Be Holy
From The Forum Magazine, Fall 2014 - view the full issue here
For the Convocation that opened the 139th Academic Year at Calvin Theological Seminary, Professor of Preaching John Rottman presented what he does best—a preached sermon entitled BE HOLY that offered both challenge and support to an academic community of faculty, students, and staff. Here is an excerpt from that sermon address, based on I Peter 1:13–2:3, in which Rottman led the community through a kaleidoscope of stories and insights that candidly exposed our resistance to holiness and its boundaries. Nevertheless, the boundaries designed by God are meant for our good, for our life. And he intends us to choose holiness within community. No more “push and pull of all those unholy desires in our lives.” Instead, a place in community that percolates with the Holy Spirit and God where “is working overtime to reestablish holiness in and among us.”
When human beings violate the boundaries that God put into his creation for them, they fail to flourish and even die. For example, when human beings violate God’s boundaries for sexuality, they find their marriages falling apart, sexually transmitted diseases running rampant, the grisly practice of abortion becoming commonplace. Turning away from God’s holy ways means travelling in the direction of death. Holy is all about living within and with respect for the ways God made his world to work. Peter mentions that when people turn away from being holy, deceit, hypocrisy, envy take over. Later, Peter mentions debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, and carousing as the deathly products of an unholy life. Turn from the Holy God to live in unholy ways, then death and degradation will surely follow.
So what hope do we have, even if we really were to ask for holiness? In a world stricken by unholy rave desires, what are the chances that places like Calvin Seminary can become a Holy place and for faculty, staff and students to become holy people. Peter points to God and reminds us about how the holy creator God was not content to let his deeply loved creation languish in unholy suffering and death. Peter tells us how God hatched a plan to redeem his people. God moves in all his triune power to reestablish holiness.
Remember that The word “holy” has to do with separation. God is holy because he is totally separate from sin. But more than that, God is also holy because he separates himself from his creation in an important way. He gives his creatures an existence distinct and separate from himself in order to give them space and freedom, room to live and love. God creates people, not robots; people with their own created space. God limits himself to give us real created life. In that sense too God is Holy, the holy creator … and the holy recreating redeemer.
So Peter reassures us that the day is coming when each one of us who belongs to Jesus will no longer feel the push and pull of all those unholy desires in our lives. The day is coming when Jesus will kill off those inclinations to color outside the lines and will banish the death and destruction that comes along with it.
But in the meantime, there is also grace for us in the middle of the battle. Grace for Calvin Seminary students, staff, and faculty. This God of grace places us within a holy community, percolating with his Holy Spirit. He places us in a community where he is working overtime to reestablish holiness in and among us.
Last night I taught the opening Calvin Seminary class in one of the seminary’s prison classes. Twenty-five students, each of whom had strayed from holiness in spectacular ways. One of them whom I call Bill, took a handgun, used it in anger, and ended up in prison for the rest of his life.
The prospect of life in prison was so daunting that Bill wondered about taking his own life. How could he go on after what he had done and where he was? But God didn’t leave Bill alone, even in prison. Some of his family kept in touch and prayed for him. When Calvin Seminary started its first prison course, Bill decided to try it. There God introduced Bill to a few other people who loved Jesus. When a new church started a few months later, God gave Bill an opportunity to join the leadership team. Today, that small group of six has grown to more than sixty. Imagine a CRC church plant behind fortified prison walls. God commissioned Bill to be a key leader there. And in his spare time Bill “unofficially” ministers to psychiatric-patient prisoners. A few months ago, Bill’s brother told me, “I want you to know that I have never been prouder of the church and of this seminary when Isee the new life that God has given my brother Bill in prison.” New life. Born again. Holy.
If God can do it there, I know God can—and will—work his holy mystery of transformation here at Calvin Seminary. God is all about making us holy, renovating and saving what sin and evil aim to wreck. God is all about making Calvin Seminary into more and more a holy place where God’s love and God’s life flows and flourishes.
Early in his letter, Peter mentions that when angels hear about advances in the worldwide reclamation project that Jesus is working in and among his people, they can’t get enough. When the angels see what lengths God has gone to save and restore people like Bill and like us, they shake their holy heads in awe. “My God,” you can hear them saying, “I can hardly believe it. Look at what God has done with him. Look at what God has done with her.” Almost unbelievable.
Well, here we are, angels looking on. As we face life’s battle with its unholy desires, God places us within a community of holy people. Calvin Seminary, half church, half school. Look around. God has gathered us as people bought not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood Christ. God places us within this seminary community, a community percolating with the Holy Spirit love of Jesus. A place where smiles and loving words prompt us to say, yes, here we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. You see, Holiness is life. Holiness is human beings fully alive. Holy is what we were made to be.
(John Rottman, Professor of Preaching, emeritus)
