Bibliography: Culture Shifts, Lesson 10
Over the last several months, we have looked at the modern culture we find ourselves living in. I personally have found the exploration of the world we face most intriguing. There are some aspects of our society which have really hit home.
Let me briefly run through a top ten list of the identifying characterstics that are shaping our world.
1. We are living in the technology age. Advancements are taking place faster than we can adjust to them. Our lives stay in a constant state of change.
2. Media controls our life more than ever before. It tells us what we want and when we want it. Even with some amount of control, media is shaping who we are as individuals.
3. We live in a sea of ‘truths’ with each person expected to determine what is truth for him or her. Time is short, what makes each individual happy is most important, and values are subjective.
4. Violence is on the rise. America has become the home front. We are pitted against each other. We are attacking one another.
5. An increase in divorce rate and fall out from the free love generation has resulted in multifamily dynamics. Results has been a distrust in relationships, difficulty determining relationship boundaries, and a huge rise in single parent households.
6. Employment has changed. Careers and retirement are quickly going by the wayside. Frequent job changes are in our future. It is becoming more likely that fewer of us will be able to retire when we reach retirement age. We are pitted for survival, not success.
7. Diversity in worldviews in growing. Our identity is being reshaped and redefined outside of our cultural and ethnic heritage. As identifying markers change and shift so quickly and seem to be chosen arbritrarily, we face an identity crisis. Who are we?
8. Spirituality is a hot topic. We continue to seek answers and a ‘fix’ for our problems. Most alarming about this characteristic in an increased understanding that all forms of religion and spirituality are equally valid. If one doesn’t get you what you want, then switch to another one.
9. We have become a generation where the ties that bind us together are fragile and fluid. Our morals are constantly changing and being reevaluated. Our loyalty to our relationships are weak. Never before have we been such an individualistic society, interested in what impacts us personally, first, foremost, and altogether.
10. All of these characteristics are wrapped up and bounded together with fear. We are a nation afraid. We are afraid of the world and of one another. We are afraid for our survival and afraid of ourselves.
Peter never knew what he preached would never be more true: “Save yourselves from a corrupt generation.”
Our generation is a corrupt one indeed.
*****
It is the day of Pentecost. This is a religious festival celebrated in Jerusalem. Faithful Jews have gathered from all over Israel and perhaps even those living in nearby countries to worship and celebrate this day.
Pentecost is an old Jewish agricultural celebration. It occurs in the spring, and is about giving thanks and pledging agricultral gifts to God. By the time of Jesus, it had also come to be associated with the gift of God’s faithfulness given to Israel through the Torah, or law. Through the law, Jews were able to stay in right relationship with God.
On this day, following the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples had gathered to celebrate Pentecost. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit descended upon them like a mighty rushing an roaring wind. The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to tell the story of Jesus in different languages so that the people who had come from all around to celebrate the festival could hear them talking about Jesus in their own language.
At first, people thought they were drunk with all the noise and confusion. But Peter got up to preach, and what he told them was how Jesus who had been crucified, had been raised from the dead by God.
This man who had died a shameful, dishonorable, death of a criminal, had been resurrected and brought to life by God.
It sounds so simple to say that. We who have grown up in the church have heard this part of Christ’s story so many times and accept it so naturally. But don’t let the significance of the resurrection of Christ go by so quickly.
Those gathered there that day were faithful people who waited patiently, desperately for the Messiah, the chosen one, the anointed of God to come and save them - to save them from the corrupt generation they lived in, from their occuppied state, from sin which was a live, active force in the world, from all that kept them from living the law of God fully and interfered with their desire and ability to follow God’s commands and live in obedience to God.
Peter told them that the resurrection of Jesus proved he was the one. He was the Messiah. Jesus’ resurrection was the sign that told them he had God’s favor. And those faithful Jews believed what Peter was telling them.
They were convicted and converted in their hearts. They knew Jesus was the savior sent by God to save them from sin. Only trouble was, these people - the Jews - had been the ones who had rejected him and had him crucified.
The knowledge of this cut them to the heart.
They have made a huge mistake and done a great wrong. They had rejected Jesus, not believed in salvation through Jesus. Is it too late? Can they be saved, for they know their own genereation is indeed corrupt. It has allowed, helped, taken an active hand in the crucifixion of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
Just like us all, who find ourselves separated by a gulf from God, and who know in our hearts we are powerless to close the gap, we wonder. Our shame, our failures, our weaknesses, our flaws get the best of us.
Is there any hope?
They ask, “What shall we do?”
Peter provides them with the answer of what is required to become a Christian.
*****
Repent, Peter said.
This Thursday at Grace, we celebrated a National Day of Prayer as decreed by our President.
On April 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave the following Proclamation on the National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer.
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, this many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
We, like Israelites before us, find ourselves in need of repentance, of recognizing our blindsightedness, and our need to make a decision to think, act, and live differently.
Peter’s next words are for the repentant to be baptized, everyone of us, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.
We are to be baptized to show our faith in Jesus Christ. We are baptized as an act of rememberance of the the death and resurrection of Christ.
Those who practice baptism by emersion, find meaning in the strong symbolism of going under the water in the same way Jesus descended to death, and in rising up out of the water to a new life in the same way Jesus was resurrected to new life. Baptism symbolizes our participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We die to the old way of living and rise to live a new way taught to us by Jesus.
We are to be baptized as a sign that God has forgiven us for our sin. We are baptized to be cleanse and as a sign of our renewal and fresh start.
When asked what it meant to be baptized, one woman responded, “Its like being a pumpkin plucked from the pumpking patch. First you are washed clean on the outside, but then you are made clean on the inside too. All that muck and slimey stuff within is scraped off and taken out. Then you are given a new face to face the world, and God’s light begins to shine from within you. Just as the pumpkin is transformed into a jack-o-lantern, you are transformed into a new person in Jesus Christ.”
We are to be bapitzed in the name of Jesus, who is the head of the Christian family... the one through which we receive eternal life, as he is eternally alive...
who provide us with ample examples of how to live our lives and how to live with, and treat one another...
who gives us the power to grow in our relationships - the one we have with God, and the ones we have with other people.
And then, Peter says, we receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what empowers us to be different from the person we were before. It empowers us like a spiritual battery to live in this corrupt world we live in, but live differently than the corruptness calls us to live.
The Holy Spirit counsels us, guides our thoughts and actions.
The Holy Spirit is our connection with God. We are baptized in the name of Jesus as a sign of our desire to start again, to be in right relationship with God. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of that relationship we have with God.
This is God’s promise made to each of us and our children, and to all who are far away, to everyone God calls.
Peter spoke in reference to those who were far away geographically, but we have become a global community. Peter spoke in reference to those who were outside of the Jewish heritage, the gentiles, but today there are those who are much further away in their hearts, much further away spiritually - lost from God, living in the middle of a bustling community.
Some are so close, but still have so far to go.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement was an Anglican Priest. He studied at Oxford and was ordained in 1728. With his brother Charles he began a systematic plan of Bible study and service initially refered to as the Holy Club and later derisively labeled the Methodists.
In 1735 John and Charles went as missionaries to Georgia in the colonies. Their trip was not a successful one. John returned to England feeling he had fail in his ministry there. To top it all off, there was a terrible storm on the trip home and John was extremely frightened for his life.
We can understand the fear, but there was a religious group on board called Moravians in which John Wesley saw that they had something in their faith that John did not have.
He was a minister and a missionary, yet he lacked assurance of his relationship with God.
On May 24th, 1738 - 10 years following his ordination and ironically at the same time of year we celebrate the Pentecost experience today - John was to know such an experience, which he described in now familiar and famous words.words -
"I went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading about Luther’s preface to The Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine whilst he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine."
Peter’s message is one for us all today.
Jeff Manning, executive director of the California Milk Processor Board explains the theory behind the enormously successful advertising campaign:
Deprivation is a word that isn’t used very often in our language, and especially not in advertising because it suggests that people can’t get what you have to offer. But, in our case, this is the most important part of the GOT MILK?® campaign.
The key was to give people the food and then take away the milk. The humor and the power of GOT MILK?® is that it’s true. It’s a pain to pour the bowl of cereal and then reach into the fridge to find that there’s only an ounce and a half of milk left in the container. We gave people the food, took the milk away, and they started to think milk was crucially important.
Today in our country we live in a land of plenty and excess more than ever before. Yet, ironically we find ourselves in a state of deprivation. That deprivation is what Peter spoke of to those faithful Jews on the day of Pentecost. Peter’s call is to consider what is truly crucially important in our life today. Put in the words of the highly successful ad campaign, Peter’s invitation might be put this way:
What must we do?
Got Jesus?
In his name, Amen.
