Michael A. Walrond, Jr. - "Put on Your Jesus Lenses" (March 22, 1998)

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-	Our third lesson comes to us from the 15th chapter	0:07
	of the Gospel according to Saint Luke:	0:12
	Now all the tax collectors and sinners	0:17
	were coming near to listen to him.	0:20
	And the Pharisees and the Scribes	0:22
	were grumbling and saying,	0:24
	"This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."	0:26
	So he told them this parable:	0:29
	There was a man who had two sons.	0:33
	The younger of them said to his father,	0:37
	"Father, give me the share of the property	0:39
	"that will belong to me."	0:42
	So he divided his property between them.	0:44
	A few days later, the younger son gathered all he had	0:48
	and traveled to a distant country.	0:53
	And there he squandered his property in dissolute living.	0:56
	When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place	1:01
	throughout that country, and he began to be in need.	1:05
	So he went and hired himself out	1:10
	to one of the citizens of that country,	1:12
	who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.	1:15
	He would gladly have filled himself with the pods	1:19
	that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.	1:22
	But when he came to himself, he said,	1:27
	"How many of my father's hired hands	1:30
	"have bread enough, and to spare!	1:32
	"But here I am dying of hunger.	1:36
	"I will get up, and go to my father, and I will say to him,	1:39
	"'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.	1:42
	"'I am no longer worthy to be called your son.	1:46
	"'Treat me like one of your hired hands.'"	1:50
	So he set off and went to his father.	1:54
	But while he was still far off, his father saw him	1:57
	and was filled with compassion.	2:01
	He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.	2:03
	Then the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned	2:07
	"against heaven and before you.	2:10
	"I am no longer worthy to be called your son."	2:12
	But the father said to his slaves,	2:16
	"Quickly, bring out a robe, the best one, and put it on him.	2:18
	"Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet,	2:23
	"and get the fatted calf and kill it,	2:26
	"and let us eat and celebrate.	2:28
	"For this son of mine was dead, and is alive again.	2:31
	"He was lost, and is found."	2:34
	And they began to celebrate.	2:36
	Now his elder son was in the field,	2:39
	and when he came and approached the house,	2:42
	he heard music and dancing.	2:44
	He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on.	2:47
	He replied, "Your brother has come,	2:50
	"and your father has killed the fatted calf	2:53
	"because he has got him back safe and sound."	2:56
	Then he became angry and refused to go in.	3:00
	His father came out and began to plead with him.	3:04
	But he answered his father, "Listen, for all these years	3:09
	"I have been working like a slave for you,	3:12
	"and I have never disobeyed your command.	3:15
	"Yet you have never given me even a young goat	3:18
	"so that I might celebrate with my friends.	3:21
	"But when this son of yours comes back,	3:23
	"who has devoured your property with prostitutes,	3:26
	"you killed the fatted calf for him."	3:29
	Then the father said to him, "Son, you are always with me	3:32
	"and all that is mine, is yours.	3:37
	"But we had to celebrate and rejoice,	3:41
	"because this brother of yours	3:43
	"was dead and has come to life.	3:44
	"He was lost, and has been found."	3:48
	This is the Word of the Lord.	3:52
-	Thanks be to God.	3:55
-	Good morning.	4:06
	Good morning, it is always a pleasure and a privilege	4:08
	to be here sharing with you on such an occasion.	4:11
	I was running a little late today,	4:16
	and one of the attendants told me	4:18
	that Nancy was a little concerned	4:20
	that I might not get here on time.	4:23
	And I immediately thought of a saying in the Church	4:25
	in reference to Jesus, and it says	4:29
	that he may not come when you want him,	4:33
	but he's always right on time.	4:36
	(congregation laughs)	4:38
	So I did not come when she was looking for me,	4:39
	but I was right on time.	4:42
	I thank God for her this morning.	4:44
	If you would permit me this morning to read again	4:47
	in your hearing the second lesson,	4:50
	as it was recorded in Second Corinthians,	4:54
	the fifth chapter, verses 16 through 21:	4:57
	From now on, therefore, we regard no one	5:05
	from a human point of view.	5:10
	Even though we once regarded Christ	5:13
	from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.	5:15
	Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.	5:22
	The old has passed away.	5:29
	Behold, the new has come.	5:32
	All this is from God, who through Christ	5:36
	reconciled us to himself,	5:40
	and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is,	5:43
	in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,	5:48
	not counting their trespasses against them,	5:53
	and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.	5:56
	So we are ambassadors for Christ,	6:01
	God making his appeal through us.	6:04
	We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.	6:08
	For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin,	6:14
	so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.	6:20
	I want this morning to share with you	6:29
	from the subject, put on your Jesus lenses.	6:32
	Put on your Jesus lenses.	6:39
	When I was debating as to	6:45
	where I would attend divinity school,	6:48
	there were many schools that interested me.	6:52
	But I chose Duke Divinity School for one reason,	6:57
	and that was, at the time I heard that someone	7:01
	whom I had greatly admired and respected	7:04
	would be teaching at Duke Divinity School.	7:07
	His name was Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor.	7:11
	Over the years, as I was wrestling	7:15
	with my own call to ministry	7:18
	and struggling through the nature of my call,	7:20
	I had come to be fond of the words of Dr. Proctor	7:23
	that he had penned in various books of his.	7:27
	And I looked upon him as someone	7:32
	who was a guiding light through my own struggle.	7:33
	And when I found out he would be here,	7:38
	I did not hesitate to come to Duke.	7:40
	When I got here, to my surprise,	7:45
	I was even more overwhelmed than I thought I would be,	7:48
	not by the Divinity School,	7:51
	or not by the nature of the curriculum,	7:53
	but I found out upon arriving here	7:55
	that my academic advisor would be Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor.	7:58
	My heart was filled, I was excited.	8:04
	I could not wait to go see my advisor,	8:06
	the person whom I had heard so much about, read about,	8:09
	but never had the opportunity to meet.	8:12
	I eagerly went to his office to meet him,	8:16
	and I remember on that first occasion	8:18
	I stayed there almost some 45 minutes.	8:20
	I believe I delayed him for a meeting he was going to,	8:23
	but I refused to leave, because I was	8:25
	just in awe to be in his presence.	8:29
	And during my first semester in divinity school,	8:32
	I took every opportunity that was available to me	8:34
	to try to corner Dr. Proctor in his office,	8:37
	and try to gain some wisdom from him.	8:40
	I eagerly anticipated visits to his office.	8:46
	And I came to realize that those visits	8:51
	for me were moments of growth, moments in which I was able	8:53
	to glean something from Dr. Proctor's wisdom	8:58
	that might aid me as I prepared for my own ministry.	9:01
	And just maybe he might say something	9:06
	at that moment that would help me to meander my way	9:08
	through some of the most complexing theological issues	9:11
	in which I was struggling with in divinity school.	9:15
	But on one particular occasion in Dr. Proctor's office,	9:19
	I had come to notice something	9:25
	that I had not noticed before.	9:27
	Sitting on a cabinet in his office was a wood carving,	9:29
	and the wood carving said, "Put on your Jesus lenses."	9:35
	And I thought about it, and I asked myself,	9:42
	"What does that mean?"	9:44
	And I thought immediately to myself that this was now	9:46
	another opportunity to further delay Dr. Proctor	9:49
	to explain something to me.	9:52
	(congregation laughs)	9:53
	So I said, "Dr. Proctor, what does that wood carving mean,	9:54
	"'Put on your Jesus lenses?'"	9:58
	And he would never call me by my first name,	10:03
	he would always say Waldron, he said,	10:05
	"Well, Waldron, you know, it's like this.	10:06
	"That if you are a Christian, you must begin	10:10
	"to look at the world through the lenses of Jesus Christ.	10:15
	"You must begin to see the world	10:21
	"differently than you would see with your own eyes,	10:23
	"but you must now begin to look through the eyes of Jesus,	10:27
	"and then see what it is that intrigues you	10:31
	"once you look through Jesus' eyes."	10:36
	He began to tell me that putting on	10:42
	one's Jesus lenses speaks of transformation,	10:43
	because you must now begin to see things differently	10:49
	than how you are accustomed to seeing.	10:52
	To put on one's Jesus lenses speaks of newness,	10:56
	because looking at the world through the lenses	10:59
	of Jesus means seeing new realities.	11:02
	Putting on Jesus lenses speaks of a radical regeneration.	11:07
	A radical reorientation of one's priorities.	11:13
	And this transformation, this newness,	11:19
	this radical reorientation,	11:24
	is what the Apostle Paul speaks of in this passage	11:27
	from his second letter to the church at Corinth.	11:31
	Paul is reminding the Corinthian believers	11:36
	of not only who they are, but he is challenging them	11:41
	to remember how they ought to look at the world.	11:46
	He says that you ought not look at the world	11:52
	as a human any longer, but you must now begin	11:57
	to look at the world as a transformed child of God.	12:01
	And he goes on to say in that eloquent verse,	12:08
	"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,	12:11
	"he or she is a new creation.	12:16
	"The old has passed away, the new has come."	12:19
	And what Paul was trying to say, was that	12:26
	if you have been apprehended by Jesus the Christ,	12:30
	if one has been baptized into the community of faith,	12:36
	they are a new creation.	12:42
	Behold, all things are passed away.	12:45
	And all things are made as new.	12:49
	As Paul put it in his letter to the church at Rome,	12:54
	"We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death,	12:57
	"so that as Christ was raised	13:02
	"from the dead by the glory of God,	13:04
	"we too might walk in the newness of life."	13:06
	And we who have been transformed	13:13
	by the power of Jesus the Christ,	13:15
	must now walk in the newness of life.	13:18
	We must now embody the transformation	13:22
	that we claim to have experienced.	13:26
	It reminds us that God, through Jesus Christ,	13:31
	was doing a new thing in the world,	13:37
	changing the old ways of being,	13:42
	changing the old ways of seeing,	13:46
	changing the old ways of doing,	13:50
	and then giving us new ways of living,	13:53
	new ways of being, new ways of doing,	13:56
	and even new ways of walking.	13:59
	The late Dr. Frederick Herzog, former professor	14:03
	at the Divinity School, wrote a book entitled "God-Walk."	14:07
	It was my pleasure of taking numerous classes	14:12
	with Dr. Herzog, and he said	14:14
	that when you have been changed by Jesus the Christ,	14:16
	you now must be the embodiment of that transformation,	14:21
	so much so that you now walk with God,	14:25
	and your walk is inspired by God,	14:29
	and your walk is determined by God.	14:32
	Paul said, "We now walk in the newness of life."	14:39
	And this transformation, this newness,	14:46
	this being a new creature that Paul talks about,	14:49
	I can accept, I can understand,	14:52
	but since I have been pastoring	14:55
	I have learned a lot of things	14:58
	about people who claim to be part of the new creation.	14:59
	And one of the things I have learned	15:05
	that disturbs me the most, is that those of us	15:06
	who are Christians, we are really scared of newness.	15:10
	We are fearful of new things.	15:16
	And as a pastor, I've come to learn	15:20
	that the seven deadliest words	15:23
	that could be uttered in a church is,	15:26
	"We have always done it this way."	15:28
	(congregation murmurs)	15:31
	"This is the way we've done it	15:34
	"from God knows when, and why change now?	15:35
	"This is part of our tradition, why change now?"	15:40
	And yet, we claim to be the walking embodiment of newness.	15:43
	Of being new creatures.	15:50
	A new creation, and yet we are so fearful of change.	15:52
	And you don't have to be in the church	16:00
	long as a pastor to realize that.	16:01
	We are held captive, almost, by our traditions.	16:05
	We are bound by our traditions.	16:10
	And tradition is not a bad thing, mind you,	16:12
	but when tradition has priority over the Word of God,	16:14
	then you're walking on dangerous grounds.	16:20
	The songwriter reminded us in the great hymn,	16:25
	"Great is thy Faithfulness," that	16:27
	"Morning by morning new mercies we see."	16:29
	Day by day new things we see.	16:33
	Day by day, moment by moment, we behold new ways of being,	16:35
	so that to be bound by the past does not reflect	16:42
	your transformation as a Christian.	16:46
	Being a new creature means, and this may be radical	16:50
	for some, encountering new people.	16:55
	It means going to new places,	17:00
	it means even engaging in new ministries.	17:04
	Doing things that we may not be accustomed to doing,	17:09
	but doing them because of the call that God has placed	17:13
	on our lives to be new creatures.	17:16
	And yes, it is difficult to embody this newness.	17:22
	It is scary.	17:27
	But I am reminded that the Word tells us	17:31
	that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power.	17:33
	So where we are confronted with our own fear,	17:41
	we reach deep within ourselves and grab hold	17:46
	of the power of God that lives in us	17:48
	because we have been transformed by Jesus the Christ.	17:51
	It means that we must stop being our greatest enemies.	17:57
	Stop putting limits on what we can do	18:03
	in service of Jesus the Christ.	18:07
	Stop limiting our possibilities,	18:10
	stop putting ceilings over our heads,	18:12
	and being content with where we are.	18:16
	The good thing about being a Christian	18:18
	is that you have a past.	18:20
	You can say, "I was this way, I used to be this way,	18:22
	"but since I was apprehended by Jesus the Christ,	18:25
	"things start to look different now.	18:28
	"I start to see things differently,	18:30
	"and I no longer can be held captive	18:32
	"by my own self-limitations."	18:35
	To be a new creature means to reach beyond what is,	18:40
	and grab hold of what ought to be.	18:45
	It means reaching beyond the narrow confines	18:47
	of our own dimly-lit horizons, and grabbing hold	18:50
	of the greater possibilities of life.	18:54
	It means that we no longer are bound	18:58
	by the ways and the order of the world.	19:05
	But we are now bound by the ways and the order	19:09
	of Jesus the Christ, and it is my opinion	19:12
	that we as the Church are now at a crossroads.	19:16
	Many issues that are now challenging	19:23
	the Church, the Body of Christ,	19:25
	would have never been thought of in the long ago.	19:27
	And how will we confront the new challenges,	19:32
	how will we confront the new issues?	19:34
	Will we sit idly by and just rely on our traditions,	19:39
	or will we try to grab hold of the greater possibilities	19:42
	of life, and thereby fulfill our transformation?	19:46
	We are not supposed to uphold	19:55
	the division that abounds in our land,	20:00
	the division that abounds in our churches,	20:07
	but we are to embody and reflect	20:11
	a radical difference, a radical transformation.	20:15
	And our division that exists in so many of our churches,	20:22
	does not reflect our calling, nor mark our ministry.	20:27
	And the division that abounds in our society	20:32
	surely is not the kind of thing that we,	20:35
	as believers in Jesus the Christ, want to uphold.	20:38
	Classism is not of God.	20:44
	Sexism is not of God.	20:48
	Racism is not of God.	20:53
	It seeks to put asunder what God has joined together,	20:57
	and if you are part of this new reality,	21:01
	you cannot embody division.	21:04
	But, as Paul reminds us in this passage,	21:07
	that our ministry is marked by reconciliation,	21:10
	not alienation, not separation,	21:14
	but restoration and reconciliation.	21:17
	That we seek to embody the mending of broken lines.	21:20
	The mending of broken relationships.	21:30
	If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creature.	21:34
	We are always striving with God	21:43
	to restore the brokenness in our society.	21:48
	We are always striving with God	21:54
	to bring life to the places where death abounds.	21:58
	We are always striving with God	22:03
	to bring hope in the midst of hopeless situations.	22:06
	We are always striving to feed those who are hungry,	22:11
	to clothe those who are naked,	22:16
	and to give water to those that may be thirsty.	22:18
	Always abounding in our bodies, what Christ has done for us.	22:23
	There's something, a poem that I like to refer to,	22:35
	and I may have said it in this context before.	22:39
	It is my favorite poem, because it speaks	22:41
	of reaching beyond one's limitations,	22:44
	grabbing hold of greater possibilities	22:49
	and recognizing the hidden potential that may dwell inside.	22:52
	And Howard Thurman, who was a great theologian,	22:57
	often quoted the poem.	23:02
	And he said, "I'm tired of sailing my little boat	23:05
	"far inside the harbor bar.	23:10
	"I want to go out where the big ships float,	23:13
	"out on the deep where the great ones are.	23:17
	"And should my frail craft prove too slight	23:20
	"for waves that sweep those billows o'er,	23:24
	"I'd rather go down in a stirring fight	23:27
	"than drowse to death by the sheltered shore."	23:31
	My grandmother put it another way.	23:36
	She would say, "Have thine own way, Lord,	23:41
	"have thine own way.	23:44
	"Thou art the potter, I am the clay.	23:47
	"Mold me and make me after thy will,	23:52
	"while I am waiting, yielded and still."	23:57
	Put on your Jesus lenses.	24:04
	Take the risk to look at the world	24:08
	through the eyes of Jesus.	24:12
	And for some it may be offensive	24:14
	to look at the world through Jesus' eyes.	24:17
	But if it is offensive, so be it.	24:19
	Because I'd rather be offended by Jesus	24:24
	and have my life changed, than march to the drumbeat	24:26
	of a world that does not know my savior.	24:31
	Put on your Jesus lenses.	24:36
	Amen.	24:40

Item Info

Title:

Michael A. Walrond, Jr. - "Put on Your Jesus Lenses" (March 22, 1998)

Description:

Sermon start time: 04:06. Sermon end time: 24:41.
As Christians we are to view the world through the eyes of Jesus the Christ. Only then will we be able to embody the transformation we have experienced as new creations in Christ and practice the ministry of reconciliation. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “To be a new creature means to reach beyond what is and grab hold of what ought to be. It means reaching beyond the narrow confines of our own dimly-lit horizons and grabbing hold of the greater possibilities of life. It means that we no longer are bound by the ways and the order of the world. But we are now bound by the ways and the order of Jesus the Christ.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r47m04f98

Date:

March 22, 1998

Speaker:

Walrond, Michael A., Jr.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-0898
ref9945_00l
uachapelsermaud
duke:320298
dcrau001542
ark:/87924/r47m04f98
aed6e899-6fe7-474b-9e2e-5c01ba21a3ef

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