Well-Credentialed

When you apply for a job, or offer service to a customer, you will need to show your credentials. You will need to prove that you are who you say are and that you have the skills and abilities to deserve the job or land that contract. The word ‘credential’ is based on the Latin word credo, which means ‘believe.’ So your credentials make you believable — credible.

People want religion to be credible – they want it to “work.” Visit a Christian bookstore today and you’ll see plenty of books on the shelves selling “the prosperity gospel.” One preacher after another claims that, if you are committed to their system or strategy (which, of course, is always God’s system or strategy) then you will succeed; you will prosper. And your life will be full and complete.

Some people gravitate to churches in order to be ‘saved.’ But I’m not so sure that it’s their souls that they want to save. More often than not they expect the church to save their marriages, save their families, save their jobs, save their health, save their delinquent children. But before joining these churches, they want to know the church’s credentials. Why should they believe that we can save them and their marriages, families, jobs, health, children, and more?

As a church, we want to be relevant. And so we offer our credentials in the hope that they will make us believable. We present a positive image. We show that this is a happy place filled with nice people. Isn’t that what we expect our beautifully decorated and well-maintained church building to do … to make us credible and appealing to our community?

Such sentiments are not new. Churches have always been concerned about their credibility. In today’s Epistle from 2 Corinthians we see a snapshot of life in your typical messy church. As the congregation in Corinth began to be racked with conflict and disagreement, it turned on Paul and blamed him because his credentials were rather questionable.

He was very ordinary looking. He lacked eloquence. He was not well-versed in the wisdom of the ancient world. He wasn’t wealthy. He wasn’t popular and had this terrible habit of creating conflict and controversy wherever he went. In short, he just did not have the proper credentials to be a good leader and pastor.

Paul responded by writing, “But as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…” (2 Corinthians 6:4-5).

How odd! Paul believes that those very things that would seem to undermine his credibility are his most compelling credentials. He’s proud of things that would put us to shame and make us shrink with embarrassment.

He goes on to say, “We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:8b-10).

Paul dares to make such outrageous claims about himself because of his relationship to Christ. God’s love in Christ has transformed Paul’s troubled life and made it a success, even though in the eyes of others it seems like an utter failure. To many his credentials seem worthless, yet Paul believes that Christ has made his suffering and troubled life the most compelling proof of all that his message is true and his authority as an apostle is legitimate.

So, what are our credentials? We show them every time we gather for worship. But they’re rather strange and odd credentials. They’re not the kind of credentials that members of a successful and prosperous organization would want to show others.

As part of the liturgy each week, we drag out all of our dirty underwear for everyone to see. We confess our sins, recognize our failures, and admit our despicable behavior and attitude. And today we add another wrinkle: we mark our foreheads with ashes. We don’t use face paints or cosmetic makeup or something else that can cover our blemishes. We use ashes, something burnt and dead and utterly useless – as if this best symbolized the state of our lives.

The ashes remind us of the embarrassing and uncomfortable truth that the rest of the world is dedicated to denying: All is not well. We are at odds with God and doomed to the ash heap of history. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But this is not the whole truth. There’s an even bigger and better truth which ultimately is the church’s reason for being. This is the truth on which we can base our credentials: that, through Jesus, we are righteous, upright, beloved sons and daughters of God.

Yes, there will be ashes, but these ashes are in the shape of a cross. And it’s not just any cross. It’s the cross of Jesus, the Christ. His cross makes all the difference in the world. Because of his cross, because of what he did for us, we are able to make the outrageous claims that we are righteous in the eyes of God.

Sure, when the world hears us talk like this, they think we’re just a bunch of hypocrites. They believe we’re deluding ourselves if we think that trusting in Christ and his promises can make such a difference in our lives. These aren’t credentials that will make us more believable – they’re liabilities that make us look like fools, they say.

But these are our credentials. And what we sport as our credentials is not what we have done but what Christ has done for us!

We come to church to hear that good news, and we leave this place with our lives changed. Our lives changed? But our lives are still a mess. In fact, that’s what the critics of our credentials are quick to point out. All this talk about forgiveness and mercy is just another lie to get us off the hook. We’ve heard this line before. It’s just cheap grace, freedom to remain the same old sinners that we have always been. “God loves to forgive sins. We love to commit them. Isn’t the world admirably arranged?”

But that’s not the case at all. Christ does change our lives. Our making the sign of the cross in ashes on our foreheads and our willingness to face up to our dirty underwear on this Ash Wednesday is recognition that our lives have been changed. We have now entered a struggle, a struggle that will continue the rest of our lives, a struggle that will never leave us complacent, at ease, or unmoved. Yes, “God loves to forgive sins,” but we don’t love to commit them. We hate to commit them.

But if it were not for Christ and his mercy, we would be stuck in our sins and the same old miserable world. Were it not for Christ and what God did for us in him, we would be most pathetic and all the charges of hypocrisy made toward us would certainly be true.

Yes, we are nothing more than ashes and deserve nothing more. But we are ashes marked in the sign of the cross, Jesus’ cross … and his cross makes all the difference in the world. Because this is his ashen cross, we can stand tall. We are righteous and holy, the beloved sons and daughters of God … who can give our lives away in service to others, not needing credit or recognition. For we already know who we are.

When our critics demand, “Show me your credentials!” we can point to the ashen cross on our foreheads. The incredible gift of what Jesus did on the cross makes us credible.

Yes, we have the credentials.