William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)

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-	Let us pray the prayer for illumination.	0:06
	Open our hearts	0:11
	and minds, oh God,	0:13
-	and minds, oh God,
-	By the power	0:14
-	By the power
-	Of your holy spirit	0:15
-	Of your holy spirit
-	So that his word	0:17
-	So that his word
-	Is read and proclaimed,	0:18
-	Is read and proclaimed,
-	We may hear your message	0:20
-	We may hear your message
-	To us this season of Lent.	0:22
-	To us this season of Lent.
-	Amen.	0:25
-	Amen.
-	The first reading is from the Book of Romans,	0:28
	the 4th Chapter.	0:31
	For the promise that he would inherit the world	0:34
	did not come to Abraham or to his descendants	0:37
	through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.	0:41
	If it is the adherence of the law who are to be the heirs,	0:48
	faith is null and the promise is void,	0:52
	for the law brings wrath, but where there is no law,	0:58
	neither is there violation.	1:03
	For this reason, it depends on faith in order	1:07
	that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed	1:12
	to all his descendants, not only to the adherence	1:17
	of the law, but also to those who share	1:22
	the faith of Abraham, for he is the father	1:26
	of all of us.	1:31
	As it is written, I have made you the father	1:33
	of many nations.	1:36
	In the presence of the God in whom he believed	1:38
	who gives life to the dead and calls into existence	1:42
	the things that do not exist,	1:48
	hoping against hope, he believed that he would become	1:52
	the father of many nations according to what was said,	1:57
	so numerous shall your descendants be.	2:03
	He did not weaken in faith when he considered	2:07
	his own body, which was already as good as dead,	2:10
	for he was about 100 years old,	2:16
	or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.	2:19
	No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God,	2:24
	but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,	2:31
	being fully convinced that God was able to do	2:36
	what God had promised.	2:42
	Therefore, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.	2:45
	Now the words, it was reckoned to him, were written	2:52
	not for his sake alone, but for ours also.	2:56
	It will be reckoned to us who believe in him	3:02
	who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,	3:06
	who was handed over to death for our trespasses	3:12
	and was raised for our justification.	3:17
	This is the word of the Lord.	3:24
-	Thanks be to God.	3:27
-	The second reading is from the Gospel	3:31
	according to St. Mark, the 8th Chapter.	3:33
	Then he began to teach them that the son of man	3:40
	must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders,	3:43
	the chief priests and the scribes and to be killed	3:50
	and after three days, rise again.	3:55
	He said all this quite openly and Peter took him aside	3:59
	and began to rebuke him, but turning and looking	4:05
	at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said,	4:09
	"Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind	4:14
	"not on divine things, but on human things."	4:19
	He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them,	4:26
	"If any want to become my followers, let them deny	4:31
	"themselves and take up their cross and follow me,	4:36
	"for those who want to save their life will lose it	4:44
	"and those who will lose their life for my sake	4:50
	"and for the sake of the Gospel will save it,	4:55
	"for what will it profit them to gain the whole world	5:01
	"and forfeit their life?	5:06
	"Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?	5:09
	"Those who are ashamed of me and of my words	5:16
	"in this adulterous and sinful generation,	5:20
	"of them the son of man will also be ashamed	5:25
	"when he comes in the glory of his father	5:31
	"with the holy angels."	5:34
	This is the word of the Lord.	5:38
-	Thanks be to the Lord.	5:40
-	Pop psychotherapist Scott Peck says that one of the main	5:49
	reasons why we need other people is that other people	5:56
	provide what Peck calls friction.	6:01
	The solitary person has no one to rub up against,	6:06
	therefore no one there to smooth out rough edges	6:10
	of the personality, no one to promote the warmth,	6:15
	the energy, the creativity that comes from rubbing	6:19
	up against others.	6:22
	People give us friction, and I'm hoping that maybe	6:25
	that's one reason why you come to church,	6:30
	not just to rub up against other people	6:34
	because we discourage that here among the undergraduates,	6:36
	(congregation laughing)	6:40
	particularly in church,
	but to rub up against the word of God.	6:44
	Church is a place not where we snuggle up close to God,	6:50
	but where in being met by God, we get friction	6:58
	and in those moments, we realize that there is a distance	7:05
	between us and God.	7:12
	That's not what I was taught in seminary about preaching.	7:15
	There, somebody told us the preachers stand in the pulpit	7:19
	with a Bible in one hand and today's newspaper in the other.	7:23
	In 20 minutes, the preacher seeks to narrow that gap,	7:26
	that great gap between our fresh, new, modern world	7:30
	and the ancient world of Scripture.	7:35
	We moderns tend to think that way.	7:40
	We characterize the distance between us and the Bible	7:44
	as one of time, of a great gap of history.	7:48
	That's the way modern people think.	7:53
	We are privileged to live at the very summit	7:56
	of human development, namely Durham and there,	7:59
	from these serene heights we look down on everybody	8:03
	who got here before us.	8:06
	Is our problem with God just a matter of time,	8:09
	a gap of history, years between us and God?	8:13
	Now a Scripture like today's Gospel that makes you think	8:20
	the gap is just, it's simply because of who God is	8:25
	and who we are, to be brought on a Sunday	8:30
	into the presence of a living God is sometimes to be made	8:36
	aware of the gap between us and God	8:41
	that has little to do with 2,000 years,	8:46
	the gap, the distance is because we're unaccustomed	8:51
	to living with a free, sovereign God.	8:58
	We preachers, often in the interest of a kind of misguided	9:04
	evangelism, are forever guilty of inappropriately	9:09
	attempting to bridge that gap, to domesticate the Gospel,	9:13
	to housebreak God, to produce a Gospel which is honey	9:19
	to make the world's solutions go down a bit easier	9:23
	rather than salt, rather than light.	9:27
	Poor old church, they sometimes say.	9:32
	You're just so out of date, out of touch.	9:36
	You need to get the Gospel down to something	9:39
	that anybody can just walk in here off the street and get,	9:41
	something you can put on a bumper sticker,	9:44
	a slogan that can be put on a church billboard	9:47
	out on the front lawn.	9:51
	Years ago, Raoul Howl interviewed laypeople	9:53
	and probed your ideas about preaching	9:58
	and Howl's most frequent lay complaint in sermons	10:01
	was that sermons were just too long on analysis,	10:10
	too short on solutions.	10:13
	Tell me what I now need to do.	10:17
	20 minutes or so, I want a resolution of life's conflicts,	10:20
	answers to questions, solutions.	10:24
	True, the Gospel can be the answer to some of our deepest	10:29
	questions, solution to pressing problems,	10:32
	yet before it's an answer, it's a question.	10:38
	The question if this be God in the presence of this Jew	10:41
	from Nazareth, well then who are we?	10:47
	How then ought we to live?	10:53
	Too often popular American evangelism presents the Gospel	10:57
	as the solution to all our problems, the resolution	11:02
	of all conflict, a technique for making nice people	11:06
	just a bit nicer, successful people even more successful.	11:12
	My life was on drugs, I was a mess, I was addicted	11:18
	to various, I ate high cholesterol snacks.	11:22
	Then I found Jesus and everything got fixed.	11:26
	But there are these wonderful moments in Scripture	11:34
	when Jesus appears downright uninterested	11:39
	in getting close to us, in meeting or needs.	11:43
	He seems more interested in increasing the distance	11:49
	between himself and us.	11:53
	At times, when he seems more interested in widening the gap	11:57
	between us and God rather than bridging the gap,	12:01
	like today's Gospel.	12:08
	By now in Mark's Gospel, Jesus' disciples have been with him	12:11
	for some time and maybe they think they've sort of gotten	12:14
	the hang of what he's about, they kinda got him down	12:18
	fairly well and then right there at that point,	12:22
	Mark says Jesus began to teach them	12:28
	the son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected	12:32
	and be killed.	12:39
	The shock is great.	12:42
	Is this any way for a Messiah to act?	12:45
	Peter took Jesus aside and Peter urged Jesus	12:48
	to stop talking like that.	12:50
	Such talk will cause people to have negative thoughts.	12:52
	They might get depressed.	12:56
	How do you expect us to attract people to a movement	12:57
	that's headed in that direction?	13:00
	Jesus rebukes Peter, Peter's rebuke with well, if anybody	13:06
	wants to become my follower, then he ought to deny himself	13:14
	and take up his cross and follow, for those who want	13:19
	to save their life will lose it and those who lose	13:23
	their life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel	13:29
	will save it.	13:34
	Strange kind of talk.	13:38
	No doubt there were many that day who were following Jesus	13:42
	precisely because they thought that by following	13:48
	that they would save their lives, they would make	13:51
	their lives more rewarding and fulfilling,	13:54
	and now these tough words from Jesus.	13:58
	Mark doesn't say it, but you kinda wonder if maybe	14:01
	the crowds got smaller that day.	14:06
	After this conflicted teaching, the crowds around Jesus	14:10
	got smaller as the gap between us and Jesus got greater.	14:13
	And I tell ya, as a preacher, this is hard	14:21
	'cause I think I probably got in my head the notion	14:25
	that my job as a preacher was to take Jesus	14:28
	when he is most difficult and distant	14:32
	and work it up in such a way that you sit there	14:36
	hearing my sermon and you say to yourself	14:40
	well, that's kinda what I've always thought.	14:45
	Yeah, that makes sense to me.	14:48
	Yeah, got it, yeah, okay.	14:50
	Yerard Abling once said, "Theology is necessary	14:52
	"in order to make preaching as difficult as it should be."	14:58
	Whenever preaching gets easy, a kind of over-simplification	15:04
	of the Gospel, rules for better living, proverbial wisdom	15:07
	with a dash of pop psychology,	15:12
	Leo Buscaglia dressed up like Jesus.	15:15
	Well then, theology comes along	15:18
	and it pushes preaching toward petulancy.	15:20
	What Abling claims for theology can be true	15:25
	for us in Sunday worship.	15:29
	To rub up against the Bible is often a reminder	15:33
	that well, we don't own God.	15:37
	Scripture keeps making Jesus available to us	15:42
	and at the same time, keeps Jesus at some distance from us	15:45
	in order that that space between us and the throne of God	15:53
	might be kept free and untamed and threatening,	15:57
	and thereby demanding and thereby, life giving.	16:03
	Poor disciples in Mark.	16:09
	They've been following Jesus, they've been listening	16:11
	to every word and here toward the end,	16:13
	they don't have the foggiest notion of where he's going	16:17
	or what he's up to.	16:21
	Poor us.	16:24
	Second Sunday of Lent.	16:26
	Yeah, that in order to get close to Jesus.	16:28
	But then we get Scripture and we sense a growing gap	16:32
	between us and the Lord.	16:35
	Well, we've come here to get things kind of fixed,	16:39
	to get our lives and hear Jesus speak	16:43
	of losing our lives, of taking up a cross and following.	16:47
	Things can get rough walking up such a narrow path.	16:55
	Richard Hayes and I are teaching a class together	17:02
	in the seminary and the other day, Hayes noted	17:05
	that the common lectionary, that table of Scripture	17:08
	that we get our lessons from here each Sunday,	17:11
	that in the lectionary, if you have a Scripture lesson	17:15
	and you're reading along in the Scripture lesson	17:20
	and suddenly there's a break in verses	17:22
	and there's a gap of a few verses, then you pick up	17:24
	some other verses, check out those verses	17:26
	that got discarded in the lectionary and invariably,	17:29
	says Hayes, you'll find that in some way or another,	17:34
	they are verses of judgment, they are verses	17:37
	when God gets wrathful and judgmental,	17:40
	and those are the kind of verses	17:50
	it's sometimes hard to take.	17:51
	That way, Hayes says, if you can just eliminate	17:56
	a few of those verses, you can make Jesus over	17:58
	in anything you please.	18:02
	We can lessen the gap, we can remake Jesus	18:04
	until he looks just like us.	18:08
	As Malcolm Muggeridge said, "Genesis says God said,	18:11
	"'Let us make man through our own image,' and down	18:16
	"through history, man has been attempted to return	18:21
	"the favor to God, remaking God in our image."	18:24
	But those wonderful, delicious moments when Jesus rebukes,	18:31
	stands against us, judges, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"	18:36
	Jesus says to his own disciples.	18:42
	Such moments, we realize that Jesus, though he is God	18:47
	with us, he's still at some distance from us.	18:52
	He resists us, patiently, firmly teaches us.	18:58
	He is determined to have us on God's terms	19:05
	rather than acquiesce to our terms	19:09
	and one of the great adventures being a Christian	19:15
	is to get to follow that God.	19:20
	I think I told some of you who accosted me at the front door	19:26
	at the end of the service after I'd preached	19:31
	this sermon on forgiveness.	19:34
	"Do you mean to tell me," that's what she said	19:39
	to me back in the narthex, "Do you mean to tell me	19:41
	"that God expects me to forgive my abusive husband	19:43
	"who made my life hell for 10 years till I finally	19:47
	"got up the nerve to walk out on him?	19:49
	"I'm supposed to forgive him?"	19:51
	And I was thinking, "Now I remember why we don't preach	19:55
	"on that subject that often here."	19:58
	(congregation laughing)	19:59
	And immediately moved in to my homiletical defensive	20:01
	posture and said, "Look, we've only got 20 minutes.	20:05
	"I can't qualify all this the way it needs to be.	20:09
	"Spouse abuse is a terrible evil and I, I, I,	20:11
	but, I, I, I.	20:14
	"He did say 70 times seven and that's a lot	20:16
	"of forgiveness, and he did say forgive your enemies.	20:18
	"I can't think of a bigger enemy than your ex-husband	20:22
	(congregation laughing)	20:24
	"and I don't know
	"that I would say this, but I do believe Jesus,	20:27
	"it sounds like something he might say."	20:30
	(congregation laughing)	20:35
	She drew herself up to her full height and said,	20:37
	"Good, just checking.	20:40
	"Thank you!"	20:41
	(congregation laughing)	20:43
	And I thought to myself, now who ordained me to protect	20:45
	her from Jesus?	20:49
	(congregation laughing)	20:50
	Who gave me the right to say I'm sorry,	20:52
	when you got called for baptism, I guess God made a mistake.	20:56
	You look just as deceitful and cowardly as I am.	20:59
	I guess no, these demands of course don't apply to you.	21:03
	You're off the hook.	21:07
	You ought to demand that Scripture is read	21:11
	and that the word is preached in such a way	21:16
	that we restore the dignity to your baptism,	21:19
	that while you may have just thought that being a disciple	21:25
	of Jesus was just a matter of bringing out the best in you	21:29
	and little minor, moral tinkering to make you	21:33
	even nicer, in moments like, say wait a minute,	21:36
	Jesus is walking down a narrow road here	21:40
	that everybody doesn't want to go.	21:45
	This thing is bigger than I first imagined.	21:48
	If you don't want that kind of risk,	21:53
	then just, it would be good to be here, somewhere else.	21:56
	Get the consolations of pop psychology or wherever	22:02
	you can get it to help your life	22:05
	be a little less miserable, or you can stick	22:08
	with Jesus and be part of the adventure.	22:12
	This is some journey we're on with Jesus.	22:18
	In just a few weeks, this Lenten journey	22:24
	with Jesus will be over.	22:27
	We're gonna see where this path finally leads.	22:30
	The cost of the trip is going to be made painfully	22:34
	apparent for all to see as everybody gets a good view	22:38
	as he is lifted up, lifted up on a cross	22:43
	and we gathered with him toward the end	22:52
	at a meal, a meal of Jesus and his best friends.	22:54
	The table, a place of warm conviviality and socialization,	23:00
	and it was there at the table that he took a piece of bread	23:08
	and he took hold of a cup and he said, "This is my body,	23:11
	"broken for you.	23:20
	"This is my blood, poured out for you."	23:22
	And in moments like that, we realize this journey	23:31
	with Jesus can get rough, and yet it is a journey	23:35
	that leads to life everlasting.	23:42
	Amen.	23:46

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 5:49. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:48.
The preacher speaks to the awesomeness of God that human beings cannot fully fathom. He is aware of the fact that evangelistic preaching tends to soften the gravity of judgment and undermine the theology of Cross in order to make God more welcoming to the world, but Jesus’ preaching always pronounces the holiness of God and the great gap between divine and human, which can only be bridged by the Incarnation. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r44f1mz43

Date:

March 19, 2000

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Lent

Biblical Book:

Mark

Chapter and Verse:

Mark 8:31-38

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-1003
ref10163_lcq
uachapelsermaud
duke:320338
dcrau001647
ark:/87924/r44f1mz43
1957e6e6-cc19-4682-9363-885f0b5ca05a

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Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)

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1. William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)

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William H. Willimon - "The Faith Gap" (March 19, 2000)

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