Author: W. Keith Brenton

What Should We Preach?

/ W. Keith Brenton / 11 Comments

These things were preached.

They were proclaimed. ~ Mark 1:14; Luke 8:1, 9:60; Acts 4:2, 5:42, 8:5, 25, 13:5, 38, 17:3, 23, 20:27, 10:8, 15:16-19, 1 Corinthians 2:1, Colossians 1:23-28, 4:3-4; 2 TImothy 4:17; 1 John 1:1-3.

All these things are really one. (It’s obvious, isn’t it?)

This one message was shared in the context of history and prophecy fulfilled (Acts 2, 3:11-26, 4:1-21, 7). It was explained in the context of current and local beliefs (Acts 17:16-34). Before great crowds and small gatherings, kings and governors, stadiums of angry protesters and fellow prisoners in jail cells, by rivers and in synagogues and in homes, this is what was preached and what the bearers of the gospel encouraged others to preach.

In all of scripture, I am unable to find instruction, encouragement or example to preach anything but this. No sermons arguing about how bad sin is, how stupid unbelievers are, how wrong other faiths and beliefs are, how right and good we are to have figured everything out, how new binding but silent law compels the follower in Christ to perfect obedience, how to discern what is binding from what isn’t, how much our works of obedience must complete our salvation, how eschatological theology affects ecclesiology in an epistemological context, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pinhead.

I did, however, find warnings about the sanctity of the gospel:

“By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” ~ 1 Corinthians 15:2

“For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” ~ 2 Corinthians 11:4

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” ~ Galatians 1:8-9

And I found one bit of good, solid preaching philosophy:

“I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” ~ 1 Corinthians 2:2

So here’s my two cents’ worth on the matter. You’ve heard or read me say it before:

People who don’t know about Jesus need to.

The rest of us never tire of hearing more about Him.

Luke 1 and 2 – The Bread is Given

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52 Weeks at the Table – Week 32

Luke’s opening chapter leaves no doubt that the Child foretold in centuries past will be born an extraordinary child. Angels appear. A forerunner is prophesied. A Messiah is promised. The fetal forerunner John leaps in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. Mary sings. Zechariah sings. And in chapter two, all of heaven sings while dazed shepherds keep watch over the innocent, newborn Lamb of God. He is laid in a manger — a place where animals eat. The One who will feed thousands lies in a food trough.

But the prophecies are not all kind and fair. When the parents bring their eight-day-old Son to the temple for circumcision, the elderly prophet Simeon seems to sing his praise and prayer for God’s salvation – and for release from this life. He holds the Child and blesses Him and confirms His destiny: to cause the rising and falling of many in Israel … to be a sign spoken against … to reveal the thoughts and hearts of many. And he tells Mary that a sword will pierce her own soul, too. It is a dark revelation, relieved only a moment later when the prophetess Anna begins telling everyone around that this Child would bring the redemption of Jerusalem.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God and Father, You behold past, present and future. You weave them to Your purpose. You create life, give life, restore life. Your promises never fail. So we sing to You our praise of thanksgiving for the redemption of our lives, our bodies … through the Body of Your Son. We cherish Him in this bread, which nourishes body and soul. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Merciful and Just One; Loving and Righteous God: thank You for giving Your Son, the Only of Your creation to remain innocent as a newborn throughout the span of life. Through His blood, we fallen may rise again. Through His blood, the thoughts of our hearts are revealed. Through His blood, a sword pierces our own souls, too. Through His blood, we find redemption from sin. Through His name, we thank you for this cup: Amen.

John 1, 2 – Eat This Scroll

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52 Weeks at the Table – Week 31 (Alternate)

Twice in scripture – Ezekiel 3 and Revelation 10 – a spokesperson of God is told to eat a scroll containing a prophecy to be proclaimed, God’s Word for His people. God wanted His Word to be taken internally … digested and comprehended and made a part of His spokesperson.

The apostle John tells us in the opening chapter of his gospel that the Word of God for His people is Jesus. Jesus came to this world, not by whirlwind or meteor, but as a baby laid to rest in a manger. We get our English word “manger” from the French verb manger, “to eat.” Jesus’ mother cradled Him in a food trough. He came to be consumed – consumed by His passion for His Father’s house; for the people He came to populate it with … you and me. John recounts this zeal for God’s house early in his gospel,1 where Jesus drives the selfishness and convenience and animal nature from the temple; where He predicts that God’s temple will be destroyed, and He will raise it up in three days.

Jesus’ birth, His life, His teaching, His miracles of helping, His death, and His resurrection – these are the gospel; what all scripture points toward. This is Jesus, the Word of God, not in a nutshell … but in a morsel of bread and a sip of the blood of the grape. Let’s proclaim it together.

A Prayer Over the Bread

Our God, who put Your word in the mouths of Ezekiel and John on Patmos, You speak to us now through Your very own Son, and that Word made flesh – whose body is seen in this bread – enters our mouths to give us strength to testify to that Word with our mouths. This is His body, broken for us. It is as sweet as honey with the promise of redemption and resurrection. It is also bitter with the suffering and death He endured that we might live. Help us always to remember this, whether hungry for the Word, or filled with its grace – through Jesus: Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Creator and Giver of life, we see in this cup the blood of Your Son, and we remember that it flowed from His body at His crucifixion. Yet we also remember that His life-blood flowed within His veins and arteries as He lived, and lived again, for us. We remember what He taught, how He showed Your love, how He brought life back to those who had died. We, too, were once dead in our sins … and this blood brought us back to a life worth living; a life that need not end. For all this we give our humble thanks: Amen.

I Baptized My Daughter Last Night

/ W. Keith Brenton / 11 Comments

I told her – and her gathered friends and family – it was the moment that every Christian parent prays about for their child from the moment of birth … or adoption.

Still … it wasn’t quite the way I had pictured it; or quite the way I had hoped.

You see, I began picturing it and hoping it a long time ago, as I said. Continuously! And back among those years of picturing, hoping and praying were three years in Abilene, Texas at a church where our friends Randy and Jackie immersed their teen-aged daughter, together, and spoke words of blessing over her. So, of course, as nothing about that strikes me as the least bit unscriptural, I could not help but picture that moment shared with Angi right there in the water with our children and me.

No one in that pool of baptismal water would be “lording it over” anyone about anything – least of all authority, which belongs to Christ in totality (Mathew 28:18) but sharing a mile-marker moment, a privilege of ongoing instruction, a blessing made possible only by the Lord.

But that’s not the way it happened. Laura could have just as easily asked a minister at our church … a counselor at Bible camp … a teacher from her Christian school … all kinds of people! … to immerse her into Christ. She chose Daddy, and I’ll always be grateful and honored that she did.

Her sweet nature and generosity are already more example than I deserve or can live up to. (As if that weren’t enough, I also have her brother Matt and mom Angi to look up to!)

As more years pass, if we can all mature in Christ together, feeling free to speak and do and live for Him, all the time and in every place, it will be more than enough for this old soul.

Somewhere Back We Jumped the Track

/ W. Keith Brenton / 13 Comments

The title of the post is a line from a song by Bread, “This Isn’t What the Governmeant.”

But the post has nothing to do with the state.

It has to do with the church.

For those of us in the Restoration Movement fellowship, we can look back at a time when our track diverged from the Presbyterian Church. From there, we sprouted a three-way switch throwing folks onto Christian Church, Disciples of Christ and Church of Christ sidings.

Sidings? dare I say. Yes, sidings. We are not the main track, and we are not the only ones going to heaven, and in fact, going to heaven is not the whole point anyway. But that’s a different post for a different time. (So please don’t start singing “I’m Goin’ Home on the Morning Train.”)

I don’t know church history well enough to know when we first jumped the track. But we did. Oh, I know, we weren’t alive then; we’ve just been following the track laid down by others.

Well, guess what? The track dead-ends. All but the Main Line.

When we got off track, I don’t know.

But I do know where.

We left the main line when we started being more concerned about church than Christ. You know it. I know it. We started fretting about this doctrine and that doctrine; works vs. grace; choice vs. election; what name is on the door; who’s got the authority; who’s in and who’s out; what must we do to be saved instead of what He has done and is doing.

We invented a new religion, Christianity. It was kinda like Christ. Kinda. On Sundays, anyway. Between the hours of 8:00 and noon, generally. As long as we were in the right building, doing the right things, and living lives that were self-deceiving enough that we didn’t feel motivated to confess our sins to one another while gathered. We would graciously part with a few minutes of our lives to remember Him, at least ceremonially, if not soul-deep in our hearts.

And we decided it was all about church.

Getting church right.

We thought: If we could just get church right, we’d be right. So we’ll figure out how to do it right. We’ll solve all those clues buried deep in the scriptures under ancient languages and customs and history about what God wants us to know and do, and we’ll know them and do them, and earn our way right back into His heart.

At least us Restoration folks concentrated on it to pretty much the exclusion of everything else, everything that matters. For the most part, we still do. We still want to restore the church of century one. Not the heart of Christ, or His Spirit living in us, or God working through us. Not the Way that early followers followed. Or the Truth. Or the Life.

Not the Main Line.

Somehow, soul-deep in my heart, I am persuaded that Satan could not have been happier when we built each switch and laid each set of tracks and followed them faithfully … because our eyes were no longer on the Main Line and where He leads, but on us, on each other, on our guilt and on failure and on imperfection and oh-what-the-bloody-blue-blazes-why-bother.

“Exactly,” Satan says; “got those bloody blue blazes right here for ya.

“Come on down the tracks.

“And build some more switches and sidings to accommodate all the others, willya?”

The Hiatus

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I could use lots of excuses: Summer. Travel. Workload. Posting a lot of back issues of New Wineskins to its site.

All of them have contributed to my delay in posting here.

But behind all of them is the problem of where to go next. You see, in the table meditations I’ve been trying to write in an order roughly following the timeline of scripture, we’ve come to that part of the Story of God and us in which we’ve sinned, heinously, and God has again put us into exile from His house … and His presence and despite our pleas and penitence, His response is pretty much silence.

For four hundred years.

That means “where to go next” is to the gospels, and to begin the story of the new covenant and the promises and prophecies coming true at last. It’s daunting. It’s the challenge of telling the Story of God and us in present tense, and first person – and He now has a name: Jesus.

It’s everything that the first part of the Story has been building toward.

He is the answer after the silence; the answer to the pleas and penitence; the response to the heinous sins.

Give me a little more time to prepare, and we’ll put our heads down and launch forward into the next part of the Story.

Esther 7; Daniel 5; Matthew 26 – What is Revealed at a Banquet

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52 Weeks at the Table – Week 31

Because of their idolatry and disobedience, God allowed His people to be conquered, and the best of them deported to a kingdom called Babylon. There they were captive for seventy years. During that time, a king named Belshazzar ordered a banquet at which sacred bread-plates and wine-goblets plundered from the temple in Jerusalem were used to fest and toast his idol-gods. The prophet Daniel interpreted God’s handwriting on the plaster wall of the banquet hall – and that night, Belshazzar and his kingdom fell.

During the captivity, Esther was a beautiful captive chosen in a contest to become the consort of another king, named Xerxes. When a plot of genocide against the captured Jews by an official named Haman became known to her through her overhearing uncle Mordecai, she accused Haman at a private banquet she gave only for him and her husband, King Xerxes. Haman was immediately hanged on the gallows he had built to execute Mordecai.

Jesus also chose the occasion of a banquet – the Passover feast – to quietly reveal the plot against Himself by Judas. He named no names; simply prophesied that one of the twelve who shared in dipping the bread and drinking the wine would betray Him to His enemies. The betrayer, like the other eleven, asked “Surely not I?” And Jesus answered, “Yes, it is you.” Then He served the bread and shared the cup.

A Prayer Over the Bread

God, our Father through the grace of Christ, it would seem that there have long been plots and conspiracies against those who love You – but Your reserve in not foiling the one against Your Son – in letting Him be the One cursed by hanging on a tree – perplexes and humbles us. As we remember this, His body given for us, while we eat this bread, we confess our awe and gratitude for the love you have shown us in Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

 

A Prayer Over the Cup

Holy and Righteous One, You know what is to come before it even enters our minds. You know what is in the hearts of those who love You and those who betray You. You know what is in our hearts right now. If You find anything there that does not recognize the blood of Your Son as we share this cup, root it out and crucify it and replace it with the life that His sacrifice brings. Amen.

Isaiah 53:8-12; Luke 22:35-38 – The Prophecy of Sacrifice

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

52 Weeks at the Table – Week 30

Moments before His arrest, Jesus quoted a snippet of Isaiah to the remaining eleven, and told them that it was a prophecy about to be fulfilled in Him (Luke 22:35-38): “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

If those disciples remembered their scripture as well, they would have recalled that Isaiah (53:8-12) also foretold the arrest, the judgments at trial, the suffering, the taking of His life, and – above all – the reason for it: He was to be “a guilt offering” … to “justify many” and “bear their iniquities.” And the prophecy also hinted at His victory, both with the question “Who can speak of his descendants?” as well as the triumphant answer: “He will see the light of life and be satisfied” … “I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong.”

A Prayer Over the Bread

All praise and honor are due You, Father God, for You have revealed Yourself – Your justice, Your mercy – to us through Your Son. You have willed that He should serve to intercede on our behalf. And, sharing Your very nature, He has poured out His life unto death for our sins. Through this bread we see the body of Jesus, pierced for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities. Forgive us, O God, through the power of this, Your promise. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

We can only continue our praise and thanksgiving, Almighty God, for the giving of Your Son, Jesus, the Christ. As He poured out His life unto death, may we see His life poured out in this cup. May we dedicate ourselves to the imitation of His selflessness in pouring out our lives in gratitude and living sacrifice that honors You through Him. May we find strength in His strength, and be counted among His portion. Amen.

Women Evangelists: Unauthorized Worship, Part 5

/ W. Keith Brenton / 21 Comments

Should women be forbidden to speak about the Christ?

Apparently Jesus Himself didn’t think so.

He stopped at a well near Sychar of Samaria and spoke to a women whose reputation was known in town, but most visiting Jews would not have known (John 4). After they had spoken, He did not forbid her from going “back to the town and [saying] to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Nor was He so offended at the turnout she prodded that He immediately left town on the run; in fact, He stayed two days there.

In Samaria. Thanks to a woman.

Nor did He choose to appear first to the remaining eleven on the morning of the third day after His crucifixion. No, instead, “When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons.” (Mark 16:9).

A cured demoniac. A woman.

In fact, the eleven didn’t believe her nor her feminine friends at first (Luke 24:10-11). But they were ones He sent – and Peter and John had enough curiosity stirred to go and see for themselves (John 20:3-9).

Granted, these women were not evangelists in the sense that they wrote any of the four gospels, nor were they Protestant (or Mormon!) missionaries or ministers. But in the word’s original use in scripture, they were bringing good news.

Good news about Jesus.

In one case, news of a prophet who might be the Christ who shared news about His kingdom.

In the other, news of the Son of God miraculously raised from the dead.

Really, really good news.

They were not telling old wives’ tales (1 Timothy 4:7), nor were they disgracing an assembly by inquiring about things during worship (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). They had good news to share, and they were sharing it.

They were people who sinned who had also encountered the embodied Grace and Word of God, and there was an urgency about this good news that could not be delayed nor kept silent – and Jesus encouraged it, giving them this good news to share.

Against all of the prejudices of culture – but against no prohibitions of the Law – Jesus gave that news of Himself to women to share with men and it was enough that people came looking for the Christ.

He told one woman “… the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” and “… true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

He told the others that He was “…returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Really, really, really good news.

To women who would serve as His messengers in a world that only listened to men, He gave this gospel.

He innovated.

And people responded.

“And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” ~ John 4:41-42

“Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)” ~ John 20:8-9

They believed.

Now, you may object that neither of these situations involved gathered worship, but let’s remember that Jesus’ message to the woman at the well was that true worship was no longer a matter of time and place, but of spirit and truth. His words were “a time is coming and has now come.”

People were gathered. They heard gospel. They believed.

Just what Jesus wants – and what glorifies His Father’s name through Him (Romans 15).

Isaiah 53:1-7; Matthew 26:62-63 – The Servant Who Suffers

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52 Weeks at the Table – Week 29

The prophecy Isaiah has been given to share seems incredible, even to him: “Who has believed our message?” He expresses it in past tense, so certain is it that it may as well have already happened. God sends a Servant – not handsome, not esteemed – and suffers not only as we suffer, but actually bears our suffering and our guilt. And we misunderstand. We see Him struck down by God. But the truth is, He is stricken and smitten by us; by our sins. All of us have wandered away from God like bleating sheep … but this Lamb of God is led to slaughter silent.

“The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, ‘Prophesy! Who hit you?’ And they said many other insulting things to him.” ~ Luke 22:63-64 … “Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, ‘Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?’ But Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ ~ Matthew 26:62-63 … “The Jews insisted, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.’ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer.” John 19:7-9

A Prayer Over the Bread

Holy God, one of your wisest once said that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. You speak even in Your silence, and before You now we listen. We hear the sheep-brained bleat of our own lives echoed in the mockery of the soldiers and the high priest and hear our fear in the words of Pilate. Remind us in this bread that Your Son’s body was given for us; that we are now that body in Him. Amen.

A Prayer Over the Cup

Father God, only One could claim to be the Son of God; the Suffering Servant foretold by Isaiah, and that is Jesus. He was silent in response to cruelty and cowardice, yet could not remain silent about that truth. He gave His consent through silence to the brutality that results from sin. He gave His blood to remove our transgressions, and we remember Him in penitence through this cup. Forgive us, we pray; embolden us that we too might never be silent about the truth of Your Son – however difficult to believe that it might seem to others. Amen.