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Archives For March 31, 2015

What happens on Easter Monday?

nateadamsibsa —  April 6, 2015

HEARTLAND | Nate Adams

As Easter approaches each year, I frequently find myself returning to the music of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Perhaps it’s because I was a teenager in the 1970’s, when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s groundbreaking rock opera was immensely popular. They say the music of our teen years can shape us for the rest of our lives, and certainly hearing these songs again brings back many memories and emotions.

Nate_Adams_April6But really more than the music, it has been Tim Rice’s lyrics that have stuck with me. To this day I can recite most of the words Rice penned over 40 years ago, including the powerful dialogue where Pilate angrily demands of Jesus, “Why do you not speak when I have your life in my hands? Why do you stay quiet? I don’t believe you understand!”

Jesus’ reply in the rock opera, though imaginary, is consistent with the Bible’s message. “You have nothing in your hands,” Jesus meekly replies. “Any power you have comes to you from far beyond. Everything is fixed, and you can’t change it.”

Those simple words powerfully convey the confidence and courage of Jesus as he went to the cross for us, and also the providence and sovereignty of God in securing our salvation. Each time I hear them, they make me want to cheer for God and His great victory on our behalf.

To their credit, Webber and Rice took moments like that from the passion week of Christ and, with some admitted license and imagination, placed them in the contemporary music and language of their day. The result was memorable, and therefore enduring.

And yet, as critics and Christians alike noted even during the height of its popularity, Jesus Christ Superstar has one obvious and major shortcoming. It concludes with the crucifixion.

Apologists for the rock opera observed that the ending was deliberately left to the faith or skepticism of the observer. Even Christians noted with appreciation that it at least served to place the name of Jesus on peoples’ lips, and the story of his life in their minds and hearts, in many cases for the first time.

But there was no resurrection. No Easter. No delivering the good news that death was not the end for Jesus and that it need not be the end for those who believe in him.

Yes, ultimately Jesus Christ Superstar sadly reminds us that it’s possible to stop the story too soon. It’s possible to focus so much on the various overtures to Easter that we don’t truly celebrate the finale.

It happens all around us. Immediately after Valentine’s Day, the candy and toy aisles at every store in town switch their ruby red treats and treasures over to the pastel, Easter versions. Clothing catalogs tell us that we need something new to wear. And florists and garden centers remind us that a properly decorated Easter requires lilies. All these traditions paint the days before Easter with an elaborate pageantry. Then the big day comes, and we are left to wonder whether all the preparation overshadowed Easter itself.

We can even do it in our churches. For weeks we can invest in preparing musicals, programs, decorations, and children’s activities designed to help us celebrate Easter. All these things are good. But they are not the finale. They are not the really big part of the story that must be celebrated and that must be told.

The title song from Jesus Christ Superstar is sung by, of all people, Judas, near the end of the rock opera. In it he asks Jesus, “Who are you? What have you sacrificed?” In our churches and in our conversations with others, we need to make sure to get to the part of the story that answers those questions with truth and faith and confidence. As important as what happened before Easter is, it’s what happens after Easter that makes all the difference.

Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.

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Where did the angry birds go?

Meredith Flynn —  April 2, 2015

COMMENTARY | Meredith Flynn

PrintOne of the major stories out of last year’s Leadership Summit hosted by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was the negative reaction on social media. In fact, the “Reporter’s Notebook” column space in the following issues of the Illinois Baptist was devoted to “angry birds” who spoke out on Twitter about the speaker line-up, the subject matter, and the opinions expressed.

It seemed like almost everything that was said (or tweeted or blogged) at last year’s meeting made somebody mad.

This year, not so much. Yes, there was some chatter, according to tweets after the event, about Baptists having an agenda for tackling this year’s topic, racial reconciliation. At least one poster noted the Southern Baptist Convention should be honest about its past in regards to slavery and racial division. (One whole panel discussion and pieces of other messages were devoted to the topic.)

But most of the Twitter feedback was positive. Maybe it was because much of it came from inside the summit. Racial reconciliation may not have drawn the same large online audience as last year’s topic: sexuality. Or, there’s this possibility: At its core, the summit was a meeting about a problem that every Christian can identify with, and one for which even those outside the church see the need for a solution.

Divisions exist around racial identity, and in recent days, they have been especially ugly, violent, frightening and real.

Leaders at the summit seemed to view racism as a common enemy. And, for Christians, as sin. There are some things you don’t do anymore once you have a relationship with Christ, said recent Southern Baptist Convention President Fred Luter.

“Don’t tell me you’re saved and still lying like a rug. Don’t tell me you’re saved and still cussing like a sailor. Don’t tell me you’re saved and still mean as a pit bull. Don’t tell me you’re saved and still don’t like someone because of the color of their skin.”

From the podium in Nashville, summit speakers talked about racial division as a universal problem, and a universal responsibility. Thabiti Anyabwile compared having skewed ideas about racial identity to walking into a cafeteria and seeing one table of diners that look like you, and one that doesn’t. You immediately think the table that looks like you has something in common with you, and is therefore safe for you.

“The mind is a relentless stereotyper,” Anyabwile said. No matter who you are. At the ERLC Summit, speakers and attenders were unified by that knowledge, and in the belief that the gospel is the only thing that has the power to reconcile people to God and to one another.

And the angry birds, for the most part, stayed away.

Meredith Flynn is managing editor for the Illinois Baptist newspaper.

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Healing for fractured relations after Ferguson

Meredith Flynn —  April 1, 2015

Editor’s note: This is part 1 of the Illinois Baptist’s coverage of a recent summit hosted by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission on racial reconciliation and the gospel. Read part 2 next week here at ib2news.org.

NEWS | Meredith Flynn

Weeks of riots in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police shooting of a young black man, Michael Brown. More protests in major cities after the death of another African American, Eric Garner, during an arrest. And with the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, the culmination of a summer of racial unrest in America. And it was only the beginning.

Chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot” in the streets gave way to “Black lives matter,” and in personal conversations, the question has become “Why now?” and “I thought we had made so much progress on race relations in the U.S.”

A sad and challenging summer, followed by a new round of unrest in Ferguson after a condemning report from the U.S. Department of Justice, leaves many thinking, “Apparently not.”

And the church wonders, What can we do? And in some corners Christians have asked, What does the gospel require us to do?

“How do we as people formed by Christ start to have those conversations out in the world?” said Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore at a March summit in Nashville. “It starts if we’re in the same body, gathered around the same table, praying with one another, praying for another, serving one another, being led by one another, and then we will stand up for and speak up for one another.”

The state of race relations in America, from Ferguson to New York, and coast to coast, is demanding fresh thinking and producing new preaching on race in all kinds of churches—including here in Illinois.

More than 500 current and future church leaders gathered at LifeWay Christian Resources last month to address racial reconciliation and the gospel. The second-annual Leadership Summit hosted by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission brought together nearly 40 speakers who presented on a wide range of topics: multi-ethnic ministry, Islam, the SBC’s history on racial issues, pop culture, and more.

In each message and panel, the summit’s key theme was clear: Racial reconciliation is a gospel issue. The gospel reconciles people to God and to one another, but sin is still at work in the world, causing tension, division, strife and violence.

The solution, leaders said at the summit, is for the church to preach and live out the gospel on matters of race. To examine itself for any lingering race-related sin of pride, and to work together to fight the common enemy of racism.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Moore said in his opening address. “Our sin keeps wanting us to divide up. But to the faithful, Jesus promises, ‘You will be called overcomers.’ And we shall overcome.”

Summit attenders gathered in the aisles and at the altar to pray together at the start of a March meeting on racial reconciliation and the gospel.

Summit attenders gathered in the aisles and at the altar to pray
together at the start of a March meeting on racial reconciliation and the gospel.


Learning how to see each other
“All creatures of our God and King; lift up your voice and with us sing…”

The first hymn led by band Norton Hall and worship leader Jimmy McNeal took on extra significance as the words reverberated around the auditorium. All creatures, lifting up their voices, together. African American, Anglo, Hispanic; male and female; young and old. At the summit, mostly young.

The picture painted in “All Creatures of Our God and King” isn’t possible when people are left to their own devices, summit speakers said. The gospel is central to racial reconciliation. In perhaps one of the few times the Good News has been compared to mayonnaise, Dallas pastor Tony Evans said it acts as an “emulsifier,” like the eggs that helps combine the ingredients in his favorite sandwich condiment.

“Grabbing a black Christian and a white Christian, a red Christian and a yellow Christian, a Baptist and a Methodist, Pentecostal,” Evans preached as the crowd clapped and agreed with Amen’s. “He’s able to pull them together when you understand that the gospel can change an environment, and can do anything.”

Thabiti_Anyabwile_blogThe mission of reconciliation can be seen in the Bible from the very beginning, said Washington, D.C., pastor Thabiti Anyabwile (right). Preaching from the book of Genesis, he urged his listeners to consider how they look at people different from themselves, in light of the fact that everyone is made in the image of God.

“Every person we have ever looked at, smiled at, greeted, encouraged, insulted, slandered, touched, is a person bearing the marks of divine likeness, the ‘imago dei.’ So, racial reconciliation must begin with our learning the habit of seeing each other as together made in the image of God, and therefore possessing inestimable, unfathomable dignity and worth and preciousness.”

But seeing other people is such a commonplace occurrence, Anyabwile continued, and then there’s the problem of sin. That’s why true reconciliation requires a constant renewing of the mind. How a Christian treats people of different ethnicities is such a key part of living out one’s faith that it ought to be a category of discipleship, the pastor said.

“That [racism has] moved so rapidly to be a despised thing is wonderful,” he said. “But along the way, I think many Christians have been so afraid of the label, so afraid of the discussion, and so afraid of the implications, that they don’t even want to have the conversation.”

Working out the reconciliation that Christ has achieved for us is one of the most underdeveloped areas in Christian discipleship in the U.S., he said. A believer can live his whole life without someone sitting down with them to explore their identity in Christ.

And so, Anyabwile said, “We’re weak when the Fergusons erupt around us, we’re weak when we watch Eric Garner choke to death on a city sidewalk. We feel incompetent when we see a Tamir Rice shot in Cleveland.

“We don’t know quite what to say or what to do, when the (Department of Justice) reports come out, whether it’s telling us that ‘hands up don’t shoot’ isn’t true, or whether it’s telling us that, man, this police department is shot through with racist practice….It immobilizes us, because we’re not discipled, because we don’t have this as a category in what it means to mature as a Christian, as a follower of Christ.”

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