PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “Catacombs Conquering the Coliseum”.

     Things aren’t always as they appear.  A recent magazine carried an article on the Coliseum in Rome.  It spoke of it as the place where “Christians died for a faith, that is now taken too lightly”.  i.e. “taken for granted”.  We look back to that famous historic amphitheater as the place where Christians were a spectacle to be pitied.  It is true that many Christians, facing the Caesar, greeted him as “those who were about to die”.  They were ridiculed, mocked, faced starved lions, and died for the blood-thirsty passion of the spectators of the day.  Their blood was spilled so freely in the arena that a visitor, asking about relic to mark his visit to Rome’s coliseum, was told, “take a handful of sand from the Coliseum, it is all martyrs!”.  That Flavian amphitheater seated over 50,000-85,000 spectators. In its arenas gladiators and wild beasts fought for the entertainment of the public.  On the Emperor’s birthday over one thousand exotic animals were slain in one day!  Christians weren’t the only victims to this madness.  This show place, still standing in modern day Rome built by Jewish slaves, and had surrounding walls costing over 50 million dollars to build.  The great Southern Baptist Preacher Vance Havner once said, “If we had sat in those grandstands amidst the grandeur that was Rome we might have been deceived.  For it was not the howling mob in the Coliseum that determined the course of history.  Underground in the catacombs another force was working.  A handful of men and women who worshipped another King called Jesus, who had died and risen again and was coming back again someday-here was the beginning of an empire within an empire, The Christians beneath the Caesars that would change the world.  They crept along the subterranean passageways and tunnels, among the tombs and caverns, haunted and persecuted, were the scum of the earth, in Rome’s eyes.  If we had prowled around in these gloomy depths, we might have come upon little companies singing songs, listening to a Gospel message, observing the Lord’s Supper.  We would have said, ‘they haven’t a chance!’.  BUT THE CHRISTIANS UNDERGROUND EVENTUALLY UPSET THE CAESARS ABOVE GROUND.  THE CATACOOMBS EVENTUALLY OVERCAME THE COLISEUM AND PUT THAT GREAT AMPHITHEATER OUT OF BUSINESS”.  (Havner Hearts Aflame. 1954).

     On January 1, 404 B.C. A Christian monk, from Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, was led by an inner voice to go to Rome, and plead for an end to the gladiatorial games.  He followed the crowds into the Coliseum.  Two gladiators were fighting.  Telemachus tried to get between them to get them to stop the fight.  Three times he cried out, “in the name of Christ forbear!”.  Some stories go that he was killed when he was run through by one of the gladiator’s sword.  Actually, a more historic accuracy is that the frenzied crowd, angry at his attempt to stop the entertainment, actually stoned the Christian monk to death.  The historian Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical history Book V, Chapter XXVI: Of Honorius The Emperor and Telemachus the Monk, says “when the abominable spectacle was being exhibited, Telemachus stepped down into the area, endeavoring to stop the men who were wielding their weapons against one another.  The spectators of the slaughter were indignant, and inspired by the triad fury of the demon who delights in those bloody deeds, stoned the peacemaker to death.  When the admirable Emperor was informed of this, he numbered Telemachus among the number of victorious martyrs, and put an end, once for all to that impious spectacle!”  THE CHRISTIANS HAD CONQUERED THE COLISEUM! 

     We live in a pagan world.  We are headed toward a very perilous age for Christians.  We are given very little chance to impact our world.  But as we read Christian history remember-Committed Christians who “love not their life to the end” even in numbers of courageous single Christians, even living underground, in their own self-imposed catacombs, can rise up in Spirit-filled courage, and make an impact!  We must rise up, stand up, refuse to back up, shut up, until we are taken up.  Who knows?  History might just repeat itself!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “JESUS SAVES: GET THE MESSAGE OUT ANYWAY YOU CAN…IT STILL HAS POWER TO MEET OUR DEEPEST NEED”.

     One of my favorite hymns is the hymn-“JESUS SAVES”.  I’m sure you recall the lyrics.

We have heard the joyful sound

Jesus Saves! Jesus Saves!

Spread the tidings all around

Jesus Saves! Jesus Saves!

Bear the news to every land,

Climb the steeps and cross the waves;

Onward tis our Lord’s command

Jesus Saves!  Jesus Saves!

     What a great song to sing in a worship service!  It gives us opportunity to lift our voices and testify to the reality of the truth that Jesus Christ really does save sinners like you and I.  But the sad thing is those who really need to hear that testimony are not sitting there listening.  We all benefit from being reminded of the trustworthiness of our Savior, but those who really need to know that reality rarely come to worship services to be reminded by or confronted with that truth.  Singing that lyric in public would probably not be well received from those listening, and not likely be received as life changing truth.  One zealous Christian took the phrase “Climb the steeps” to share the joyful news “Jesus Saves!” quite literally.  He climbed up a highway overpass, and for all to see, white paint, on black background, he wrote his public message, in courageous graffiti-“JESUS SAVES!”  Now everyone who drives by that underpass/overpass is confronted with that reality of that news!  THE GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL!  You might respond-well that certainly will not be effective!  How embarrassing that any Christian would resort to that kind of tactic to get the Good new of the Gospel out.  Frederick Buechner, in two of his books, The Hungering Darkness, and Secrets in the Dark, referred to such an incident, and what impact it just might have on the public collectively, and all of us individually.  Let me share what he wrote: 

     “Maybe Jesus Saves written up there on the cliff or the abutment of the bridge is embarrassing because in one way or another religion in general has become embarrassing: embarrassing to the unreligious man because, although he does not have it anymore, he has never really rooted it out of his soul either, and it still festers there as a kind of reproach; embarrassing to the religious man because, although in one form or another he still does have it, it seldom looks more threadbare or beside the point than when you set it against very much the same kind of seventy-five-mile-per-hour, neon-lit, cluttered, and clamorous world that is represented by the highway that the sign itself looks down upon there. 

     And maybe, at a deeper level still, Jesus Saves is embarrassing because if you can hear it at all through your wincing, if any part at all of what it is trying to mean gets through, what it says to everybody who passes by, and most importantly and unforgivably of all of course what it says to you, is that you need to be saved. Rich man, poor man; young man, old man; educated and uneducated; religious and unreligious—the word is in its way an offense to all of them, all of us, because what it says in effect to all of us is, “You have no peace… You are not happy… not whole…not saved” That is an unpardonable thing to say to a man whether it is true or false, but especially if it is true, because there he is, trying so hard to be happy, all of us are, to find some kind of inner peace and all in all maybe not making too bad a job of it considering the odds, so that what could be worse psychologically, humanly, than to say to him what amounts to “You will never make it. You have not and you will not, at least not without help”? You need to be saved, and Jesus specializes in that!

     And what could be more presumptuous, more absurd, more pathetic, than for some poor fool with a cut-rate brush and a bucket of white paint to claim that the one to give that help is Jesus? If he said God, at least that would be an idea, and if you reject it, it is only an idea that you are rejecting on some kind of intellectual grounds. But by saying “Jesus” he puts it on a level where what you accept or reject is not an idea at all but a person; where what you accept or reject, however dim and far away and disfigured by time is still just barely recognizable as a human face. Because behind the poor fool with his bucket there always stands of course the Prince of Fools himself, blessed be he, in his own way more presumptuous, more absurd. (Being saved by the Cross is still foolishness to the world!)

Jesus Saves…. And the bad thief, the one who according to tradition was strung up on his left, managed to choke out the words that in one form or another men have been choking out ever since whenever they have found themselves crossed up by the world: “Are you the Christ? Then save yourself and us.” With the accent on the “us.” If you are the Savior, whatever that means, then why don’t you save us, whatever that involves, save us from whatever it is that crosses us all up before we’re done, from the world without and the world within that crosses us all out. Save us from and for and in the midst of the seventy-five-mile-per-hour, neon-lit crisscross of roads that we all travel in this world. And then the good thief, the one on his right, rebuked the bad one for what he had said angrily, and then in effect said it again himself, only not angrily, God knows not angrily—said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingly power.” And finally the words of Jesus’s answer, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” which are words no less crude than the ones trickling down the cliff side, in their way no less presumptuous, absurd, pathetic; words that express no theological idea as an idea, but words that it took a mouth of flesh to say and an ear of flesh to hear. I can imagine that the guards who had been posted there to see that the execution was carried out properly might themselves have felt something like embarrassment and turned away from the sheer lunacy of the scene. (How can someone dying such a death on a cross save anyone?)

Such a one as that save me? That one—the spindle-shanked leader who thinks he is God’s son, bloodshot and drunk with his own torture, no less crossed up, crossed out than any other mother’s son. Such a one as that—Jesus, scrawled up there on the concrete among the four-letter words and the names of lovers? Only somehow then, little by little, a deeper secret of the embarrassment begins to show through: not can such a one as that save me, but can such a one as that save me? Because I suspect that at its heart the painful wincing is directed less to the preposterousness of the claim that Jesus saves than it is directed to the preposterousness of the claim that people like ourselves are savable—not that we are such sinners that we do not deserve saving, but that we are so much ourselves, so hopelessly who we are—no better, no worse—that we wonder if it is possible for us to be saved. I suspect the reason why the name “Jesus” embarrasses us when it stands naked is that it inevitably, if only half consciously, recalls to us our own names, our own nakedness. Jesus saves … whom? Saves Joe, saves Charlie, Ellen, saves me, saves you—just the names without any Mr. or Mrs., without any degrees or titles or Social Security numbers; just who we are, no more, no less. I suspect that it is at our own nakedness that we finally wince.”  Get your brush, and bucket of paint…get to sharing the good news…JESUS SAVES! EVEN ME! EVEN YOU!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “DISAPPEARING ACT FOR THE MAGNIFICIENT MAGNET!”

     Somebody stole the cross. Go figure!  Well that was a news story that got my attention a few years ago.  The missing cross was a six-foot-tall metal structure that was embedded in rock and concrete, and it was perched high upon a Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert.  Veterans actually placed it there to honor those who had died fighting for their country.  And wow! It was there for 75 years-no problem.  People who did not want it there argued against it all the way to the Supreme court.  And for the time being the Justices said that it could stay.  But somebody just went up there and stole it!  It’s Crazy!  Who stole the cross?  When I heard that I got to thinking…and something much more troubling occurred to me.  The cross has gone missing a lot of places these days; places that matter a lot more to God than on a mountain in the Mojave Desert! I listen to a lot of Christian radio programs; a lot of Christian television programs and I hear very little about the cross.  I listen to a lot of Christian talk today and there is quite an emphasis on how to have a great marriage, how to raise your kids, how to manage your money, how to have a good self-image, but hardly one reference to the Cross!  I hear some great Bible teaching on subjects that are deep and powerful, but the cross was on the margins or not even on the page!  The emphasis today is on important things like justice for the oppressed, compassion for the poor, help for families, and make no mistake, these things are a priority to our Loving Heavenly Father!  But we seldom hear about the Cross-God’s game-changer for a sin-broken planet, and that is the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

     Sadly, I think of lost people that I have known for a long time.  We have talked a lot about a lot of things!  But somehow how there never seems to be an appropriate moment to talk about the Cross of Christ!  To let them know He choose to die, such a death, not as a victim, but as a vicarious substitute.  He died for them.  He died for me.  He took the deserved judgment for our sins!  But somehow I seldom get around to the cross!  The cross is stolen from the conversation.  I suspect I am not alone!  Christians talk about their Church, their faith, their worship, but not much about our Savior!  Somebody stole the Cross!  I know who stole it!  It is the one that Jesus talked about-in John 10:10 he said, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy”.  The devil hates the Cross.  The Bible says, “that he disarmed the principalities, and powers, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross!”. Charles Spurgeon called the Cross “the Magnificent Magnet”. In John 12:12 Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself!”.  No wonder Satan encourages us to talk about anything we choose…just don’t mention that Cross!  Talk about your Church.  Talk about your faith.  Talk about family values.  Shy away from that cross!  The enemy of our souls knows its power, and he does whatever he can to erase the cross from our view!  He has stolen that cross.  That is the great disappearing act of the Magnificent Magnet!     

     Now the veterans were outraged that the cross was stolen from the hill in the Mojave Desert. We should be outraged too!-About the fact that the cross has been stolen from our hearts,  from our minds, from our worship services, from our Bible studies, from our Christian radio and TV programing, but most of all from our daily conversations with  the very people who need to hear about it!  I Corinthians 1:18 says “The message of the Cross is the Power of God unto Salvation”.  Mel Gibson did a powerful movie on The Passion of the Christ.  It was controversial.  It was criticized, but it changed the lives of millions who saw it!  So will our conversations about the Cross.  We need to be Passionate about the Passion of the Cross!  Just as passionate as the World and the Devil is about stealing it away from our consciousness!  Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross!  The Old Rugged Cross Made the Difference.  I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary. Gold City used to sing a Gospel song entitled- “It’ Still the Cross!”  It still is!  The Cross will never lose its power!  At the point of being redundant-let me share my favorite quote about the cross.  It is by George McCloud, in his book Only One Way Left, “The cross must be raised again in the center of the marketplace, as well as on the steeple of the Church, I am recovering the fact that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.  At the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble, because that is where He died, and that is what He died about!  That is where His followers ought to be, and what His followers should be about!”  Malcom Muggeridge, in his book Jesus Rediscovered, admitted that he had let the devil steal the cross from his heart, when he wrote “I should have worn it over my heart, carried it as my precious standard, never to be wrested out of my hands…it should have been my cult, my uniform, my language, my life!  I have no excuse!”  Neither do we!  We need to reclaim the Stolen Cross!  We need to raise again the “Magnificent Magnet”!  The World is in desperate need of the saving power it radiates to all who will “Look and Live!”