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October 26, 2003
How to Build a Life
How to Build a Life
Psalm 33 / Proverbs 14: 1-12
Luke 6: 46-49
October 26th, 2003
Reformation Sunday
Protestants around the world call today “Reformation Sunday.” Reformation Sunday isn’t one of the great festivals in the Christian year such as Easter and Christmas. All Christians don’t celebrate it. In Greece and Russia Christians don’t know what the term means. No doubt at St. Mary’s Cathedral this morning, the morning sermon may remember the Reformation, but for sure the bishop will not rejoice in it.
In fact, Reformation Sunday challenges one of Jesus’ most basic longings, expressed in His great prayer recorded in the Gospel of John, “That they may be one as we are One.” I wonder what the Apostle Paul thinks, as he looks down on this massive, worldwide thing called “Christendom,” that evolved from his hard labors. As Paul and Jesus confer, what do they think about the splintering of the Church that took place after Martin Luther re-discovered the words of the ancient prophet, Habakkuk, that stirred the soul of St. Paul—“The just shall live by faith”?
Who can dispute that Jesus is the foundation of the Church, but who can dispute as well, that the building has gone every which way on top of that foundation?
Fear and pride, I sense, have been like two very bad tools preventing a strong house from coming together on top of that sure foundation. Humility and contrition were needed, but in their place came pride and fear. Knowing that even the gates of hell cannot prevail in destroying the Body of Christ, the devil has used pride that makes us grab on to this or that perception of truth, and fear of the criticism of others whose approval we cherish, to prevent our visible unity in Christ. Pride and fear far more than doctrine separates us. How similar are the doctrines of many who will never come together in one house until Jesus forces us to at the end. We’re all proud. We’re all afraid.
The Church was already divided when the Protestant Reformation began. The first official division in Christendom took place in AD 1054, separating east from west. Then, on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther took a hammer and walked to the front door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. He nailed there his now famous 95 Theses, little knowing how each blow of his hammer was a harbinger of the splintering of the Western Church.
How I love Luther’s hymn with which we began our worship this morning, “A Mighty Fortress is our God!” But it was never intended to suggest something different from “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” What a “house” Protestantism has turned out to be! We’ve built a house with so many rooms with different décor in each so that you’d wonder if there was a common architect behind it all. The Psalmist wrote, “Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” I wonder is the Lord building this house?
This morning we have been reminded of Jesus’ story that encourages us to build life on a strong foundation. He gave this word-picture at the end of His “Sermon on the Mount.” Hearing and doing what He taught is like building our lives on a rock-solid foundation. Floods and winds destroy a house with a sand foundation, but they cannot destroy a house built on a rock.
He gave us images we can understand clearly in the wake of this summer’s flooding. The flooding of the Wabash River wasn’t as successful as the mudslides in California in wiping away the homes of many people. We had flooded basements and even living rooms, but not many of the homes in Indiana were carried away with the flooding. Perhaps the good concrete foundations our homes are built on helped.
When you pause and think about it, the very idea of having a strong foundation for life is good, but what does it mean? And how do we “build,” an image that suggests blueprints and skill? What Jesus taught refers to the Church, but it also refers to your life and to mine. The Church is made up of very many people like you and me.
You and I have five senses, one brain, and a host of physical and emotional hungers that agitate to be satisfied. Hunger, thirst, the longing to reproduce that seems to drive human society crazy, the need to be safe, warm, correct, satisfied, and to thrive—all of these appetites and instincts and many more seethe inside us like chemicals in a test-tube. And there is no guarantee how the experiment will turn out. How will the experiment turn out in the test tube called “You?” Did Jesus have something like your life, or like Faith Church in mind when He said, “Build on the Rock!”?
What do we mean, then, when we speak of Jesus building His Church, and what do we mean when we think of building our lives on a strong foundation? We talk about growth a lot. What do we mean by growth? It seems most people stay pretty much the same.
When God began the process in human history that would lead to deliverance from sin and death He made two promises to Abraham. First, God promised him a family, that is, a house. “I will build it,” God promised. People would be able to speak of the “house of Abraham” as a very big house. He would have descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore. His seed would be a blessing to all nations. Second, God promised him a homeland. Abraham’s life was an odyssey to find that homeland. Today that homeland is torn with violence.
Later in the story of Abraham’s “house,” his descendant, King David, wanted to build a house for God. God told David, “You will not build me a house, but I will build you a house.” This meant that David wouldn’t get to build the Temple in Jerusalem, but that God would make sure that someone from David’s family line would be king over Israel for ever. As Christians we often remember the mysterious way God kept this promise.
Quietly history unfolded, and the Tribe of Judah didn’t go the way of the dinosaur. In the little Palestinian town of Nazareth God began to bring together the threads of Israelite history as a little boy from the tribe of Judah was born named Joseph. Judah was the tribe of King David. Joseph fell in love with a girl from the tribe of Levi named “Mary.” Levi was the priestly tribe. The royal and the priestly lines came together when Joseph and Mary fell in love.
And even though they reserved the full physical expression of their love for each other until after they got married, God did something special in Mary. She found herself with child in a special act of God. We call this the Virgin birth, or more properly, the virginal conception of Jesus. This Child was the ultimate fulfillment of the promise God made to King David. This Child was not merely King of Israel, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—and our Great High Priest. He was Immanuel, God with us. All of this wrapped up in that little baby born in Bethlehem, the City of David. He fulfilled God’s promises to King David and to Abraham and to Adam and Eve—and to Himself when He said, “I will make myself a beautiful world.”
These past few weeks we have been reading and pondering the special teaching of this Immanuel, this King of Kings and Great High Priest to His closest followers. Here Jesus explained the blueprints for building on His strong foundation. To individuals and to the Church Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, give to him who begs of you . . . I’m the sure foundation, but this is how you build.”
How are we building with these blueprints?
When Matthew’s Gospel tells us Jesus taught these things from the top of a mountain, it was to make us think of Moses who received God’s commands to Israel from the top of a mountain.
How different the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is from Moses’ Sermon on the Mount. After Moses gave to Israel the laws of God from the mountain, he sternly warned them to obey these laws with a list of blessings and cursings. If they obeyed the laws of God, blessing. If they disobeyed, cursing. And the curses were enough to make you shudder. But as bad as the curses were they didn’t work to scare Israel into following God’s plan of life.
Jesus followed up His Sermon on the Mount with a story. No threats. Just a story.
But I notice Jesus prefaced this concluding story with a question: “Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” I wonder what His tone of voice was? When Matthew mentions Jesus’ asking the same question he tells us Jesus will one day say to those who call Him, “Lord, Lord,” but do not do what He says, “Depart from me; I never knew you.” That sounds stern. Luke skips this hard saying. But it seems we should remember Jesus said this too.
Did Jesus say this sadly? Did Jesus look into the future and know that His grace would cover all our sin, and wonder why people who call Him “Lord, Lord,” should use grace as a reason for not building in His way? “My blueprints matter,” Jesus said. Paul explained grace. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” If I were God and knew that people would use my undeserved favor as a reason for not even trying to build using Jesus’ blueprints. . . well, I’m not God, and that’s just as well.
Jesus looked at His disciples who wandered like sheep without a shepherd, who stumbled into foolish mistakes. He looks at us and says, “But I have offered you a better way. Why don’t you give my way a try? Why do you call me Lord, but don’t try to follow me?” Jesus might have continued, “You don’t try because it’s hard and you’re unsure of yourselves. But you make it harder still by not trying, and by defending your blunders. I will help you. My father has given you the Holy Spirit.”
When Jesus told his story about the wise and foolish builders, it was to make clear that He intends for us NOT just salvation from sin and death in the end, but that we should build a full and abundant life. Life is like a house we build. Salvation from sin and death is a gift of God; it’s the foundation. But the life Jesus offers us is a house we have to build.
The Apostle Paul tells us, “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest. It will be revealed with fire. . . If any one’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
When Paul wrote this, it seems he had himself in mind as someone who was building the Church. He and Apollos were two very respected Church leaders. But Paul knew there is a difference between building big and building good. Paul never forgot that the heart and soul of his message was the odd idea that God became flesh in Jesus, and that this God-man suffered death by crucifixion, and that He came to life again on the third day afterwards. This message, foolishness to the Greeks and scandal to the Jews, was the heart and soul of his message. It was monotonously simple. Come to Jesus and be reborn and changed by the renewing of your mind.
Other ideas can draw a following. God can make you rich—oh yummy! But money burns fast—yuk! Other ideas are the kind of building material that will burn with fire—wood, hay, straw.
But it’s not just the overall thing we call the Church that Jesus and Paul had in mind to build right. Your life and mine are houses God wants to raise on top of a sure foundation. Jesus is your foundation. But how are you building?
It’s hard. For one thing, it’s all well and good to speak of the Sermon on the Mount as Jesus’ blueprints for life, but with a set of blueprints you are supposed to have a final page showing how the finished house looks. I can’t see the picture of my finished house called Stuart. You have no picture showing what your house will look like. All we have is blueprints that look very awkward to follow now. “Turn the other cheek?” “Give my jacket to the one who stole my shirt?” What kind of blueprints are these? We don’t try to follow these blueprints because we’re proud and afraid they will only lead to disaster.
Jesus is the one person in the world to whom I’ll say “OK!” when He says, “Just trust me.”
You say you love God. What’s the proof? What are the priorities of your life? What questions do you ask before you make your decisions? What we can afford very often is the prime consideration in how we use our money. Are your questions the kind that have your comfort and best interest in mind first? You say you love your neighbor. What’s the proof? How does your prosperity figure in to the blueprints you follow day by day?
Loving God and loving our neighbor are two aspects of the house- building project God has given us. We begin on the foundation of realizing God loved us despite our sin. We trust that Jesus died to forgive us our sins, and this is the bed rock of our life and faith. Now where do we go from there? And where does the Church go from that basic trust? Building his hard work. It is a task that must follow a blueprint.
I worked construction during the summer after graduation from college. I was strong and loved to push wheel-barrows filled with concrete up ramps to where the brick-layers worked. Everyone who worked building dormitories at Allen University in Colombia, SC, worked hard. But our hard work was far from the whole story. There was a guy wearing a hard hat who carried a sheaf of papers around, and a tape measure, and he kept checking what we were doing. Because we not only had to work hard, but we had to follow the blueprints.
Building on the foundation of Jesus requires hard work and using the blueprint He gave us. We can’t see the finished picture. We have to trust that in the big blueprints God drew, the building will be worth seeing. You and I are builders, and it matters how we build. You are building the house called “You.” We are building the house called “Faith Church,” just a small part of the Big House called “The Body of Christ.”
The winds will blow hard, and the flood waters come, but the Church will stand. I pray your life will stand too when the hard wind blows and when flood waters come. How are you building your house?
Let us pray: O Lord, in these few minutes we have tried to understand how to build on the sure foundation of Jesus. Now give us grace to build. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2003
The Principle of Buried Treasure
The Principle of Buried Treasure
Psalm 95 / Proverbs 12: 1-10
Luke 6: 43-45
October 19th, 2003
This past Wednesday evening the Public Broadcasting System aired a TV program about the life of Winston Churchill. I was once again drawn in to the life of a man who has intrigued me as long as I’ve known of him. As I was reminded of this man’s story, I wondered about my own life’s fruitfulness.
I read Churchill’s biography some years ago. He defied the early expectations of him. As a lad he’d not shown much promise, but in his later years he had “his finest hour.” When all the chips were down for Great Britain, its cities being bombed pitilessly, he inspired his country’s defense against the Nazi blitzkrieg. He then wrote the story of this war so well that he won the Nobel Prize for literature. He wrote the history of his nation as well. He was a spellbinding orator and a more than competent artist and bricklayer.
There was a fire inside Winston Churchill, something inside that developed gradually, and in the end burst on the world scene as a multi-faceted, brilliant life. And I thought of Jesus’ words in our text this morning, “from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” What was the abundance inside of Churchill? What was inside of Winston Churchill was a buried treasure that got dug up and was offered to the world when it needed just this kind of treasure.
And yet, having witnessed the striking role he played on the stage of world history, I wonder what he was in his depths. What makes “great people” noticeable involves factors outside of themselves. Timing is everything. Had there been no war with Germany, would Winston Churchill have been just another witty, cigar-chomping British politician, clever in the debates on the floor of the House of Commons, but not even a footnote in history?
Whether or not there was a war with Germany, and Churchill a great player on the world stage, he was what he was, as you and I are what we are, regardless of how we are perceived. None of us is defined by what we accomplish.
In the brief section from Luke’s Gospel that we read a few moments ago, Jesus spoke to His twelve disciples about what they were inside, regardless of how they were seen by others, without regard for what they would accomplish on the stage of history. Here Jesus instructs them on how to love themselves. Because, I believe, we love or do not love ourselves on the basis of our deepest goodness or badness. Indeed, there are many who do not love themselves because they assess themselves as God does, and subliminally condemn themselves. Outwardly we may defend ourselves for what we condemn ourselves at the deepest level. The twelve Apostles little realized how dramatically they were going to change the history of the world. But St. John was what he was at heart, and so were St. Peter and St. Paul, regardless of their upcoming roles in shaping the world. Jesus spoke straight to the heart, without interest in how they would be seen later on.
Jesus is puzzling to me in his first remark, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.” What is a bad tree? The word for “bad” here means spoiled or rotten. It’s the Greek word saprovn (sapron) from which we must get our word sap. Perhaps Jesus is saying, no matter what a tree looks like, if the sap is bad, it cannot produce good fruit.
I’m not sure what Jesus means in terms of plant biology, though I get the idea. There are fruitful trees that don’t look like much, like the dwarf red-delicious apple tree in my back yard that produces scrumptious apples. In the spring I look at that scrawny little tree loaded with blossoms, and wonder how it will support the weight of all the apples promised in those blossoms. That little tree produces the sweetest, nicely shaped, most crisp apples you could imagine. Perhaps there are other trees that look good, but are simply defective genetically--they produce defective sap so to speak, so that though they look good outwardly, they can never produce good fruit. You plant-geneticists will have to help us understand this illustration. But we all get the point. It’s what’s inside that counts.
Jesus is clearer in reminding us that a thorn bush can’t bear figs, or a bramble bush produce grapes. Brambles produce a terrific fruit--those big, black berries that we all love in a pie or jam. But brambles can’t bear grapes. If it’s grapes you want, you must go to a grape vine.
We get the point, we can only bear what it is in our nature to produce. In the Epistle of James Jesus’ brother, asked, “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening fresh water and brackish?” Of course not.
Jesus spoke to a like matter when he chided zealous religious people in his day that made a big project of cleaning the outside of a cup, but not the inside. It’s a cartoon again, that asks us to imagine someone scrubbing the outside of a cup, removing every coffee stain, while ignoring the accumulated grunge inside, then putting it back into the cupboard, ready for use. There are people who would never think of putting a dirty cup back into the cupboard, who will do nothing about mire in their hearts.
Jesus wouldn’t have spoken of these things to His disciples, these men He chose to launch the greatest reform movement in the history of the world, unless they were liable to the inner contamination about which He warned them.
And you and I have the same inner defects. How we handle these defects is crucial to what becomes of us in life. It’s really hard for some of us to admit that we have these inner defects. We protect ourselves when we realize others notice something of our contaminated inner selves. This is really awkward for the one who sees and for the one being seen.
It is hard to escape the instinct of trying to cover over inward blemishes with outward cosmetics. We may hide behind nervous laughter. We hide behind excessive sensitivity. We hide behind façades of philanthropy. We hide behind habits that destroy us physically--over-drinking, over-eating, over-medicating, over exercising—and even being over-religious. We even now refer to as “physical diseases” what are actually inner diseases because we protect as much as we can any exhibit of our depths. We feel exonerated if we can blame our flaws on a physical problem. The psychiatrists tell us that many physical problems are caused by what’s going on at the heart-level.
The psalmist confessed in that revealing thirty-second Psalm, “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away.” How many of us are wasting away physically because of a root cause, a cause in our hearts, in our depths that we at once try to protect and realize it is destroying us? It would surprise me if there are not a few of us here today who are suffering emotionally, and even physically because we will not let God re-shape us inside.
We dabble in healing our defects when we make public confession of sin. We acknowledge to God publicly that, yeah, we know we’ve messed up here and there. “Forgive me, God,” we say ceremoniously. But then we move on, unchanged, and not intending to change. We continue to hammer out on the anvil of our lives the same iron we hold to the same flames that burn inside of us.
Some people criticize those who go to church all dressed up in Sunday finery, as though all we do at church is compare clothes. This is an accusation that would have seemed more appropriate in another time; we’re pretty casual these days. But still, some people accuse you and me who come here for God’s correction and guidance of showing off how good we want people to think we are—simply by showing up at this address on Sunday morning. All of us who come know better. But is it not true, we do not come here asking God to change us, with the intent of cooperating with God in producing a new, changed way of life? Paul told us that “reasonable worship” means being transformed by the renewing of our minds. But there is nothing more off-limits to others and even to God than our minds.
And aren’t those who accuse us partly right? What one of us wants the inner details of life changed? We cling to what we are, even as we desperately don’t want our inner-selves put on exhibit. Is there a one of us who is proud of who we are in private? Are you proud of what you say about others to your closest confidant, about others to whom you are affable when you speak with them personally? We who don’t like two-faced people, are we two faced? When we see a judge put on trial for offenses that he has put other people into jail for, we at first feel like pointing the finger at him. But then, does this not make you have the sinking feeling that you’ve just not been caught yet? I sometimes think our jails contain at least a few scapegoats of our uneasy consciences.
What we do in private, when we think nobody can know about it, says most about what we are like inside. You know it’s true. Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that it matters what we’re like inside. He warned His disciples, and He warns us, because it matters.
Jesus told His disciples these things, and He instructs us, because we can do something about the sap that runs inside us. A tree can’t. But you and I can.
You and I are not altogether stuck with contaminated sap. The doctrine of “original sin” may be true, that all of us have a sin nature that we cannot get rid of, but Jesus did not speak in vain in telling us we can do something about what’s there inside of us.
The Apostle Paul understood what Jesus was saying when he wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed. The new has come.” We are offered a transfusion in Jesus, with His sap replacing our sap. His spiritual genetics replacing our spiritual genetics.
Jesus would not tell us of these things if they were not important, and if there was nothing that could be done about it. That these things of the heart are important is evident in how unsatisfying the outward embellishments of life are. If concentrating on outward things could help us, then wealth would be the answer to human need. If outward things could help, every man with rippling muscles and every woman with an hourglass figure would be happy. If outward things could help, then everyone with a Ph.D. would be virtuous. If outward praise could satisfy, then all the awards and congratulations we heap on great outward achievers would bring them satisfaction. If outward things were most important, then the most important profession in the world would be the make-up artist.
Despite the fact that we put the lion’s share of importance on all these things, accumulating wealth and education, making ourselves look good, producing measurable achievements, the richest nation on earth is not the happiest. I read recently that Nigeria is the happiest nation on earth. How this was calculated, I don’t know, but it surprises me that a poor African nation should be thought of as having the happiest people.
So what do we do? What can you do to get at the inner person, to see your heart healed, to make good sap run in your veins, to change your bramble bush to a grape vine? There are two aspects to any change that comes about in us for good. First, we have to trust that God is working behind the scenes, able to help us turn any difficult situation into an opportunity for good. We have to trust that the hard things that come to us do not compel us to respond badly. A troubled personality, even weak character can be changed. You can change the tendency to give up, to become bitter, to criticize, to lie in self-protection.
Poor health, financial fears, career disappointment, a difficult spouse, or whatever evil that has come your way does not have to define your life. We quote Romans 8: 28, grasping it as a promise: “And we know that in all things God works for good for those who love Him, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” God is One who does remarkable things with chaos.
Second, God has so made us that so that we can train ourselves inwardly by what we compel ourselves to do outwardly. He has given you and me the privilege of participating in His reshaping us inwardly. I think that many of us need to reconsider whether we even try to be sincere. You will either choose to be sincere in coming to God, or you will choose to keep up appearances. Sincerity matters.
Personal discipline is another tool God has given us to use. You can make yourself do what does not come to you naturally, in obedience to God. You can compel yourself to acknowledge what are your inner sins, what are the inner contaminants to your character and behavior. And you can attack those very sins, imploring God’s strength. God’s strength is able to do a lot with your weakness. But if you cling to your weakness as your right, as your “uniqueness,” then be sure that you will not change. You will continue to sink in the sad direction you have chosen to go.
There is something more than mysterious about cultivating what’s inside of us. There are aspects of your inner makeup that you can’t control. They are built in to you. They are the autonomic part of your psyche, that work the way the heart beats without your thinking about it, or the way your lungs breathe without your command.
In these days of modern medicine, we know we are not stuck with our bodily weaknesses. Pace-makers can help a weak heart beat right. Surgery can replace arthritic joints with titanium joints that work wonderfully. And we go after these surgeries with fond hopes of success.
God can do even better things with your inner person, the engine that drives your life. Some of you may need to start some habits that will help you. Be here faithfully on the Lord’s Day. It hurts you if you are hit and miss on the Lord’s Day. Make yourself be on time. Lazy habits contribute to our weakness. Actually take out your Bible and begin to read it. Read it not with a critical eye, noticing how much is unclear, or how defective the Bible’s characters are. Read it humbly asking God to enlighten your understanding. Go to Sunday School where we talk about the Bible together.
Actually pray. Come to morning prayers on Wednesday. Use the gift you know you have for the common good. If you sing well, get to the choir and sing like a nightingale that loves its Creator. If you have plenty of money, give it generously thinking of Jesus as the recipient. If you can fix things, ask what you can fix for Jesus’ sake. But, for goodness sake, do something for Jesus’ sake.
I don’t know how God will reshape your heart, because I can’t see into your heart. But it works the same way for us all. We’ve got to participate. God will not impose goodness on you. He can and will, but only if you consent. Open your heart intentionally to God. Begin intentionally to do what you know is good, for goodness sake, for Jesus’ sake.
“The poor of this world, rich in faith, are heirs of the Kingdom which God has prepared for those that love Him.” “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t rely alone on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him. And He will direct your paths.”
Let us pray: O Lord, we sit here in Your presence, known completely to you. Give us grace to become what will please you best, and what will please us best, and will make our lives good and useful. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2003
Learning to Walk in the Land of the Blind
Learning to Walk in the Land of the Blind
Psalm 32 / Genesis 29: 1-25
Luke 6: 39-42
October 12th, 2003
Last week I watched a blind young man walking down the staircase in Stewart Hall. On the landing he tapped his cane until he got to the rail, and then made his way down the next flight of stairs. I was amazed at his courage. With trust in his white cane he walked into the blackness.
But blind people develop other instincts to make up for no eyesight. They read with their fingertips. They hear sounds you and I miss. They memorize the lay of the streets they must walk. If asked, they can tell you details about our neighborhoods that you and I never notice—smells here, sounds there, the texture of the side-walk in a certain place. They develop another fifth sense, replacing sight. We’d call it a sixth sense, except they only have four others.
But despite their courage and their other sense, I would not ride with a blind person driving a car. I would not trust a blind person to lead me by the hand along a trail at Shades State Park with a rock cliff on one side and a steep decline on the other. For sure we’d both end up falling one way or the other. But we do not fault blind people for the challenge of sightlessness. And no blind person would ask us to let him lead on that trail.
We just read of a time in the life of the Old Testament Patriarch, Jacob, when he moved, sight unseen, into his choice of a wife. It’s this way for us all. We cannot see the future into which we must walk as though we know what to do next. No one is to blame for being unable to see the future.
But it’s another matter when it comes to spiritual blindness. Spiritual blindness is an incapacity within; we cannot or will not see. In a way it is an inability people choose and then cling to. Spiritually blind people, thinking that their blindness is sight, are often eager to get followers. Because they imagine the terrain we are to walk in is called “religion,” while what’s really at issue is the Kingdom of God. The way of religion is well populated with spiritually blind people saying, “Follow me.” The Kingdom of God is a spiritual land, a land of the heart over which God presides, and to which He invites us. Jesus referred to spiritual blindness when He asked the question, “Can the blind lead the blind?” What passes for the spiritual realm of the kingdom of God is often nothing but religion. It’s a disaster to follow a religiously confident but spiritually blind person.
Remember that in this “Sermon on the Plain,” Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is continuing to explain the meaning of the Second Great Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? It means, “Love those who don’t love you.” It means, “Don’t criticize or speak unkindly to people who irritate you.” And now, “You who are spiritually blind, don’t lead the way for others. You’ll bring others down into the ditch with you” –– not a loving thing to do.
But who are the spiritually blind? Jesus says, “Wait, I’ll get to that.” First He has to build the case a bit more. Remember He is speaking to the Twelve Apostles. These twelve men would hold a status just below the Son of God Himself for millions of people over the following centuries. They would come to have immense prestige. Clad in this prestige, this religious stature, they would be responsible for spiritual leadership into the Kingdom of God. They didn’t know this at the time, but Jesus did. Jesus was grooming them for spiritual leadership for all people yet to come while they would face the daunting obstacle of being considered towering religious authorities. Abraham and Sarah were the physical progenitors of God’s people, but the Twelve Apostles would be the spiritual teachers. It mattered what way they would lead, as spiritual guides into the Kingdom of God and not as mere religious leaders. Religion may have little or nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.
Jesus was grooming them for spiritual leadership—not religious leadership. Jesus was not starting up a new religion. Jesus was opening the way to worshiping God “in spirit and in truth.” Jesus was teaching a way available to a Samaritan woman rejected as a defective human being by her own people, who were themselves a people rejected by the Jews. Jesus was teaching a way that harlots, despised tax collectors, and pagan Roman soldiers would precede people who are proud of their religiosity. It was this spiritual leadership, this leadership for the heart, for which Jesus was grooming the Twelve Apostles.
There is a great difference between religious leadership and spiritual leadership. Religious leadership is often an institutional thing. Religion is something people make up with the bits and pieces of God’s truth that they may or may not fit together right in a puzzle. Religion, maybe even our religion, is often like a puzzle with the pieces put together not quite right. If you see a group of folk huddled together over at Friendship House, putting together a puzzle on a card table, and one of them is bossy, telling the others to put this piece here and that piece there, even though the pieces obviously don’t fit, you say, “It’s funny.” Old people act like that, we younger folk say. But when it is respected religious leaders doing this with spiritual truth, it’s a tragedy.
People accept religious leaders as spiritual leaders, as guides in matters of the heart. The Twelve Apostles were spiritual guides. People from Jewish and many pagan backgrounds were eager to follow them, so that the Body of Christ grew enormously in the first three hundred years. Nowadays people are hungry for spiritual guidance too. They look beyond the institutional divisions to find God’s way. Protestants find in the Catholics Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen spiritual guides. I read Thomas Merton’s description of his walk with God in The Seven Story Mountain and felt myself being led where my heart longed to go. Hindus listened to E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary in India, when he spoke of Jesus, because they felt themselves being led where their hearts longed to go. Jesus is the light of the world, and whenever Jesus is faithfully presented people cannot help but be drawn to Him.
Jesus’ disciples would be guides bringing people from every religious sector under heaven to Jesus, and through Him into the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ amazing love of which we sing, “That thou, my God should’st die for me,” is very attractive. Jesus is irresistibly attractive. Nobody can resist someone who loves them the way Jesus loved people. Remember Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It was to an un-seeable Kingdom that the Twelve Apostles would be the teachers and guides. In a realm that we cannot see, we are blind. Jesus said to these twelve men who would lead people who could not see the way to the Kingdom of God, “Every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher.” You are the teachers, the leaders into this kingdom no one can see. People will be like you. It matters how you are.
You remember that Thomas, whom we call “Doubting Thomas,” said to Jesus, “We don’t know where you’re going.” Jesus said, “Yes, you know the way. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and you know me.” So it was to these future teachers of the way of the Kingdom of God that Jesus said, “Don’t become blind spiritually by opting in to that broken human thing called ‘religion’.” It was a way to warn them against spiritual blindness that could strike them. So what is spiritual blindness?
It was in answer to this question that Jesus gave the parable we love to remember because it is so ironic, so descriptive of human behavior. He asked His disciples to visualize someone with wooden pole in her eyes. Think of it as a Miss Utopia in the Miss Universe pageant, who has a pole sticking out of each eye, but she thinks she has perfect eyelashes and eye shadow accentuating her lovely brown eyes. But in reality she has two poles sticking out of her eyes. It’s not mascara; it’s mahogany wood. She confused two “m” words. Forget that this might be a bit dangerous to her health. Just think of it as questionable make-up. Yet, as she walks around dressed proudly in her beautiful ball gown, and two poles protruding from her eyes, she notices Miss Greece has a speck in her eye. Miss Utopia walks over to Miss Greece and says, “How bizarre! You have a flaw in your eye make-up. You should be wearing perfect eye makeup like mine.”
We’re not supposed to ask physiological questions; it’s a cartoon, after all. We know it’s impossible to see at all if you’ve got a pole in your eye. In fact, you’d be not only blind, but dead with a big piece of wood sticking into your eye-socket—even if you are Miss Utopia. Jesus was talking about something as spiritually deadening, we might say, as having a mahogany pole in your head, through your eye-socket.
Jesus’ cartoon asks us to imagine how the twelve Apostles, spiritual guides into the way of the Kingdom of God could have glaring, obvious defects and be oblivious to them, while being acutely aware of far smaller defects in others. These poles in their eyes would be an immense hindrance to teaching the Gospel.
If this was possible for the Twelve Apostles, consider that it is possible for you and me. Jesus knew that the problem of His disciples would be multiplied because they would cling to their cherished defects. We all do this. These defects are obvious to others, but we deny having them. Remember again, Jesus was teaching something to the Twelve Apostles. “If you won’t acknowledge and get rid of your glaring spiritual defects, you’ll be nothing but blind leaders of the blind.” It is nearly impossible to see and admit to our own self-blindness.
It was this very crucial matter that the Apostle Paul had in mind when he told earnest Christians in Corinth, “If you can speak with tongues like angels, and know everything, have faith so you can move mountains, and can understand all mysteries, but don’t have love, you are nothing, have nothing, and gain nothing.” Religion emphasizes “right” knowledge, faith, and mystery. Jesus warned His disciples, and all of us who come after them, who have learned from them what it is to follow Jesus, that they and we would be lured into concentrating on knowledge we’ll never know, on definitions of faith, on subtle mysteries while ignoring the most basic element of Jesus’ way. If you don’t love your neighbor as yourself, all your correct doctrines constitute a pole sticking in your eye. You will be so proud of your correctness that you are blind to what you really are. Your very correctness may kill your spiritual life. It keeps you from seeing.
You think of Jesus warning others about this grave danger, when He would have you realize He is talking to you. He’s talking to me too, but you must listen to Jesus speaking to you, and I must listen to Him speak to me.
You know yourself. You know, when you stop and think about it, how spiritual pride protrudes from your eyes like poles. You pride yourself in what you believe right that is different from the way others believe. How refined we Protestants have become in our differences from others. How we cherish these refinements. You pride yourself on how fine a Christian you just know you must seem to be. Maybe you’ve never been convicted of a crime—that is, you’ve never been caught after drinking an additional glass of wine you should not have drunk before driving home from the restaurant. You’re proud of your fine home, of your fine education, of your distinguished career. Maybe you’re proud you attend Faith Church. What composite picture have you drawn for yourself from all your excellences? You’ve been able to cover over the fact that you do not love your neighbor as yourself, a thing of the heart, by accumulating layer upon layer of life-make-up. Your perceived excellences are superior to the life make-up of others.
This is too bad in itself. But the problem is that the next generation follows your lead. You and I are teaching our young people what is important. We try to teach correct doctrine and correct morals, and that’s good. But have we taught our children that first of all we must love God with everything, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
I hear some of my conservative colleagues saying, “Don’t minimize correct doctrine.” I’m not. But I’m reminding you that Paul who taught us nearly everything we know about correct doctrine understood Jesus’ message to His Apostles and to all who would learn from them, “If we have all knowledge, and all faith, and understand all mysteries, and can speak in spiritual ecstasy, if we do not have love, we have nothing at all.” Not only that, but we’re like Miss Utopia, strutting around with poles in her eyes—something lethal to the body, and also to faith. “Faith without works is dead.” Paul, Jesus, and James march in lockstep on this basic truth.
So where do we go from here? Shall we give up trying to believe correct doctrine? Shall we give up on emphasizing the importance of holding to the morality taught in the Bible? Shall we not enjoy the times of exquisite spiritual delight that come along?
No. Let’s try to understand and teach good Bible doctrine. Let’s let the Bible be our guide in all matters of morality. Let’s enjoy the unique delights that come to us when our feelings are moved with sacred music or clearly presented Bible truth. But let’s not be confused that these are the stuff of following Jesus. Let’s not imagine these are the substance of the Christian life. All of these good things may solidify for us into a thick pole, sticking in the eye, that somehow makes us both spiritually blind and acutely conscious of perceived flaws in others. All this may even lead to spiritual death.
Because, remember, Jesus told us that “in that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’” And Jesus will reply to these who prophesied and did many mighty works in His name, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.” Jesus told us that loving Him is a very hands-on kind of thing. It’s not a matter of spiritual perceptions but of spiritual actions, actions prompted by the Spirit of God—loving your neighbor as yourself, in fact.
Perhaps you hear God speaking to you this morning. What will you do about it? You can go from here and say, “I hope so and so heard what the pastor said.” Or you can recognize that you’ve got a pole in your eye and implore God to remove it so that you can see the way to follow Jesus. While all along you live in a world and even worship in a church where many confuse mahogany poles for mascara, and these pole-eyed folk are distressed at what you know is only a fleck in your eye. This is the challenge of following Jesus that we must follow Him while living in circumstances that do not give the kind of encouragement we need. It’s a lonesome valley those must walk who will love God with all they are, and will love their neighbors as themselves.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for Jesus, the light of the world, my light and the light of these my friends, my brothers and sisters. Take away the blindness that we cherish, and give us grace, to see Jesus clearly and the will to follow Him more nearly. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
October 05, 2003
When is Loving a Virtue?
When is Loving a Virtue?
Psalm 32 / Proverbs 15: 13-23
Luke 6: 32-36
October 5th, 2003
I have struggled with the message I am to offer you today because it’s so obvious, so simple, and seemingly so unreasonable. In fact, so impossible. Why impossible? Well, look at what we just read! I’m to speak about love in conjunction with doing good to those who don’t do us good, and lending money without expecting to get paid back. Something in us protests, NO!
What we have in mind for “love,” other than the romantic or parental kind or the kind that breeds “philanthropy,” is a benevolent attitude, the genial outlook that makes us say “Have a good day!” to anyone and everyone. Love is the conditional goodwill I will show to keep a good thing going, but don’t expect me to be oblivious to surly, rude behavior. Love is the reward with which I encourage your good behavior to me. It is the carrot I carry in one hand, but remember, I’ve also got a stick in my other hand.
But then we read what Jesus said. This is a passage we pastors usually avoid because if we take Jesus at His word, well, we’re at the mercy of every charlatan out there. I preached on the verses just before this a couple weeks ago and realized as I spoke that nobody could take this literally. You know, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, give your coat to the one who steals your shirt, and turn the other cheek when someone clobbers you.” The most pious of us, the most religious, the most eager to be a good Christian will quietly turn the page at this point. Impossible! I’m a literalist with my Bible only so far.
I’m sorry, Jesus; it’s impossible. Yes, I believe in Jesus. Yes, I can sing, “Lord, I want to be a Christian inna my heart, inna my heart.” But, no, I’m sorry, it’s more than is possible to bless those who curse me, to pray for those who abuse me, to give more to a thief than what he just stole from me, and to turn my other cheek to a violent person who just hit me.
Why did Jesus say such impossible things to us? The 103rd Psalm winsomely gives us another picture of God, a God who “knows our frame,” that is, how He made us. He remembers that we are only animated dust. Genesis tells us that God scooped up some dust and made Adam. That’s why we turn back to dust after we die. God remembers this. What do you expect of mere dust?
God pities us like a loving father pities his children. We accept this condescension, indeed, expect it. Usually we hate condescension as it is demeaning. But now we want God to condescend.
Here it’s as if Jesus forgets that we are dust. Here we see Jesus, the One who revealed to us in person what God is like, announcing moral expectations of us that seem to forget we are just dust. Jesus commands us with a cutting reminder. “Love your enemies” because even sinners love those who love them. Even sinners do good to those who do good to them. Even sinners will lend with the hope of getting a return.
I notice Jesus did not say, “even sinners will turn the other cheek.” We know that doesn’t happen. But the rest of it, loving those who love us, doing good to those who do good, and lending with expectation of return—that’s just the way of ordinary ol’ sinners.
So if you and I are amiable to nice people—and stop the moment they quit being nice; and if we participate in a community of folk who do good things for each other—and stop the moment they stop doing good to us, and if we maybe even lend our hard earned money--fully expecting to get it all back—with some reasonable interest, of course, we’re just doing as any good ol’ sinner does.
All along we have operated as though Jesus wanted us to keep a good thing going—love loving people; do good to those who are doing good to us, rather than interrupt the cycle that makes this world such a hard place. And, well, we’re not really into lending money, that’s for the banks to do.
This is an unsettling section of Jesus’ very clearest teaching. And the last words He says are the cruelest of all. Doing what he said is the condition of being children of the Most High—who is generous to the ungrateful and to evil people. The Most High God is the loftiest description of God in the Old Testament.
You and I come to Jesus and say, “I’m a child of God,” and He tells you, if you are a child of God love your enemies, do good to all, lend without expectation of repayment, and something in you balks worse than a mule. You dig in your heels. No, Jesus, I can’t love that way, do good according to that standard, or give that way. But I am a child of God.
I read a bumper sticker this week that said, “No Jesus, no peace; know Jesus, know peace.” How clever. Here are two words that sound the same, spelled and meaning very differently. Why do we put self-accusations on our bumpers? What is it to “know Jesus?” Words come so easily. If you are mingling in the narthexes at the right churches, is that “knowing Jesus?” If you’re saying the right words, is that “knowing Jesus?” Do not our right words function like passwords keeping us in good standing in the church we choose? Knowing Jesus has a lot to do with taking to heart these hard words you and I are wrestling with right now and realizing we must do better than getting pinned to the mat every time.
So what are we to do? What do we do with hard teachings of Jesus? Two responses stand out in the Bible. First, we must not discard hard teachings because they seem impossible. They stand before us as a goal to be strived after. Second, remember that God responds to us as He asks us to respond to others. What is hard for us is how God chooses to respond to us, loving the unlovely, doing good to those who will not do good in return, giving generously to those who will not repay. We call this grace, favor that violates our sense of deserving.
The Lord Jesus invites us who are weary and heavy laden to the very behavior that His commands lead us to correct. Trying to follow Jesus’ hard way lifts the load of guilt that makes you tired. Your weariness accumulates when you do to others as they have done to you. You return tit for tat and one part of you says, “Good, I got even,” and another part of you says, “But Jesus didn’t teach me to get even.” You grow weary with getting even. Following Jesus is something hard that we must learn, but learning something hard that brings tremendous refreshment.
One of the reasons why teaching Hebrew is turning out to be so fun for me is that I watch people begin with apprehension, something they fear is very hard, and discover before very long, that they’re having a very good time. This week a quiet, very studious young engineering major came to me after class perplexed at a problem of Hebrew grammar. Engineers analyze things to the core. Fortunately for me I could answer his question. He was so pleased to understand what one minute before was not clicking. He told me quietly as he left the room, ‘Hebrew is my favorite course.”
I thought about that happy response as I drove home. You know why Hebrew is so much fun? It’s because everyone who begins fears it is very difficult. But as they gradually discover not only what those funny looking letters are, and how to make those signs turn into words and ideas, but even how the language works, they feel tremendous satisfaction. That Hebrew seems at the beginning hard to learn makes the achievement all the more thrilling.
How many of us view what Jesus said we must do to be children of God the way students do who won’t even give Hebrew a try. It’s impossible. But what happens when we begin to try to do what seems at first impossible? What if very deliberately, when someone acts ungraciously to you, at that moment you remember what Jesus said, and for His sake, you respond with grace. You respond to anger with a soft answer. When you do this, you’re acting like God, like a child of a heavenly Father.
What if in the place where you work, you are troubled by a fellow employee whose behavior is like a continued pebble in your shoe. She is wearing a blister that hurts. She is the reason why you dislike going to work. So you avoid her. For Jesus’ sake, change your response to her. Imagine how you can do her good. For Jesus’ sake! When you do this, you are acting like God, showing yourself to be a child of a heavenly Father.
Do you know someone in desperate financial need? Maybe you’re thinking this person is merely reaping what he has sowed. What did you pray to God in your time of need—a different need, but still a need? What if you acted like God where you know there is financial need—if you are able to do something about it? Has God given you the means to play God, to prove yourself the child of Almighty God?
Is this going too far? I ask you, “Is this going too far?” Or is this taking Jesus at His word. If you wanna be a Christian inna your heart, you must try. Even common decency says to you, “I must try.”
But maybe you’ve tried, and tried hard, and have discovered that inside you there is a perpetual warfare between what you want to do and what you do. Then what? It is at this point that it makes sense to remember that we can stand before God justified, as though we have never committed a single sin or ever been sinful, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, only by God’s grace, His freely given favor.
God sees you struggling to be gracious to that person who is a pebble in your shoe and God knows it is hard. Remember, Jesus suffered a pretty grim death at the hands of pretty nasty people. And Jesus suffered this death so that He could forgive your failure to behave like God, that is, to act like a child of God, to be gracious to offensive people. God’s grace engulfs our every failure. God graciously chooses to look at us and see His Son, Jesus. This is the Gospel I rejoice to preach and that you want to hear.
But I know that when it comes to the hard matters of life, you and I want to give in too soon. If you want to cherish the grace of God because you have given up on trying to follow Jesus, you’re still going to get God’s grace in the end, but you’re going to forfeit the peace He offers you now. Peace of heart comes to you and me when we try to follow Jesus, when we discover that though learning is hard, it is not impossible. It’s a bit like learning God’s language, the first language of the Bible, Hebrew—when you try, you discover that it is possible. Learning anything new and fearful starts very simply. Begin to obey Jesus in simple ways. You know how this applies to you now. Begin! Start to follow Jesus.
Who makes it hard for you to act like a follower of Jesus? Begin with him. You can do better in loving an unlovely person. Start to try. Do deeds of love and your feelings will follow like a caboose on a train. Feelings that we desire follow behavior that is hard. You say, “I can’t.” God tells you, “No, say ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’.” It’s when we do not begin, when we do not try, because we assume that we can’t. Or when we persuade ourselves we don’t have to. This is why we live with this seething sense of failure that produces guilt. Try, for Jesus sake. Try! And you will begin to know Jesus, and to find His peace in your heart.
There is a song in our hymnbook that my conscience often tells me I should choose for us to sing. It’s “Onward Christian Soldiers.” I know many of you love that old, familiar song. But I find it hard to choose because it has that line, “with the cross of Jesus, going on before.” We think of being a soldier in terms of the success rate of American soldiers. We are used to winning our battles. But soldiers of Christ who arise, and gird their armor on, are fighting a very different battle than I fear we have in mind.
The battle that we wage with Jesus’ cross going before is a battle that has weapons like these: loving my enemies, doing good to those who do not do good to me, praying for those who abuse me, even turning the other cheek to the one who hurts me. It’s these strange, awkward weapons, more awkward that a Scottish broadsword that Jesus has in mind in calling us to join His army. We imagine the Crusaders marching to Jerusalem in ancient times, with red crosses stitched on their tunics, carrying swords to conquer the infidel. Jesus imagines the victory of the cross.
Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie is much in the news these days. Some people fear that so graphically portraying Jesus’ Passion, His suffering and death, will stir up anti-Jewish feelings. But how opposite are Jesus’ expectations of us who contemplate His suffering and death. Jesus wants us to see two things: First, He wants us to see how much He loved us, that He should die such a death for our sake. Second, Jesus wants us to see how hard is this triumphant way of the cross. Because if we understand, in coming to Jesus, than we are coming to the way of the cross, then we’ll realize how pertinent is this way of life He taught, so different from the way of this world.
You think the ordinary way of this world is normal. But look what it brings? Open the paper, and read the head lines. This is the normal way and its effects. Jesus invites you and me to an abnormal way with the high purpose of reclaiming the world God made for God. That’s why Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to all, lend with no confidence of getting your money back. Remember these words as we quietly share the meal in which we remember the cross of Jesus.
O Lord God, we hear Jesus speak and ask that you may give us Your Holy Spirit to help us take Him at His word. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)