer us the worlds of light that live inside the Trinity.

Jesus said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”  Jesus, sharing this abundant life with us, lifts us to his experience of the Father.  You see, the death of Christ is not just his death,  it is ours too.  Paul tells us in Romans 6 that those of us who are baptized into Christ were baptized into his death.  We have been united with him in his death, so in that he has died unto sin, we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin (we sang those verses earlier in the service).  Likewise, we are united to Christ in his resurrection.  So now, in that he lives unto God, we are to reckon ourselves alive to God.  Jesus, by his resurrection, brings to us what is his and shares with us what is his, including his relationship with the Father.  Through our union with Christ, we dare to address God, the Creator of the Universe, as “our Father.”  Jesus has lifted us to share in the worlds of light that live inside the Trinity.  He has made us a part of that eternal community of love that exists amongst the three Persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  And through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said that both He and the Father would come to us and make their home with us.  We share in the Trinitarian life!

The refrain of the hymn says, “Joy, joy, joy to the heart all in this good day’s dawning.” The joy of Easter is unspeakable.  It is the joy of knowing the abundant life that Jesus promised—eternal life through belief on his name.  It is the joy of a living hope:  the hope of our resurrection from the dead and of an eternity with God.  And it is the joy of being lifted up to participate in the Trinitarian life.  Do you know this joy today?  Do you have eternal life?  Do you have this living hope?  Do you have the life of God within you and have you been made a partaker of the Trinitarian life?  You can.

Know that it was your sin that put Jesus on the Cross.  Know that you stand condemned by the Law of God, because you have broken that Law.  Know that Christ kept God’s law perfectly, never committing the least sin.  Know that he gave his own life as the perfect sacrifice.  And know that he trampled down death by death, rising victorious over sin and death.  Hear his promise to you:  “He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” Hear the Word of God, “If you will confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and will believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Hear his Word to you today.  Believe, live, and rejoice.  Rejoice in eternal life, in living hope, and in the Trinitarian life.

Joy to the heart, all in this good day’s dawning!

Jared Wilson over at The Gospel-Driven Church comments on the trend of churches giving stuff away, Oprah-style (yes, even cars) to get people to come to church on Easter:

“The simple explanation for all this is that they want people to hear about the resurrection, and these are ways to get people in proximity to hear the message. I am reminded of when Jesus tells the rich man in hell that if his surviving family didn’t believe Moses and the prophets, they weren’t going to believe a resurrected man. Does that sound backwards to you? The same principle is at stake here. If the message that Jesus died and came back to life(!) isn’t compelling enough to draw people, the enticement of winning a car is not going to cut it. Anyone who believes on Christ because they were attracted by “stuff” has been won to prosperity gospel, not crucifixion gospel.”

We think a resurrected Christ isn’t enough.  We think eternal life isn’t good enough.  We’ve got to throw in a free TV or microwave to make it worth someone’s time?

You can read the whole post (and it is quite good) here.