It’s the year of our Lord, 2024 and that means that another famous pastor has “fallen” into sin and Twitter is arguing over what to think and say about it. Just as an aside, and not to disappoint anyone, but I’m not going to link to particular tweets because it would take me hours and potentially turn this blog into one of those sites that report on the tweets and I wouldn’t be able to do it as well as those places that do.
With that out of the way, I put the word “fallen” into scare quotes because one or two people, women I think, are mad that that’s the expression. Like Pastor Lawson just sort of happened, unawares, to stumble into the pit of adultery through no fault of his own. Nobody yells at a child for falling down. Poor Pastor Lawson was probably a victim of some evil vixen. Honestly, I can sympathize with this complaint. Though we do, for the most part, fall into sin unawares, some sins take a lot of work.
I never wake up in the morning intending to hate anyone or lie or be selfish. I “fall” into those things as I’m going along trying to be good. The trouble is that my heart, as the Lord says, is a factory churning out evil thoughts. I therefore continually “fall.” But finding another person to have sex with, to whom you are not married, involves a number of logistical complications. There would be many moments along the way that you might just say, “Oh hang it, I don’t have time for this,” or something like that.
Another group of people are arguing about Pastor Lawson’s theology. He preached from a Calvinist point of view, with a heavy emphasis on the sovereignty of God, and so a lot of people are saying that he tried to put the responsibility for this sin at the feet of the Lord, when really he is to be blamed, and this discredits Calvanist theology. I don’t think this is quite the gotcha so many suppose. God really is the ruler of the universe. That verity is not at all in contradiction with the fact that we are all sinners. God doesn’t make us sin, but neither is he helpless before all the ruin and devastation we pour out upon the earth. When you hold man’s sinfulness together with God’s power you end up with the cross, the divine redemption of fallen humanity. It’s literally the gospel that grows up from the parched and blighted ground. Even people who aren’t Calvinists can make these necessary logical connections.
And finally, there is the group of people who are angry with another group of people who are expressing heartbreak and sadness. The angry group believes that the sad troup is treating Pastor Lawson too gently. Where was all the mercy and kindness for Pastor Begg when he gave that unfortunate advice about whether or not to go to an lgbtq wedding? What about the abuse of women? What about toxic celebrity pastors? Be angry, not sad, they say. This is, perhaps, my favorite type of Twitter conflagration for it is always a fun thing to police other people’s feelings and thoughts about the news of the day. One person reacts, however thoughtlessly, and another person comes along to explain why that reaction was wrong, and then another person comes along and defends the first person, and so the excessively long day wears on.
As for me, I am weary of having to read about yet another well-known pastor deciding to trash his life and his ministry by committing the grave sin of sexual immorality. It is so foolish. It is so wicked.
All I can do is flee Twitter for a short minute and wander over to the Lections appointed for today. For no matter the ruin and devastation wrought by any man, the Bible is still the single place to discover what is best to feel and best to say.
Both James and Jesus have some hard words for anyone who wants to still grope his way around the Kingdom of God. Why do bad things happen? Because of “jealousy and selfish ambition.” Where those two things abide, “there will be disorder and every vile practice.” This seems to me a neat and terrible description of the world every day of the week. If I don’t want to live in a world like that, I need “wisdom from above” which is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. In fact, a “harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
Yes of course, says the reader of the Bible. But what about Pastor Lawson? What about my general disappointment with the failures of the people who took up positions of trust, whose job it was to shepherd the flock of God? Also, what about Twitter? Why does the early morning scroll make my stomach turn over? James can explain that too:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Every time I go past this text I wonder who on earth in the congregation James is writing to is committing murder. Can you imagine going to church and having the pastor lean over the pulpit, wave his hand over you and all your brothers and sisters in Christ, and then hearing those shocking words, “You adulterous people!” It would be really awful if then you discovered the pastor was actually committing adultery.
The trouble is—well, there are so many troubles, but one of them is—that the only way for Christians to live peaceably together in the Kingdom of God is if they really understand down in the depths of their hearts that they are really so bad, that their inclinations are so ugly that unless God does something, they have no hope. And this is a hard saying, for none of us really believe that we are that bad. Our sins are “struggles.” They are just us being “broken.” They are the result of our childhoods. They are because other people are selfish and didn’t consider us more highly than themselves. They are because we didn’t have the same opportunities as other people. There are a thousand reasons why those stray vile thoughts about other people are not my fault. But the seedbed of peace is, as James says, humility, and humility is the result of looking into your own soul and seeing that you have thoughts and desires in there that would destroy the whole world.
I was trying to explain this to my children for some reason this week. The way of peace in marriage and in church is if both people know they are bad. If just one person believes himself to be good, the flames of jealousy and rage begin to grow.
But how can one begin to face one’s own badness with any hope? How can I even consider the possibility that I might be capable of murder or adultery or just being a jerk when so clearly none of those things are even on my horizon? Well, Jesus has a pretty neat trick:
And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
What’s so funny about this, of course, is that what Jesus had been discussing “on the way” was that he was going to die and rise again. But they didn’t hear what he said, because they were occupied with the more pressing consideration of which of them was better than all the others. The word is “greatest.” It is a relative term. It only works when some people are pretty low down. A fun time in this life usually includes being able to compare yourself to someone. I might not be as rich as I’d like, but at least I’m not as poor as those people across town. I’d love to be thinner, but…well, you get the idea.
The problem with the disciples’ little argument is that they were all bad. James and John would have been happy to have a whole village annihilated. Thomas reserved the right to be suspicious about everyone even to the end. All of them ran away. The worst of it is, Jesus had to go to the cross and die—for them. Those twelve men who were trundling down the road with him, bitterly recriminating each other, all needed the Lord’s precious blood to wash away their dark and destructive sins.
And so Jesus takes a child who must have been hanging around occupied with something the way so many children are and makes all his disciples stop their chatter for just a minute. I expect it must have been a very young child, one young enough to be picked up, one young enough not to talk very well. For as soon as we gain the power to talk, we gain the power to compare, to measure, to justify ourselves. A six-year-old child, for example, can explain to you that she is very beautiful and has a much prettier dress than the girl over in the corner. An eight-year-old child can make fun of your name, or decide that what you’re saying is boring and stupid.
But a three-year-old? A two-year-old? That child thanks God, when invited, for the candle, for the snuffer, for his parents, for her pretty shoes. That child can barely speak and has to be invited to come into the room, so humble, so anxious, so unaware of her own position in the world.
That halting step, that mute gratitude is the very best way to endure until the end. Creep into your pew, this morning, and let the ugliness be washed away by the Word of God. Take ahold of the Cup of Salvation, open your hands for the Body of the Lord and accept how very low the Savior came to raise you up to life.
So anyway, hope to see you in church!
“The way of peace in marriage and in church is if both people know they are bad. If just one person believes himself to be good, the flames of jealousy and rage begin to grow. “
I so agree ! Just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to see that TRUTH🩷
“But how can one begin to face one’s own badness with any hope? “
Really the only hope we can have is if we admit we are bad, sinners, dead.
If I do something “inappropriate “, I can learn to be appropriate. If I make a mistake, I can fix it. If I am broken, I can blame someone else. But only if I admit I am a sinner, I acted evilly, only then can I receive forgiveness and mercy and restoration. In our fear and pride we (I) do not want to admit sin, but only in that humility can we (I) be restored.
And now I am going to take Anne’s frequent advice and go to church.