HFP Holiday Series, #1, Jesus is the reason

It was Al Hoksbergen’s first sermon in Ferrysburg Community Church. 

This well-known theologian and progressive thinker in the Christian Reformed Church of North America had spent most of his career in ministries that were near campuses of 2 major Michigan universities. He was well-known and highly regarded in Reformed circles. 

How did he end up in a small-town church? Well, he wanted to retire in our community.

In expressing a willingness to accept a call to become our pastor, he thought it best that we experience him on the pulpit first. And so, as a guest pastor, he came to speak. And instead of giving us a heady lecture, full of scriptural truths and important doctrines, he nodded toward a gnarly old cross that our aesthetics committee had placed on the stage. Al simply stated, “That is what I preach.” 

Another even more famous Calvinist theologian named Karl Barth was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during a lecture tour in 1962. In a Q & A session afterwards, a student asked him if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Barth is said to have responded, “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’” 

As the founder of HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS, I, too, want to make a simple statement. Be assured that I don’t compare myself with theologians. The founder of HFP is a “crooked stick” who has a closet that overflows with skeletons, who daily battles his own demons, and who identifies with the Apostle Paul as “chief of all sinners.” But for the grace of God, he, too, might have spent time behind bars. 

This is my 85th Christmas, and it could very well be my last. I’d like to tie in the Christmas story with the founding of HFP. Church signs love to post the trite phrase, “Jesus is the reason for the season!” 

Well, I can truthfully say that he is the reason for this organization. 

I had no experience in this field, let alone any interest in getting involved with the incarcerated. But this Jesus, whose birth we celebrate this week, had different ideas. 

The most influential teacher in the history of mankind would grow up to tell his followers, “I was in prison and you visited me.” 

20 years ago, this carpenter from Nazareth led the way. 

I simply followed.



 

 

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