The Resurrection of Christ in the Modern Age

Easter 2018

       We approach the Easter sermon with an awareness that in the modern age, an age that is dogmatically agnostic and constitutionally secular, it takes moral and political courage to believe in the resurrection of Christ, because the resurrection of Christ, like no other dogma, directly challenges the basic premise on which the secular society stands. The resurrection of Christ is inherently controversial and anathema to the precepts upon which devotion to religious pluralism rests for the obvious reason: that if it’s true that Jesus raised himself from the dead by the power of the divine nature inherent within him , then by so doing he revealed himself to be who he said he was; the one in whom the scriptures are fulfilled, the one by whose suffering and sacrificial death the whole world is redeemed from sin and reconciled to God, a man who though born of a woman and was, therefore, fully man was also fully God’s equal, being God’s only-begotten Son. And therefore, any doctrine of God that denies or omits him and his appearance on earth is woefully incomplete; which is to say, that if Jesus rose from the dead in accordance with the scriptures then the entire project of the modern age, which seeks to equate all those religions which know not Christ with those that do, is bankrupt. Like the emperor who wore no clothes, the myth that undergirds secularism—that all religious truth is subjective and therefore one religion is as good as another—is exposed as sheer pretense by the resurrection of Christ. In that old story everyone at court was afraid to tell the emperor he was naked. Modern secular multiculturalism, the emperor of our age, is as naked as can be. The resurrection of Christ exposes multiculturalism, the relativizing of all religions, for the empty nonsense that it is.

      So brace yourself. I’m going to preach the resurrection of Christ. And for that offense the political-correctness police may arrive at any moment to arrest me. But if they do what is that to me? We take comfort in what Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16.33).

       There is no religious doctrine more divisive than the resurrection of Christ. When it comes to this subject the world separates into five different camps. Let’s look at those five different camps and let’s see where you stand.

       The first camp I would call the O. J. jury camp. The O. J Jury made up its mind before the trial began. There was no persuading them. When it comes to Christ’s resurrection, Judaism and Islam are like the O. J. Jury. The evidence just doesn’t matter to them. Both Judaism and Islam deny the resurrection of Christ but for different reasons. The Jews at the time of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial explained the scandal of the empty tomb by spreading the rumor that Jesus’s disciples had stolen the body. What could be more absurd? How could his cowardly disciples have stolen the body when the tomb was guarded by soldiers? Why would they do this when grave robbing was a crime? The Jewish priests did not want to admit to themselves that, in a fit of madness, they had crucified their king. So rather than admit the truth they betrayed him again by escaping into a bizarre conspiracy theory. Islam is even worse. The Koran tells us that at the last moment God took Jesus off the cross and put someone else there to die in his place. Not only does that fiction make God into an arbitrary murderer but it means that when Mary held the body of her dead son in her arms she failed to recognize that she was holding someone else’s son. According to Islam, Jesus did not die on the cross, so how could he have risen from the dead? How could he have redeemed the world from sin if he failed to die according to the scriptures and rise again? He couldn’t have. That’s the whole demonic point of Islam. The Koran buries Jesus under a mountain of feigned praise but in the end according to Mohammad, he was a minor prophet of no real importance. The next time you hear someone call Islam a “great” religion or the Koran, that is the object of its worship, a “holy” book think about that. Compared to Islam and Judaism, the O. J. Jury was relatively rational and open-minded.

       The second camp is the communists. The communists are atheists who consider themselves to be intellectuals rigorously guided by scientific fact. Communists do not stoop to believe in deities or in miracles or any of those old world superstitions. According to their philosophy of materialism, nature accounts for everything; there is no supernatural realm and therefore there was no resurrection of Christ. We may never know what really happened to cause Jesus’s body to be absent from the tomb, but what we do know is that there was no miracle involved. We know that because there are no such things as miracles; because according to the communist, there is no God and therefore no one to cause a miracle to happen. From the communist’s standpoint, the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ is nothing but legend and superstition. Marx compared it to an opiate, a poison that numbs the mind and takes the pain away. He meant that many people, fearing death, cling to the resurrection of Christ as a drug addict does his heroin or as a child does his security blanket. The communist sees himself as a sober-minded realistic adult compared to the infantile Christian. The Christian is escapist, whereas the communist is not afraid to meet death head on and make the best of life without retreating into a make-believe world of religious fantasy. The communist criticizes Christian faith because, as he sees it, the resurrection leads us to dream of a better life to come after death. The communist wants a better life for us all here and now since in his view this is the only life we have and the only world we will ever know.

       The third camp is the liberals. Liberalism is the philosophy on which modern secular society is built. The liberals believe in the resurrection of Christ, but only as a metaphor: hope springs eternal. Liberalism is largely sympathetic to Christianity but only because the ethics of Christ, especially his commandments to feed the hungry, care for the poor, heal the sick and judge not lest ye be judged are amenable to the ideals of a secular society. I remember well, early in my ministry, receiving a letter in the mail postmarked the day after Easter. The woman who wrote it to me anonymously said bluntly and in hurried handwriting, “Please remember next year as you write the Easter sermon that some of us have a roast in the oven!” Besides bearing the usual complaint that the sermon was too long, she was making a larger and more important point that for many Christians raised patriotically to share the values of a secular society, the dogma Christ’s resurrection is largely irrelevant to their religion. The resurrection of Christ is, no doubt, an important and dramatic story but it detracts from the ethics of Christ which is the real roast in the oven of liberal Christianity. What’s more important: that we believe a tall tale about a man rising from the dead or that we treat each other with love and respect and kindness? As liberalism sees it, if we do the right thing by our family, friends and neighbors, does it even matter whether we believe in Christ’s resurrection? Who cares what we believe about the after-life, as long as we’re good to each other in this life? Actions speak louder than words, do they not? Was that not the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan, that what matters to God is not one’s creed but the content of one’s character? In other words, to the liberal, religion is important only as means to forming character;  therefore, according to liberal doctrine, one religion is essentially as good as another, you judge a tree by  its fruit. Therefore, whether Christ actually rose from the dead or not is largely irrelevant. Give me a compassionate pagan any day over a corrupt Christian the liberal would say. All that counts with God is how we live our lives.

     The fourth camp into which the world separates because of our varied responses to the resurrection of Christ is the camp comprised of timid Christians. Timid Christians are those who dutifully come to church on Christmas and Easter, for baptisms, weddings and funerals. They stand to recite the Nicene Creed not because they know exactly what it means, but because it’s expected of them. They’re faithful to believe what the church teaches and to accept what the Bible says is true, but if you ask them why they believe as they do, they can’t really tell you except to say that “if the church teaches it and it’s in the Bible I believe it.” Timid Christians have their heart is in the right place but they are easily intimidated by liberals and communists, by Islam and by Judaism, by anyone who challenges the dogmas of their baptismal Creed because they just don’t know or understand the reasons that undergird the faith. Timid Christians have a blind faith. A blind faith, though better than none at all, is like a house built on sand. As soon as the opponents of Christianity begin to marshal arguments against the resurrection, the timid Christians retreat. As soon as someone objects to the doctrine that Jesus may be, by virtue of his prophetic death and glorious triumph over the grave, both Christ and Lord of all, to whom all human beings owe a priceless debt of gratitude, the timid Christian surrenders and seeks a truce with the unbelieving world pleading, “Why don’t we just agree to disagree? We’re all children of God. Can’t we all just get a long together?” The timid Christian, too afraid of rejection to fight the good fight of the faith, slaps a “Coexist” bumper sticker on the back of his car and drives cautiously away.

       Those four camps, I estimate, account for about eighty percent of the people in this world, who all have one thing in common. They don’t believe that the resurrection of Christ actually happened. It’s not a real event to them like the sunrise this morning in the east. It’s more like a dream or a fantasy. It’s real to some but it has no basis in history. Therefore, they see no compelling reason to believe in the resurrection of Christ. And therefore, there is no good reason to have an absolute preference for Christianity over any other religion.

       But there is a fifth group that I would call the true believers. They are outnumbered in a largely unbelieving world but they have one great advantage. True believers listen to God’s word and learn. When Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and revealed to them the light of his divine nature as a preview of what they would see on that first Easter day, the voice of God, the Father, said to them “This my beloved Son, listen to him.” True believers; be they Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox are those who listen to him. And when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14.6) they hear what he’s saying. By raising himself from the dead, not as a ghost but as a whole person living eternally in a glorified body, Jesus proved that he was not just blowing smoke when he made that bold claim to be the sole mediator between humankind and God. True believers are not afraid of the truth. They accept the facts for what they are and follow them to where they lead. And the facts of the resurrection of Christ are these. We have a man from Nazareth who said he would fulfill the scriptures by suffering, dying and rising again on the third day, who gave credibility to this outrageous claim by working many miracles among the Jews, including raising at least three people that we know of from the dead. We have an empty tomb. We have hundreds of people who said they saw Jesus fully alive after death and who backed up their faith by suffering martyrdom rather than deny what they saw and heard in Him. And we have a new religion formed shortly after his death around the belief that the same Jesus who died on the cross rose from the dead and lives eternally in and through his church, which he has sanctified by the Holy Spirit. True believers have what those first witnesses of the resurrection had:  a faith in Jesus Christ that ascends to the level of unshakable conviction. The first Christians knew what they believed about the resurrection of Christ and they knew why. And no one could talk them out of it or change their minds. Even though for two thousand years the world has been trying to change their minds, there’s no reason to listen to the world. The unbelieving world hates Jesus Christ and denies his resurrection, but they cannot make him go away. As he said to his disciples before he ascended into heaven, “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Tyrants in every age have assaulted his church, persecuted and martyred true believers but they cannot kill him who lives eternally. As Saint Paul, who violently persecuted the church until he met Christ resurrected and became a true believer, said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified of God that he raised Christ” (1Cor. 15.14–15)

       Unless you think all the saints were lying or delusional, you have to admit that there is only one explanation that makes sense of why the tomb was empty on the morning of the third day following his burial, why so many saw him alive that day and for several weeks after his death ate with him and learned from him and why thousands of sane faithful Jews after his death asked to receive baptism in his name and then began to worship him as Lord; and that is the explanation they gave. That he proved himself to be a man of his word by doing exactly what he said he would do; by raising himself from the dead he revealed himself to be God—a fact, the most important event in human history—they could not deny.

       The story of Jesus overcoming the grave and appearing to many before ascending into heaven is not make-believe. God has really done this. And I submit to you that if you are not already in the camp of the true believers, if you honestly dare to examine the evidence for Christ’s resurrection with an open mind, you soon will be. And that’s where you want to be because, if Jesus was anything, he was a man of his word. After feeding five-thousand people by multiplying a few loaves of bread and a few fish, he promised them this: he said, “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6.40). Don’t let an unbelieving world psych you out. If you have not already, today, right now, put your faith in Jesus Christ and determine to stand with those who stand in the camp of the true believers. The world may mock you and some of your friends may even turn their backs on you, but on the last day when he raises you up, you’ll be eternally glad you made the choice to believe in Jesus Christ.

The Beatles and Christ

Palm Sunday 2018

       Fifty-five years ago this week the Beatles released their first album. It included hits like “Please, Please me," “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Do You want to Know a Secret.” I loved that album then. I still do. Last summer, my daughter asked me to choose a song for her and me to dance to at her wedding reception. “That’s easy” I said, “Let’s dance to John Lennon’s version of Twist and Shout," which I consider to be the best song on that first album. My daughter was thrilled with my choice, “That’s cool, Dad,” she said. I mention that because I was ten years old when the Beatles came on the scene. I fell in love with them quickly and for about the next decade of my life I, along with everyone else in my generation who did not idolize the Rolling Stones, idolized them. I had a happy case of Beatlemania. I eventually grew out of that state of semi-idolotry but I still do love the Beatles' music, especially that first album. I always will.

       But my love for the Beatles is not unconditional. As great as their music was, Beatlemania led many, including the Beatles themselves into a dark place. The Beatles music at first was relatively innocent. They sang about experiences that were important to teenagers at the time. They had a hit song called, “I want to hold your hand”. It doesn’t get more innocent or sweet than that. But gradually they lost their innocence. The Beatles began to smoke pot and their music reflected it. Then they moved on to doing LSD and to glamorizing that experience. Then they went to India and got into transcendental meditation, openly embracing pseudo-eastern mysticism. Then they began to write angry songs about "revolution." The revolution they advocated was less political than it was cultural and sexual. Their own personal life styles of sexual promiscuity and drug use set bad examples for the millions of teens who saw them as cutting edge icons defining what it is to be cool. The message sent by their music and lifestyle was not lost on their adoring fans: cool people are liberated—liberated from the taboos and old-fashioned morality of a tired and out-of-touch Christianity; cool people are open-minded to finding new ways of being in the world un-bound by the prejudices and superstitions of Christian orthodoxy. The end result of this counter-cultural movement—a movement that would have gone nowhere nearly as fast without the Beatles and their music—was that millions of young people lost their faith and forever lost interest in the Faith ( Jude 3). And a whole generation of kids who might have become Christian apologists became agnostic hippies and drop outs rejecting the Faith before they ever had a chance to even understand it. That’s no small thing. It was major cultural tragedy the effects of which we are still feeling today.

       How different might our social history have been and how different might we as a people be today had the Beatles been faithful Catholics who went to mass every Sunday or born-again Christians who went to Bible Study on Wednesday night? What if they had not been sexually promiscuous and rejected pot and other drugs? Might they have defined cool for our generation in other terms? Could it ever be cool to be Christian? What if John Lennon instead of writing a song called “Imagine," a sad paean to his pathetic atheism, had written a reverent hymn to Jesus? We might be singing a Beatles hymn today in church. Is it so hard to imagine? Was Jesus really so un-cool?

        After church today someone will ask you what the sermon was about and some of you will say, “He preached about the Beatles and said he didn’t like them.” Be kind. That isn’t fair. I love the Beatles. But I regret what has happened to our society in the last fifty–five years since the Beatles came along, and I regret the advent of what’s become a universal and ubiquitous pop culture, born of Beatlemania that is, at its core, dogmatically secular and anti-Christian. You might argue in rebuttal that I have no cause to be so critical. Jesus taught that love is the aim of life and the Beatles music celebrates love. After all one of their best songs has the refrain, “All you need is love.” What could be more Christ-like than that?

      All right, you make a point. There’s no denying that Jesus taught us before and above all things to love one another (Mt.22.34-40; Lk.10.29-37). And every Sunday before the offering I quote the words of Saint Paul to the church in Ephesus, “Let us walk in love as Christ loved us.” ( Eph.5.1-2) I think we all agree that Jesus stood for love. And so did the Beatles. So does the Pop Culture, or so they think. So what’s the problem?

       The problem is that when the Beatles sing “All you need is love” they are defining love in wholly humanistic terms. “The love you take is equal to the love you make," whatever that means, is how John Lennon put it in another lyric. The significance of Jesus, by contrast, is that his love for us was more than human. He revealed to evil and selfish men and women by his sinless life, his prophetic death and his inspired resurrection, the very nature of divine love. “No greater love has a man than this “he said, “that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13) True love is sacrificial. And no one has ever made a greater sacrifice for more undeserving and largely ungrateful people than that which Jesus Christ made for the whole world by his willingness to accept torture at the hands of Pontius Pilate and death by crucifixion.

       That’s why we’re here today: to remember what he did for us by his suffering and death on a cross and to know what it means.

       There are many in the world today who would say that his death doesn’t mean anything special. It just means that one day long ago on a hill in Jerusalem a very good man was unjustly executed by religious bigots and was bullied to death by a tyrant. It just means that nothing in this world will ever change until people learn to beat their swords into plowshares and love one another. It’s the oldest story in the history of humankind: good guys finish last.

      There’s only problem with that interpretation of the story of Jesus’ death. Jesus was many things, a humble man who lived at home with his mother until age thirty, a prophet who put his life on the line to proclaim the word of God; a king come down from Heaven to rule Israel in peace. But the one thing he was not was just a good man. A good man is the one thing he could not have been.

   “ For heaven’s sake”, some are thinking, “how can you stand in the pulpit of a church on Palm Sunday and say that Jesus was not a good man?” I say that out of respect for him because anyone who honestly examines his life and takes him at his word sees that Jesus did not leave us the option of regarding him as just another good man. He was and could only have been one of two things. He was either the “righteous one” of whom Isaiah spoke: the sinless, sacrificial victim who would by his death “make many righteous” (Is.53.4-12), the Savior to whose coming among us to stay all the prophecies of the Old Testament point (Mt.13.16-17). Or he was a bad man, a liar, deceiver and blasphemer who pulled the wool over the eyes of his disciples and to this day continues to sew religious discord and controversy wherever his name is mentioned. Either way he was not just a good man. He was either much more than that or much less than that. He either was who he claimed to be: the Christ and eternal king of Israel whose rule, he said to Pilate, “is not of this world” (John 18.36). Or he was, as his accusers said, a magician whose occult powers to work so-called “miracles” came not from God, whom he blasphemously called “my Father,” (John 5.17-18) but from Satan (Mt.12.24). In other words he left us no choice but to either worship him as God’s Son or reject him as an impostor. But to marginalize him as a good man is not an option. He ruled that out the day he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

        What does a donkey have to do with it? It was not by accident that Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. His choice of vehicle for this triumphant parade may have seemed foolish to some but it was deliberate on his part. Remember what he said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”(Mt.5.17). One of the prophecies that he had to fulfill was the word spoken by Zechariah, “Your king will come to you humbly and riding on a donkey” (Zech.9.9). By doing this, Jesus publicly identified himself as the humble king of Zechariah’s prophecy. If it was just a random act of foolishness, Jesus had every opportunity to tell the crowd that he was not really a divine king and that they shouldn’t be waving palm branches and welcoming him as the Savior. But he did not do that. He let the crowd think what they were thinking, that their long awaited king had come at last. So you see, after he did what he did on that fateful Palm Sunday there was no going back. There was no retreating after that into the safe space of saying, “Hey man, I’m just like you. I just want love and peace to rule the world. That’s all I’m trying to say, man. All you need is love.” No. He presented himself to Israel as their king. After that, he would either prove to them that his rule was eternal or they would hang him for blasphemy. The irony of the story is that in order to prove himself the eternal king, they had to first hang him for blasphemy.

       In a few minutes from now, before the offertory, I will once again say to you, “Let us walk in love as Christ loved us”. But that is not all of it. The full quote is this: “Let us walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph.5.1-2).  The reason Jesus surrendered himself to death and allowed himself to be tortured and crucified by men from whom he could easily have escaped had he wished, was that he came to earth to die for us. He who was sinless came among us as one of us to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. This was something, an eternal redemption that he alone being, by virtue of his divine nature, God’s only begotten Son could accomplish. And it had to be accomplished because we need more than love. Our salvation depends in part on our commitment to a life of good works (Titus 2.11-14), “do everything in love”, the apostles said repeatedly (1Cor.16.14). But for there to be any hope of salvation in the first place, we need our sins forgiven, we need the curse of eternal alienation from God set upon our race by God as the punishment for Adam’s original sin, to be lifted. That is what Christ accomplished for us by his death on the cross. That’s what he meant when he uttered with his last breath, “It is finished”(John19.30).

       By his death, he established for us all the means by which we might be in full communion once again with God (Jer.31.31-34). That is why it is misleading to say, “All you need is love” when what we need most of all and first of all is what Jesus Christ gives us: baptism for the remission of original sin and Holy Communion for the forgiveness of our actual sins. That’s the food and drink of our soul’s salvation; that is the sure foundation of world peace; that is where eternal hope and true love is to be found: in the blood of Christ shed for the sins of the whole world on a cross (1 Pt.1.17-19; 1 John 2.1-2).

Remembering Billy Graham

I remember from my youth that there were two outstanding preachers on television. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen had a weekly program in the 1950s called "Life is Worth Living." And in the 1960s right up to the dawn of the new century, Billy Graham would appear on television three or four times a year preaching to stadiums full of people in what he called “a crusade” for Christ. The two men could not have been more different. The one was a Catholic. The other was a Southern Baptist. The one had a PhD in philosophy having studied at the Sorbonne and taught at Oxford. The other was just a common man from North Carolina with a common public school education. One wore the purple vestments befitting a prince of the Church ordained in the apostolic succession. The other wore a modest suit and tie and was, as he said, simply answering the call God had given him.

        But for all the differences between these two men, they had one thing in common. In an age of liberalism which has dismissed the supernatural and miraculous elements of the Gospel as nothing but superstition and legend, these two men spoke with authority affirming with certainty beyond doubt the absolute truth of the word of God. In an age of agnostic unbelief, they believed. They believed the Bible, which tells us that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins. And their message to America, though delivered in very different ways, was essentially the same. It was the timeless message of the New Testament: that the same Jesus Christ who died in Jerusalem accursed on a cross for our sins will one day come again on the clouds in glory to judge the living and the dead. And on that day when he judges the world there will be a stiff penalty to be paid by all who have not believed in Him.

         But why him? Why is it so important that we believe in Jesus Christ? Why won’t faith in Moses or Buddha or Mohammed or any one from a myriad of old souls and gurus do? They won’t do, because not a one of them has the power to save us from our sins. Christ alone, having risen from the dead, can rescue us from the curse of death that God put upon Adam’s descendants because of Adam’s sin. For as the Bible says, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim.2.5). The world has known many religious leaders, prophets true and false, and our age is full of fortune tellers and spiritual guides. But Jesus Christ alone came to earth from heaven to sacrifice himself for our sins. By raising Jesus from the dead, after he faithfully suffered torture and crucifixion in accordance with the scriptures, God revealed that Jesus was more than a prophet or a wise and righteous man. He was the only begotten Son of God.

       This is a mystery hard to understand.  He who had the power to exorcize demons, heal the blind and raise the dead to life again willingly underwent torture and gruesome death by crucifixion; why? While he was dying on the cross, his merciless tormentors taunted him by saying, “He could save others, why doesn’t he now save himself? Come down from the cross and we’ll believe in you” they laughed. Why didn’t he come down from the cross? Was he powerless? No. He who created the universe by the power of his word was all powerful. But in his human nature the Son of God was entirely committed to one thing: obedience to God. That he was God’s son made it no easier for him to do what he did. Foreseeing all that he would be required to endure to redeem humankind from sin, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not my will but thine be done.” Had he come down from the cross there would be no Gospel to proclaim, no sermon today to preach, because the scriptures would have gone unfulfilled. Had he not died on the cross, he would have failed to make atonement for our sins, and Satan, who defeated Adam in the beginning, would have won again. That is why, after he told his disciples that the Christ must suffer and die, Jesus was furious with Peter when his disciple said to him, “No way Lord, you must not do this.” Our Lord reprimanded him harshly, saying to him, “Get the behind me Satan, for you are not on the side of God but of men.” Christ became our savior by dying for us. And by taking all the sin of humanity upon himself—which he alone could do, being fully divine—he abolished those sins by putting them to death in himself. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he prayed as he took his last breath. What he prayed for us, he accomplished by his perfect faithfulness to God, faithful even unto death.  St. John, who alone among the chosen twelve stood faithfully at the foot of the cross with Mary, summed up the significance of this event in these immortal words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him may not perish but will have eternal life.” ( John 3.16).

        In an age when preachers everywhere are wasting precious time advocating for marriage equality, gun control, black lives matter, and hundreds of other political causes adored by politically correct progressives, while men and women everywhere are losing their souls to sin, giving themselves over to unspeakable promiscuity, these men kept the focus of their preaching and teaching where it belongs: on the precious blood of Christ shed on the cross which alone has the power to save our souls.

      At the end of each sermon, Billy Graham would offer, as is the custom in the Southern Baptist church, an altar call. He would invite those in the congregation to come forward and receive Christ he would say, “as your personal Lord and Savior.” It was always impressive to see hundreds of people come forward in response to his preaching, many of them in tears and all of them wanting to repent of sin and begin a new life following the commandments of God. And as the people responded faithfully after hearing Billy Graham preach, the choir would sing the hymn "Just as I Am"—"Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou biddest me come to thee, O lamb of God I come, I come."

       Some may wonder, why don’t we ever have an altar call? If we did, maybe we could get some of the sinners in this congregation converted. But if you think we don’t have an altar call, look again. What do we do at the end of each service after we have preached the word and lifted up Christ to God in the Blessed Sacrament consecrated on the altar? We pray to him who takes away our sin by taking it upon himself: O Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world have mercy upon us. And then the priest invites us to come forward and receive Christ who humbly comes to us disguised under the forms of bread and wine. We kneel at his altar rail and we humbly offer our souls to him as he imparts the divine sanctity to us forgiving our sins. That’s an altar call, my friends. Whether you’re worshipping in a Protestant church or Catholic, that’s what it’s all about, you give your soul to Jesus Christ who gave his life for you or 'you got nothin'.' But when you have Christ in you the hope of glory you have everything. For he who rose from the dead after having died on the cross as he said he would, will keep his promise and his word is sure: “all who see the Son and  believe in him will have eternal life,” he said, “ and I will raise you up on the last day.”

         Many will say that Protestants and Catholics are so different, they have nothing in common. But not really. All of us who are Christian believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As soon as I say that I know that there are many here today who wonder: Lamb of God? What is that? Well, the answer is in the Bible. Go back to the story of Abraham and Isaac. God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son. Abraham did not rebel but obeyed God. He led Isaac to a mountain to sacrifice him to kill him. Like Jesus would centuries later, Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be sacrificed up the mountain. And like Jesus would, Isaac obediently did what his father asked of him and laid on the wood. But as he lay on the wood he asked Abraham, “My Father, where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ And Abraham said “God will provide the lamb.” At that moment God provided a ram. Abraham took the ram and offered it to God, God then accepted the ram and spared Isaac.

       But unless Abraham was a liar, and not a righteous man, God had still to provide a lamb. The absence of that lamb is mystery hovering over the whole Old Testament. Abraham, whom God declared to be a righteous man, could not have been a liar. Therefore, there had to be a lamb yet to come. A greater sacrifice than Abraham would have made of Isaac was still to come. But what would it be; when and where? No one knew.  The answer would come two thousand years after the events related in Genesis 22.  Jesus appeared on the banks of the Jordan River and John the Baptist, prophetically moved by the Spirit, proclaimed upon seeing him, “Behold the lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus is that lamb. And what God would not let Abraham do, sacrifice his only son, God himself would do. God, the Father of us all made the ultimate sacrifice for us by offering his Son on a cross on our behalf. To be Christian is to believe that. To be saved is to know that Jesus Christ has fulfilled the scriptures he is the answer to the mystery that hovered over the Old Testament. He is the ultimate sacrifice, the one in whom the love of God for fallen humanity is perfectly revealed.

       And so Catholics and Protestants may have separate traditions that hopefully will be reconciled one day but we all have the same Savior and our singular hope is in him. Billy Graham preached consistently with conviction the message of that savior. That’s what made him effective just as it made Bishop Sheen effective. And those churches that will be effective in the future are the ones that deliver that message faithfully for God. The handwriting is on the wall. Churches that sell out to the liberal progressive culture and devote their resources exclusively to promoting what they call social justice are nothing but socialist wolves in disguise and at best a waste of everyone’s time. And there are so many of them now, Protestant and Catholic alike that America is starving for lack of authentic gospel preaching.

       Who is going to take Billy Graham’s place? They called him America’s pastor. Who is America’s pastor now? And what would he say to our previous President who at a national prayer breakfast called Jesus “a son of God”? And to our present one whose daughter left the faith to become a Jew? And what would he say to the American people who greet all of this with a yawn? We are a nation of sheep without a shepherd. I would not dare to predict the future. It remains to be seen whom God will raise up or if he will raise up anyone to take Rev. Graham’s place as America’s pastor. He may punish us and raise up no one. But that’s a sermon for another day. The message for this day is the one that Billy Graham hammered home time and time again; it’s the timeless message of the Gospel: believe in what the Bible says and believe in Jesus Christ. Accept him today as your personal Lord and Savior. For he is the sole mediator between God and humankind ; and his blood, shed on the cross, has the singular power to save us all from our sins.