A Big Machine in the Weeds; photo by GAC

1 Timothy 1:12-17

New International Version (NIV)

I think I’ve had the tendency to assume that when Paul refers to himself as the “worst” or “chiefest” of all sinners, he was using hyperbole, a sort of self-deprecating humility.  Or I have thought that he might be making a statement to the effect that blasphemy and outright opposition to the kingdom of God ranks as the highest (or lowest) of all sins.

But I had never really considered the emotional experience of remorse and sorrow he might have felt about the individuals and families whose lives he tore apart in his persecuting activities.  As I read this passage, I find myself wondering if Paul was haunted by memories of children weeping as they were torn out of the arms of their parents by Paul and his men.  Did he have nightmares about wives pleading for their husbands, fathers weeping over their children?  Was he troubled by the on-going realization of the torment he had  brought upon the people and families of the Christians he had no come to love?  I can’t help but think that some of the weight of his statement about the extent of his own guilt may have come from these troubling memories of his past.

After the stoning of Stephen, “Saul [Paul] was trying to destroy the church; entering one house after another, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.” Acts 8:3 [NET]

Ananias talking with God about Paul, “Lord, I have heard from many people [refugees in Damascus who had fled from Saul's [Paul's] persecution] about this man, how much harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem.”  Acts 9:13 [NET]

©2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

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A detail from a stained glass window in the sanctuary of North Presbyterian Church in Elmira, NY; photo by GAC

Discipleship is the calling of every one who claims the name of Christ.  Discipleship extend to every portion of our lives without exception.  The third sermon in a four sermon series on sex and the Christian faith, I preached this on January 22, 2012 at North Presbyterian Church, Elmira, NY.  Prior to the beginning of the recording, the congregation responsively read Colossians 1:15-23.  The recording begins with a reading of Luke 18:18-30.  Click on the link below to listen to the sermon.

Sex and Loving God: Sexual Discipleship

© 2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

Sermon #3– Sex and Loving God: Nature and Origins

Sermon #4–Sex and Loving God: Brokenness and Redemption

Pastor Note #15–A Theology of Sex

Pastor Note #16–Sex with a Purpose

Pastor Note #17–Sexual Discipleship

Bible Note #8–Loin Cloths, the Fall, & Sex

]]> http://gachorpenning.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/sermon-5-sex-and-loving-god-sexual-discipleship/feed/ 1 gachorpenning NPC Stained Glass--Shepherd's Crook http://gachorpenning.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/matt-chandler-on-being-a-reformed-charismatic/ http://gachorpenning.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/matt-chandler-on-being-a-reformed-charismatic/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:00:28 +0000 gachorpenning http://gachorpenning.wordpress.com/?p=778 ]]> Matt Chandler on Being a Reformed Charismatic.

The eighty-five year old, I knew.  I’d conversed with while she was still able to do that.  I’d held her hand, prayed with her, looked

Cemetery at the Hector Presbyterian Church, Hector, NY; photo by GAC

at her family photographs.  I had expected to be doing her funeral before too much longer.  In fact, I had been forewarned a few days earlier that the end of her life was quite near, and so it proved to be.

I saw her two days before she died.  She was deeply asleep at the time, and I didn’t try to wake her.  She had been for the past few years all but deaf.  So, I knew that, if I was to try to wake her, I’d have to shake her awake.  That just seemed like the wrong thing to do.  Instead, I just laid my hand on her head and prayed for God’s nearness and peace.  I asked God to ease her passing whenever he deemed the time right.  I believe he did just that.

Her funeral was small and simple.  I try never to take such events lightly.  Each is enormously important in its own way.  And each such funeral will be, in certain respects, as unique as is each life that is remembered and celebrated in them.

I have not kept a running tally of the funerals that I’ve presided over during the past twenty-three years.  But a rough estimate of something like 250 seems about right.  (In 2011, for example, I oversaw twelve funerals).  I no longer find it to be especially taxing to prepare and preside over the funeral of someone who has reached the natural and normal end of a full life.  I often feel sadness and a sense of loss, especially if I knew the person well.  But it is rarely challenging or taxing for me to prepare and preside over a meaningful and appropriate funeral service in such cases.  (It is always more meaningful and appropriate if you yourself talk with me about what you want your funeral to be like.  I keep those advanced plans in my files until they are needed.  Think about it.  Give me a call.)

The funeral service for the seventeen year old was an entirely different case.  That task was emotionally wrenching and fraught with uncertainties and anxieties.  The age and circumstances of this death made it so.  He had taken his own life in the basement of his stepfather’s house.  This was a death that touched an enormous number of young people, their parents, and a wide array of the community’s adults.

What did it all mean?  How can one make sense of such senseless and unnecessary tragedy?  How can we cope with the writhing emotions pressing, pushing, competing in the bowels of anyone who was even brushed by this terrible thing?

I made some faltering, imperfect efforts.  But in the end, I realized that in the face of such evil as the untimely and entirely unnecessary death of a healthy, potential-filled seventeen year old human being, the answers, such as they are and there are some, are not sufficient.  Healing, redemption, and hope are not ultimately founded on good logic alone.

Healing, hope, and redemption are in the end the work of love – God’s love, which is a robust, muscular, emphatic, and gentle love.

November Grapes on the Vine with the Hector (NY) Presbyterian Church and Cemetery in the Background; Photo by GAC

What I saw, as I looked out on that sea of broken faces during that wrenching funeral, was a desperate, frightened, aching need for an assurance of love – not a syrupy, pale, limp sort of love.  Whether they understood it or not, what they longed for was the powerful, world-making love that spoke the universe into existence, the surging, unrestrainable love that burst out of the tomb on Easter morning, the persevering, pursuing love that simply refused to allow us to escape, the conquering, completing love that declares, “Behold, I have made all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)  Where will they ever see the reality of that kind of love?  They won’t ever see it, unless they see it in us.

[The Five Wishes program is a wonderful tool for helping a people talk about and plan for care at the end of life.  End of life planning is something that many people avoid, but in so doing they make things much harder for their family.  I want to encourage you to check out the Five Wishes website and consider using it to help you and your family prepare for the end of life.]

The link to the audio of the sermon is here:  Sex and Loving God: Brokenness and Redemption

Toward the beginning of the sermon, you will hear me drop a delicate piece of electronic equipment.  In order to help you visualize what the congregation saw, I’ll give you a couple of pictures of the results.

Electronic Brokenness; Photo by GAC

More Electronic Brokenness; Photo by GAC

More Electronic Brokenness; Photo by GAC

Related articles

• Sermon #3 – Sex and Loving God: Natures and Origins (gachorpenning.wordpress.com)
• Pastor Note #15–A Theology of Sex
• Pastor Note #16–Sex with a Purpose
• Pastor Note #17–Sexual Discipleship
• Bible Note #8–Loin Cloths, the Fall, & Sex
• Tina Schermer Sellers, “Made in the Image of God . . . sexually?”
  

Industrial Works in Silhouette; Photo by GAC

Genesis 3:7–”Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” [HCSB]

Maybe it’s because I’m preaching about sex these days, but today as I read this verse during my devotions, I was struck by the fact that the Man’s and the Woman’s first impulse after the First Sin was to cover their genitalia.  Yes, of course, I have always recognized that their first impulse was in a general sense to hide themselves from each other.  But it was “loin cloths” [HCSB] that they used to accomplish this hiding.

Why not masks?  Why not shoes?  Why did their genitals rather than their faces or their feet or their left hands?  It was, I think, because it was the deepest point of intimacy that was broken at the moment of the fall into sin.  And the deepest and most delicate aspect of their relational being was their sexuality.  And further, and perhaps more important still, it was in some sense that this sexual aspect of their being was tied most closely to the expression of the image of God in them.

Unquestionably, the image of God in human beings is expressed in relationalness, in human community, and especially in the

Industrial Remains in the Woods; photo by GAC

profound relationship of sexual intimacy in marriage.  I say that the image of God is “expressed” in these relational contexts, not that the image of God “is” these relationships.  I’m convinced that that distinction is important, though I will have to wait till later to sort out just how that might be so.  Maybe we can do that together.

©2012  Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

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Here is the link to the sermon:  Sex and Loving God: Natures and Origins

Related Blog Posts:

Pastor Note #15–A Theology of Sex

Pastor Note #16–Sex with a Purpose

Pastor Note #17–Sexual Discipleship

A cardinal on a snowy, early spring day; photo by GAC

So, we’ve come to the beginning of a new year, and those seem lately to come flying around more often than once a year.  The idea that time seems to move more quickly as we get older is not a novel idea.  Conventional wisdom says it’s true.  And who am I to argue with conventional wisdom (whoever he or she is)?

Of course, the fact is that clock and calendar time move at the same pace whether they seem to be moving faster or whether they seem to be moving slower.  The key word in all of this is “seem.”  The real issue in how fast time seems to be passing in our lives has to do with things inside of us not with the pace of the hands around the face of a clock.

So, if the actual (scientific?) pace at which time passes is constant, regardless of how we feel about it, why should we care about how the passage of time feels to us?  That’s a good question.  I’m glad I asked.  On the one hand, how we feel about the passing of time has no bearing on many things in life, such as the management of a scientific experiment in a lab or our planning of a road trip to Des Moines.  In the outside world, time is time, and my feelings about that really don’t affect how long it will take me to drive from my home to my dentist’s office for a root canal.  But inside of us, on the other hand, how we feel about the passage of time can reveal a lot about the state of our souls.  And the state of our souls matters a lot — to God, to the people who love us, and even to the fruitfulness of our lives in the outside world.

Inside of us are all sorts of forces that can shape how we experience the passage of time.  Anticipation of some pleasing and exciting event can make time seem to pass very, very slowly.  Ask any seven year old child if it seems to them that Christmas will never get here, and most of them will tell you that the closer we get to December 25^th, the more time seems to stand still.  Dread of some painful or frightening event can make time seem to slip past as if the world has switched to a twelve-hour day.  Due dates for complicated and yet crucial projects seem to approach at twice the speed the calendar says they should.

If we take those two feelings — excited anticipation of something good and anxious dread of something terrible — and turn them into general attitudes toward life, we might call the former, optimism, and the latter, pessimism.  Optimism in life refers to an approach to life in which a person focuses on the good things and the blessings that come to us as we live our lives.  Pessimism in life refers to an approach to life in which a person focuses on the bad things and sorrows that come to us as we live our lives.

Optimistic and pessimistic attitudes can often be quite obvious in the people we know, though not always in exactly the way we

A tufted titmouse on a chilly day; photo by GAC

have come to expect.  We most commonly, I think, consider optimism/ pessimism to be fundamentally future-oriented.  An optimist expects things to turn out well.  An optimist operates on the basic assumption that something good is just around the corner.  A pessimist is the opposite.  A pessimist expects things in life to turn out badly.  A pessimist generally assumes that just around the corner there is a banana peel, which he will most certainly step on and fall.  That’s just how things are, the pessimist knows.  It can’t be helped, and to think that things are any different is just being naive.

Although this “around the corner” aspect of optimism/pessimism, this future orientation is the most frequently recognized feature, optimism and pessimism express themselves just as much in our relationship to the present and to the past.  We’ve all had the experience of sharing memories with people and discovering that we don’t all remember the same event — an event that we all experience — in the same way.  Optimism and pessimism will affect the things we remember about the past and the meaning of the events of the past.  Of course, sometimes we can subconsciously distort our memories of the past in order to protect ourselves from painful or guilt-laden memories.  But also, our generally optimistic or pessimistic worldview can lead us to focus on the positive or the negatives of our past.

Our perceptions of and approach to our present circumstances can also be shaped by our optimistic or pessimistic outlook.  On one particular afternoon of visiting with folks in local nursing homes a few years ago, I had that fact demonstrated for me vividly.  I’ve told this story a number of times, because it so dramatically illustrates choosing an optimistic or pessimistic outlook can profoundly influence the way we feel about our circumstances.

My first visit that afternoon was to a woman, who was about ninety years old.  She had in the previous year or so become increasingly frail and unstable on her feet.  When I entered her room at the nursing home, I found her in bed, staring glumly out the window.   I asked how she was, and she immediately burst into tears.  “See that thing over there?” she said, pointing to her walker as if she were pointing to a pile of dog droppings in the corner.  “I can’t take a step without using that thing.  I can’t even just go into the bathroom without using that.  It’s like a ball and chain to me.”  And she began to weep.  I tried to be comforting and wise and pastorly, but nothing seemed to make much difference.  When I left her, she was still in tears, still lamenting the presence of the vile aluminum frame in her life.

I made my way to visit another of our long-time members in a different nursing facility.  I will tell you her name, because her story is much more encouraging.  Celia Hutchinson was well into her nineties.  When I entered her room, I found her also in bed reading a very, very large print book.  I asked her how she was, and she said that she was very well indeed.  Then, she said the most remarkable thing.  Laying her hand on the aluminum walker parked next to her bed, she said, “You know, as long as I have this here, I can go wherever I want.  I can take myself to the bathroom.  I can walk down the hall to the activities room.  I can get around fine.  I don’t have any complaints.”

One afternoon, two women in nearly the same circumstances, two very different outlooks on life.  The only real difference I could see was the way each woman chose to interpret her situation.  One chose to focus on her opportunities and freedoms.  One chose to focus on her limitations and losses.

Now, I know that in some sense, our natural inclination toward optimism or pessimism is influenced by our upbringing and even, probably, our genetics and brain chemistry.  But those factors are only influences or predispositions.  But much of what shapes our expectations of life come from the kinds of mental and spiritual habits of mind we allow ourselves to develop.  Over time and through each experience in life, we make choices about how we will think about our circumstances — past, present, and future.  As those choices begin to follow a pattern — optimistic or pessimistic — the nurture habits of thought, habits of thought that can stand up in opposition to what we know about God and his plans and involvement in our lives.

Pessimism says, “Life is stacked against me.  No matter what I do, things will turn out badly for me.  The world is a dark, dangerous, and miserable place, so what can we expect from life but sadness and disappointment.”  But if God is really there, if he really gave his Son up to suffering and death out of love for you and me and the whole fallen world, then shouldn’t that produce a different outlook on life than we find in the words of pessimism?

Listen to what God has to say through his word:

A pileated woodpecker getting ready for the family; photo by GAC

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us. . . . I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. . . . Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:31, 38, 39. [NLT]

 “But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.  They will soar high on wings like eagles.  They will run and not grow weary.  They will walk and not faint.”  Isaiah 40:31.  [NLT]

 “Even though I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me. . . . Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life.”  Psalm 23:4, 6 [HCSB]

Do we really believe that God is good?  Do we really believe that God is able to do the good that is natural to his character?  Do we believe that is actively involved in the intimate details of our lives?

I encourage you to look at the coming year knowing that, as you live it, you do so under the protective care and purposeful direction of your loving Father and faithful Good Shepherd.  The path he lead you on may involve the deepest, darkest valleys.  But even there the light and leading of God will not leave you.  You don’t need to be afraid of what may be around the corner.  What’s around the corner is Jesus, and he is always good.

©2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

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Bringing the Marks of Everyday Life into the Presence of the Lord

Finally, I had a decent black suit.  I was very pleased with that fact on this particular morning as I drove to conduct a funeral.

Pulpit Woodcarving in Heinz Chapel at the University of Pittsburgh; photo by GAC

Until a recent, successful trip to the Bargain Hut, I had been without a good black suit.  I had out-grown my other one.  I find that once one reaches middle-age, outgrowing clothing can be quite depressing.  When I was a kid, out-growing clothes was a pleasing event.  It meant that I was getting bigger, and as a kid, getting bigger is generally experienced as a good thing.  Not so in middle age.

Anyway, as I drove down Water Street, I was feeling good about being suitably attired.  I hate feeling underdressed.  Of course, our culture has become more and more informal about clothing.  I’m finding that even at funerals and weddings ties are becoming less and less common.  But for me in my role as the presiding minister, I can’t overcome my up-bringing.  A sport coat and slacks are good enough for most situations, but for funerals and weddings I need a suit to make me feel comfortable.

So, there I was driving down the street toward a funeral, feeling quite pleased in my “new,” pre-owned, black, wool suit.  Then my glance passed over the back of my right hand, and to my dismay there, smirking back at me, was an olive-brown blotch – walnut wood stain that had gotten there when I was putting the finish on a small wood-working project in my basement.  Well, there was no rubbing that away.  The stain is designed to seep down into the pores and fibers of the wood and adhere there to enhance and bring out its figure and contours.  And, of course, that is exactly what it was doing to all the cracks and crevasse of the skin on the back of my hand.  Maybe with some turpentine or some strong cleanser I might have been able to clean that blotch off of my hand.  But I didn’t have any of that sort of thing with me, and I had no time to go back to my house and get it.

It bothered me that my hand would look dirty as I greeted people at the funeral.  It was a very noticeable smudge.  Did it look as if I hadn’t washed my hands?  Well, no.  It did look pretty much like some kind of stain, and people do understand that some kinds of dirt such as axle grease and walnut wood stain have to sort of wear off.

Still, wearing that walnut wood stain into the funeral caused me to feel somehow as if a mundane, unspiritual fragment of my everyday life was intruding into the sanctified presence of God.  I had tried so hard to put on the attire and attitude of a professional minister.  I wanted my appearance to communicate that all was in order and under control.  But here was this splotch of stain on my hand, proclaiming that just below the surface lay all the clutter and untidiness of everyday life.  And in fact, on the back of my hand it was right there on the surface.

Well, multi-tasking the rest of the way to the church, I continued to drive my car while thinking about this idea that I could or even should try to put on some sort of façade of professional propriety to conceal the spotted and stained me that is the real me.  Who, after all, do people think I am when I stand up in front of the sanctuary and lead in some sort of worship service to God?  And who does God see when he looks at me standing there in front of his people?

I know that my little concessions to my vanity like “new,” pre-owned, black, wool suits and unstained hands don’t really hide the real me from your perceptive eyes when I’m standing in front of you in worship.  And even more, I know that God’s gaze penetrates to the very deepest and darkest corners of my soul whether I’m wearing a “new,” pre-owned, black, wool suit or even a full-fledged suit of armor.  In fact, I know that God is not satisfied unless I bring all my cluttered, untidy, disordered, and not-quite-in-control life before him.  To try to maintain any form of vanity or pride, to attempt to conceal any of our real self before God is an offense to him and a serious obstacle to a true and rich worship experience.

Back in the summer of 1980, I was working as a student pastor at a small, country church in eastern Ohio.  The church, Oak Ridge Presbyterian Church, was literally nestled in amongst corn fields.  And when I would open the window in my closet-like study, I could hear the cattle mooing on the hillside across the corn fields.  Working there was a wonderful and humbling experience.  I met some of the most memorable people in my pastoral career there.

One was a dairy farmer, Bob, in his late sixties.  He walked with the slight stoop of a man who had years of backbreaking work behind him but who was not ready to stop just yet.  Twice a day he milked about 65 head of Holstein cows.  And in between the milkings he tended to the myriad other labors involved in the task of keep up a substantial family farm.

Every Sunday evening through that summer, I lead a Bible study at the church.  Usually ten or twelve people would come.  Bob was almost always there.  But he would arrive a little late sometimes because the evening milking had to get done first.  I knew that he always came straight from the barn.  The aroma of cattle was always very strong upon him.

He never gave the least hint that he was especially embarrassed about the fact that he smelled like a cattle barn.  City boy that I

At Night Behind the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh; photo by GAC

was, I was startled at first.  But I soon came to understand that the odor of this man’s everyday life was an honorable and even holy thing.  If he had insisted on showering first in order to hide the realities of his life, he would never have been able to get to the Bible study before we were almost finished.  And why should he need to try to conceal his honest and good labors from God or God’s people.

Adam and Eve tried to hide from God, and it didn’t work out well for them.  Nor will it work out for us.  God does not like pretending.  And his love and grace are unconditional.  So, why should we try to pretend?

I’ll still try to wash the stains off my hands, but I don’t think I’ll be ashamed of them if I can’t quite get myself all cleaned up.  It will be God who cleans me up in the end, and not just my preacherly life but also my workshop life and all the rest, too.

© 2012 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

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Icy Trees; photo by GAC

Lord of heaven, Lord of earth, Lord of all time, Lord of this moment, Lord of all things living and Lord of my own beating heart, I want you to be my Lord.  I want my fleeting thoughts to be from you and for you.  I want you to be the head waters of my dreams and the mouth where they flow out into the wide ocean of your sovereignty and love.  I want you to be the One who soothes and quiets the itching and twitching of my fevered imagination and then guides it soaring into the vast expanse of your creative, sovereign will.

Where else could I look for such things?  Who else can fertilize and fructify the soil of my imagination?  Who else can master and manage the sizzling, darting of my mind?  You, Lord God, only you.  I have no such strength in my.  For me to manage and master my random spurtings of energy and lapses into enervating paralysis, I would have to cease to be me.  I would have to step outside of myself and become some demigod.  But only you are God.  And you are altogether God; there is no “demi” in your name.

You are not just vast — you are infinite.  You are not just powerful — you are omnipotent.  You are not just wiser than all — you are

Wintery Hills; photo by GAC

wisdom itself.  You are not just the perfection of love — you are the fountainhead of all love — love’s only and inexhaustible source.  You are the essence of mastery without tyranny, sovereignty that multiplies freedom, discipline that explodes into creativity.

All other lordships are poison beside you.

© 2011 Gary A. Chorpenning; all rights reserved.

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