Our scripture lessons show us that God really cares about vulnerable people – orphans, children, widows, sojourners in our midst.  Jesus had a very special place in His life and ministry for children, telling us that nothing was ever as important as caring for one of His children.  Another time Jesus said that it would be better for a person to tie a heavy millstone around his neck and go jump in a lake than for that person to hurt a child.  Clearly Jesus wanted children to be protected from harm.

It is in this context that the Council on Ministries has asked me to share some information with you today regarding our “Safe Sanctuary Policy” and why it has been instituted.  We felt it was important enough to displace the usual sermon with this informational talk.  This is the only way we could find to get this information out to our members.

Within the last two decades, we have sadly become almost accustomed to hearing about church leaders misusing their positions of trust and authority.  The truth that we all are sinners in need of God’s mercy has been clearly shown.  First we heard about a few Roman Catholic priests being accused and convicted of sexual abuse of children and youth.  But this was by no means confined to that denomination.  Soon we heard about other pastors in other churches, and right here in our Greenville District, a United Methodist pastor left the ministry after being accused of misconduct with several women against their will.  Elder abuse was reported in some of our nation’s nursing homes, and the concern spread from children and youth to include vulnerable adults.  Many of us in the church couldn’t believe that this was happening. We kept hoping that these issues would just go away and we tried to just ignore the problem, acting like it just couldn’t happen here, but it never went away.

Finally, some organizations became aware that policies had to be established which would reduce the risks of sexual abuse and offer guidelines to follow as they dealt with offenders and the injured.  The Boy Scouts were among the first to write a policy back during the 1990′s that required a minimum number of adults chaperones on trips and which specified that adults had to camp in separate tents from the boys unless the boys were sons of that adult.  Then insurance companies began demanding that churches come up with such policies for the protection of our children or else lose their insurance.  In 1996 the General Conference of the United Methodist Church adopted a resolution aimed at reducing the risks of abuse.  Two years ago the S.C. Annual Conference passed a resolution which required all United Methodist churches to have a written “Safe Sanctuary Policy” in place by the end of 2008, and Bishop Taylor and the district superintendents required this policy to be included in last fall’s charge conference.  To help us comply with this mandate, our Council on Ministries established a committee to study and write Memorial’s policy, and it has now been approved by our Council and Administrative Board.  Today I come to explain some of the whys and the wherefores to you.

But before I do, let me tell you that none of us on this committee enjoyed our work!  Just about everybody had some objections to parts of the policy.  “This will be impossible to enforce,” someone said.  “This will scare away the few volunteers we have. It treats everybody like potential criminals and makes us look like we don’t trust anyone.  It is going to make ministry with youth and children so complicated.”  There are no objections that you could raise that we have not already raised!  But the need to insure that our children have a safe place to grow ultimately overruled all of our objections.

The thing to always keep in the focus of our vision is the safety of our children and vulnerable adults.  That is of paramount importance.  Of secondary importance is protecting the adults who work with our children because a false accusation can ruin an adult’s life!  The final focus is on how we respond to a victim of abuse and to an accused adult in ways that offer support and healing.  Here at Memorial we have already taken steps to insure the safety of our children and youth.  First, we moved all of their classes into the Family Life Center where there are limited entrances and exits.  Our Trustees’ security patrol will continue to reduce the chances that strangers can come in off the street and bother our children. The Safe Sanctuary Policy also requires that there be windows in classroom doors so that children are able to be seen by passing adults at all times.  It also requires two adults to be with the children in each classroom if possible.  If the number of volunteers makes this impossible, then a “floating” adult is to be in the hall, looking into all the classrooms periodically.  This adds a level of protection to both the adults and the students.  Parents will be expected to walk their children to their classrooms and pick their children up at the classroom door.  This reduces the chance that a child can be hurt by a stranger lurking in our hallways. The policy also establishes safety procedures during trips on the church bus.  Again, the focus is primarily on the safety of the children and youth.

Under the policy, adult supervisors of children and youth agree to a criminal background check to further protect the young people.  This has been a requirement for pastors and paid staff members for some time, but now it is being expanded to include volunteer supervisors. Our Annual Conference has set up an office that will do all of these background checks for us, and the results will be kept confidential in Columbia.  All we will ever be told is whether or not a person has been authorized to work with children, youth, and vulnerable adults. This check is only done when an adult agrees to have it done, but it is a requirement for supervising our children and youth.  Since we have never done this before, every supervising leader of children and youth will need to be tested, even those who have worked with children for years and years.

The policy also requires training events for workers with youth and children: first aid, CPR, proper discipline procedures, and handling allegations of abuse.  We have two defibrillators just in case someone has a heart attack, and considering my age, I hope some of you know how to use them!  Those supervising children and youth will be made well-aware of the requirements of our Safe Sanctuary Policy.

Many of us have health insurance policies, but we hope we never need to use them.  We put fire stations near our homes, but we hope we never have to call on them.  It is our greatest hope that now that we have this Safe Sanctuary Policy, we never have an occasion to need it.  Indeed, the simplest rules of the policy, if followed, would eliminate any further need for the policy.  But just in case, the policy contains a page which outlines the steps required by law if a case of sexual abuse is reported.  These steps are aimed at protecting the child, youth, or vulnerable adult by alerting the proper authority.  There is no intention of protecting the church by “sweeping the problem under the rug.”

One final word needs to be said, and that is a word of grace to those who have already been convicted of some crime against a minor.  The Church of Jesus Christ is in the forgiving business.  There is nothing that is beyond God’s power to forgive, nor is there any habit or behavior that is beyond God’s ability to change!  In doing all that we can to protect our children, let us never forget that we are also expected to do all we can to change the lives of adults through God’s grace, mercy, and power.

It is the hope of the Safe Sanctuary committee that we would have other opportunities to talk with you in a small group setting.  We are asking the adult Sunday School Classes to contact chairperson Harriet Johnson to schedule a time to meet with your class.  Copies of the Safe Sanctuary Policy will be in the adult classrooms and the church office.  And if you check around the community, you will find that we aren’t the only church instituting this policy.  I know that the Lutherans and Presbyterians have a similar program under way.  Let us pray that together we can make all of our churches safe places for children and youth to grow!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

One of the problems in everyday communication is our use of symbols and metaphors which we understand but which our listeners do not.  For example, the next time it pours down rain, try telling a 3-year-old that it is raining “cats and dogs” and you will see what I mean!  One day Dennis the Menace walked over to a visitor in his home and then announced, “Mommy, I don’t see a blue streak when she talks!”  The problem with metaphors is more pronounced when you cross cultural boundaries.  A visiting pastor from London wanted to contact me, and so he asked the church secretary there in Irmo, “Is Arthur on the line?”  Our secretary looked at the lights on her phone and saw that they were all dark, and so she answered, “No.”  The English pastor couldn’t believe her answer, and so he decided to rephrase the question: “Does Arthur have a phone at his home?” Bible translators face this same problem.  How do you translate metaphors from an ancient language into modern English or French or German?

In Ephesians 2 we are told that we have been seated in heavenly places along with Christ.  Some translations say that God set us down beside Christ in “highest heaven,” but that is not any clearer, and it makes me wonder if there is a lowest heaven.  That is the problem with metaphors.  They can create more problems than they solve.  My sermon title is another attempt to employ a metaphor for that Ephesians 2 passage, this time from the sporting world: “He gave us seats on the 50-yard line.”  At football games, only dignitaries, guests, and top supporters get to sit on the 50-yard line.  Those are the best seats in the house.  Ephesians is telling us that through Christ, God has given us the best seats in His house!  That still needs work, people… needs work…  Somehow, we need to find a way to say that along with Christ, God has given us all that He’s got!  Hey!  That’s not bad!  Anyway, it is the work of the church to translate the Gospel into language that our communities can understand.

After the Apostle Paul was martyred, his writings were collected, copied, and distributed to all the churches where they were read and studied and came to be counted as sacred scripture.  Someone, probably a very close friend and student of Paul, wrote a cover-letter to be attached to the collection of Paul’s letters.  This cover-letter summarized Paul’s teachings.  The letter-writer did a great job of capturing Paul’s spirit and theology, so much so that he wanted to honor Paul by giving him the credit for this cover-letter.  But this student did not write like Paul or use Paul’s extensive vocabulary, and for that reason most Biblical scholars do not believe that this cover-letter, Ephesians, was written by Paul.  I wish we knew more about this student of Paul who wrote Ephesians because he does a great job of expressing Paul’s thoughts.  In his letter, he tells us about salvation – what we are saved from, what we are saved for, and how we know we are saved.

Listen to what Ephesians tells us we are saved from: we are saved from the deadness of sin; from stagnant, going nowhere living; from having to live by someone else’s values instead of our own; and from sin’s pollution.  Hear this again in the translation known as The Message: “You were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.”  Paul understood salvation from stagnation as nothing short of a resurrection in this life!

Sometimes when we talk about sin, we make it sound so interesting and inviting.  Some people, upon hearing that someone has turned away from sin to follow Christ, get the mistaken idea that we have to give up lots of neat, fun stuff in order to follow Christ!  That’s just not the way it is.  Sin is wrong because it destroys life.  It hurts ourselves and others.  Just ask an alcoholic living on the street how much fun he or she is having.  Ask a drug addict.  Ask the man who destroyed his home through infidelity just how much fun he is having now.  Ask the thief who is in prison how much fun sin is.  It is death and stagnation, a dead end road.  It is something to be rescued from.

We also live in a world where we allow Hollywood to tell us about how life should be lived, but Hollywood itself doesn’t have the foggiest idea how we should live. Wall Street defines success for us, and lately we’ve seen just how much Wall Street knows about successful living.

My children made up a word to describe something that is broken beyond hope of repair.  Their word for this was “deflicted.”  I guess that was a blend of defective and afflicted.  Life without Christ is broken beyond human repair.  It is deflicted!  Christ has come to save us from deflicted living.

I made an interesting discovery recently.  In describing salvation, Paul used a number of metaphors and similes.  Salvation is like a war where the two sides, God and humans, have been reconciled.  Salvation is like being redeemed, freed from the institution of slavery.  It is like going to court and being declared justified and in right standing with God’s Laws.  It is like a temple sacrifice where our sins are covered by the blood of sacrifice.  Salvation is like being adopted into God’s family.  But in explaining what we have been saved from, Paul never once uses the word “hell.”  Now, I’m not saying that Paul didn’t believe in hell.  He probably did.  But Paul preached the gospel without using the word “hell.”  It would be nice if some preachers here in the deep South would try to follow Paul’s example!  The closest Paul comes to talking about hell is when he talks about God’s wrath. Someone prove me wrong, if you can!  For Paul, what we are saved from is sin’s grip on our lives with its injury to ourselves and each other, leading to broken relationships with God and each other, resulting in stagnation, death, and meaninglessness.

But we were also saved for certain things.  The writer of Ephesians says that we have been saved for showers of grace which begin now and continue throughout eternity and saved for joining Jesus in His work here on earth.  “Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus… He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join Him in the work He does, the good work He has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”

Sometimes we preachers spend so much time talking about what we’ve been saved from that we never get around to talking about what we have been saved for.  It is good to be reminded that we have been saved for a calling into ministry in Christ’s name.  We all are called, preachers and lay people alike, called to proclaim the Good News, to care for the forgotten, the lonely, the poor, and to raise up the fallen.  We are saved for building soup kitchens and Habitat Houses, for going on mission trips and for teaching Sunday School.  We are saved for continuing Jesus’ work of preaching, teaching, and healing.

The writer of Ephesians also captures Paul’s idea that we are saved from “exclusion” and saved for “inclusion.”  In Christ, God was unifying all people of all races and backgrounds into one new family of God.  “The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non‑Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance…  Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody. Christ brought us together through his death on the Cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility.”

Another of Paul’s favorite themes was how the Law had been replaced by grace and love.  Christians are no longer bound to live strictly by a set of rules or “under the Law.”  Now we have been freed from the Law so that we can live by love’s dictates.  The writer of Ephesians states Paul’s position on this: “[Christ] repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then He started over.”

Ephesians also summarizes very well Paul’s understanding of how we obtained salvation.  The writer begins by saying that God is loving and merciful.  Secondly, he says that salvation was all God’s idea and doing.  Again, hear how Peterson translates the passage: “All of us [did] what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose His temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He embraced us. He took our sin‑dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Saving is all His idea, and all His work. All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving.”

“All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it.”  I don’t think I have ever heard the doctrine of salvation by faith through grace explained so clearly!

What was God doing through the cross?  He was saving us from some things like sin’s deadness and control and from stagnation, from living by standards set by the world.  He was saving us for showers of grace upon our lives and for joining with Christ in His work.  He was saving us for good deeds and unity.  And saving us was God’s idea, God’s work, God’s doing, because God is merciful and loving.  All this is in this life, and in the world to come, we will get all that God has to give because we have a reserved seat on the 50-yard line, by Jesus’ side in highest heaven!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Let me paint you an impossible picture: One Sunday during the 11 o’clock worship, our choir stands up to sing the anthem.  Ann Mayfield stands up, and instead of playing the organ, she has an electric guitar hanging over her neck.  Jessica Crim stands up and you notice that she is wearing an “Annie Oakley” cowgirl costume. The choir members take off their robes, displaying sequined, black “Grand Ole Opry” costumes as they break out into a chorus of “I’ll Fly Away” and “The Unclouded Day.”  What’s wrong with this picture?  It just doesn’t fit with the Chancel Choir that we know.

I feel the same way about this passage of scripture about Jesus cleansing the temple.  The actions and demeanor of Christ just do not fit in with our usual expectations of Jesus, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”  He seems to be acting so out of character, out of control, militant. According to Matthew and Luke, this appears to be Jesus acting on an impulse.  Mark suggests that Jesus thought about it overnight before He returned to cleanse the temple, making it a premeditated, thoughtful response.  Either way, it seems out of character for Him.  One way of thinking about this scene is to realize that a person acts differently during a tornado than he does in a cool breeze.  I saw a picture of a man, swinging an ax while screaming at a little boy.  It turned out that the house was on fire and the man was swinging the ax, not at the boy, but at a door, to open it for a speedy exit.

My father grew up in the country in the 1910′s.  His greatest fear, even when I was a child was of a dog with rabies.  If there was a possibility that a mad dog was in the area, my usually pleasant Daddy could turn into a screaming maniac!  Soon after they were married, Mom went with Dad to visit his parents, and Daddy thought he heard a mad dog. “Stay in the car!” my father ordered.  “Why?” asked Mom as she continued getting out.  “Did you hear what I said?” screamed my father.  “I said, ‘Stay in the car!’” It is a wonder I was ever born!  Sometimes love can act very much out of character.

Jesus was acting like that.  He saw something that was a danger to people, and His love for people made Him angry at this offense.  This was an act of love.  After all, He didn’t whip people – just the animals to get them moving out of the temple.  Anger can be the child of love.

There is really nothing wrong with the emotion of anger.  It is just a feeling.  What we do with our anger is either right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, helpful or hurtful.  The Bible says, “Be angry but do not sin.”

There are some unhealthy ways of dealing with anger.  Steven Wright is credited with the saying, “Depression is just anger without enthusiasm.”  It is anger turned inward, and that is not healthy.  Another unhealthy expression of anger is passive aggression.  I heard about a husband whose food was burned every day for a week.  He said that it finally dawned on him that his wife might be angry.  It is usually much healthier to express anger directly and calmly to the one who offended you.  Sometimes just the presence of a counselor enables a couple to calmly express their anger to each other, anger that was either held inside or expressed too sharply to be heard.

There are some things that should make a Christian angry.  If we see someone being treated unfairly, if we see children being mistreated in any way, if we see someone about to make a terrible mistake, we ought to get riled up!  It is OK to get angry about these things, just as long as we act constructively and appropriately.

On this occasion in the temple, why did Jesus get angry?  Originally the moneychangers and animal sellers had a purpose in being in the temple.  The Law required certain monetary and animal sacrifices to be made, and these merchants helped the worshipers by supplying the needed items.  The moneychangers had been in the temple all of Jesus’ life.  They were there when Mary and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the temple as they made the required sacrifice.  They were there when 12-year-old Jesus was there, talking with the elders.  They were there all the times Jesus went there for worship.  So why did Jesus get mad this time?

Perhaps the reason was that the sellers and the buyers had lost sight of their purpose.  Let’s imagine that a good church like Memorial decided to feed the hungry for a very nominal fee each week if they would attend worship.  Some of the hungry didn’t have adequate church clothes, and so the church began selling clothes to the poor.  Soon dinner and clothes became a very profitable enterprise.  It became the priority of the church.  Leaders began to complain that the preacher’s sermons were too long and that more time was needed for dinner and clothing sales because they were making more money through those activities than from the offerings.  After a few years, the people were meeting on Sunday morning for a very brief devotional before heading to the clothing store and food line.  There was no music, no choir, no sermon.  That would be a church that had lost its way and its sense of priorities.  Its original purpose had been lost in the clutter. Perhaps that is similar to what Jesus found in the temple that so angered Him.  The temple leaders had lost their way and forgotten their purpose.  Now the moneychangers and the sellers of animals were more anxious to make a buck than to enable prayer and reconciliation.

Every few years our Annual Conference leads us through a process that calls us to examine our church’s purpose. We have written mission statements and worked on vision statements because all too often churches get so caught up in maintenance issues that we fail to ever get around to ministering to others. As long as the bills are paid and we have “church,” then we tend to forget our call to serve the world.  It is so easy to lose our sense of direction and forget why we are here.

There are always people who use God to make a buck for themselves or to build up their reputations.  Comedian Tim Wilson says that he is always careful when he hires someone who has a big fish symbol on their work truck.  He says that what this means is that even after they have done a lousy job for you, you still have to forgive them!  For some people, Christianity is more of a fad than it is a calling to follow Jesus.  You get to wear cool T-shirts with various pictures and sayings on them, and some of them are right meanspirited.  Bumper stickers were a big fad for us young folks back in the 60′s, causing one Christian singer to sing, “Jesus, He’s more than the sticker that’s on my car.”  Sometimes when someone seems like they are just a bit too dedicated to God, they really aren’t!

So perhaps Jesus was angered by the loss of direction and priorities and by people using God for personal gain.  The House of Prayer had been perverted into a den of thieves, He said.  It was all cluttered.  So Jesus went in to set things right, to clean house, to clear out the things that were hindering true worship.

Today we are the temples of God because God’s Spirit lives in us.  Sometimes we lose our sense of priorities.  Our lives become cluttered.  Good things which were meant to serve us become our masters.  We put money, jobs, and material things above God and our families.  The good news in this Bible story is that Christ will come to us, His temples, again and again to clean house and reestablish our priorities, to say to us, “My house is meant to be use for God and for prayer.”  More good news is found in the fact that those who are drowning in the errors of their ways can find in Jesus a Savior who will come and unclutter those lives, too.  He will bring direction and purpose and wholeness to your lives.

“But Jesus, what gives you the right and authority to do this?” we join the temple people in asking.  “What gives you the right to unclutter and prioritize our lives?”  Jesus responds, “Here is my authority: Tear down this temple and in three days I will build it again.”  In other words, Jesus is saying, “I am the One Who was crucified and then rose again on the third day.  I am the Christ, the Son of your maker God.”  That is what gives Him the authority to rule over the temple and our lives.  “The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to His temple and shall purify the sons of Levi.”

That word “authority” is an interesting word.  Dr. Tom Langford of Duke Divinity School said that an authority is something we center our lives around, something that gives life a sense of meaning, purpose, order, and direction.  To acknowledge Jesus as our authority is to say that we have chosen to make Him the center of our lives, our top priority, our purpose in life, the One our lives revolve around.

Finally, some say that the significance of the timing of the temple cleansing was that Jesus sought to put an end to animal sacrifices for sins by giving Himself as the last and lasting sacrifice.  Sacrifices in the temple did continue until the temple was destroyed in 70 A. D., but Christians believed that these sacrifices we no longer needed because God had supplied a permanent sacrifice for the sins of His people.

According to the synoptic Gospels, the temple cleansing occurred just before the crucifixion and it was one event that led directly to the cross.  Jesus gave His life so that we, God’s temples, could be purified and free from guilt so that God could dwell permanently in our hearts!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

We’ve been hearing about it for over a year now: the United States is suffering from a crisis in the credit industry.  Two Presidents have now said that we’ve got to fix this credit crisis, and I still don’t know if I completely understand the problem.  But let me try to put it in simple Holt terms.

I have a dollar bill that I want to invest.  Ralph Johnson Savings and Loan tells me that it will give me a nickel per year if I will invest it with them, and so I do.  Ralph then lends out my dollar to a home buyer and makes a dime per year on this loan.  At the end of a year, I get my nickel, the bank gets a nickel, and everybody is happy.  Then Ralph comes up with another idea!  What if he lends my dollar to two people at the same time?  It is legal for banks to do this, and it is called “leveraging” my dollar.  Now after a year, I earn a nickel and Ralph Johnson Savings and Loan earns fifteen cents.  I am happy and Ralph is ecstatic!  Since that plan worked, Ralph decides to lend my one dollar bill to 50 borrowers at the same time.  I’m still happy, and Ralph makes $ 4.95 profit, and he plans to buy Harriet another horse!

One day I decide I want a candy bar right now more than I want to earn a nickel, and so I ask Ralph for my dollar back.  Yikes!  That makes fifty loans unsecured!  Meanwhile, twenty-five of the borrowers can’t pay Ralph back because they were risky loans to begin with. The only reason he loaned them money was that he had so much money available to lend.  But now Ralph owns 25 empty houses that nobody seems to want to buy, and he no longer has my dollar to lend.  What’s worse, nobody seems to want to buy Harriet’s horses!  With all existing money all tied up in abandoned, worthless property, Ralph has no money to lend to new borrowers who want to pay contractors to build them new houses.  Our economy collapses!  People lose their jobs!  Businesses fail!  Detroit can’t even give away their cars.  All because I had to have a candy bar instead of a nickel!  I stand here today to confess to you that our present credit crisis is all my fault, but that was one delicious candy bar!

What got me thinking about all this was St. Paul’s reference to another credit crisis in his letter to the Romans.  This credit problem has to do with our standing with God.  What people of faith want, above all else, is the assurance that we are at peace with God, that there is nothing that separates us from God.  “Get right with God,” the billboard advises us.  Righteousness is the condition of being right with God, in right relationship with Him. The fear of hell is the fear of dying in such a sorry spiritual shape that we will be separated forever from God.  If you grew up in a church that talked a lot about this, then you probably have a very healthy level of fear of hell and guilt in your life – or is it an unhealthy level of fear?

If you ask the average Joe or Jane what God expects of us before God will accept us into His heaven, they will answer, “God will judge us on whether we kept the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule, and other laws.”  The assumption is that keeping the commandments pleases God and earns us credit points that make us worthy of heaven.  The assumption also is that breaking the commandments racks up debts that might eventually add up to insufficient funds to get into heaven.  We might get overdrawn or bankrupt!  The fact of the matter is that all of us here today have already run up enough debt on our heavenly bank accounts to make it impossible for us to ever balance the books on our account.  The very hope we think we have by the keeping of the commandments turns out to be the thing that does us in.

Why would I say such a thing?  I’m not judging you; I’m looking into the mirror at myself.  My thoughts are so very often a breaking of the commandments!  I am not perfectly loving toward all people, nor do I see everyone as God’s child.  I immediately judge people that I run into as too ugly or too beautiful for me to feel comfortable with.  I see folks as too fat or too skinny.  I notice immediately the racial or socioeconomic background of everybody I meet, and that affects how I relate to them.  Sometimes I overcompensate and treat a person in ways that show that I am trying to convince myself that I am not really prejudiced.  Most of all, I want my own way and I want it right now, and I might let you have your way occasionally, but only if it benefits me in the long run.  I am capable of hatred, and Jesus called that murder.  My actions might not condemn me very often because most of us adults can control our outward behavior.  But then again, my actions are a calculated attempt to gain something from you – love, respect, something.  I am morally bankrupt, and I would feel very bad about myself if I wasn’t surrounded today by people who are just like me.  You are just like I have described myself.  If heaven is a place we get to by earning sufficient credits, then we are all in terrible peril!  We are all lost!  Our credit crisis is beyond our ability to repair!  We need a bailout from somebody, somewhere, somehow!

It is precisely this credit crisis that Paul says Jesus fixed for us.  We have, indeed, received a bailout.  Faith in Christ credits our heavenly accounts with right standing with God.  It is not a temporary bailout either.  Some folks think that Christ wiped out our past debts so that we might start over with a zero balance and that now we still must earn our way to heaven, mounting up credits to cover our debts.  But that is not how it works.  God’s bailout is so complete, our right standing with God so secure, that no further credits are needed and no future debts can bankrupt us again.  It is as if God has given our account overdraft protection.

My name is still on my son’s bank account.  We set it up this way when he went off to college so that he could phone home to tell us how much his books had cost him and how much money I needed to deposit in his account so that he wouldn’t write a rubber check!  Bounce, bounce, bounce!  He’s done that a few times, too!  Soon he will take my name off of his account, but right now he thinks that it is pretty cool to have a father around who can cover his debts with my resources.  I think it is pretty cool to have a Heavenly Father around who can cover my bad debts with His resources, too.

To the people in Paul’s day, this was a new idea!  They were used to thinking that they were earning merits to their accounts by their religious activities – sacrifices, worship attendance, strict observance of the law, and rituals like circumcision.  Prove to us, Paul, that there is another way to get credits toward right standing with God.  So Paul looks back in their history, before Moses, before the 10 Commandments, all the way to a promise made by God to Abraham.  God had chosen Abraham and Sarah as the parents of God’s chosen people.  The problem was that Abraham as Sarah were old enough to be great-grandparents and they were still childless.  Nevertheless, Abraham and Sarah trusted in God, having nothing else to trust in but God, and that faith was credited by God as right standing with God.  Abraham was not placed in right standing with God through obedience to commandments because there were none.  It was not due to Abraham’s obedience to certain rituals because they hadn’t been invented yet.  All He had was trust in God’s goodness and grace.  That is what Jesus taught, Paul says.  All we need is trust in God’s goodness and grace as displayed in Christ and this will be credited as right standing with God for us.  What a bailout!

Today if you are very conscious of your credit crisis with God, I want you to know that it is very real and very serious.  But it is not irreparable!  God though Christ offers you a bailout.  We have a Heavenly Father who can cover our debts with His unlimited resources.  God can solve your credit crisis today!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Many times I drive down Pleasantburg Drive in Greenville on my way to the hospital, and if I happen to see that “hot doughnut” sign as I pass by Krispy Kreme, my car knows that it must turn into that parking lot!  I have it well-trained.  There is nothing quite as good (or anything more detrimental to my desire to lose weight) than two hot doughnuts and a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon.  That’s just too tempting!  As a matter of fact, Krispy Kreme counts on the fact that we can be tempted by their glowing sign.  Grocery stores also depend on our tempt-ability.  That is why they put all those candy bars and magazines in the checkout lines, hoping that we will make an unplanned purchase.  Whatever you do, don’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry!  You’ll be so tempted that you will blow your food budget.

I realize that these examples of temptation are rather harmless, but it is the same human weakness operating in our lives, whether we are tempted by the smell of doughnuts or by the thoughts of wealth, power, prestige, or sin.  Temptation is the weakness inside of us that can drive us to eat too much or to steal or to do harm to someone.  Lent is a season that calls us to exercise self-control over temptation, to make our lives conform more closely to God’s will for our lives, and the place to conquer sin is while it is still in the bud of temptation, before it grows into full flower.

The Gospel lesson today tells us about how Jesus went from a very high moment at His baptism, a time when He heard God’s voice saying, “You are my child and I love you,” to a very long time of isolation and loneliness in the desert.  There are several surprises in this story.  The first surprise is that Jesus had within Him the human weakness of temptation that we have.  The second surprise is that God’s Spirit led Jesus to the place where Jesus could be tempted!

As far as the first surprise goes, there have always been two heresies regarding Jesus that the Church has debated.  One heresy is that Jesus was only a human being, a good moral teacher,  while the other heresy said that Jesus was only a divine apparition who pretended to be human.  It took four centuries of debate within the Church to decide that neither position was correct.  Jesus was both totally human and totally divine.  He is both just as human as we are and just as divine as God is.  In our day, unchurched people tend to be into the human-only camp while we inside the church have such an exalted view of our Messiah that we have trouble believing that He has any humanity within Him.  But the idea of the incarnation of Jesus means that He has human impulses and emotions just like we do, and if we miss that point, then we have not understood the extent to which our God was willing to go to save us!  Jesus the divine Son of God became just like us.  Therefore, He could be tempted as we are, and He showed that it is possible to resist temptation.  As Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are‑‑yet was without sin.”  That is the first “shocker” in this passage.

The second surprise is that God led Jesus to a place where He could be tempted.  Now, the Bible is very clear that God is not the author of temptation.  James 1:13 says, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.”  While it is true that God does not tempt us, neither does He put a bubble around us to shield us from temptation.  Wherever He leads us, there will be ample opportunities for temptation to come to us.  God leads us to deserts where we are tempted.

I heard about a man whose greatest temptation was chocolate.  Hoping to conquer this temptation, he went to work at a chocolate factory.  One day his family was told that the man had drowned in a vat of chocolate.  “But he was an excellent swimmer,” his brother said.  “That’s true,” said a coworker, “but he jumped back in three times after we pulled him out.”

I think what Mark is really trying to tell us is that, in spite of the fact that the Spirit led Jesus to the desert, Jesus found temptation there.  Mark is not trying to blame God for what happened to Jesus; he is trying to reassure us that even when we are trying our best to follow God’s Spirit, we will still encounter temptation.  In fact, it may actually be true that the closer you follow God’s will, the more likely you are to encounter frustration, temptation, and other kinds of discouragement sent your way from Satan.  If you never feel the current, maybe you are swimming the wrong way.  Sometimes we are like salmon; it is God’s will for us to swim upstream!  It is the temptation that reassures us that we are going in the right direction.

According to Matthew and Luke, Jesus was tempted to use His gifts for selfish goals.  Aren’t we also tempted to use our God-given abilities selfishly?  A few successful leaps from the Temple pinnacle and everybody would believe He was God’s Son.  Everybody wants a super-hero; but a caring teacher is really what most of us need. Turning stones into bread was a sure way to gain popularity and fame as well as fortune.  Can you imagine how rich He could have become by selling bread?  Jesus did become very famous and popular, but His fame and popularity came from the words He spoke telling people about God and from His loving, healing touch.  I am neither critical nor envious of big-named actors and singers; in fact, I am often quite sorry for them because their great success, popularity, and fortune seem to be the cause of their misery.  They have sacrificed their one chance at life on the altar of popularity.  It is so easy to misuse our gifts for selfish gain.

Jesus was also tempted to cut corners, to compromise His principles to achieve His goals. Jesus knew He was going to be King of Kings; the temptation was to reach that goal the easy way, without His sacrifice, employing the forces of evil instead of trusting in God’s good ways.  The surest path for any of us to a life of meaning, purpose, and success is through exercising our brains and working hard.  But there are many in our state who are counting on the lottery to bring their ship into port.  I just believe that a few dollars invested in a good book would do them more good than a few dollars thrown into the bottomless pit of a lottery.  We are tempted to stab others in the back and step all over people as we climb up the ladder of success.  Jesus decided to choose the path of servanthood, believing that He could conquer the most powerful man by becoming his servant.

In the Bible, the concept of temptation is often associated with the concept of testing.  Students know that tests are actually helpful to them.  Tests make them learn their assignments.  Tests show them if they have mastered the material.  Tests show them where they still need to grow.  When we think of temptation as a testing of our faith and values, it can be beneficial to us also.  The fact that we face temptation should make us draw close to God and each other, to study our Biblical assignments, to learn how to depend upon God for strength.  If we yield to temptation and fail the test, we can discover where we still need to grow.  One failed temptation can lead us to greater resolve and strength.

Learning where we are vulnerable is helpful, too, and that is what temptation shows us.  In the desert, Jesus learned about Himself, especially the things that tempted Him.  From those days on, He knew what to be on the lookout for.  He knew what His vulnerabilities were.  Temptation shows us our weak spots so that we can build strength.

Jesus is like us.  He could be tempted.  We are like Jesus.  We can learn to resist temptation and stick with God’s ways for our lives.  The Spirit leads us, but we will find that we are tempted, nevertheless.  Like Jesus, we will be tempted to misuse what God has given us selfishly.  Like Jesus, we will be tempted to cut corners and compromise our principles.  Like Jesus, we should realize that temptation shows us where our vulnerabilities are so that we can find strength to overcome these weaknesses.  May the Spirit lead us into deserts where we will be tempted.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt