"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Ps.22.1

Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017

     Christ’s first recorded words are those spoken to his mother. He was only twelve, when on their way home from Passover celebrations in Jerusalem, he went missing. After searching for him frantically for three days, Mary and Joseph found him in the Temple discussing scripture with the rabbis. When asked, “Son, why did you treat us so? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you,” the youngster replied irenically, “Why were you worried; did you not know that I would be in my Father’s house, doing my Father’s business?” (Lk.2.49).

     Luke tells us that after that incident, “he returned to Nazareth and was obedient unto them”(Lk.2.51), living quietly at home until age thirty, when suddenly he burst onto the scene with dramatic power, quickly capturing the attention of the nation. He came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and when he came up out of the waters a voice from heaven did proclaim:“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. (Mt.3.17)” From that moment on, it was plain to see that Jesus of Nazareth was something much more than a quiet momma’s boy from a rural village. Some doubted, but many in Israel believed that the Son of God was on earth doing his Father’s business. And what a business it was: healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, raising the dead throughout Galilee and Judea (Mt.11.4-6; Is.35.5-6; 61.1). Doing it all by the power of his word alone. His was a stunning performance, to say the least. In the town of Bethany, he raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11.38-44). A week later, as he rode into Jerusalem to shouts of, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!” it appeared that Israel was ready to receive him as their king (John 12.13).

        But then, almost as suddenly as it began, the drama of God’s Son came to a screeching, gruesome, blood-soaked end. There he was less than three years after his prophetic baptism, hanging helplessly on a cross between two thieves, condemned as a blasphemer by his own people and as a traitor by the governor of the province. It wasn’t enough that the Roman guards had whipped and beaten him nearly to death. They also mocked him by jamming a crown of thorns on his head. They then poured salt in the wounds by making him carry the very instrument of his death up a hill. The Jewish scriptures that he knew so well even in his youth prophesied that “the one whom you see hanging on a tree is cursed by God” (Dt.21.23; Gal. 3.13). And there his life ended, hanging on a "tree"; condemned by men and cursed by God. Saint John tells us his last words were but one in Hebrew, “It is accomplished” (John 19.30). The business he was about in the temple at age twelve he completed at age 33, on a cross outside the city.

      But what, exactly, had he accomplished? The world looking on Jesus crucified saw not a great accomplishment but an abject failure. Some of his opponents scoffed at him saying, “If you are the Christ come down from the cross, save yourself” (Mt.27.40). Surely, he who raised Lazarus from the dead the previous week could pull himself free from the nails that held his wrists and feet to a cross. That he did not do this, they took as evidence confirming their suspicions that his messianic mission had been nothing but a magic act by a clever deceiver, a sleight of hand. He was not God’s Son, they thought, and his death on a tree confirmed it. This charlatan was at last getting what he deserved, good riddance (John 8.48-52; 11.45-53).

     Or so it seemed to some. Three days later, God would vindicate his Son, raising him from the dead and by so doing reveal what the meaning and purpose of his violent death was. He said he had come to his Father’s business. What exactly was that? Early in the mission, he told his disciples what it was: “The Son of man has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many”(Mk.10.45). “For many” is a reference to Isaiah.53.11, “My servant, the righteous one, shall make many righteous.”  In other words his death, he said, would accomplish the redemption of humankind. Those who were exiled from God because of sin would be reconciled to God because the Son of God paid with his life the price of their redemption. And this was not his doing alone. This was God’s plan from the beginning (Gen.3.15): that the Christ would come to his people and die, “according to the scriptures” (1Cor.15.3).

"In spite of that, we call this Friday good."   —T. S. Eliot

   This is part of the mystery of Christ that puzzles all who try to understand him. How could his death on a cross be a good thing? His death seems so senseless, so pointless. And yet Christianity makes his death the foundation of the message and even calls it “good news.” How could the brutal death of an innocent man be good news? Again, Jesus told his disciples early in the mission that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the chief priests and the leaders and be killed (Mt.16.21). All other religious leaders come to teach. If Jesus too had come to teach, after giving the Sermon on the Mount he could have sat down satisfied and said, “It is finished.” He then could have written a book, collected the royalties, built a house on a hill outside Jerusalem and lived a long and full life, enjoying his wealth. But Jesus did not come into the world to live well. Jesus alone came to die, to die on a cross, accursed. This was the business which the Father sent his Son to do because he alone being perfect man and perfect God could offer himself up as the perfect offering for sin. And on the cross he did exactly that. He sacrificed himself, shedding his blood, for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2.1-2).

   This is difficult to understand. Indeed we can only understand it by returning to the beginning of Israel’s long history and remembering what God said to Moses. God told Moses that Israel’s priests could offer up lambs in sacrifice to him and that God would accept the blood of those lambs as atonement for their sins (Lev.17.5-11). As Jesus hung on the cross on the eve of Passover he could hear in the distance the cries of hundreds of the lambs being slaughtered. How ironic that the Jews did not see that that lamb of God, a sacrifice that would end the need for all further sacrifice, was offering himself to God on our behalf on a hill outside the city (Heb.10.1-18). John the Baptist, when he first laid eyes on Jesus, cried out prophetically, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1.29; 36). This is the mystery of atonement: that Jesus on the cross is both priest and victim. He is the one offering up the sacrificial victim and the victim is Jesus himself (Heb.9.11-14).

   At the time no one understood this. Not even his mother and Saint John who faithfully stood by him to the end knew fully what was happening. It all looked to the human eye like such a tragedy. Peter, the one Jesus called his “rock” fled in fear and cowardice. None of his disciples as yet had received the Spirit (John 7.37-39). But in due time, Christ would pour out his Spirit upon the church with wisdom and understanding and the coward Peter would be empowered to preach boldly to the church the message of the cross: “You know that you were ransomed from your futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pt. 18-19).

    And so to this day Christian preaching is a message to the world about the meaning of the cross and the sacrifice of Christ. And the church proclaims with boldness that Jesus did not die in vain but he suffered and died for us. We owe everything to him. It is by the precious blood of Christ shed on the cross that atonement is made for our sins, his self-sacrifice is fully acceptable to God, and because his sacrifice is perfect, by virtue of his divine nature as the only son of the Father it could be no less than perfect, it need never be repeated. Christ by his death has saved us from our sins. Christ by his death has reconciled us to God (2Cor.5.17-21). And all he asks of us who would be saved is faith. “For God so loved the world” he said, “that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3.16).

    In the Garden of Eden there was a man, Adam, a woman, Eve, and a tree. The man and the woman ate the fruit of that tree in disobedience to God who told them not to eat it. For their sin, God punished them. They paid the penalty for sin, which is death—physical death and separation from God. Spiritual death came into the world through sin. On Calvary there too is a man, a woman, and a tree. The man is Jesus, the new Adam. The woman is Mary, the new Eve, and the tree is the cross. The difference is that what the first man and woman lost by their disobedience to God, Jesus and Mary restored by their obedience. Those who ate the fruit of the first tree died. But those who eat the fruit of the second tree have life restored to them in full. The second tree is the cross, and the fruit of that tree is Jesus Christ. By receiving him through faith, in baptism and in the Holy Eucharist, literally, but also in a spiritual manner, inviting him to make a home in our souls, we who were consigned to death because of the first man's (Adam's) sin have life returned to us as a consequence of the second man’s (Christ's) perfection. And we owe our salvation entirely to him who went about his Father’s business; a business that took him all the way to the cross.

   But knowing this makes us wonder all the more, what happened between him and God while he was on the cross that he should cry out in haunting anguish words of such awful abandonment that have become the most famous last words of any dying man ever, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Ps.22.1; Mt.27.46)  Surely Jesus who from his youth was an expert in scripture knew the promise of God, “'I will never fail or forsake you,' says the Lord" (Dt.31.6-8; Heb.13.5-6). Had Jesus lost his faith? Would God have abandoned him whom he called at his baptism and again on the mount of Transfiguration, “My beloved Son”? Surely not. So what happened to Jesus that caused him to sink into the depths of despair and for one awful moment feel the horror that Adam felt when the gates to Paradise were closed behind him? This is what happens when you take upon yourself the sins of the whole world. The nails holding him onto a tree were the least of it. He had to suffer. He had to feel not only what a lamb being ritually slaughtered feels, but he had to feel the guilt Adam felt when the death sentence was imposed upon him and upon all his heirs to come. He had to feel what a man feels when everyone, really everyone, blames you.

    It’s hard to imagine what Jesus felt in that terrible hour of abandonment. But here’s the thing. And this makes his willingness to endure this torture all the greater and mysterious. Scholars have wondered what scriptures he was discussing with the rabbis when he was with them in the temple as a boy. We’re not told. But I would venture he discussed with them the 22nd Psalm. And he told them that, “This is how it will happen. The Savior, when he comes, will be brutally killed according to the scriptures.” No one of course believed the young lad. “He is bright but he has much to learn” they told his mother afterwards. Do you see my point? Did you listen to that Psalm? Read it again, if you didn’t get it. Written a thousand years before the event, it prophesies in detail the gruesome death of the Savior (Is.53.1-11; Lk.22.37). Jesus, even in his youth, understood exactly what it meant. It was written about him, and his business with God was to submit to His will.

    In light of this we see how extraordinary his crucifixion was. He knew what was coming, but he ran not away. On his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed “My soul is sorrowful unto death. Father, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done” (Lk.22.42). The plan for mankind’s redemption was laid out in scripture, though none but Christ foresaw it: if the Son cared enough for sinners to die for them on a cross after being tortured, the Father would forgive them. What did we do for him, that he should do this for us? As Saint Paul put it in so many words: nothing, we did nothing to deserve it. “Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom.5.7-8). That’s what makes the crucifixion amazing. He saved us by his grace, thereby revealing the true nature of the divine heart as infinite pity, infinite mercy, infinite peace. God is love (1John 4.7-11). And all he asks of us is that we honor His Son, Jesus Christ, who took the curse of death and the punishment of sin upon himself, for one reason and one reason only: that we who are dead to God because of sin might live and love eternally (John 6.40).

Today is the Day

Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2017

2 Corinthians 5.20–6.10                                             

     People come to church for all sorts of reasons and with a variety of expectations. Some come looking for a church that offers their children Christian education and fellowship. Some choose to attend services at a particular church because they like the music there. Others choose a church that has a beautiful liturgy. Still others just come because their wives make them come. If there are a hundred people in the congregation, those same people have a hundred different reasons for being there. But whatever motivation leads people to come to church, be it on Ash Wednesday or any given Sunday, I believe that all of us have one expectation in common. We come to church hoping to hear a good sermon, a sermon that inspires faith and hope in us and draws us closer to God and leaves us feeling like we learned something.

       You’d think that writing and delivering a good sermon would be an easy task. Like a nurse giving a flu shot, how tough can it be? But judging by the number of sermons that miss the mark, I’d say that writing and delivering a good sermon is a challenge that compares to batting in Major league baseball. If a player can keep a batting average of 300, getting a hit one of every three tries, he’s doing really well. Likewise, a preacher who can hit a home run from the pulpit once a month is doing very well. Let’s be honest, most sermons are not big hits. Preachers try their best, but it doesn’t always work. Preachers often wander without making a clear coherent point, while the poor souls in the pews drift with the meandering sermon into a slumbering twilight sleep born of the tedium of listening to something that makes no sense.

       This happened once to me, in Westminster Abbey, London, of all places.  It was a dark December evening during Christmas week about thirty years ago. I had come five thousand miles to attend a service of evensong in this hallowed shrine of Anglicanism. My expectations were high. The choral music was magnificent. The aesthetics of that setting are unrivaled in the Western world. Just being there was an inspiration. But then the young Canon to the Ordinary began to speak. On and on he droned, about what I don’t know. The last thing I remember is that he was reading to us from a book of cannon law; then I suddenly I found refuge in sleep. I mean, I went out like a light—not very polite to do when you are a guest in a foreign country, but a boring sermon is a boring sermon. I fought sleep but I could not stay awake. Then, it happened. The sermon ended without my knowing it. The organ bellowed. Trumpets blared. The congregation stood to sing, and as they did it startled me from sleep. You know what I mean. It’s one of these when you’re sound asleep and then suddenly it’s like, “Woo, woo, woo woo, Where am I?” My arms and legs were flailing about. I was so embarrassed. The gent beside me gave me a dirty look. I looked at him appealing for Christian forgiveness and understanding, but none was forthcoming. I could have shriveled under my seat. “It’s not my fault!” I wanted to say, “He was reading from a book of canon law!”              

        I’m sure that preacher was a good man, but he would have had a better sermon had he taken Saint Paul’s advice. Paul told Timothy how to preach. “Preach the word,” he said, “be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and teaching…do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4.2–5). Billy Graham was an evangelist. What does an evangelist do? The work of an evangelist is to tell the world about Jesus Christ. Not meekly but boldly. Not passively but urgently. Not quietly but loudly so all can hear the message of the gospel that salvation comes by the cross of Christ, that sin is the problem, and the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us on that old rugged cross is the answer; it is the antidote as Saint John said, “not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world.”

       You say the whole world is turmoil today and the country is divided and we need action to heal our wounds. When the world repents of sin and turns to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and when we turn to the Prince of Peace for salvation, he will mend those divisions, and that turmoil that seems intractable will cease. You say he can’t do that. No one can do that. You’re right.  No one relying on human power and reason alone can do that. But Christ does not rely on human power but on the grace of God and grace, as he revealed when he worked among the people in Galilee. It is a power that can heal the sick with a word, open the eyes of the blind, and raise the dead to eternal life. Grace is the greatest power governing the universe and it belongs exclusively to him.

       There is no political party that can deliver the salvation we need. Salvation belongs to Christ and it long past time for this county to admit that we blew it when we took prayer out of the public schools and turned Sunday mornings over to little league soccer. If God doesn’t come first in a nation’s life he doesn’t come at all. It’s no mystery what is happening to this country. We have treated Our Lord, the world’s true redeemer, as if he were some sort of pariah. We need the salvation that only he can deliver, a salvation that is in his precious blood and his alone, a salvation he gives to those who repent of their sins and beg his forgiveness. And God knows we have a lot to beg forgiveness for.

      “Repent, and believe the gospel,” Jesus proclaimed, “The kingdom of God is near.” (Mark 1.15). That is how Jesus preached: simple, straightforward, alarming, bold; always pointing the listener to the world’s true governor: God.

       But in pointing the listener to God, Jesus could not help but point also to himself. He had the courage to tell them what they did not want to hear: that in order to enter God’s kingdom they would first have to repent of their sins and then follow Him. “Take up your cross and follow me,” he said.

       That was Jesus’s message then. And still today, two millennia later, the message has not changed. And that is the work of the preacher: to proclaim that message. A good preacher proclaims not his own word but Christ’s. Saint Paul said that he was—and that the preachers are—“ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor.5.20). The preacher’s job is to deliver a message to us from the Lord. An urgent message that comes down to two little words, “the cross.” What is Christianity about? The cross. Where do we look for salvation? To the cross. Where did Christ die? On the cross!” The message never changes. That is why every true sermon is a variation on this one theme: “Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor.6.2). Today is the day to repent of sin, change your life, and determine once and for all to live for Jesus and let him live in you.

        The preacher may be up in a pulpit and the congregation may be seated in the pews but we all, alike, stand under the authority of God’s word. All of us are called to conform our lives to the pattern of holiness that Christ has set before us.  That is why the best sermon ever is the one I make of my life and you make of your life.  When it comes to the gospel, actions speak louder than words.

       Nevertheless, words matter and preaching is vitally important. As Saint Paul put it in his letter to the Romans, “How are people to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? …” As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!” (Romans 10.14-16). 

     What’s he saying? There is nothing more important in life than that we faithfully proclaim the word of God and obey it. He is saying that we do not come to church for entertainment. Nor is this a lecture hall where we debate current issues. This is a church whose business is to proclaim the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ who died on a cross for our redemption. And the word is this: “Today is the day. The time of salvation is now” (2 Cor. 6.2). Confess your sin to Jesus Christ, commit your soul to his eternal care, cling to him who alone is our redeemer, as you would to one who rescues you from a burning building. Cling to that old rugged cross on which the young prince of glory died, and having turned your life over to him don’t ever, ever turn back.

The Reverend Jansen String
St. George’s and St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
Dundalk, Maryland

Love thy Neighbor as Thyself

Epiphany 7, 2017

Lev. 19.18                         

       Along with Genesis 1.1: “In the beginning God created...” and the 23rd Psalm which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” Lev. 19.18: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is probably the best-known verse in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, John 3.16, which begins, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son," notwithstanding, Jesus's repeating “love thy neighbor as thyself” is perhaps the best-known verse in the Bible. For many that one verse sums up the entirety of Jesus’s teaching.

        I do not agree that that one verse sums up the entirety of the gospel; the gospel of the coming of the kingdom of God is about more than ethical behavior. The gospel concerning God’s son (Rom1.3) is about the forgiveness of sins and the redemption that Christ secured for us on the cross, the redemption that we access through faith by grace. The message of salvation through faith in the redemptive death and resurrection of Christ is the essence of the New Testament.

       But the message of the Old Testament, Jesus said, is summed up in one golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt.7.8), which is another way of saying that the heart of God’s message to humankind handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai is, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” When asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus replied, “The first and great commandment is this; Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul, and the second is like unto it, Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In other words, Jesus taught that we show our love for God by showing love for others. Where love for others is absent, there is no tangible love for God.

       It is no wonder then that the name of Jesus has become synonymous with love of others. Jesus not only preached "love thy neighbor" but he practiced what he preached. He proved his love by going all the way to the cross to secure our redemption, thus backing up his words with actions, “No greater love has a man than this” Jesus said, “that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15). If we wonder what love is, we don’t have to look far for the answer. Love is revealed fully in Christ on the cross. Christ who in his divine nature possessed everything and was in need of nothing, nevertheless emptied himself of everything in order to share the infinite wealth of his eternal inheritance with us who rejected him and showed ourselves utterly unworthy of anything. We nailed him to a tree. And yet as he took his dying breathe he prayed to the Father, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He loved us. Despite our lack of deservingness, in order to save our souls from eternal separation from God, he loved us to the end.

      And that is what the saying means, “ Be imitators of God as beloved children; and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5.1-2). Those are the marching orders of the church militant. Go into the world like an army and conquer all nations with humble love.  Jesus commanded his church on the night before he died, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Anticipating his passion and crucifixion, he was saying to his apostles—the future bishops of his church—“ Watch me and learn, for tonight and tomorrow morning I am going to show you what love is, and I am going to show you how to be my witnesses in the world. For those who torture you pray; to those who abuse you turn the other cheek; when they steal your coat give them your shirt as well; when they insult you and call you all sorts of names, like a lamb before its shearers is mute be meek; and when they pour evil upon you bless them, bless them and do not curse or plot revenge. When life puts a cross on your back, carry it for others, as I will carry it for you, and do not grumble. Be ye kind one to another. Have the patience of a saint. Be aglow with the Spirit. Be good to those who burden you with trouble as God is good to you and by your goodness some will be converted. Then God will smile and say to you, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Come into my kingdom.’”

       If we take this message to heart and make it our aim in life to be as loving of others as Christ is of us (1Cor 13.1), which is absolutely how it’s intended, not as an option for some but as a commandment for all, then we begin to see what a serious task God has set before us. Being truly Christian is no easy thing. I dare say many treat it as though it were nothing more than child’s play. But actually, if we recognize the power of temptation and sin that ravages human souls like fire, and how quick we are to retreat when the heat is on, we may begin to see that the army into which Christ has called us holds us to a standard that makes Navy SEALS training seem relaxed. The SEALS have to endure and survive to fight another day, but to be worthy of the name “Christian” we have to “be holy as your heavenly father is holy, be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful, be perfect,” Jesus said, “as your heavenly father is perfect.” In other words, there are no part-time Christians, not really. You’re either in this army or you’re not. You’re either committed to the cause or you’re faking it.

       Romano Guardini, a Catholic priest in the early 20th century, who wrote one of the great Christian books of that century, simply enough called The Lord, penned one the most poignant statements about Christian faith and life I have ever read. He wrote, “I “am” not a Christian; I am on the way to becoming one—if God will give me the strength. Christianity is nothing one can have; nor is it a platform from which to judge others. It is movement. I can become a Christian only as long as I am conscious of the possibility of falling away. The gravest danger is not failure of the will to accomplish a certain thing; with God’s help I can always pull myself together and begin again. The real danger is that of becoming within myself unchristian, and it’s the greatest when my will is most sure of itself. I have absolutely no guarantee that I shall be privileged to remain a follower of Christ save in the manner of beginning, of being en route, of becoming, trusting, hoping, and praying.”

       In other words if we think we're holy and perfectly merciful, we are not, and until we are then we keep working to acquire the virtue of humble love in our souls, devoting ourselves to prayer as Navy SEALS do their pushups at four in the morning, until maybe we start to understand that being Christian isn’t about us, it’s about Christ living his life in us and us getting out of the way so that he can fully and uninhibitedly do that.

       Prayer opens our souls to receive direction and counsel from the Spirit and the great prayer of the church, the Holy Eucharist, is the spring from which the Spirit, like a stream of living water, is poured into our hearts. Those who are most serious about becoming truly loving souls are serious about prayer. They are, therefore, devoted to the Eucharist, that great encounter with the real presence of the living Word. The world is full of people who think they are spiritual. The world is filled with good guys and gurus and wise old souls who serve as spiritual guides. But, Jesus warned, the world is full of blind guides. Genuine spirituality is a gift from God. It is only by grace that we are conformed to Christ. That is not a virtue we just acquire by living. That is a virtue we acquire, if we acquire it at all, by surrendering to the Holy Spirit, who is the bearer of Christ’s love. True spirituality begins in baptism when the Spirit is given and is fueled by the Holy Eucharist in which that gift is renewed. And it is strengthened by suffering. We go into the world armed only with the weapon of forgiveness and shielded by the wisdom of the gospel. We show kindness even to our enemies. What becomes of it? Our love is rejected. What becomes of that?  We love even more.

     As Teresa of Avila put it in her classic work, The Way of Perfection, “What profit then can come to us from being loved ourselves?...For however dearly we have been loved, what is there that remains to us? Such persons (true Christians) care nothing whether they’re loved or not. …Do you think that such persons will love none and delight in none save God? No; they will love others much more than they did, with more genuine love, with greater passion and with a love which brings more profit; that in a word is what love really is.” In other words, love is nothing, if it’s not loving those who reject you, loving even more when your love is not returned.

      Looked at in this way, I’m surprised that anyone would choose to be a Christian. Becoming as Christ is is a tall order. Maybe that’s why so much of the church today has taken a short cut. There are thousands of sermons being preached this morning on the theme of, “Love thy neighbor and join the fight for social justice, be the resistance, welcome the aliens no matter how they got here or what they do and open the borders; love demands it!” That sounds genuine enough, and is often sincere. But when it’s served up, as so many churches today serve it as the main course, it’s nothing but stone soup. The gospel is not a political agenda and simply substituting a canard called social justice for the hard but ultimately satisfying work of being filled with the Holy Spirit is a cheap counterfeit for real spirituality.

     We all want America to be great. We want our community to be great again. When the people begin to hunger and thirst again for the Word of God, life will return to these streets. Congress can’t do it; the President can’t do it. The churches have to come to the rescue. The only weapon the church has is the gospel. The gospel is more than enough. But the gospel is only effectively proclaimed by those who take the life of Christ to heart and live it. And his life transcends politics.