Eucatastrophe- The Feel of Ministry

It may seem strange to start a sermon series with such an unusual title — and yet, what if the word you're looking for to describe what a book is about isn't available to you? That happened to Tolkien when he was trying to describe what happens in a fairy story. You know the plot of the fairy story, and for that matter every great story that has ever moved you: it feels like a tragedy for most of the story, and then suddenly, out of nowhere (if the storyteller knows their craft), an unlooked-for rescue comes, and you have a happy ending. That, Tolkien says, is a eucatastrophe, or good catastrophe. There is a sudden turn, and Tolkien describes it like this: "…it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur… giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world." (J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories)

He goes on to say the story of redemption is the ultimate eucatastrophe — and it's true. The disciples certainly felt this as they watched Jesus die, only later to see him alive and experience joy beyond the walls of the world. Such joy turned the world upside down. Well, this week we will see Paul experience an eucatastrophe; indeed, the Thessalonian church is born out of it. The whole book is pastoral, and one of the first and earliest letters Paul wrote. I can't wait to begin this journey deeper into the mystery of grace!

Also remember, Sunday School for all ages and St. Patrick 101 both start this Sunday. If you're new to St. Patrick, I hope you'll join us for this class — and for our Newcomers Feast after worship.

Imagine you’re the parent of teenage twins. In some ways, you’ve prepared for this - the human part, at least. You’ve been on the planet for decades. You know what it feels like to make the leap from childhood. But then there’s the parent part, which is pretty new. You’re not much more than a dozen years in, and the game keeps changing. 

Last week, the cut list was released for the competitive lacrosse team the twins have both been working to make. You blow it immediately: as soon as they get home, you ask them how it went. Rookie move. You can see it on their faces before the words leave your mouth: one got the spot on the roster, and the other didn’t. The one who didn’t make it chimes in with what most people would consider an extremely mature and healthy response. He rejoices with those who rejoice, smiling and saying he’s happy for his brother and that this frees him up for better things. But you know your son. You know he’s hiding his heart, and you think you know why. So, a while later, you try again. You get him alone and don’t say a word. Just sit next to him and pull him into your chest as he sinks into sobs. 

Can I suggest to you that that was an even more mature, healthy response? But he needed the invitation, and he needed to come away from everything else first. Maybe he’s a kind soul and he loves his brother and didn’t want to ruin the moment for him. Maybe he was embarrassed and wanted to downplay what felt like a failure. Either way, he was hindered by the other cares he had in that first moment from his core needs. He needed a place where it was just you and him, to express the pain of unfulfilled desires. Of being “not there yet.”

This week we talk about the last of the five doctrines of grace: “the perseverance of the saints.” Contrary to popular misuse, these doctrines aren’t simply eternal truths about other people. And this one in particular is very much the opposite: it’s intimate comfort for me. We’re going to do our best this week to get alone with God, (a better father than we’ll ever be), and let the troubles of living in this already-but-not-yet world melt on His chest as he comforts us in the way that only He can. 

There are things in this world that defy explanation. There are events that happen that you would say are impossible. I just read an account of that in David Grann’s book, The Wager. It is the story of HMS Wager, a British ship that was lost at sea rounding Cape Horn—the southern tip of South America in 1741. It was reported by other ships in the squadron that it just vanished. However 2 years later, various factions of the ship made it back to England, telling tales of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder.

You read the book, and you can’t believe it is possible that anyone would survive this shipwreck given the weather, the desolate island they were initially stranded on, the privation they endured, and the navigational feats they achieved, and yet they did. It has been a week like that for me. On Sunday I will tell you another story where the seemingly impossible happens. That is not just from my estimation of the situation, but also from everyone I asked, including the car body shop I went to. He heard my story and looked at one of his guys who worked for him and said, “I don’t believe in all our years here we have ever seen this before".

We do love stories of the unlikely and the unimaginable, don’t we? Well, this week we turn to look at how the redemption that Jesus accomplished at the cross actually comes to us, and let me just say this—in the Gospel, the impossible becomes possible. I will say no more until Sunday!

I hope you will join us. I don’t know about you, but it was good to get back into a rhythm this past week. Now if we could just get some coo

The first debate I ever heard about the atonement of Jesus was at my grandparents' house in Northeast Mississippi. I was only about ten or eleven at the time, but from time to time the debate would come back up. My grandfather was a Calvinist, and my grandmother was not. My grandparents were some of the finest people I have ever known. They loved the Lord a whole lot. I have my grandfather's Bible, which has a cloth cover sewn on it, and I can still see him in a recliner reading it after lunch until he fell asleep for a short nap before we headed out to the fields. My grandmother was quietly poetic, and I can still see her at the stove with a calico apron on, a spatula in hand, a little flour on her face—grinning as she quoted some piece of poetry to my cousin and me.

They rarely argued, and this point of theology may have been the only argument they engaged. But here is what would happen. A conversation about Jesus's death on the cross would begin, and my grandmother would say this—and when she said it, she would direct her scripture to my grandfather. She would say, "Olen, Jesus said, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft would I have gathered you under my wings, but you would not.' See, Olen, that is free will—'you would not.'" She would articulate this with poetic flair and pathos. My grandfather was a man of few words and, totally undaunted by the passion of her delivery, would say this: "Now, Marie, the angel that announced Jesus's mission said this: 'You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' See, Marie—'his people.'"

This Sunday we will be talking about the atonement of Jesus and looking at the story of the cross and why the whole image of Christianity is gathered up in this one symbol. We will be pondering the question: did Jesus really make an atonement for sin, or just make atonement possible? I hope to see you Sunday as we continue to marvel at the grace of God!

I didn’t grow up in Reformed theology circles. We were part of a branch of Presbyterianism that had rejected its confessional roots and only partially retained the governmental structure. I think I knew in my late teens there was something called “5-point Calvinism,” but I didn’t know what that meant, or anyone who believed in it (other than my grandfather’s hermit cousin). Fast forward 25 years, and now it’s not just an optional feature of the Presbyterian package for me. It’s a foundational part of how I understand the God of redemption. I teach it several times a year and each time my faith is always enriched. 

One of the things I’ve heard many times along my own journey of discovery is someone claiming to be a “4-point” Calvinist. Often the “point” these folks don’t want to adopt is the one of the two we’re talking about the few weeks: unconditional election and limited atonement. But the deeper concern is actually a collection of unspoken logical implications drawn from the flow of the entire argument. When I learned what they were objecting to, I was quick to recognize the logical inconsistency of this pick-and-choose method. The whole rational nature of the doctrines of grace collapses under that kind of buffet-style theology. Why would people do that?

What takes much longer and much more love is to see how this is not a quibble with the theology, but commitment to God’s holiness paired with a confession of grief. When you are a broken person in relationship with broken people, Biblical terms like election and predestination (and theological counterparts like eternal security and assurance of salvation) aren’t just ideas. They carry heavy implications for those we care about. We are not just rational creatures. We are affectionate too, and very protective of our loves. And the secret is that this tension we feel is not just a problem: it’s a hint at the solution. 

This week, I hope to help us repent of a separation between the rational and relational aspects of our souls that puts us between the rock of our salvation and the hard places of our experience.  If God is as gracious as we Reformed folks claim He is, then the way we talk about the so-called “doctrines of grace” should reflect that. And He certainly is. 

I am not much for throwing out Latin terms. Long ago I took Latin and was not very good at it, but sometimes an old term just needs to be used, and if we don't know it, we just need to. Sola Gratia is the name of a new series we are starting this week and will run for the next five weeks. Sola Gratia means grace alone. It was one of five solas that came out of the Protestant Reformation—like battle cries, or things we hold dear and must never forget, or we will lose something that must not be lost.

If you have been around here for a while, it will sound familiar to you, because it is one of our four core values—"Grace is Everything." It's not just a core value; it is, we might say, the core value which makes all our other values possible. Grace alone is what the gospel is all about. For the next five weeks we will look at the gospel and ask the question, "Why is grace everything?"

Sunday we will look at what we might call a biblical anthropology, or who we are as human beings before God—what is our essence as image bearers of God, and how has sin affected us. It is a bleak picture, and one in which, if we do not understand it, grace will just be something, not everything.

I hope you will join us Sunday!

A sense of smell is a powerful thing. Around this time of year, I have a trauma response when I smell fresh-cut grass. It reminds me of 2-a-day football practices when I was in high school. August in Memphis is brutal, especially in pads, getting run and beaten to death! And that was 50 years ago! Or most often, there are intoxicating aromas that signal memories of Christmas or Thanksgiving, and immediately we have a visceral reaction.

Our Psalm for this Sunday got me to thinking that this is also true with gratitude and thanksgiving, especially to the Old Testament believer. Psalm 100, the subscription reads, A Psalm for giving thanks. Many psalms are about giving thanks; only this one is so designated. Many scholars believe this Psalm is the thanksgiving offered when an individual came with his sacrifice and bread to the temple to give a thanksgiving offering. When the believer was especially grateful for God’s blessings, he would bring this offering, which was also a meal to be shared with those he chose to bring with him. 

That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Gratitude can’t be contained; it overflows to our friends with whom we must share the joy with us. And yes, it usually calls for a grand feast! That is the setting of our final Psalm in a summer of Gratuitous Gladness. I hope to see you Sunday as we share the feast together.

The more I think about gratitude and thanksgiving, the more I am convinced that gratitude is more a matter of being than an emotion. What I mean is we tend to think of gratitude as just a feeling we have as a result of a perceived kindness. And while that is true, I think there is more. When I say it is a matter of being, I mean that gratitude actually affects and shapes what one is capable of seeing. I think this litany we will look at Sunday is a good case in point. 

A litany is a kind of call and response liturgical device. In this particular Psalm, a statement is made about something God has done, and after that statement, throughout the whole Psalm there is a response that says, “For his steadfast love endures forever.” The thanksgiving ranges from thanksgiving for God’s lavish creation, his glorious redemption, and all the way down to his continued care of his people. It is like the Psalmist is trying to beat it into our heads that there are things we might doubt, but the evidence is in: God’s love endures forever. In other words, if there is one thing that shapes how we know and perceive the world, it is this: God’s love endures always. 

I read somewhere long ago, and I can’t find the quote anywhere, a writer who was talking about how we learn to love, and he says this about his child, “I kiss my child because I love him. I kiss my child in order to love him.” In other words, love is more than a gush of feeling that then spontaneously is expressed in an embrace; it is also a learned habit, practiced even when feelings are not exactly bubbling on the surface. I think gratitude is like that. We express gratitude when we genuinely feel grateful, but also, we express gratitude to be grateful. Like this litany, we are practicing being grateful, because we know this is the correct posture of seeing and perceiving the world.

That is what we will talk about this Sunday. Speaking of grateful, how ‘bout this reprieve in the weather this week! I don’t know about you, but I am so grateful for this small kindness! 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup this summer, and I hope you have as well. The celebrations, the underdogs, the brilliance, the world stage, it's an incredible experience. There's a deep sadness creeping in with the thought of it coming to a close this Sunday and having to wait another four years for the next edition.

Forty-seven teams from this World Cup will go home and face reality. They will be forced to acknowledge that they were not the best, they could have been better, and they have work to do and four years to do it if they want glory in 2030. But they also must acknowledge the incredible blessing of getting to play in the World Cup, a dream of billions of children across the globe.

The tension between acknowledging our own weaknesses and acknowledging our great blessings can be tough. It forces us to admit we didn't earn much of the good we experience. There's a word for that in the Bible and it's used over and over again, especially in the Psalms. And in that word is the better story of the Gospel. So before watching the World Cup Final on Sunday afternoon, let's consider the good news together on Sunday morning from Psalm 107.

Most of the conversation around generations these days, particularly among those who are “terminally online,” revolves around what are actually micro-generations: Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, Z, and Alpha. I’m told there’s now a Beta designation. As is the case with most online discourse, the general tenor is one of negative comparison and resentful competition. Generational prosperity and cultural dominance have become a zero-sum game for the living only. The losers haven’t even been born yet. 

When we log off and enter the Biblical world instead, we see a better story unfolding. It’s all an expression of what is sometimes called “The John 3:16 of the Old Testament.” Exodus 34:6-7 is the most internally quoted and referenced revelation of God in all of Scripture. When Moses asked God to show him his glory, 

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

And that’s exactly what we see is driving this whole plot: God’s desire to show favor to those who draw near to him in such a way that has generational consequences.

What if the things we think of as our generations’ greatest strengths are actually iniquities incurring debts that our children’s grandchildren will be forced to carry? If you know your genealogy back that far, I’ll bet you’ve already traced some of your brokenness to the choices of a quarter century ago. If you could cast your eye (and some of you can) to your great grandchildren, you’ll notice that some of your own failures already have compounded interest for their lives.  

What can we do? That’s what Psalm 145 is all about. The Psalmist places his allusion to the mercy of God from Exodus 34:6-7 in the center of our text, between an impossible standard and a childlike faith. It’s enough to make us gratuitously glad!