My Dad was in the foreign service when I was a kid and my family was stationed in Argentina for a couple of years. We lived in a city called Rosario, about 4 hours north of Buenos Aires. The weather was fabulous, the schools were good, the streets were safe, and there was a club with an Olympic sized pool within biking distance. I really thought it was a great place to live, except for the bombings, and that only happened twice, and it happened at night where my dad worked, not where he lived, so nobody was hurt. It was a more innocent age, I guess, and my folks played it down, so we kind of thought of it as an adventure. But what did I know, I was only 10.
It came as a surprise to me when I found out a few years later, after we came back to the States, that Dad had received extra pay, a hardship allowance, because of the substandard living conditions. Medical care, sanitation, the kind of infrastructure we take for granted here were all second-rate at best. And one of the trials we had to live with was the gas-fired water heater in the bathroom. Without going into the details of how it worked which I don’t remember all that clearly anyway, sometimes the pilot light went out. The matches were kept in the medicine cabinet next to the toothpaste. And one evening when it was time for my bath the light was out, so I lit a match, and it blew up, and I lost all the hair on my face. There was only a little stubble left of my eyebrows and my eyelashes and my bangs. I was really lucky not to have been blinded.
That’s the image I see whenever I read 1 Cor 3, which came up in my morning devotions this past week while I was preparing this sermon.
“If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, previous stones, wood, hay, straw - the work of each builder will become visible for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work has been done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.” [1 Cor 3:11-15]
Anything in our lives that isn’t built of eternal things, on the foundation of Jesus Christ, will be burnt up. And it seems to me that the more dry, strawy, useless stuff we have built with, the fiercer the fire will burn and the more painful the purification process. Imagine if I’d been wearing flammable clothing when the gas exploded. There mightn’t have been much left. I’ve been in burn units, working as a hospital chaplain. Burn victims are not a pretty sight, and they take a long time to heal. Straightforward broken bones or knife wounds are a whole lot easier to fix.
Now, mind you, Paul does say that if you have the foundation of Jesus Christ, that core foundation will survive even if you build on it with cheap, non-flame retardant material. But wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense to clean up your life before you come within ignition range, so that you can make it through on judgment day with no more than a few scorch marks? If you get the corrective surgery done the right way, you won't have to endure the more drastic flame-cure process.
Back when surgery was a crude, often hit-or-miss affair, the image of surgical remedies for spiritual disorders wasn’t a whole lot more attractive than fire. But now that we have such things as laser surgery on eyeballs, we might begin to get a feel for the delicacy, the precision, with which the Great Physician uses Scripture to dissect and repair our souls. Think better than Botox. Think complete overhaul.
It is not a simple, one-step process. The prophet Jeremiah spoke truly when he said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”[Jer 17:9] Only the Holy Spirit, using the Word of God as a scalpel, is capable of cutting through our pretensions, and showing us to ourselves.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart...
The first stage in the process of cutting the trash out of our lives is first of all to recognize the rubbish for what it is. And that’s hard, in our world. We live in one of the most determinedly self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-obsessed societies the world has ever known. It’s hard to stand against the messages that bombard us day in and day out. The only defense we have against those messages is the Word of God, but that defense is stronger than Fort Knox.
The world tells us, “I’m OK, you’re OK.”
The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The world tells us that God owes us an explanation for the mess it’s in.
The Bible says that we owe God everything we have.
The world tells us that there is no objective standard of right and wrong.
The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
The world tells us to pursue personal fulfillment regardless of who is in the way.
The Bible says to seek the kingdom of God first.
The world tells us that the one with the most toys wins.
The Bible says that the one with Jesus Christ wins.
It is only by measuring the world’s standards against God’s standards that we can begin to make the kind of investments in eternity that will withstand the test on the day of judgment. We have to recognize the rubbish before we can start throwing it out.
One of the reasons why reading Scripture regularly is so important is that it is how God most often speaks to us. That is what it means to say that “the word of God is living and active.” When the Holy Spirit is active in our lives, Scripture speaks to us with the immediacy of a direct confrontation. Sometimes we are comforted, and sometimes we are convicted. But that sense of immediacy is a sign of the presence of the Spirit.
Jesus told his disciples at the last supper that the Holy Spirit would teach them - and us - the truth, reminding us of the things he had said when he was alive, and had not understood. Reformed theology teaches that we cannot understand Scripture without the Holy Spirit, and that makes sense in the light of the fact that so many people read the Bible without being touched by it, except perhaps to get angry with it. You should hear some of the stuff I see on the internet from feminists angry at pro-lifers and "trad wives." And the gay rights groups around the world who accuse anyone who quote Scripture passages critical of homosexuality of hate speech. But those are subjects for another time - unless you’ve been getting angry at Scripture lately? Come talk to me if you have. It’s a sign of spiritual conflict.
A Baptist preacher was interrupted mid-sermon once by a teenager who challenged him, “You talk about the burden of sin, but I don’t feel any.” Then he wisecracked, “How much does sin weigh? Eighty lbs? A hundred?” The preacher answered, “Tell me, if I put a 400-lb weight on the chest of a dead man, would he feel it?” The youth answered, “Well of course not, he’s dead!” And the preacher responded, “the person who feels no weight of sin is dead spiritually.”
Once we’ve been awakened by the Holy Spirit, however, we can not only recognize the objective truth of Scripture, but we can also see the truth about ourselves in its light. That’s a whole lot harder. It used to be that if you pointed out to someone that they were being selfish, for instance, they would instantly recognize it as a sin, and either resolve to do something about it or rationalize it away. Not any more. Nowadays, the answer is, “what’s wrong with being selfish?” The Victorian wit Oscar Wilde said that “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” We don’t much bother with hypocrisy any more, since we’re well on the way to abolishing any distinction between vice and virtue. On the contrary: we advertise our vices instead - often at very lucrative rates. So the second verse of today’s passage just doesn’t have the impact it used to: “And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”
When I was taking evangelism at seminary I got into an argument with some of my fellow students. Our assignment was to put together a 4 or 5 step evangelism formula on the same order as the Campus Crusade’s Four Spiritual Laws (which I don’t remember except for the first one, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”) Anyway, the others in my group wanted to start with confronting people with their sin, and their need for a savior. I said that that was the wrong way around, because people who haven’t been raised in the church reject the idea that they’re sinners, unless they’re into really serious stuff like crime or addiction. Sin just isn’t part of our national vocabulary any more. The holy and righteous God who brought the Hebrews to their knees has been replaced by a mumbling and ineffectual sugar-daddy (or mommy).
No, bludgeoning people with their sins doesn’t work any more. The only way we moderns can become aware of our shortcomings is by getting to know Jesus Christ. Once we’ve come into the light, the spirit of truth can begin to show us where “the thoughts and intentions of our hearts” fall short of his example.
Well. Step one - recognizing truth - is quite a stretch all by itself, isn’t it. I expect I should make it two steps instead, so we don’t trip on it. Recognizing the truth of Scripture comes first, and then recognizing the truth about ourselves. It’s the Holy Spirit, wielding the Word like a scalpel, that cuts away our games and pretensions and rationalizations and shows us what we are really like. There we are, perched stark naked on the cutting edge of Scripture, with not an excuse left in sight to hide behind. It’s not a pretty sight. Which is why step three is such an incredible relief.
So what is step three?
Step three involves taking our eyes off of the unappetizing sight of our unadorned selves and putting them back on Jesus, who is the only solution to the problem of our fallen humanity.
Step three is recognizing that there isn’t a single thing we can do by ourselves to become acceptable to God, because we are human, and fallen, all the way through. It’s kind of like having an inoperable brain tumor - as good as the surgeon is, you can’t take this kind of tumor out without removing the brain as well, which kind of defeats the purpose. The reason God doesn’t eliminate sin is because, a long long time ago, he promised Noah never again to wipe mankind off the face of the earth. And the two go together, so it all seems pretty hopeless, doesn’t it? But God has not left us without a answer.
Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the cure for the incurable. Jesus is the reason why the knowledge of our sinfulness does not lead us to despair. Jesus is our hope, and Jesus is our hiding place. That is why the author of Hebrews follows Scripture’s exposure of our sins with the promise of grace.
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Instead of picking up the tattered shreds of our former pretensions and trying to weave them into some semblance of a garment, we can be completely covered in Christ, and completely filled by Christ.
There’s an old Irish prayer called the Breastplate of Saint Patrick which hangs on the wall of my study. It begins like this:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
That should be our prayer, our confidence, our assurance, as it was for St. Patrick. Because wherever Christ is, sin recedes, sin retreats. And wherever the Holy Spirit working through Scripture makes a hole in our defenses, Christ can enter in and begin to transform us. It’s in our interest, to get the surgery done early. But we have to cooperate. We have to show up for our appointments, and sign the consent forms. This is all voluntary on our part. The Holy Spirit does have standards, you know.
Where are you at in this process?
First, are you convinced of the authority of Scripture? Do you believe that God has revealed himself in these stories and letters and poems? If you have questions or doubts, please come talk to me. I’d be happy to help you wrestle with this or any other issues you may have. Doubt is an open door to discovery.
Second, do you let Scripture speak to you personally? When is the last time you took something read at home, or even maybe heard here, to heart, and changed an opinion, or an attitude, or a habit? If you are not in constant dialogue with Scripture, letting it guide and instruct you, you are still standing outside the door to the abundant life that God has promised those who follow Jesus.
And third, have you asked Jesus Christ to enter your life, and make it his? Do you turn to him with your mistakes and anxieties, ambitions and plans? Are you building a life that matters, on the only foundation that will last?
And wherever you are on the stages of faith, are you willing to go further?
