Being Alive in Christ

 This Sunday we continued a sermon series entitled "Identity Matters" at EBC, based on the book of Galatians.  The following is some of the main ideas from the fourth message: "Being Alive in Chirst."

One of the things I value about Eastwood is the relaxed, friendly spirit we embody when we gather together.  Unfortunately, this spirit can be taken to extremes at times.  Before the service, parents sometimes have to grab children that take it upon themselves to crawl on the stage.  I’ve seen some grab microphones, poke at instruments, and grin really big when they are caught.  It’s not uncommon to have to defend a smart-mouthed remark or two before we can move on from our morning announcements.  Finally, once we get past all of that, we have ANOTHER visiting time that sometimes goes on a little longer than it should.  These experiences are signs of life.  When we really live out our lives together, it can sometimes get messy, out of order, and even a little chaotic.

Would you rather go to a church where the opposite extreme was the norm?  I hope Eastwood would never have this reputation, but church is sometimes thought to be a dull place where you have to sit through a boring service and do your “duty” before you get to go and do what you really want to do on Sunday.  I hate to admit it, but that is the way that I saw church when I was occasionally drug there with my grandmother.  Of course, this was a Lutheran church, so it was much more formal.  An organ always played a “prelude,” the pastor wore a robe, and an acolyte lit candles.  However, they had an informal side, and it came out AFTER the actual service was over.  They reserved their announcement time to be the very last thing after the final benediction.  The pastor would disrobe, walk out in the middle of the aisle among the people, and they had a free-for-all. 

Everyone and their dog had something to announce, from a church bake sale, to a personal birthday party.  I remember sitting through it all, my stomach growling after already being there for about an hour-an-a-half, getting furious over hands that continued to spring up with something important the whole church just HAD to know.  It took every fiber in my being not to shout: “will you all just be quite already so we can go to Luby’s?”  But that was part of the way they expressed themselves in church life.   

Christians should be “alive” in Christ.  If that means announcements run a little long, our service leans towards the informal side, or that sometimes things are a little chaotic, so be it.  Regardless of where they are at, Christians have a life in Christ that is worth experiencing.  You do not have to do anything to get that life, but you are in charge of living it out.   

 Paul describes this life in Galatians 3:29 by saying “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  The promise this refers to goes all the way back to the first book of the Bible.  It connects the promise that God made to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and sand along the sea, with all who come to know God through faith in Christ.  In other words, it points to Jesus as the fulfillment of what God was doing from the beginning of the Bible.   

This is proof that God desires his creation to have a full life that is connected to him.  Unfortunately, his creation has not always been great at doing what it needs to do to experience this life.  In the scheme of things, our role is very small.  God is the one that has made a full and joyous life available to us through his Son. We are the ones that live it out.

Are you merely living life?  Or are you experiencing life in Christ?

Being Crucified with Christ

 This Sunday we continued a sermon series entitled "Identity Matters" at EBC, based on the book of Galatians.  The following is some of the main ideas from the third message: "Being Crucified with Chirst."

My wife’s parents lived and worked at a Christian camp for several years.  During the course of that time, they encountered lots of different church groups.  Take the personalities and quirks that you encounter in your own church, multiply that by twenty, and you have the various types of people they had the pleasure of encountering throughout the year.  This created some “interesting” situations from time to time. 

One situation occurred when two ladies from an African American missionary Baptist church came to survey the camp a week before their group was to come for a retreat.  After getting a general tour of the facilities and the places their group would be staying, one of them asked my wife’s father, Mike, if they had a prayer garden she and her sister could go to in order to pray for their group and the week they would experience at the camp.  He said “sure,” and pointed out the way.  He didn’t think much about the two ladies after that, until he ran into them unexpectedly as he was moving from one task to another.  The sweet, soft-spoken church lady he previously talked to had a serious demeanor and a firm scowl on her face.

“You know why you hadn’t had any rain out here?” she asked.  “Um..why?” he asked in a cautionary tone, a little afraid of what she might say.  “Because you got them crosses up in the prayer garden.”  “And…” he said…wondering where the conversation was headed.  “Jesus ain’t on that cross no more!” she told him in an absolute tone.  Mike didn’t really know what to say.  He just stood there for a few seconds in silence with a questioning look on his face.  Finally, she explained: “Crosses are a sign of the curse.  God ain’t going to send you no rain as long as you have those up.”  Then she repeated: “he ain’t on that cross no more” as she and her sister walked away. 

Her comment reflects a sort of “phobia” some Baptists have about crosses.  However, I believe that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the victory of the resurrection without first focusing upon the reality of the crucifixion. 

Catholic churches have crucifixes, which are visual representations of Christ suffering on the cross.  From a Baptist perspective, these are pretty tough images to stomach.  Like the lady at camp, we use similar logic for not displaying crucifixes: “Jesus isn’t on the cross anymore, so why should we look at something like this every day at our church?” we reason. If we give this train of thought credence, we might as well banish crosses from prayer gardens and the walls of our homes.  The reason we do not is because the crucifixion is more than simply a grotesque event to us.  We realize that without the crucifixion, we have no resurrection.  And without the resurrection, we have no life in Jesus.

The point I’m trying to make has nothing to do with what the type of religious symbolism you display.  The point is that the crucifixion is central to understanding our identity in Christ.  Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  As teachers came into Galatia preaching a “false Gospel,” Paul combated it by pointing to the crucifixion.  The reason that we do not have to follow a twelve-step program to be acceptable to God is because of this event.  At the same time, it is also the reason that we CAN do good works on God’s behalf.  Being crucified with Christ transforms your identity.

“Jesus ain’t on that cross no more,” but by the grace of God, your identity as a sinner can be.