Scott Freeman

I haven’t posted my podcasts in a while. Although some of it may be attributable to laziness the real reason is that I dedicated the month of January to preaching a series directed specifically to my congregational context in an effort to spur us on to more missional living. Those sermons consisted of the following topics:

Be Active from 2 Thessalonians
Be Prayerful from 1 Timothy
Be Re-lit from 2 Timothy
Be Age Appropriate from Titus

I post these below if they may be of any help or benefit to anyone. Also included is the sermon I preached last week during our annual “Friend Sunday.” It is a narrative sermon from Philemon entitled “Be Set Free”

Alas, my sermon from today did not get recorded. I’m a little cheesed because it was one that I was really pleased with where I name-dropped MLK and Shane Claiborne. Oh, well.

Click here to get your own player.

I’m preaching on Colossians 1:28–29 this Sunday. The title is “Be Mature.”

So, I ask you, dear readers: What is a mature Christian? What do you think that looks like? What are the characteristics of of a complete, or mature, believer?

Don’t just cop out and say that he looks like Jesus. Give me some real feedback here.

Today’s podcast is a two-fer. I’ve included last week’s sermon which I forgot to post. On the embeddable player below those two sermons should show up eventually. If not, click on the blue text that says “Scott Freeman’s Sermons” and it will take you to my podomatic page. These sermons are from 1 and 2 Corinthians. The first is on marriage and divorce, the second is on reconciliation and conflict resolution. Enjoy.

Click here to get your own player.

A little over 14 years ago now, I loaded up my small little white house that sat along interstate 30 in Benton, Arkansas and prepared to move to Tennessee.
Lebanon, that is.
In my 24 years that 6 months stretch of time in that Jim Walter house. was the longest I had been away from home.
I lived in the same house the first 24 years of my life.
I was going to go to Freed-Hardeman for college but backed out at the last minute. (Good move.)
Forced out of a whole lot of options due to the last minute change of heart, I stayed at the old home town university–the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
There I secured my degree, broke into youth ministry and finally secured my first “real” job post-matriculation.
That morning crossing the Arkansas river bridge that divided Arkansas and Tennessee I couldn’t help but being overwhelmed with excitement for what lay ahead. I was going to dedicate my life ministering to teens.
My parents brought the U-Haul, we unloaded and set up house.
The next day my parents left.
And I was alone.
I was overwhelmed with the thought of “What now? What do I do?”
All I really knew was that somehow the next day I was to go into my office and start doing what I had trained and prepared for.
But, honestly, I was lost. All I could do was pray for wisdom and jump in.
Those initial days were marked by fits and starts.
I was arrogant thinking that I knew everything. I was the one who knew about teenagers, not out of touch parents.
I was immature with little to distinguish between my antics and that of the teens who had been entrusted in my care.
It wasn’t long before there was a small group of parents who wanted me out.
And they were right.
But my elders were patient with me. They knew that part of their job was to help me grow up and into the ministry that God had called me to.
I couldn’t help but go back to those days as I was reading the book of Acts this week. Jesus incarnate was no longer among them.
This ragtag bunch of followers were left to somewhat figure out where to go from there. Those 10 days between the ascension and outpouring had to be fraught with questioning and speculating about what they future held for them.
When the Spirit finally did arrive (2:4) they began a ministry that would change the world.
But it was not always easy.
They were still given to immaturity and failures.
They struggled with the thought of the message going to Gentiles.
They wrestled with the implications of proper Christian service.
They fought and divided (See Paul and John Mark)
Surely there were dark and lonely days.

But this is sure: Christ is made manifest in the book of Acts by the faithful witness of His followers.
Were they perfect? Not even close.
But they were faithful and sincere.
Christ is modeled in Acts through the discipleship of common, every-day believers. They wrestled, they struggled and they failed.
But through the transforming power of the Spirit they changed the world.
That is the call of discipleship–to be missional and transformative.
To be in community and fellowship with one another.
To break bread.
To give out of our abundance for the general good of all.

Acts opens with the risen and victorious Lord ascending into Heaven, leaving His followers behind.
Acts continues with the risen and victorious Lord appearing time and time again through the faithful witness of fallen people.
Like me.
And you.

Listen to this sermon from John 3 here.

Last night, Tracy and I had an insurance agent come by our house. Out of respect and deference I will not name the company. Now, the last thing in the world that I want to happen at 8:00 on a Tuesday night is to have to talk to somebody about health insurance.
My feelings about the state of insurance companies in America is well-documented.
But, Tracy begins a new job in a couple of weeks and we will no longer have coverage through her work.
Hence, the need to scramble and find a provider, stat.
So, this guy comes by last night to tout his company and its superiority to all the other insurance companies vying to not pay our claims.
An hour and a half later he left.
While he was there he painstakingly told us about every aspect of the coverage and all of the benefits, exclusions and supplementary riders.
So much for watching “Gilmore Girls.”
I kept waiting for him to get to the cost. Of course, I wanted to know the specifics of the coverage but the important thing to me was the bottom line.

I’m a bottom line kind of guy.
I can find myself getting way too irritated when people belabor a point and won’t get to the heart of the matter.
Tell me how much it costs first, then I’ll determine if I’m interested.
Hook me with the story in the first 30 pages or I’m going to a different book.
Grab me in the first 10 minutes or I’m changing the channel.
You know what I like? The Four Word Film Review.
They give a review of the movie in just four words. To wit:
Gone With The Wind: Scarlet has midwife crisis.
Titanic: It hit an iceberg
Casablanca: Rick loses chick.

That’s great stuff.
And that’s one of the reasons that I love John so much. My favorite gospel doesn’t beat around the bush all that much.
Whereas in the synoptic gospels we get a lot of Jesus telling the disciples not to tell others who He truly is, John dispenses with that pretty quick.
In the synoptics we hear Jesus say quite a bit, “Don’t tell anyone about this.”
It takes John all of 14 verses to tell us that Jesus is the Son of God.
And that is in keeping with his purpose: John writes so that we might know who this Jesus is. That He is the Christ, the very Son of God (John 20:30–31)

Where the other gospels give us a more historical account, Clement of Alexandria said that John wrote a spiritual gospel. The Son of God, The Messiah, the Christ comes into full view in the pages of this beloved apostle.
In John, Jesus boldly and unapologetically claims who He is. In the book of Exodus when Moses is dispatched as the great deliverer of the Hebrew Scriptures he asks God who he is to say sent him. God’s reply? “I Am Who I Am.”
That phrase, Yahweh, meant something to the Jewish reader. It was the very proclamation of the name of God. 23 times Jesus identifies Himself with the descriptive appellation “I Am.”
Seven times He gives us even greater insight to who He is:
–I AM the Bread of life (6:35)
–I AM the Light of the world (8:12)
–I AM the Door (10:7)
–I AM the Good Shepherd (10:11, 14)
–I AM the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)
–I AM the Way, the Truth, the Life (14:6)
–I AM the true Vine (15:1)

Unequivocal. Clear. Direct.

And in case we fail to get the message through the continuous assertions of Jesus, John provides us with seven signs that point to Jesus as God in the Flesh:
He turns water into wine signifying His place as the giver of life
He heals a official’s son signifying His mastery over distance
He Heals a lame man at the pool of Bethesday signifying his dominance over time
He feeds 5,000 signifying His sustaining power
He walks on water and stills the storm signifying His dominion over the physical world
He Heals a man blind from birth signifying the Light He brings to the world
He raises Lazarus from the dead signifying His victory over death.

I like that. There’s no waffling here. We know precisely who Jesus is in the gospel of John.

He is the Christ.

From Luke 5:27:32. It starts a few seconds into my reading the text.

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I love history. From time to time I will go to the library and pick out a retelling of some historical event. I have a very simple method to separating good historical works from bad ones:

If I’m able to read it with the possibility that the outcome might be different, it’s good.

In other words, although I know how the story ends, I still read it as if it hadn’t happened.

One of the best examples of that was my reading of Taylor Branch’s masterful Civil Rights saga: America in the King Years. In the final installment of the three part series, At Canaan’s Edge, I knew that when Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis that second time that he would be assassinated. But as I read the book I couldn’t help but hope against hope that the ending was different:
–That MLK used a different hotel,
–That James Earl Ray missed,
–Or he did not go out on the balcony of the Lorraine hotel.
Although I knew the outcome I still read as if the ending could still turn out differently.
That, to me, is the mark of a great historical work.
I’m currently reading Douglas Brinkley’s detailed account of Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath, The Great Deluge. Again, I’m reading believing that the ending might somehow change: that the hurricane will veer further off course, that the levees will hold, that the government will be prepared.
That is the mark of a great historical work.

That’s the impression I get when reading the gospel of Luke. Luke the physician is a master chronicler. He writes with the air and authority of the great historians.
Luke flows with context, content and climate. In Luke we see the Kingdom come to life through the Messiah of God. We see the hope of redemption for the outcast and downtrodden.
We see the Christ walking amongst the people pointing the way to Calvary.

What separates Luke from Mark is the insertion of a travelogue between His Galilean ministry and the Passion. In 9:51 when we read “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” the reader can sense a dramatic shift in the movement of the book.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. In Mark that trip takes one verse. In Luke, it takes 10 chapters, a full third of the book. This travelogue is rife with the sayings of Jesus, but we are continually reminded that He is on His way to Jerusalem.
I couldn’t help reading this segment with the idea that it might be different: that there could be another way. That He wouldn’t have to die. That He would take His time to get to Jerusalem.
And I couldn’t help thinking what I would have done. He set His mind to go to Jerusalem knowing full well that He would die there.
I’m pretty selfish. It’s not an attractive quality but I know it’s still there. What would I have done if I had known that going to Jerusalem was a death sentence?
Here are some possibilities:
–I would have found a reason not to go;
–I would have dawdled in every city I entered;
–I would have started a smear campaign against my potential executioners to turn the tide of public opinion decidedly my way.

But that is not what Jesus did. He didn’t dawdle. He didn’t delay. He didn’t denigrate.
Instead, this is what He did:
–He warned. He told of the coming kingdom and warned the religious, the Pharisees and the legalists that love of money, dismissal of the poor and neglecting the forgotten was anathema to the way of God. His warnings were not for those outside of the halls of faith but for those of us who live as if we all have it figured out.
–He taught. He showed the the way to pray, the way to treat others, the importance of living Kingdom lives.
–He healed. The kingdom was announced through the miraculous power of the Son of God: The blind can see, the lame can walk, the prisoner set free.
–He forgave. Even the most blindly religious could find peace and hope. By laying down the chores, by giving, by being childlike, they too experience the fullness of the Kingdom.

Christ in Luke is determined, committed and persistent in fulfilling His mission. He lived His life on the margins where the people were. By setting His sights on Jerusalem He plotted a course that wound its way through the highways and byways where the lost, downtrodden and neglected were pushed to the side.
On that way He provided a message of healing and forgiveness, teaching the Kingdom purposes of loved and generosity of spirit. In that is great warning for those of us who have reduced Kingdom living to a list of rules, habits, disciplines and purposes. It’s not a list of rules but the road we travel that matters.
Ultimately the road He calls us to travel is the same one He did winding through the hearts and lives of people.
All the way to Calvary.
That is Christ in Luke.

The gospel of Mark teaches us that Jesus was human. What does Jesus teach us about being human? Click the link and find out.

http://sfreeman.podOmatic.com/entry/2006-09-24T14_07_13-07_00

One of my favorite movies as a child was “The Poseidon Adventure.” I watched repeatedly the story of this disparate group of people as they struggle to make their way up and out of a capsized ship.
At a 2 hour running time you were able to get a great handle on the individual characters and how they contributed to the group, each bring specific strengths (and weaknesses). The interplay between Gene Hackman’s man of faith and Ernest Borgnine’s grizzled and cynical cop was the highlight of the character development. Also contributing to the dynamic was a stellar cast featuring such cinematic heavyweights as Red Buttons, Shelly Winters, Roddy McDowall and Jack Albertson.
And that song. There’s got to be a morning after, right?
Earlier this year Hollywood gave us a remake. Poseidon was to be a fresh take on the nautical classic.
Was it? That’s debatable. What was noticeable was that it was about 30 minutes shorter than the original. When you cut a movie like that usually the first thing to go is character development.
So, in the new version what you have is a whole lot of action and a whole lot less about the individual characters. Not necessarily a bad thing but you have to pay a lot closer attention to ascertain who these people truly are. Dialogue takes a back seat to movement.
That’s the feeling I get when I read Mark right after reading Matthew.
The first gospel is chock full of character development. Matthew is showing that Jesus is the promised Messiah. This Promised One holds forth repeatedly in lengthy discourses.
Mark dispenses with all of that stuff. It’s all about the action for him.
Obviously his audience is a lot different than Matthew’s. Mark is writing to Gentiles. Most likely believers in Rome. It was less important to posit Jesus as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was not essential for the Messianic proof of Matthew to be spelled out in Mark.
Following Matthew and its rich detail can render Mark a little disappointing. It can seem disjointed, brusque and a little bit choppy.
Initially I found myself a little bit irritated that it moved so quickly, devoid of any great discourse or elaboration of its themes. Like Poseidon, I wanted to know more about those relationships and the greater truths that were contained within.
But as I read and re-read I began to fall in love with its subtlety, with its minimalistic brilliance.
For Christ in Mark is more like me than in the other gospels: He’s human.
Here, what we see clearly, is that Jesus, although God was fully man.
He slept, he ate, he walked, talked and laughed.
Jesus is not captured in Mark in grand speeches or controversial encounters. Instead He is captured with a not-so-subtle sigh, a sympathetic glace.
He is rendered as playful with children.
As compassionate to the plights of others.
It is in what is not said in Mark where we truly see Jesus. It’s through reading between the lines, taking into account what He did.
It’s the action that matters–but the actions reveal the character underneath.
Character development is a great thing but what truly counts is what we do, how we live.
How we treat others.
That is what develops our character.
That is what Mark has to teach us.
Jesus exemplified His character through a tender touch, a loving look and a gentle embrace.
He touched.
He loved.
He lived.
You don’t need a lot of words to do that.