1 Kings 17: 8-24; Psalm 146; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17

 

Please join me in prayer: O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of each and every one of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

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Evangelical. You hear the word thrown about Christian circles all the time.

In more recent years, it has come to be used to describe a certain type of Christian, and has become – in the public arena at least – a near-universal description of Christians.

If you hear someone described as an “evangelical,” chances are you automatically pigeonhole them as someone who is conservative both theologically and politically and someone who probably believes in a strict – and probably completely literal and inerrant – reading of the Bible.

Famous “evangelicals” are the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and their like.

There’s even a denomination that calls itself the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. (Perrow Presbyterian over on Big Tyler Road is an EPC church; it used to be a PCUSA church. The EPC is also apparently the denomination of choice for many PCUSA churches disenchanted with our denomination at the moment.) And I was recently looking at the website of another church in our denomination which described itself as an “evangelical congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”

Would it surprise you to discover that all this is a misuse of and a misunderstanding of the word “evangelical?”

Look it up, as they say. Well actually, don’t, because many of the dictionaries of today follow or imply the current erroneous understanding.

To be precise, “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion (euangelion) which appears only in the New Testament and is used to talk about the “good news” of the salvation. A related word is translated as “evangelist” and describes the one who announces or brings the “good news.”

In fact both words are rooted in the Greek word for messenger, angelos, (angelos). Does that sound familiar? In Christian literature, the word is used “exclusively for one who carries on the preaching of the good news of Jesus Christ.”

Despite all these modern uses and understandings of what it means to be evangelical, the fact is that Presbyterians throughout their history have been, and still are, evangelical. As good Presbyterians will, we write down what we believe and on the very first page of the PCUSA Book of Order it says, “The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel (that is the euaggellion) for the salvation of human kind; the shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”

And then there’s this from one of my favorite books, Being Presbyterian in the Bible Belt: “Presbyterians are ‘evangelical’ in the sense of being “messengers of the good news of God’s redeeming love for the world.”

All of this is to say that Presbyterians are, and again always have been, all about spreading the good news and today’s Scripture passages are in many ways at the core of that good news.

The good news that we have to tell is that we have been saved and redeemed by Jesus, not through any work or merit of our own and that we belong, as we’ll say later in the Heidelberg Catechism, “body and soul, in life and in death … to [our] faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all [our] sins and has completely freed [us] from the dominion of the devil.”

What seems to be hard for many people to understand, but what today’s scripture makes clear, is that we don’t have to do anything to receive this grace.

As Charles Cousar, a renowned Presbyterian theologian and author, says in his discussion of Paul’s writing in Galatians, “It was not [Paul's] decision to become an apostle, a preacher among the Gentiles; it was God’s decision. It was God’s voice which called him, God’s hand which grasped him, God’s grace which opened his eyes to see his son.”

It is not too much of an overstatement, perhaps not an overstatement at all, to say that Paul is the most influential figure in Christian writing. His work makes up the bulk of the New Testament and he is credited with spreading Christianity beyond Palestine.

His experience on the Damascus road has entered our lexicon; we talk about having “Damascus Road” experiences and for many people such an experience has – unfortunately – become the expected, the norm.

How many of us have indeed almost apologized saying something like, “Well, I haven’t had the Damascus Road experience like Paul. I’ve just always believed.”?

We should not apologize or somehow suggest our – or more importantly others’ – faith is of a second class, or less real, because it’s always been with us. Just because we cannot pinpoint a time and date where faith began.

But that’s not the main thing I want to focus on today. I want us to think closely about the widows, the widows in 1^st Kings and in Luke, and what they did, or didn’t do. It’s clear that Luke was using language and phrasing to recall the story of Elijah and the stories have multiple parallels.

The passage in 1^st Kings comes just a few verses after our introduction to Elijah. He abruptly appears in the text to tell King Ahab – the worst of the worst of the Israeli kings – that God is going to bring about a three-year long drought in punishment for the many sins the king has committed. God tells Elijah to leave Israel, and head east where he will be fed by ravens. When even the water near there dries up, God sends him to Zarephath, where he meets the widow.

It is important to realize that this widow, because she is a widow, is outside the care of the community. In addition, she is, theoretically at least, not one of God’s chosen since she is from Sidon and is not an Israelite. And neither is she a “God-fearer,” the name given to non-Jews who followed Yahweh, whom she refers to as “your God” when talking to Elijah.

Nevertheless, God reveals Godself to her and uses her and she comes to believe. Not because of anything she does, but because of what God does. As the story moves on to the death of her son, removing her last hope of support on this earth, it’s instructive to realize that she doesn’t ask Elijah, or God, to intervene.

But God, through Elijah, does intervene and she believes.

Similarly, in Luke, listen carefully to the story:

 

As [Jesus] approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town.

 

Again, like the widow of Zarepheth, this tells us this woman was going to be in dire straits. No man, no support, no income. Nothing. Life was going to be about as bad as it could get.

 

When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

 

Did this woman ask Jesus for help? No. We don’t even know if she believed Jesus was who He said, or if she even knew who he was. This story is early enough in Luke, wedged between the calling of the disciples and sending them out, that it seems likely that Jesus wasn’t yet “famous.”

Time and time again, there are stories in the Bible of Jesus and God helping people – saving them if you will – without them even knowing, to say nothing of their asking.

But his action did make an impact on the crowd.

 

Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” [Other translations render this as "God has visited his people. (Charles B. Cousar 1994, 380)] This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

 

And there is good news to tell, because of Christ. As Cousar puts it, “The gospel, as we have seen, is primarily a divine power whereby God changes people and situations.”

God certainly changed Paul, and not because Paul wanted to be changed, not because he was seeking answers to life’s great questions, not because anyone was trying to convert him. Indeed it is more accurate to say Paul was “called” instead of he was “converted.”

“(W)hat does it really mean to live as one so called and grasped?” Cousar asks. He answers this way:

 

“Two things at least are worth noting. First, it means that life has direction and purpose. Events which seem random and fortuitous are ultimately oriented toward a goal and thus make sense. They are pieces of a puzzle which in turn fit together with numberless other puzzles to comprise a huge mosaic. Certainly this is an affirmation of faith and not a statement which can be verified by scientific or historical procedure. …

“Secondly, the reality of being called and grasped provides enormous support for getting about one’s task. … The decision as to what one is ultimately about in life, that is, being a Christian, is not one’s own to be fretted over; it is God’s decision. That takes a burden off and opens up incredible resources for coping with life and its problems. It enables one to be amazingly optimistic in dark hours, even light-hearted about momentous tasks, certainly with a sense of humor about ones self.”

 

In other words, the fact that it is God’s action that has caused us to believe – indeed causes anyone to believe – we can quit worrying so much about our own status and quit trying so hard to persuade, to convert, others.

“At the core of Christian experience a centrifugal force pushes believers – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – beyond the temptation to tarry forever with their own problems or with the preoccupation with Christ’s benefits so that they may join God’s work in convincing the world of his holy love.”

And how to we do that convincing? By living as if we mean it and as if we believe it.

The Psalmist gives us a hint how we go about this in Psalm 146 which “gives instruction about the wrong way and the right way. The wrong way is putting trust in human leaders; the right way is to trust the Lord for help and hope.”

This is the good news we need to spread. That we have put our hope in God and that we know that “everything must fit his purpose for [our] salvation” and that “by his Holy Spirit, he also assures [us] of eternal life, and makes [us] wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

Our sin may be great, but we have been “freed from all [our] sins and their wretched consequences,” and for that freedom, that redemption, we owe gratitude to God and God alone.

We are evangelical: evangelical in our history; evangelical in our beliefs; evangelical in our actions. Just because it may not fit into others’ understanding of “evangelical” doesn’t make it any less valid, or any less effective, or any less authentic.

To God alone be the glory, amen.

Please join me in prayer: Good and gracious God, we thank you for the good news of Christ’s redemptive and saving actions, which you sent to humankind not because humankind deserved it, but because humans didn’t. We think you for your grace, unmerited by us in anyway, that gives eternal life and brings us into your presence. Give us the ability to accept this unmerited gift, and to tell others and to show to others the freedom and joy the gift really means. We ask this in the name of your son the Christ. Amen.