Sermons

ASKING FOR HEALING FROM RACISM

Yes, we protest but not without prayer, and like the psalmists, overwhelmed by the “roar of the waterfalls … the waves and the breakers” our protests are expressed in our prayers of lament. We are ASKing of God in lament, not with worldly sorrow but godly sorrow, which means it is expressing the grief of the heart of God, in the midst of a global pandemic and a global reaction to racism, provoked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, United States. Our ASKing cannot but be global. Our mission statement at ASK NETWORK declares that we gather to ASK for “all nations” and if ever there was a time to do so, this is the time.

Two weeks ago I was on a Zoom gathering with 70 pastors in our city of Washington D.C. after the killing of George Floyd in a political context that has seen the uncovering of our nation. We have been meeting together regularly for some time now, building relationships and seeking God’s good for our city. It’s make-up is probably 60% African-American and 40% Hispanic, Asian and Caucasian. We realized that our commitment to relationship over the last five years or so had prepared us for the necessary and hard conversations that we are now having that specifically deal with repentance from racism, and what God is asking of us in terms of holy action in Washington D.C. The next Sunday after the protests began, we saw our churches marching to the Capitol and the White House on a prayer walk, with worship that extolled God’s righteousness and therefore His just character. The question is, will this be just a short-lived reactive or responsive event, or will it be a holy movement of obedience to God’s righteousness and justice, which are the foundations of His throne (Psalm 89:14). When we ASK, this is the throne of grace that ASK Network comes to, ASKing with an open Bible that tells us how to ASK, according to His perfect will, not according to an unrighteous agenda. We ASK according to the Word that God has already spoken about His judgments on evil and wickedness, as well as His resources to obey His commands and be reconciled.

The pastors at that gathering generally agreed that the term ‘racial reconciliation’ needs to be re-exegeted given its assumptions. You can only have a reconciliation if there is something in the past that was good and that was then broken and can now be reconciled. There is no past racial relationship of that kind given the historic roots of the United States with its 400 years-old race problem, and racial alienation still experienced by millions. Our history bears so much shame and racism: with Native Americans (genocide, treaty breaking); with African Americans (only people brought here against their will); with Asians (cheap labor, citizenship exclusions); with Hispanics (vulnerability to exploitation). The reservoir of woundedness is deep, with limited will to sluice the pain and dereliction.  Talking of racial disparities exposed by the global pandemic, there is a serious disparity between God’s vision for us and our present social reality, and of course, there is plenty of evidence for the church’s role in racialization, given that the majority of religious groups are racially homogenous.

What usually happens is that there is a necessary response to racial crisis, and we think our response is reconciliation but it is actually conciliation, which does not mean repentance and restoration, but is about pacifying and placating. This is not God’s kind of peace. It explains why there is no healing and consequent change. Thus Ferguson becomes New York, and then Baltimore  … and then … and then Minneapolis … and then Atlanta. There is a temporary response to an event and it is not a movement of repentance and repair, either personally or locally, either in the church or in the public square of the nation. We return to practiced responses in the face of systemic and systematic racism. We minimize and marginalize it. We individualize it, blind to the collective and institutionalization of it, and we popularize it with simplified repetitions of misguided assumptions. We stigmatize it, defending ourselves by blame shifting and deflecting the attention away from necessary confession and repentance. We vaporize it with a selective and convenient memory that hardens into national amnesia. 

“Contempt is becoming a cultural phenomenon.  It’s seeping into every banal aspect of our lives. Not just anger, though there’s plenty of that, too. No, I mean pure, unabashed, undignified contempt for fellow humanity. This is so toxic.” This quotation is an example of the way that even secular cultural commentators are beginning to realize the horror of it. Contempt is the characteristic demonic response to the presence and purposes of God, to the commands and character of God. The enemy has always opposed our experience of the presence of God with contempt: for Christ, for ourselves, for others. This results in our despising of God, others and self.  What was the opening satanic volley in the record of scripture? “Has God really said?” (Genesis3:1) Contempt is the first manifestation of the diabolic subversion of God’s presence which led to the expulsion from Eden and the loss of “the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden.” 

Healing begins with the confession of contempt. White supremacy and superiority is a principality and power, rooted in contempt that is demonically and satanically energized to throw back into God’s face the demeaning and despising of the imago dei, the image of God. The gospel emphasizes the need for ALL of us to experience healing for all of our false identities, and healing from the consequences of the loss of God’s creational order in our personal lives, ethnicities and societies.

There are three main constituent elements of contempt:

  • Condemnation and consequent judgment: someone or something has failed to meet our privatized standards for behavior or whatever are our self-preferred, self-chosen social, cultural, racial, emotional, intellectual or even spiritual norms. The more we elevate our unquestioned individualism and sense of personal rights, the more we idolize our preferences and particularities, then the more we have to condemn and hold in contempt.

  • Superiority and consequent separation (segregation) and distance because we’re better than someone. It’s all about hubris, vanity, pretension, conceit, disdain, condescension, insolence, pretentiousness, presumption, pomposity, aggression, narcissism, brazenness, incivility, shamelessness, and any of self-love’s progeny like self-admiration, self-exaltation, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-reliance, self-righteousness – it’s about superiority and supremacy. 

  • Hostility and consequently the desire for someone to be removed, whether from sight, the public square, the relationship, or the job. There are plenty of ways for the hostility of contempt to remove someone, including just ignoring them. But murder? That’s taking it too far. I’d never do that, we say. That’s a bit extreme! Not according to Jesus when he redefined our understanding of murder in Mt. 5: 21-26. Jesus describes the separation and distance of contempt as equivalent with murder that separates someone’s life irremediably from all relationship and guarantees reconciliation will be irrecoverable. Listen to Jesus: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with their brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother ‘Raca!’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” What do you make of that? ‘Raca’ was an Aramaic term of malicious contempt, imposing inferiority on the one so named. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus’ teaching on reconciliation with a brother or someone to whom you are indebted (unreconciled accounts) follows this warning about contempt – the great cause of irreconciliation and the great barrier therefore to reconciliation. This is evil name calling, as all name-calling is evil. Why? Because it removes the significance of the real name, of personhood and personality, of creational uniqueness. To call someone Raca or Fool was to strip them of their identity and impose on them a false identity. Contempt is identity theft. It makes someone what they are not, and thus we dehumanize and demonize, as we determine what is and is not human. Genesis 9:6 tells us why murder is so heinous: “for God made man in His image.” So if contempt is equivalent to murder then you now know why God takes it so personally and judges it so severely: it is primarily against Him, His image, before it is against that person or that race. These elements alone give us an analysis of the present state of the civic soul. 

Contempt is the nature of the devil and all that is diabolic (‘diabolos’ means hurler of slander); of evil; of pride in particular; of the root of sin; of all falsehood, heresy, division and schism. It is the nature of the last days. And nowhere does this contempt more masquerade than in the relational divisions and racial irreconciliations of our nations. Whether violator or victim, we have our own infected and infested systemic corruptions of viral contempt for God, for others and for self, deeply embedded in a history past, despicably maintained in a history present, and seemingly doomed to continue in a history future. ‘Prejudice’ is just not strong enough a word. We need to come to terms with the darkness of our acidic, deforming contempt – deforming of self, and others, and thus of the image of God. Prejudiced? We are contemptuous. To destroy God’s image is to erect our own in its place which makes us idolaters of the most egregious kind, while we mouth “in God we trust”. There cannot be transformation without the excising of the deformation of contempt. The words of Jesus Himself should be our warning and our motivation to get reconciled. The contempt that wants someone to be removed, to disappear, to become persona non grata, to become invisible in the system, to vaporize in color-blindness, is the sin of murder.

This may seem like a lot of bad news. However, if we have been cut down by any kind of despising, personal or corporate, familial, parental, or racial – God happens to specialize in choosing despised things (1 Corinthians 1:28) and forgiving and changing despising people. God specializes in removing reproach, removing the roots that cause us to despise others; removing the garments of reproach with which others may have clothed our characters and spirits. From Genesis 30:23 onwards God says, “I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt.” How has God done this? How has he absorbed all despising that we may be absolved of it? The answer is the core of the gospel: in His own body on a tree. He became the toxic waste dump of the world’s despising. He was “despised and rejected of men … He was despised and we did not esteem Him” (Isaiah 53:3). No one was ever more drained of esteem than Jesus, or held in more contempt. One of the most often quoted psalms in the gospels, with reference to the cross, not surprisingly has this emphasis: “I am a worm … a reproach of men and despised by the people … All those who see me ridicule me … They shoot out the lip … He trusted in the Lord … Let him rescue him” (Psalm 22: 6-8). And after this concentrated horror of despising comes an unbelievable delivering truth: “God has not despised the suffering of the afflicted.” When anyone is moved to repent of the ways they have despised Him and not esteemed Him, God takes the repentant response as personally as He took the sin of despising: “a broken and a contrite heart I will not despise.” There is forgiveness for our despising, there is deliverance from its bondages and healing from its defacements of identity and spirit.

What we will celebrate next time we take communion, in whatever setting, in whatever nation, regardless of tribe, language or people, is nothing less than revolutionary.  It is not even about ‘integration’ of our old selves, or about social diversity – it is about becoming one “new man.” What meets at communion is not a variety of races, but one race, one church. Within that race are many different faces, dances and songs, traditions, regalia, tastes – but as Revelation shows us, when they are all gathered around the throne (including some really weird looking creatures!) there is no self-consciousness, as the work of Jesus has flushed out the beauty and brilliance of our creational individuality, surrendered to God, and there is no room anymore for the rights and claims of our individualism and our identities. So often we seek, well-meaningly, to resolve our sins in the context of brotherhood. In the racially divided church, we live as if we have a common mother (the church) but a different Father. A recovery of a common Fatherhood, of our equal sonship and daughterhood, is biblically necessary if there is going to be change. When Father runs the table that we meet at, no elder-brother spirit is going to control the conversation or the consequences. Racial justice does not begin first in our brotherhood, but in God’s Fatherhood, and thus we ask Father for a revelation of His heart that wills that every ethnicity and nationality will be at that throne. Racial justice does not begin from the ground up, but from the throne down as we ask “Let your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.

Use these scriptures to meditate and ASK for racism to stop in all our nations:

  • So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.  Galatians 3:26-29

  • My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  John 17:20-23

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:2

HEAVEN IS STILL OPEN!

The prophetic is the gift of God’s voice to us, but in this pandemic there is much confusion given the avalanche of self-described ‘prophetic’ communications that presume to speak authoritatively for God and to the crisis, but are often sadly infected with personal conjecture and public theories of conspiracy. They end up more problematic that prophetic. To mean well is not necessarily to minister well. Of course, many questions are raised. Is this pandemic a “birth pain”? Is it one of the apocalyptic plagues? It is retributive judgment? Is it punitive judgment or formative discipline? Is there a difference between being shaken and being judged? Is this natural or supernatural? Amidst all these different voices demanding attention, competing for our acknowledgement and agreement, it would be wise to attune our hearing to the commanding prophetic voice of Jesus Himself and to respond to His six-times repeated instruction at the Last Supper, to “ASK!”

 

We need the prophecy of “the one who sees clearly … who hears the words of God … who sees a vision from the Almighty … whose eyes are opened” (Numbers 24:16). Jesus prophesied “famines and pestilences … fearful events … the time of punishment … nations in anguish and perplexity … terror.” However, He gave us clear instructions in these circumstances: “Do not worry … do not fear.”  When what we are seeing seems grounds enough for anxiety and fear, He tells us what our eyes need to be focused on.

·      Watch out for deceivers (Matthew 24:4)

·      Watch your life and holiness  (Luke 21:34)

·      Watch the signs (Matthew 28:30)

·      Watch and pray (Matthew 28:36)

Our posture in the face of all these “fearful events” (Luke 21:11) is not to cower, hide or withdraw with lowered heads and covered eyes, but to “stand up and lift up our heads” (Luke 21:28). Where the head goes the eyes tend to follow! We are called to maintain this position so that we “may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). If we are watching, Jesus says “you can see these things for yourselves” (Luke 21:29) and when we do “see these things” (Matthew 24:33; Luke 21:31) our heavenly hope will irradiate the darkness of earthly hopelessness, because we will know that our “redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28) and that the “sign of the Son of Man in heaven … is near, right at the door” (Matthew 24:33). Are we ready? Are we right with God and all others? Are we “learning the lesson” (Matthew 24:32) in this present eschatological curriculum?

 

In the meantime, we are ASKing for other doors to open here on earth. Some of us have found ourselves praying Isaiah 26 in present circumstances: “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness”  (v9).  Our ASKing for the “people of the world” comes out of a place of intimacy. Did not Jesus say that if we abide in Him we could ASK of Him (John 15:7)? Again, intimacy is the environment of intercession (John 15:7).  But interestingly, the prophetic chapter ends like this: “Go my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you: hide yourselves for a little while until His wrath has passed by” (Isaiah 26:20). This sounds awfully like a shut-down, doesn’t it? The vocabulary of our day amidst global pandemic is a litany of limitation and restriction: do-not-enter police tapes, barriers and diversions, lock-downs, quarantine mandates, social distance, shelter-in-place, services suspended, planes grounded, shut for business, cancelled, sealed customs posts, secured borders. In a word – CLOSED.

 

However, that same chapter in Isaiah begins: “OPEN the gates” (v2), the same ASKing request of the psalmist (118:19). We are encouraging you all, as behind-closed-doors, Jesus-style ASKers, to be in no doubt that we ASK under an open heaven (Deuteronomy 28:12) for the doors of heaven to be always opened (Psalm 78:23). Though our physical doors are shut, our “longings lie open” before the Lord (Psalm 38:9). In order to watch and pray we are ASKing for open eyes (Psalm 119:18; Luke 24:31) but also for the opening of presently darkened and blind eyes (Acts 26:18). We are ASKing for open lips and mouths (Psalm 51:15; 81:10); open ears (Psalm 40:6); open hearts (Acts 16:14); open arms for those both poor in possessions and poor in spirit (Proverbs 31:20). We are ASKing for God’s opening power: for His open hand that creates (Psalm 104:28); for His opening of what to us is impenetrable rock that the waters may flow (Psalm 105:41); for His resurrection power to open what the minister of death has boxed and buried; for His exposing light that will “bring into the open” that which is being sinfully hidden and concealed (Luke 8:17).

 

Above all, we cannot cease to ASK for “the door of faith to be opened” to the nations (Acts 14:27). We want to say with Paul at this season: “a great door of effective work has been opened to me” (1 Corinthians 16:9) and ASK that God will “open a door for our message” (Colossians 4:3) in a manner unprecedented in history.

 

We finish where we began, declaring God’s power to open doors, make iron gates yield, their hinges lubricated by the oil of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the One foreseen by Isaiah who would hold the key of David, and open what no man would be able to shut. With man shutting doors, we will ASK Jesus to do His own shutting of that which needs to be sealed up, and shut down for demonic business and unclean trade, and unrighteous exchange. However, Isaiah talks about His opening power in chapter 22:22. I think most of us have heard the phrase ‘catch-22’. I like to call this verse ‘latch-22’ because this is our encouragement, when doors are barred, that a door has been opened. It is a  “new and living way opened up for us through the curtain” so that we can “approach God’s throne of grace” and ASK of the Father because we have “access by one Spirit”, an “access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Hebrews 10:2, 4:16; Ephesians 2:18; Romans 5:2). ASKers, watching and waiting; we are standing up and we are looking up in these times, and like John on Patmos, in a context of enforced constriction and restriction, we are seeing an open door in Heaven, and anticipating as never before, the open scroll and the open Temple (Revelation 4:1, 5:5, 11:19). Meanwhile, let us ask for the opening of millions of Laodicean doors on earth, that the King of glory may come in! Amen.

GOD'S CUSTOM POSTS

Genesis

Pastor Stuart spoke from his personal readings in Genesis and examined Jacob’s experiences at what He called ‘GOD’S CUSTOM POSTS’.

Dear family,

It was such a joy to be with you on Sunday. Thank you for your welcome, for listening so attentively to the message and for your response to the Word. I spoke from my personal readings in Genesis last week, where the second-half of the narrative tracks Jacob’s journey. Paul told the Corinthians why the OT narrative is so important for followers of Jesus: “These things happened … as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come” (1 Cor. 10:11). I trust this made sense to you, given our look at Jacob’s experiences at what I called ‘GOD’S CUSTOM POSTS’

Customs Posts are check-points that are places of inspection, of investigation, sometimes interrogation. They are about evaluation, about confession in the form of making declarations. Have you anything to declare? They are about access. Yes, they can feel potentially threatening as they have a deterrent role, but once you have passed through them, you can continue your journey with a sense of freedom and authority. We noted three different customs posts (at Bethel, Bethlehem and Beersheba) that Jacob had to pass through on his pilgrimage that I suggested we too will find on our spiritual journey, both personal and corporate. The same places, by different names and in different circumstances have been and will be on our spiritual travel schedules.

These spiritual check-points are not about the excise taxes of man, about what man demands. They are about the excising of the heart of man by God, about key moments of divine inventory when, yes, we are asked to make a declaration: about our citizenship, about our intended travel plans, about our destinations, and also about our baggage. Life is littered with such check-points. God never intends them to become stopping places. The place of inventory and inspection, of evaluation and examination, is always about transition, not termination; about moving on not going back; about mission not maintenance. Sure, it sometimes feels like fear and smells like death, but the check-point is not intended to close our eyes in fear but open them in faith to new vistas of as-yet untraveled walks of faith, unclaimed territory, unfinished business. They are about new horizons, that draw us into new terrain, new possession, new occupation.

I mentioned briefly the two check-points that preceded Bethel: at Jabbok where God wrestled with him and dried up his hip-sinew, representing the excising of his flesh and self-dependency, and his ability to stand on his own feet. He is dislocated by God in order that he could be relocated. The meeting with Esau was about facing the ghosts of his unresolved past, and experiencing the grace of God in his deliverance that freed him to look in the face of Esau, representing sin and shame, fear and failure, and say that now he saw the face of God in it all. There’s no space here to do more than just identify the next three check-points. (You can always download the message and re-listen to it to get the substance of what I shared about each one.) Suffice it to say, no more than Jacob can we spare ourselves these check-points of our walk of faith: personally, familiarly and corporately.

  • Like Jacob, we will come to the barrier at Bethel, to the inspection and conviction of the Holy Spirit, to the place that requires purging before pressing on, where we will do what Paul exhorted the Corinthians to do there: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith: test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Cors. 13:5) Jesus cannot share the space with anything that is not Christ. Are you at Check-point Bethel? Do you need to remove something that has been, that is wrong, that is not consistent with the way that Jesus has called you to walk. Make your declaration at this customs January 14, 2020 post, let it be removed and let the guilt be taken away by Jesus who once and for all took away our sin, and walk out the other side of this check-point with a clean passport and a cleansed identity. This is all about removing what is wrong.

  • Like Jacob, we will come to the barrier at Bethlehem, to the places where it seems that too much is asked of us, but where what is most precious (our Isaacs) can be sacrificed and disallowed to become an idolatry or a possession that displaces or replaces our love for Jesus who is our all and all. Are you at Check-point Bethlehem? What is the Lord asking of you? Do you love Him more than these – what are your ‘these’? As Paul put it (Philippians 3:7-8) “whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” What we feel as loss of what is good, is transformed into the gain of what is Christ. Make your declaration of sacrifice and denial at this customs post. This is all about releasing what is right.

  • Like Jacob, we will come to the barrier at Beersheba. We will feel awkward and even immature that we have to be catechized by the Lord on the most fundamental matters of trust and faith. When you’re at this check-point bumper-sticker theology won’t help you, like ‘Let go and let God’. You need to hear the voice of God speaking the most basic answers to your most basic fears. But you have to admit what you fear. Name it and let the Lord excise it (get rid of) with His old but fresh revelation of who He is still is to you. Are you at Check-point Beersheba? Yes, there is a road beyond the Beersheba customs post that invites us to pass through against the odds, to mature in trust and faith and claim new land and a continuing history in God. We can pass through Beersheba, assured like Jacob of His presence, His personal care, His purpose, His protection and provision. We think it’s the end of this generation of walking and working, but God promises posterity. This is all about recovering what is true about God.

These check-points are not about the perturbation of our souls, but about the preparation of our lives for what is yet to come, including heaven no less. Yes, we often feel something is being taken away, but in the words of one young martyr, Jim Elliot, who released the good of his own life in his death at the hands of Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1956 at the age of 29:

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep

to gain what he cannot lose.

See you at the check-point.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

P.S. Perhaps you can re-listen to the message before homegroup so you can pray through and pray in the application, not only personally, but also for our corporate church life and direction, to press through and pass through to the other side of the check-points.

GOOD GRIEF PART 2

A theology of lament begins with a foundational understanding of the suffering of the Godhead before it is about my suffering; of the grief of the Godhead before it is about my sorrow; of the righteous judgment of God, before it is about my anger.

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

Good theology begins with the nature of God, not the needs of man. A theology of lament begins with a foundational understanding of the suffering of the Godhead before it is about my suffering; of the grief of the Godhead before it is about my sorrow; of the righteous judgment of God, before it is about my anger. The last two Sundays I have tried to make some observations related to this, and I presented five points for discussion and consideration under the title “Good Grief’.

1. There is the grief that God brings. The Book of Lamentations is such because it is the
response to God’s acts of judgment against the nation “Because of her many sins” (1:5).
2. There is the grief that God feels. “The Lord said, I am grieved that I made man” (Genesis 6:
5-7). Lament is God’s heart response to sin and its consequences. Lament is expressed by all
three persons of the Trinity.
3. There is the grief that desires and requires. God’s commands to lament come to the
prophets, the pastors and the people.
4. There is the grief that is normal and appropriate as a response of the people of God to
the God of the people.
5. There is a grief that God responds to. “The Lord has heard my weeping … The Lord accepts
my prayer” (Psalm 6:8).

I would invite you to listen to the recordings of these two messages so you can consider the scriptural argumentation that was presented. If we want to learn to lament biblically we simply need to pray … a lot! Prayer and lament are not two separate expressions, disciplines or practices. They are inseparable. When you pray for divine action in the terrain of human brokenness, you cannot avoid the divine affections. When you want God’s glory, you cannot avoid God’s grief. May our lament be responsive, not only to the crises and consequences of our sin, past and present, but responsive to the grief of God over that which is destructive of His will for us, and of His image in us.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

GOOD GRIEF

Why bring a message entitled ‘GOOD GRIEF’ on Pentecost Sunday? The fact is that precisely because the Holy Spirit is a Person and not just an atmosphere or a presence, as a Person, He can be grieved (as well as resisted or insulted).

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

I suggested on Sunday that the message I was going to bring might seem untypical of a usual Pentecost Sunday sermon. Shouldn’t it be upbeat and excitedly charismatic? Why bring a message entitled ‘GOOD GRIEF’? The fact is that precisely because the Holy Spirit is a Person and not just an atmosphere or a presence, as a Person, He can be grieved (as well as resisted or insulted). In an earlier series this year on the gifts of the Holy Spirit I spoke at length about the ways that we both grieve and quench the Holy Spirit, so I guess Sunday’s message was an extension of that discourse. When you read Acts 2 on Pentecost Sunday it is clear why our attention is first drawn to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and to the experiential deluge of spiritual gifts. Less attention is paid in our culture to the sermon that follows, simply because we prefer the experiential to the explanation. But even less attention is paid to the outcomes of that explanation in Peter’s presentation of Jesus and the gospel. The text says that the people were “cut to the heart” (v37). The revelation the Holy Spirit brought, particularly about Jesus and what their sin had done to Him, caused a lamentation. I am arguing that lament is one of the inevitable manifestations of the coming of the Spirit as it brings conviction and confession, and a revelation of the heart of God that leads to repentance. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is not disconnected from a baptism of repentance. As a young man I remember sitting at the feet of the great Hebridean revivalist, Duncan Campbell, and hear him plead for that latter baptism. When the Spirit fell on us at that meeting, it fell as the fear of God. This has been the trademark of the coming of the Holy Spirit in all awakenings and revivals. The grief accompanies the glory. Yes, there may be tongues of fire, but there also wet tears. The tears do not douse the flames but are part and parcel of the baptism in the Spirit.

Herewith are some brief comments, but as I’m going to complete the message next Sunday, I will save the full summary of the five main points till next week’s pastoral letter so you have them all in one cohesive communication. In focusing on lament, I suggested by way of introduction that it seems to me that there are two equal and opposite dangers right now.

1. The first danger is that lament becomes its own kind of buzz-word. It has become a new “in” word in the evangelical vocabulary. Some are talking of it as if it has only just been recovered, or discovered. The fact that is seems so new and relevant is perhaps a comment on the demise of our spiritual intimacy and sensitivity and that in itself should provoke sorrow. Yes, it is absolutely true that lament is a thoroughly non-negotiable, irreplaceable biblical expression of spirituality, always has been, and that scripture is full of it. As was shared last week, so succinctly and well by Paul and Val, lament accounts for about a third of the Praise and Prayer Manual of the Bible, namely the Psalms (we looked at some of them in the Psalm Series – 22, 42, 43, 77, 88 etc.); it was integral to the communication of the prophets (see series on Minor Prophets and Lamentations); it was intrinsic to the recorded communication of Jesus (see Luke 19, John 4 and the gospel accounts of the crucifixion). It is true that lament sadly plays little role in public liturgy or popular hymnody. It is true that most churches want to be defined by their experience of laudation not lament. We have praise bands, not mourning minstrels. There are not many guitars that know how to gently weep, to borrow from the famous song by the Beatle, George Harrison. Interestingly, there’s a verse he wrote that was excised from the final version: “I look at the trouble and hate that is raging / While my guitar June 12, 2019 gently weeps / As I’m sitting here doing nothing but ageing / While my guitar gently weeps.” It is true that in American church culture, the theology of celebration has out-shouted the theology of suffering. The loud praise song has silenced the quiet lament. This was the indictment of God on the sanctuaries through Amos: “You strum away like David … but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph” (6:5). It is true that a reason for this is the desire for all to be always well with the world, our “best life now”, as Joel Osteen heretically puts it, which amounts to an evasion of any reality that smudges the cosmetics of our ‘be happy’ prosperity and populism. It is true that historical amnesia is the present evidence of a national dementia, and that its alliance with narcissism has resulted in a national mind with a personality disorder.

What I am saying is that as true and important as it is, for the sheer scriptural reasons that I began to refer to on Sunday, to experience and therefore express lament as the grief of God, it must not become a fad, or a fleshly thing, or yet another divisive tag between those who are discerning enough to lament, and the poor unspiritual beggars who do not, and therefore are not as we are. By definition, how can lament that is the dereliction of humility be turned into a badge of enlightenment and spiritual pride? By the way, I just referred to ‘experiencing and expressing’ lament. We cannot express in lament what we have not experienced in either suffering or identificational suffering, but more deeply than that, what we do not experience of the heart of a grieving God. If our responses to the present condition, particularly racial irreconciliation in this nation, is to merely exchange competing views of secular history, differing perceptions of shame, contrary accusations of blame, then we will not be reconcilers. We will have missed several key things that include:

• Knowing that our responses of lament are not original, not primarily rooted in our
experiences or perceptions, but rooted in the character and heart of a reconciling and
redeeming God. In our lament we cannot be pridefully comforted that we are among the few
who really get it!
•We will also miss the fact that Satan, his thrones, dominions, principalities and powers – all
his counterfeit lordships, authorities, and all his demons – are utterly united against the unity
that God’s heart desires. We will end up fighting the problems with carnal not spiritual
weaponry.

2. The second danger is that we will recognize and acknowledge the need to lament, engage it, but move on too soon as if we have checked the box. It will be treated as a temporary need, as a distinctive and independent and situational expression that remains unincorporated into our larger understanding of worship, discipleship and community life. Lament? We read the chapter, had a teaching, and even wrote one ourselves. What’s next? I have always believed that lament is an inevitable experience and expression if you commit to know the heart of God. It’s not a subject, not even a self-conscious practice or means or method. It arises out of intimate relationship with God. It may well be stirred initially by suffering, either of self or others, but if it is not connected with the affections of God, it will just end up as a sad soliloquy. Lament is not an occasional flavor of the month but an integral part of the ‘DNA’ of normal and regular communication with God. Lament is surely a righteous response to personal suffering, but where does that lament lead us and what does it produce in us in our engagement with God and His world? It is for this reason that I am inviting you to linger a little longer on what Paul and Val addressed two Sundays ago. Join me on Sunday as we conclude the truth of “good grief”, the Pentecostal message that lament is a normal response to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart