We Still Need Jesus!

“As soon as the Gospels were written, speech without experience began to dabble with the new facts by the existence of the Church…people tried to think the new life without being touched by it first in some form of call, listening, passion or change of heart.” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

I must have been ten years old, and it must have been this late summer kind of time. Sitting between mom and dad (no choir in the summer!) in the sweltering balcony of North Park Covenant Church, we listened to pastor Wiberg preach with passion, returning again and again too the phrase, “We still need Jesus!” As if unplanned, the sermon ended with him coming down from the platform and beginning to bang on the piano, and we sang:

“Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidd’st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” (Covenant hymnal 331).

It was as close to an “altar call” as I’d ever seen in our church, because we didn’t have those, where we would be asked to get up and come forward and accept Jesus publicly as Savior and Lord. But I was familiar with it, from visiting my friends’ churches, and from those Thursday night camp bonfires. There the speaker would invite us somehow after leading up to it all week, to do something — raise a hand, or stand up, or throw a stick into the fire “if you want to give your life to Jesus, or re-commit your life to him.” Peer pressure ensued, but beyond that I really was touched by the gospel’s good news, even as a child.

Well, I must have just returned from one of those tender camp experiences, when on the way home from church I remember asking my dad why pastor Wiberg didn’t ask people to come forward. Not exactly remembering, my dad responded with something like this: “Well, Peter, it’s a good question, and we respond, we come to Jesus, but that’s not the way we do it.” And I knew at least part of what he meant, evidenced by the tears I often saw flowing in the sanctuary. A deep experience of God’s love and response to the call of Jesus to come to him were readily apparent, absent the more evangelical approach.

I’ve thought about that day now fifty summers ago and that question I asked. It was a good and important one. Still is, especially for those of us who carry on a more nuanced and less confrontational way of asking each other to “get saved”, to “give our hearts to Jesus”, to “find new life in Christ”, to “accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Though we don’t ask for raised hands or stand-ups, nevertheless we ask (I hope!). Because as pastor Wiberg said it, “We still need Jesus!”

In spite of all the guilting and shaming attempts at manipulation the church has a history with, and despite our more Lutheran, sacramentlist ways, we are a revivalist people. Our Pietist forebears would ask each other “So are you alive in Jesus?” And then the next time they saw each other, “Are you STILL alive in Jesus?” Ours is a tradition deeply steeped in conversion experiences and the constant process of repentance, of turning away from our selves and opening up to God’s Spirit. Our history takes shape in “strangely warmed hearts” and tears for joy and testimonies, and that real experience shapes the way we speak, and act, and love, and serve, and pray.

Ours must be a faith of experience first, and over and over again, before it is anything else. The grace of God needs to touch us, and change us, and form us, once, for the first time, and again and again, when we come to this: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3)

I still need Jesus, and you do too! Everyday, every hour, every minute. And Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Though our tradition these days is a bit more modest and relational and welcoming rather than confrontational (a good thing!), let us never lose the gospel’s call, which is to come to Jesus. If yours is a religious experience that is boring to you, try opening up and really trusting Jesus with your journey. Try giving your life to Christ and set out on an adventure of following him. An adventure it will be!

Are you alive in Jesus? Are you STILL alive in Jesus?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

We Still Need Jesus!

“As soon as the Gospels were written, speech without experience began to dabble with the new facts by the existence of the Church…people tried to think the new life without being touched by it first in some form of call, listening, passion or change of heart.” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

I must have been ten years old, and it must have been this late summer kind of time. Sitting between mom and dad (no choir in the summer!) in the sweltering balcony of North Park Covenant Church, we listened to pastor Wiberg preach with passion, returning again and again too the phrase, “We still need Jesus!” As if unplanned, the sermon ended with him coming down from the platform and beginning to bang on the piano, and we sang:

“Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidd’st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come!” (Covenant hymnal 331).

It was as close to an “altar call” as I’d ever seen in our church, because we didn’t have those, where we would be asked to get up and come forward and accept Jesus publicly as Savior and Lord. But I was familiar with it, from visiting my friends’ churches, and from those Thursday night camp bonfires. There the speaker would invite us somehow after leading up to it all week, to do something — raise a hand, or stand up, or throw a stick into the fire “if you want to give your life to Jesus, or re-commit your life to him.” Peer pressure ensued, but beyond that I really was touched by the gospel’s good news, even as a child.

Well, I must have just returned from one of those tender camp experiences, when on the way home from church I remember asking my dad why pastor Wiberg didn’t ask people to come forward. Not exactly remembering, my dad responded with something like this: “Well, Peter, it’s a good question, and we respond, we come to Jesus, but that’s not the way we do it.” And I knew at least part of what he meant, evidenced by the tears I often saw flowing in the sanctuary. A deep experience of God’s love and response to the call of Jesus to come to him were readily apparent, absent the more evangelical approach.

I’ve thought about that day now fifty summers ago and that question I asked. It was a good and important one. Still is, especially for those of us who carry on a more nuanced and less confrontational way of asking each other to “get saved”, to “give our hearts to Jesus”, to “find new life in Christ”, to “accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Though we don’t ask for raised hands or stand-ups, nevertheless we ask (I hope!). Because as pastor Wiberg said it, “We still need Jesus!”

In spite of all the guilting and shaming attempts at manipulation the church has a history with, and despite our more Lutheran, sacramentlist ways, we are a revivalist people. Our Pietist forebears would ask each other “So are you alive in Jesus?” And then the next time they saw each other, “Are you STILL alive in Jesus?” Ours is a tradition deeply steeped in conversion experiences and the constant process of repentance, of turning away from our selves and opening up to God’s Spirit. Our history takes shape in “strangely warmed hearts” and tears for joy and testimonies, and that real experience shapes the way we speak, and act, and love, and serve, and pray.

Ours must be a faith of experience first, and over and over again, before it is anything else. The grace of God needs to touch us, and change us, and form us, once, for the first time, and again and again, when we come to this: “For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3)

I still need Jesus, and you do too! Everyday, every hour, every minute. And Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Though our tradition these days is a bit more modest and relational and welcoming rather than confrontational (a good thing!), let us never lose the gospel’s call, which is to come to Jesus. If yours is a religious experience that is boring to you, try opening up and really trusting Jesus with your journey. Try giving your life to Christ and set out on an adventure of following him. An adventure it will be!

Are you alive in Jesus? Are you STILL alive in Jesus?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Taking a Daily “Time Out”

Then he (Jesus) told this story to some who boasted of their virtue and scorned everyone else:

“Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a proud, self-righteous Pharisee, and the other a cheating tax collector. The proud Pharisee ‘prayed’ this prayer: ‘Thank God, I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t commit adultery, I go without food twice a week, and I give to God a tenth of everything I earn.’

“But the corrupt tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed, but beat upon his chest in sorrow, exclaiming, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home forgiven! For the proud shall be humbled, but the humble shall be honored.”

(Luke 189-14, Living Bible)

Recently I was asking a friend who found a new church home about what drew them there, and she said, among other things that “It was the only church could find that offered me the gift of confession.” I’ve been thinking about her phrase “the gift of confession”. It doesn’t capture the way I usually think about that word or process — you know, of “coming clean”, of getting honest with the Living God about my living days and broken ways. And then I reflect on these words:

“Remember that our Lord Jesus can sympathize with us in our weaknesses, since in every respect he was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with boldness approach the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

How I need mercy and grace! Though sometimes I lose sight of these when I lose touch with my own frailty and opt instead for the delusion of self-righteousness, that old, primal temptation given to humanity way back in the garden of eden: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” What a delusion, and what a temptation still.

I think I need a daily time out to start over again with this God of mercy and grace, who I’m told is not waiting with anger but filled with what Israel calls “Hesed”, that is, steadfast love, with mercy and grace in the moment when I desperately need just such. The trick is that grace is only my experience when I’m up front and honest about my need for it, and why. And here is where my honest confession to God becomes a gift. I can begin again with a clean heart and mind, with a new chance to love up and out; I can renew the day with a lightened burden in the presence of the risen Christ who bids me to come and find rest.

Maybe that gets a little bit at what my friend meant when she talked about “The Gift of Confession”. Maybe honest confession, though not easy, though often painful and embarrassing, really is good for our souls. For we come home even in our sins to the One who has loved us with an everlasting love, and whose grace to begin again is always abundantly flowing like a rushing summer river.

I think the prayer of the tax collector is a gift too, because it’s short and sweet and easy to own: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It’s easy to repeat with the cadence of every breath, a constant plea, an unburdening of sorrow, an expression all at one time of utter despair and trust in the One who I know loves me. I can fill in the blanks, I can find the details in my secret heart. And in this honest confession I find again and again a word of release, and a lightened burden, and surprisingly, a distinct sense that all is well again.

A daily time out is what I need, to come back home to God’s grace and mercy in my time of need. How about you?

Peter Hawkinson