Rev. Brent L. White

The following is a devotional I prepared for our church’s weekly email blast.

On Saturday morning I’m leaving for the Dominican Republic on a mission trip, alongside many of our youth—including two of my kids—and other adult leaders and chaperones.

In my absence, I’ve arranged to have a fellow United Methodist pastor “on call” in case of emergency: Rev. David Brackman of the Mt. Carmel-Lovejoy circuit. Susie has his number. Our church’s own Randy Godbee will be preaching the gospel this Sunday. Based on the rave reviews I hear about Randy’s preaching, I know you’ll enjoy his message!

The point is, the church will be in good hands in my absence. I’m not the least bit concerned about that.

There have been times in my life, however, when I have struggled to get away from “my work”—to leave my work behind and trust that everything will be O.K. in my absence. I suspect I’m not the only one!

Research indicates that we Americans are by far the hardest working people on earth. For example, not only do we possess far fewer vacation days than our Western industrialized counterparts in Europe and Japan, most of us don’t even take all of the days that we’ve been given.

Why? Is it simply because we just love our jobs? Maybe in some cases, although, more likely, many of us feel guilty about being away from work. We feel like we’ll fall behind. We feel insecure. We feel like we’re “irreplaceable.”

But consider the scripture I preached on just last week, 1 Corinthians 7:17-24. Applying Paul’s words to our work, it’s clear that God has called us to do the jobs we do. God is ultimately our boss. We work for him, not merely for human bosses, supervisors, managers, or (in my case) district superintendents and bishops.

And if that’s true, then we need to trust him when he tells us—as he does in his holy Word—that we are not designed to work all the time; we need to take a break. In fact, taking a break from work, which is another way of describing “Sabbath rest,” is our Christian duty.

But here’s the thing: You don’t get to enjoy Sabbath rest only after the work is finished—because, if you haven’t noticed, the work is never finished. And you don’t get to enjoy Sabbath rest only after you’ve tied up every loose end—because, if you haven’t noticed, there are always loose ends that need to be tied up. And you don’t get to enjoy Sabbath rest only after you’ve found other people to handle your work in your absence—because, if you haven’t noticed, no one can do your job as good as you can.

Sabbath rest is not a matter of trusting in ourselves or trusting in other people to get all the work done; it’s a matter of trusting in God alone. Remember: the Lord is in charge our work. And the Lord isn’t a slavedriver. He came to set us free.

So this new summer season is as good a time as any to remind you to take a break! Enjoy vacation! Enjoy Sabbath rest! And to do so guilt-free!

One slander against the apostle Paul, often repeated even by Christians, is that Paul was anti-women, anti-sex, and even—except as a concession to the weakness of human nature—anti-marriage. Today’s scripture is one of the main texts used to make that case, unfortunately. In this sermon, I argue that Paul is none of those things. He affirms marriage, mutuality between man and woman, and frequent sex as an indispensible component of healthy marriage. 

Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 7:1-7

[To listen to this sermon on the go, right-click here to download an MP3 version of it.]

All right, who here can spell the word “scherenschnitte”? How about “nunatak”? Those were, of course, the two winning words in this year’s Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, which ended in a tie last week, for the second straight year. My son Townshend, who hardly needs an excuse to watch more ESPN, kept me up to date on the action as it unfolded.

Now I say this as someone who takes pride in being a good speller, but… how useful is it to spend hours upon hours every day, as these contestants do, learning how to spell obscure words? Especially when we have auto-correct… and spell-check… and when Google is always a click or two away?

Why devote so much time to something that isn’t much of a problem anymore? Yet in today’s scripture we have something that presents a daily challenge to all of us—that can be a huge potential problem for all of us—that is incredibly important to all of us. Yet we mostly never talk about it—or I should say, we don’t talk about it in appropriate ways. We let our popular culture talk about it. We let our movies talk about it—our TV shows, our music, our books, our favorite websites talk about it.

I’m referring to S-E-X—sex, sexuality, being sexually faithful in marriage, being sexually faithful in singleness. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the sixth part of my discussion of fellow United Methodist pastor Paul Purdue’s recent post, “The Bible and Homosexuality.” Read Part 5 and previous posts by clicking here.

In previous posts, I challenged several points that Rev. Purdue raised in his blog post: Jesus’ alleged “silence” on homosexual practice, the meaning of Jesus’ words about marriage and eunuchs in Matthew 19, the reliability of Bible translations, Paul’s words about homosexual practice, and the false analogy between slavery and women in ministry and homosexual practice.

In the next part of his article, while Purdue concedes that the Old Testament Law condemns homosexual practice, he says we Christians are no longer bound to obey it. He writes:

The OT Holiness code condemns homosexual practice. We must not leave the conversation there, for the OT also prescribes death for those who commit homosexual acts. Can we cling to the OT condemnation while rejecting the prescribed prescription that lies alongside it? (Leviticus 20:13) Are we theologically consistent if we assert that the OT is literally right about homosexuality but wrong about the penalty for it? Are we hoping to be literal and figurative inside the same passage?

“Are we theologically consistent if we assert that the OT is literally right about homosexuality but wrong about the penalty for it?”

Two points: We’re not asserting that the Old Testament is “literally” right about one thing and wrong about the other. As he did in his discussion of slavery and women in ministry, he’s once again asserting that the Bible is wrong. I don’t say that. The church doesn’t say that. Both aspects of the Law—the ethical mandate and its penalty for breaking it—were right in the time before Christ, during that period when Israel was a theocracy and then a monarchy. Jesus fulfills the ceremonial and civil aspects of the Law. These no longer apply today.

Besides, Purdue practically answers his own question about theological consistency by referring to Jesus and the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11.

We already unite in a grace-filled interpretation of any punishment for adulterers, blasphemers, parent cursers, Sabbath breakers, parent cursers, idol worshippers, and others the OT commands us to stone to death! (Leviticus 20:9-16) Why do we reject stoning? We reject the law on stoning, because Jesus proclaimed “you without sin cast the first stone”! (John 8)

Do we still consider adultery, blaspheming, parent-cursing, Sabbath-breaking, and idolatry sins? Does Jesus still consider adultery a sin even as he rejects the penalty for it? Of course! As he tells the woman, “Go and sin no more.”

In fact, Purdue makes the same mistake that good old Horus makes in the following video, “Horus Reads the Internet”:

Purdue concludes this section on the Old Testament by saying,

In 100 years will we Christians come to see today’s hotly contested issue in the same way we see stoning, slavery, kosher foods, or women’s rights?

This is, as I’ve shown, the wrong question. Given his own logic, he should instead ask,

In 100 years, will we Christians come to see today’s hotly contested issue in the same way we see adultery, idolatry, blasphemy, parent-cursing, and Sabbath-breaking?

I hope so!