During the time of confession in yesterday’s service, in which God tunes the heart of his people through confession of their sin and unworthiness, our worship leader (who also happens to be my brother-in-law) quoted one of my favorite “spooky” Christmas songs. This makes it the second time Sufjan Stevens has been read from our church’s pulpit (the first being here).

Sing a carol to your mom
‘Cause she knows what’s goin’ on
And she knows if you’ve been bad or good
If you get what you deserve
To be graded on a curve
Oh you’ve got a lot of nerve

la la la la la la la la etc.

Sufjan’s It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad! will not win any awards for poetic beauty, but what you cannot see by reading the lyrics is the way in which the words are sung. While we sinners willingly admit that we deserve death, we often take God’s grace for granted and expect “to be graded on a curve.” Then we plug our ears and sing the chorus as if to say, “I can’t hear you! La la la la la …!”

And so as we prayed I was reminded of the following scripture …

If we way we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
– 1 John 1:8-10

… which in turn revealed how utterly addicted I am to my own glory, my own righteousness and my own special rules and regulations (that are, of course, looser than everyone else’s). Praise be to the God whose tuning fork shows things as they exist, silencing the “La la la’s” of my hardened heart and replacing my fiction with the fact that he will never turn away a sinner who comes to him in truth (cf Spurgeon).

From Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society:

It is a striking fact that almost all the proclamations of the gospel which are described in Acts are in response to questions asked by those outside the Church. [...] In every case there is something present, a new reality, which calls for explanation and so prompts the question to which the preaching of the gospel is the answer. This is clearly so in the first cases I have cited, the sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Something is happening which prompts the crowd to come together and ask, ‘What is going on?’ The answer of Peter is in effect a statement that what is going on is that the last day has arrived and the powers of the new age are already at work, and that this is so because of the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

What sorts of questions are being prompted among the world by our own lives and ministries? When the questions come, what are our instinctive replies? That is, what do we believe is real-ly happening among us? Is it Jesus or is it just Memorex? A friend relayed a recent conversation with seven very knowledgable men about “what is the gospel,” and the conversation progressed for a full thirty minutes with each one waxing eloquent on the topic of “the gospel.” In that half hour not one time did the name of Jesus nor any reference to his person and work come up. How is that?