RESURRECTION PEOPLE: A People of Passion Major Lindsay Rowe
INTRODUCTION
The most common complaint we hear when people come to our office with marital problems is that "there is no passion in our marriage."
You know, "you don't bring me flowers anymore." Just before that final playoff game this week when the Buffalo Sabres eliminated the Senators, Jacques Martien, the Senator's coach told the press, "if we are going to win tonight our team will have to play with passion."
It was said about the boys who pulled the triggers and planted the bombs in Littleton last week that, "they were passionate about what they did."
We've been talking about resurrection people. We've said that those first witnesses to the resurrection were people of power, people of purpose, and people of principle. We've concluded that we too are resurrection people. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central tenet of our faith. We too are people of power, people of purpose, and people of principle.
As you look at those first disciples you very quickly observe, however, that they were also people of passion, do we have the audacity to make such a claim? Would our life and witness substantiate such a claim? To find out the answer to these questions, of course, you have to discover what that word "passion" means and observe how it was played out in the lives of those first resurrection people.
How do you take that missing ingredient in many marriages, in a losing hockey team, that common element in crimes of violence, and put it together in a working definition? And when you do that, can you come up with something that is also missing in the life and ministry of many Christians and yet very evident in the experience of many others?
The biblical word for passion is zeal. It comes from the Greek root word zeo, which means to cook or boil or to be hot.
Does that help you see a common thread running through our three scenarios? The hot passion of two lovers is not difficult imagine, the media plays that for all its worth and then some. The driving passion to win that is the stuff of Stanley Cup teams is not difficult to imagine either, we can see it lived out in our living rooms every night now. Could it be anything less than hot, boiling, seething passion that motivates a young man to gun down his peers and attempt to blow up the school?
Yet, while there is a common element, there are also a variety of outcomes. Some positive, some negative, even some neutral.
Strange thing this passion. How do we pin it down? How do we get our minds around it?
MISPLACED PASSION
I guess the first thing we need to observe about passion is that it has huge potential for being misplaced. In his book Renewing your Spiritual Passion Gordon MacDonald tells a simple yet poignant little story. A man was cleaning out his attic when he came across a wooden box. In bold letters across the top and sides were the words "DANGER-DYNAMITE."
The box was reinforced and insulated to absorb the impact when moving a very sensitive and highly explosive content. Yet, when he lifted the lid, the box was filled with paraphernalia, all kinds of assorted stuff, but no dynamite. It's a graphic reminder of what you and I are about as Christians.
We have the explosive power of the Holy Spirit within us. We really should be wearing signs that say DANGER---EXPLOSIVE written on our backs. With such dynamic power on the inside, we should be explosive in our impact on the world around us. But alas, perhaps we are filled with assorted and useless paraphernalia.
Before Pentecost, Peter was like that wasn't he? He was passionate about everything and it often got him into trouble. He reminds us that sometimes our passion can be misplaced.
The Jewish religious leaders of Jesus' day were also like that. They were zealous, passionate, about the Mosaic law and Acts 21:20 shows us that some of the new converts to Christianity had to struggle with that passion. In Gal 4:17 Paul is expressing his concern that the Galatian church is feeling the pull of the law and its customs and they are becoming passionate about them again so he reminds them that passion is great but only if the purpose is good. And who best to talk to them in such a manner?
Paul himself was a victim of misplaced passion for many years. Listen to one of his earliest testimonies about this in Acts 22:3-5. Later he reminded the Philippian church that his misplaced passion was such that it led him to persecute the church (Phil.3:6). And again he reminded the Galatians in 1:14 that I was "extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers." Acts 9 introduces us to the life-transforming event that refocuses Paul's passion. Acts 2 reveals that transforming experience for Peter and introduces us to Peter using his properly placed passion.
One after another those first resurrection people, motivated by properly placed passion, moved out into the world with a both witness and a willingness to die for the cause of Christ, many of them did die for him. Such was their passion for him.
However, scripture makes it obvious, and so does just a cursory look at human history, that passion can be misplaced and that when it does, it can often be fatal.
As we have seen, it is also possible for the Christian to be plagued by misplaced passion. How is that possible? Paul introduces us to the possibility with a graphic example. In Romans 10: 1-2 he says, "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous (passionate) for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge." Since they had rejected Christ and embraced the law, failing to see that Christ is the fulfillment of the law, they were choosing to act in ignorance.
My dear friends, the Israelites are not alone in this. Many of the things that consume our passion as Christians are nothing more than a waste of our time and an expression of our lack of knowledge about the Word of God. If we knew the Word we would recognize that much of what consumes our time is nothing less than misplaced passion.
We get up in arms about whether or not the uniform is going to change. We are making decisions about the hat. I've left it to the Band and Songsters to make their own decision. It's a neutral issue for me. I don't care if its hats on or hats off. Here is the issue for me. Whether you decide to keep it on or take it off don't presuppose that you are better than someone else because they don't concur with your decision. Your spirituality should be below your hat not in it. Ye, we have heard of songsters in other corps who have quit the brigade because of the hat issue, what a reflection on the value of their ministry, what a classic example of misplaced passion.
Ladies and gentlemen, men and women are dying in their sin, and we are wasting time debating, and in some places arguing, about hats! We get excited about the number of praise and worship songs we are singing compared to the number of old gospel songs. We get our shirt in a knot about what the building looks like.
Friends, people are dying in their sin. What consumes our passion? Misplaced passion is often the result of misinformed people. Where do you get your information about what God expects you to be and do as a Christian? What the church needs is not misplaced passion but ...
MOTIVATING PASSION
It is the stirring of a person's passion that motivates them to action. Revelation 3:19 talks about people who are zealous to repent. When the spirit of God convicts of sin, the passions are stirred, and the will must then respond with repentance. That's the beginning of the new birth experience.
But the Spirit of God will continue to convict of sin, of misplaced passion, and when he does we need to repent and refocus. II Cor.7:11 shows us how spirit stirred passion continues to motivate us to good works and godly behavior.
II Cor.9:2 also shows us that passion is contagious. These Corinthians are in themselves a lesson in misplaced passion, but here they are shown to have had a positive impact to the extent that Paul has been boasting about them to others and their example has stirred other Christians to action.
What a wonderful testimony for someone to give concerning us! It was your passion for the things of God and for holy living that motivated me to become a Christian or to pursue the holy life. Has that been said about you lately? Is your passion a motivating factor in your own life and in the lives of others, or is it perhaps misplaced?
One of the disturbing realities coming out of the Steering Committee's review and summary of the corps survey workbooks is the presence and preponderance of a negative attitude in the corps. There is concern that we tend to gossip too much at times, that we tend to be unkind to one another at times, that we do not affirm our local officers as much as we should. That kind of attitude and activity takes passion to pursue, but it is passion that results in a negative outcome.
In Titus 2:14 Paul reminds Titus about, "Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are is very own, eager (passionate) to do what is good?" Does that describe you, passionate to do what is good?
We need to examine our lives to become more acutely aware of what it is that claims our passion and what is the outcome of that passionate activity. Listen to the haunting words of some of our Army writers as they struggled with this issue: Song 409 by Herbert Booth, especially verses 2 and 4:
Am I what once I was?
Have I that ground maintained
Wherein I walked in power with thee,
And thou my soul suatained?
Have I the zeal (Passion) I had
When thou didst me ordain
To preach thy Word and seek the lost
Or do I feel it pain?
Song 522, verse 3:
I must love thee, love must rule me
Springing up and flowing forth
From a childlike heart within me,
Or my work is nothing worth.
Love with passion and with patience
Love with principle and fire,
Love with heart and mind and utterance,
Serving Christ my one desire.
If our work is to be effective it must be done with passion. How passionate are we about ministry here at the Temple? How do we renew our passion? Are we guilty of too much output but not enough input? Are we guilty of action without passion?
One translation of Romans 12:11 says that we are to be "aflame in the Spirit" is that a good definition of who we are as a people of God?
Those first resurrection people were a passionate lot weren't they? What was it that ignited their flame and fired their passion? Was it not a burning conviction that Jesus was the Son of God, that he had died for their sins, that he had risen again and that his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, was within them? Do we not have those same convictions? Do we not possess the same promise? Then where is the similar passion? Where have we placed it, or misplaced it? "The world is needing us, Christ is leading us," God has empowered us, what are we waiting for?
Passion, its definition is elusive, its outcome is varied, its power is indisputable. You may have trouble defining it but you know when you have it, and you also know when you don't have it.
There is nothing more miserable than passionless christian. It's like a can of pop with the fizz gone out of it, it is bland and tasteless. Passion is what moves some Christians off the misty flats of the Christian life and unto the slopes of a higher experience with God. Conversely, a lack of passion is what makes other Christians wander around on those misty flats of mediocrity sometimes gazing at those who with gusto go for God's goals for their lives but who more often dismiss their energy and passion with a glib "that's not for me" attitude.
Is God calling you to shake off your complacency, to renew your passion?
We are resurrection people. Perhaps we need to stare again into the empty tomb and mediate on its message for the world, for each one of us. Perhaps we need to linger long enough for the passion of it all to consume us, to motivate us.
CONCLUSION
You should know that all the passion you need is available to you because the motivating power of the Holy Spirit is here in this meeting.
Some of you need to do business with God this morning. The glory of God and the salvation of the lost have not always motivated the projects that have consumed your passion. Don't be overwhelmed by that, but don't be complacent about it either.
God's people have often been guilty of misplaced passion. Confess your failure, forsake your sinful habits, present yourself to God for service. You will be amazed at what God will do in your life, and through your life and you will be amazed at the passion that will characterize your life as you do service for him.