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March 28, 2004
Greatness!
Greatness!
Psalm 2 / I Samuel 10: 17-24
Mark 9: 33-37
March 28th, 2004
One of my favorite moments in perhaps my favorite movie, “Chariots of Fire,” is when the head of Caius College, Cambridge speaks to the freshman dinner. He tells these young fellows all trussed up in white tie and tails, sitting up straight in a dining hall on whose walls are large wooden plaques with the names of alumni killed in battle in the defense of their country, “let each of you discover where your chance of true greatness lies.”
True greatness has nothing to do with where this was said, at Cambridge University, or to whom, to privileged young men. What the principal said had nothing to do with anticipation of careers as members of Parliament, or as regents of the crown in various parts of the Empire. It had everything to do with the fact that it was addressed to young people, everyone of whom had the capacity for true greatness. You and I have the capacity for true greatness. God has called you to true greatness and given you all the equipment you need to achieve it.
What is true greatness?
Jesus was concerned about this when he heard his disciples discussing which of them would be the greatest. Luke tells us a dispute developed among his disciples over not so much the question as the assertion, “I will probably be the greatest.” Luke’s word is stronger than the one found in the Gospel of Mark. In Mark the disciples were discussing with some animation. Luke’s word for their verbal battle meant “love of winning” (filoneikiva).
Remember these are the twelve pillars on which Jesus founded His big project in life—the Church, the core of the Kingdom of God on planet Earth! It was not, as you would expect of illustrious saints of this high order, a discussion where each said of the other, “You, John, will be the greatest.” Or “You James, or you Bartholomew.” “No, surely not me. I think it will be Nathaniel over there.” It was not like this. They were debating their own candidacy for greatness, with at least someone getting the upper hand. Maybe Peter won this argument. Greatness? What is greatness? There was no subtlety in their dispute.
In a way this jockeying for supremacy is what makes the world go round. It’s not love that makes the world go round. If only it were. It’s about the pursuit of prominence, of winning, of ideas of greatness. The desire for significance is at the root of this competition. If only we realized how significant we are simply in being born. You and I live surrounded by significant people. They work at MacDonald’s, at Eli Littly, at Purdue. They collect our garbage. They are everywhere.
Greatness is confused with being recognized for power, wealth, or achievement.
Alexander, king of Macedon was the first, I believe, to be called, “the Great.” He was called the Great because his armies conquered all the world he knew by the time he was thirty-three years old after a reign of only twelve years and eight months. He imposed the Greek language and with it elements of Greek culture everywhere. He died of a fever before he had a chance to unfold his dreams of a universal government. He would be the ideal philosopher-king. He had had Aristotle as a teacher.
There were aspects of his life that evoke amazement. One of these aspects was his capacity for reverence. He didn’t confuse himself with God as the later Roman emperors did. Josephus tells of Alexander’s arriving at Jerusalem and bowing to the ground when he met the High Priest. His ability to inspire action was uncanny because he evoked respect, even devotion from his troops. But do you think Jesus would have called him great? I wonder. I believe Jesus would have said to Alexander, “Pretty impressive, Alex. But there’s that little matter of those two thousand people you crucified after you conquered Tyre. Great people are gracious like their Creator. You were cruel, Alex.”
Alexander achieved a rare pinnacle of success, great achievement; the eyes of the world were fixed on him with awe. At his death the funeral was magnificent and lasted a long time. And we’re still talking about him. But his fame is tarnished. Jesus’ had a totally different idea of greatness.
“Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
I believe that though we would all say we accept Jesus’ teachings as true, when it comes to accepting them as a guide to life, we say, “I won’t dispute Jesus’ teaching, but I can only accept them with a grain of salt.”
Yet we would acknowledge that if everyone tried to be an Alexander the Great, the world would be in chaos. But if everyone had the outlook Jesus described and exemplified, there would be none of the strife that shreds the peace of the world, that shreds the peace within countries, that shreds the peace within families, in fact, that shreds the peace within churches. True greatness, what is it? Is it just an ideal? “Ideal” has come to mean the same as “unreal.”
Are IDEALS not attainable by definition? I don’t believe this. Greatness is achievable but probably we don’t go after it in the way most people think.
There are two aspects to true greatness as Jesus taught. First, is true humility and its evidence is found in genuine service. Second, is true submission to the will of God. Humility is high character before other people. Submission is high character before God. Humility promotes the sense of submission to God. Submission to God promotes humility before people.
It is very nearly ironical to say that Jesus was humble, but He was. As Isaiah 53 put it, “a bruised reed He will not break.” Little children and the meekest of people were comfortable with Him. He was not cowed by the rich and powerful; neither did He pose as superior to them. His submission to His heavenly Father was visible in every pore.
What is true humility? Let me try to describe it. True humility has nothing to do with self-denigration. Humility does not grovel. It is not the attitude of a whipped dog. Humility is not self-pre-occupied at all, either in praise or rejection. Humility causes us to look around us and to feel surrounded by all these people made in the image of God. Here I stand this morning before all of your made in the image of God. How do I speak to an audience made up of so many replicas of deity? You are created in the image of God. It makes me want to treat you with utmost respect AND with high expectations.
Paul described this humility in Romans 12. “I bid everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.” Again in Philippians 2, he wrote, “In humility, count others better than yourselves . . . Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Some think of this as weakness. Is it?
If Jesus’ disciples had continued thinking of how Jesus had been to them at the table just a few minutes before, they could never have thought about, much less mentioned their aspirations for the ordinary idea of greatness—power, authority.
The church would drift into ordinary ideas of greatness, following the lead of the disciples’ argument. The church developed a hierarchy of power and wealth making of it another kind of human domination scheme with a religious twist. And the teaching and example of Jesus about what is true greatness settled into the ground of history, waiting to be excavated by anyone who longed deeply for Him.
I look out at a congregation like this. I look out at my Sunday School class. I look around the circle of folk who gather with Mike and me at the Work Release facility on Tuesday evenings, and I see candidates for greatness. Greatness comes in many shapes and sizes—to people in all kinds of situations, but it always has two characteristics—the first being true humility. Humility finds expression in serving.
It does not ask, “How much must I serve?” It does not say, “I have done my share. Let others take their turn.” It asks, “How much can I serve?” To the question “When should I stop?” asked after the calendar suggests you were born a long time ago, the humble person answers joyfully, “The day I die.” Some of you remember Lena Coombes climbing the stairs to accompany the children’s choir until her knees said “No more!” How are your knees doing?
Why did Jesus mention service as the final matter in greatness? Why did Jesus make His last big act with His disciples, to serve them in the most vivid way possible, on His knees before each of them, washing their feet? Why? Because the idea of greatness as serving is very hard to beat into our skulls. We learn this lesson with such difficulty.
Busy people are apt to think of service as what they can do with their spare time. “If I have the time,” are five words, which may reveal the true orientation of our lives.
The second ingredient in true greatness is submission to the will of God. What is submission to God’s will?
We think of submission to God primarily in terms of what we do. But it is first an outlook on life.
I believe God’s will for what we will do with our lives is filtered through a few channels. What you and I can do well, what we like to do, what others tell us we do well—these are clues to what we may do with our lives. It is important to listen to these clues.
But there is something more, and it is this more that leads on to greatness. And we find the model of this in Jesus. It was His outlook on life itself. He devoted himself to doing the will of the Father because this was the specific orientation of His life. Nothing distracted Him. It so happened that Jesus had a tough career in becoming Savior of the world. For Jesus it meant a very painful end, as Mel Gibson has reminded us.
Is it possible for us to share Jesus’ outlook on life? The natural tendency of everyone is to find significance in life. How do we find personal significance unless we go for it? What does an outlook of submission to God mean? Jesus’ submission to God was visible in how He was toward other people, beginning with the least, humanly speaking, and reaching to the “greatest” humanly speaking.
Everyone needs Jesus. The “greatest” people are often very unhappy. The “least” people are often very poor. Need is written over every one of us. Jesus stooped beneath the most miserable people to show how deeply the loving hand of God reaches to scoop up and embrace the weak and heavy-laden.
Jesus career goal was so other-oriented that it meant actually dying in the way most commonly imposed on the people the Romans wanted to despise the worst. It is estimated that literally hundreds of thousands of people died by crucifixion by the fourth century when Constantine ended this cruelest form of execution. So in dying by crucifixion, Jesus stooped beneath the most miserable of all people, sharing their burden in His own death.
I doubt very much that any of us will be called by God to be crucified. We can’t have this kind of job. But we are on the path to greatness when we do what God has called us to do with all we have—as unto Him.
But there is a rider to this truth. In fulfilling with all our powers God’s will for us, it must be done in a way that does not violate the first principle of true greatness, humility.
We all know people who are so career-driven, so determined to be excellent in their research (in this community) that everything plays second fiddle to this quest.
What is lacking in this kind of approach to achievement is that it lacks perspective. Their excellence is for their own sake, which leaves other people out of the picture. Jesus offers us the perspective that allows excellence in our work to feed into greatness, that is, true humility. The perspective is this: if it is the will of God that I do this, I must do it with everything I have, and with grace.
God is not pleased with shoddy workmanship. Sometimes submission to the will of God may not even look very religious at all. It is doing your work well with grace. Why? Because I carry the outlook of Jesus who loved people so much that He died on the cross for them.
Because my own life has unfolded mostly in academic settings, one of the finest human examples I know of how to follow Jesus’ idea of greatness, comes from the academic world.
Bruce Metzger was one of my teachers in seminary. I shall always be proud to say this, partly because Professor Metzger is legendary as a Bible scholar. His knowledge not only of his specialty, New Testament textual criticism, but also of all the languages into which the New Testament was translated in the first two centuries is unequaled. He is now spoken of along with Origen, the great third-century Bible scholar, and Erasmus, the Renaissance Biblical scholar.
Every class which I had with him began the same way. The full lecture hall would be bustling with conversation. Then, when Professor Metzger walked in and raised the bookstand on the huge podium to the height he wanted, everyone became quiet. He would fold his hands and say, “Let us pray.” And his prayer was as simple as a child’s. It was almost always about the same. He asked that what we learned that day might help us to present the Gospel winsomely, so that people would be drawn to Jesus. I learned the word “winsome” from Professor Metzger.
Now if this were all there was to it, maybe I wouldn’t have continued to find such fascination in him. But it also seemed to me that he singled me out for attention. He made careful, thoughtful comments on my papers, comments that encouraged me. He knew my name. He spoke so respectfully to me. He knew to ask about my wife, my children, and my preaching on weekends.
One day I met Dr. Metzger on the sidewalk outside Speer Library after he’d just opened a letter from Oxford University Press informing him his magnificent book on ancient versions of the New Testament had been released to bookstores. He bubbled with happiness and shared his joy with this undergraduate as with a close friend. “O Mr. Robertson, let me tell you something!” I felt so esteemed.
But I discovered in speaking with other students, that he was the same to them too. He built them up too.
During the holidays, he would inquire to see which students could not go home. He would invite them to his home. Once in his home they found this generous-hearted, kind man, overflowing with interest in them. What did Bruce Metzger have that is not available to us all? Devotion of all his talents to God. Humility before all kinds of people.
We all have every ingredient needed for greatness: Hearts to love God and others, work to do to the glory of God. These are what we need to achieve true greatness.
Jesus calls us all to true greatness. Not the kind His disciples were arguing about. But true greatness. True humility. True submission to the will of the Father. True service our whole lives long. And doing it with our full concentration, whatever it might be.
Our greatness as a congregation awaits us. Our greatness as men and women, boys and girls, as followers of Jesus is waiting for us. Is it worth going for it?
O Lord God, we thank you for Jesus, who emptied himself, who lived in submission to Your will, who loved us with an everlasting love, who served until the very end. Help us to follow Jesus. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2004
Loving God as We Might
Loving God as We Might
I Samuel 9: 1-2, 10: 1, 9-12
Matthew 22: 15-22
March 21st, 2004
Several weeks ago when I pulled together the plans for this morning’s service, I had an idea of what I thought was important to say today. I wanted to focus on how kind God was in choosing so modest, humble, and able a fellow as Saul as the first king of Israel. But I didn’t have it all worked out, as I never do that early in the game. I had no idea how important, how hugely important I would come to see was the issue of Israel’s demand for a king.
In fact my heart was torn as it has rarely been wrenched as I thought I caught a glimpse of the goodness, the trust, the confidence that God placed in ancient Israel, only to be disappointed in their demand for a king.
Then, as I thought about Jesus ways with His disciples that were so like the ways of God with Israel in the Old Testament, I caught a glimpse of what I think He hopes for in His relationship to us. He waits for us to accept the kind of “commands” he makes, so different from the commands from the heavy hand of a king.
The purpose that hangs heavy over your life and mine, over the Church in all its ups and downs nowadays and in the past reflects Jesus’ patience. A fourteenth-century Christian writer said that one proof of the Divine nature of the Church was that it still existed despite the immorality of the popes, priests, and monks. How the Church has failed Jesus, and I don’t mean the Catholic Church. Such high purpose Jesus spread before His disciples! So different have been the unfolding ways of the Church from Jesus’ ways.
Even though the Catholic Church is now riddled with sexual abuse scandals; even though a number of televangelists have brought shame to the “Great Commission”--
“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel,” even though the Protestant churches continue to shred into hundreds of small churchly empires; even though we remember the tragic spectacle of the Medieval Church that required the Reformation which split the Church in the West; even though in particular churches in our presbytery and in many other denominations there is anything but the joy and vigor Jesus intended to see in the community of those who loved Him—through all of this, and in spite of all of this, Jesus patiently waits for us.
Jesus will pull things together again.
There is scarcely anything more touching to us when we read about it, than to see patient love unfold, with many rebuffs, but still it keeps on, until the one who is beloved is taken into the embrace of the one who loved him/her.
Maybe you remember that in our trek through I Samuel we last saw Israel clamoring for a king. Samuel the prophet felt really bad about this. He felt personally rejected. But God told Samuel not to take it personally. Israel was rejecting God not Samuel in demanding a king.
Let’s pause and think about that. How did Israel reject God in asking for a king? I doubt that Israel intended to reject God when it asked for a king. It was a practical matter. The government of the judges was not working. It wasn’t well organized. There was no structure with branch representatives throughout the country. So in the long stretches of time when the judge was not in your area, there was no authority there except the lingering moral authority of his words that came from God.
But it takes a keen conscience for moral authority to work. A weak conscience listens only to force. Israel said to Samuel, in effect, we need more force in our government.
The situation between God and Israel was like a newly married couple that found, after the honeymoon, that the bride no longer responded to her husband affectionately. Whereas their friendship began very tenderly, with him caring for her at great cost, and with a trust greater than her previous life seemed to make reasonable, after he placed his full trust in her by promising life-long love and devotion to her, she suddenly pulled back. She lost interest in any tender expressions of affection. She no longer wanted to look beautiful for him, or to respond to him. So she said, if you want me to act like I love you, you have to make me.
All through Israel’s history till then, God related to Israel as to a bride, trusting that Israel would respond to His affection and care. The judges—Gideon, Deborah, Samuel and others, were like shepherds, pastors. But Israel wouldn’t respond on that basis. They demanded a king, an authority figure that ruled with a rod of iron in his hand.
An additional problem Israel may have developed with their judges was somewhat similar to the problem many of us have with Mr. Pat Robertson. Mr. Robertson has sometimes told us God told him things. We wonder if this really happened. Skeptical Israelites wondered, “Did God really speak to Samuel?”
People who lived in the ancient world under kings had no room to worry about the source of their ruler’s authority. A sharp sword is pretty persuasive. Kings armed their representatives with swords, put uniforms on them, and spread them throughout the land with life and death authority. The Israelites could see this worked better than their system of judges worked. The people who had a king responded instantly to his commands. They responded very indifferently to God when moved only by conscience. Maybe they’d do it better under compulsion.
The realists said, “We need a king.” In a way they were humble. They didn’t claim moral superiority to the surrounding nations. Humbly they said, “We’re just like they are.” They may have had the law of God, but they didn’t have the will to keep it. If we had a king, he could make us obey God’s law! Think of that, Samuel. Think of that, God. They had practical advice for God and Samuel. “Our consciences are weak. But we will obey power; power speaks to us loud and clear. So give us a king.”
Well, they got their kings, and things went downhill pretty fast from there. Why? Because their kings were no better than anyone else. Sometimes they were worse. They were corrupted by their power. Rather than forcing Israel to live according to the ways of God, they introduced other gods to Israel. They forced Israel in the opposite direction.
A little more than one hundred years later Israel was divided by civil war.
A little more than one hundred years after that the northern part of the divided kingdom was taken into a very harsh exile in Assyria.
A little more than one hundred years after that the southern two tribes were dragged into exile in Babylon, the Ark of the Covenant was stolen, never to be found again, and the Temple destroyed. So much for Israel’s rejection of God’s trust in them.
Time moved on and some Israelites from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi came back to Israel. They were now called “Jews,” a word that comes from the name of one of the tribes, Judah. They built a second Temple, rebuilt Jerusalem, and re-established a community in the land their ancestors lived in. In the second century before Jesus they tried to have kings again. They were priest-kings, not from David’s family but from the tribe of Levi. These priest kings didn’t last long, about one hundred years. Then the Romans conquered them again. They had a king again, only this time it was a Roman emperor they feared and despised. This was the situation when Jesus came.
We just read together about a moment in Jesus’ life when some thoughtful religious people asked Him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
They were testing Jesus. I wonder if in the back of their minds they remembered that in ancient Israel God wanted to be their king. A lot of Jews then longed for the Kingdom to be restored to Israel.
They knew that Jesus had spoken of the Kingdom of God. So now they were testing Him. How bold was His idealism? If he said, “Only God is our king, so don’t pay the tax to Caesar,” he would be in trouble with the Romans. If He said, “Pay Caesar his tax,” he accepted Caesar as king. And that went against God’s perfect will for His people.
Jesus asked for a coin, which had a likeness of the emperor on one side. I happen to own a replica of the coin Jesus probably had in His hand. On one side is the image of Emperor Tiberius. On the other side is a picture of someone in submission and the words, “Judea capta” written around the edge. There was degradation in that coin. A graven image of the emperor on one side; a reminder that they were a captured people on the other side.
This was a coin they weren’t allowed to bring into the Temple because no one could bring a graven image inside the Temple. Really strict Jews wouldn’t handle such coins at all because of the image of Caesar on them. Ironically, these fellows who were trying to trap Jesus were holding a coin with a graven image on it!
If Jesus said, “Pay your taxes,” He was accepting the legitimacy of a king other than God. Jesus didn’t really answer their question. It didn’t have good motives. He wouldn’t dignify their undignified question.
Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” It was an answer somewhat like the answer the oracles would give in the temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece. The one who asked the question had to figure out the answer, and the answer he gave said a lot about his question.
What did they owe to Caesar? Did Jesus mean they should pay taxes to Caesar or not? We have assumed Jesus meant, “Yes, pay taxes to Caesar.” Why? Because as He said to Pilate later on, Caesar would have no authority if it weren’t given to him by God. If God gave Caesar his authority, it was important to pay the taxes he demanded.
What then did they owe to God? They hadn’t asked Jesus about that. They only asked what they owed to Caesar. God wasn’t on the other side of the coin, after all.
When they thought of God as their Father it was different from thinking of God as their King. As a Father God cherished them, taught them how to live, forgave them when they failed, and cared for them through thick and thin. As a King God commanded them. It was a different image altogether. He was a God to be feared and obeyed when they thought of Him as king.
Naturally everyone likes better the idea of God as loving Father more than God as a king to be feared. Jesus came to teach us to call God Father once again. We call Jesus, “King of Kings,” but it is out of honor not because we think of Him as heavy-handed like a king. We pray every Sunday together, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Jesus taught us to do this again. Paul taught us to call God “Abba, Father.” “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” This is at God’s initiative. “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” “Abba” is the tender word of a child to her dad.
A number of the collisions Jesus had with religious people had to do with how they thought of God. The dominant idea was that God was strictly authoritarian like a king. So the Sabbath Day was a day, not of rest in the sense God seemed to intend, but a day for strict enforcement of minute laws. No healing a hurting person because that’s work. No nice long walk in the countryside; that’s work.
If we see God as a King rather than as a Father, it affects what we think we should render to God. Jesus poked fun at the antics of religious people who go through the motions of pacifying God as king. They were like people who wash the outside of a cup because that’s the part that will be seen. “Clean the inside of the cup and not just the outside.”
Picture a loving child given a chance to wash the dishes for mother and dad. He gets his hands in the sudsy water and takes dad’s coffee cup, moving the dishcloth thoroughly against the bottom corners of the cup, cleaning every trace of stain away. He rinses it and puts it on the drainer until he washes mother’s coffee mug. He takes the dish towel and dries first one then the other. He puts them in their place where mother and dad will find them. They will be surprised and notice how perfectly clean they are. How good it was to wash mother and dad’s coffee cups.
If you and I love God as our Father, there will be a lot of this in our outlook on life. The reason why Jesus dared to give us such intimate details into the heart of God in the Sermon on the Mount, but did not then command us to do these things as a condition for loving us, was that He thought maybe we’d want to know how we could best please God.
He thought we would want to know more than how to get into heaven when we die. A loving child doesn’t ask how little I can do, but how fully I can care for this mom and dad who love me, and who I discover I love. This is the basis of the Christian life. This is the way that life within a community such as ours can unfold, if we have this idea in our hearts.
But there are very specific areas where we know what pleases Jesus. What pleases Jesus is copying his attitude. It’s so simple. Give care where it’s most needed: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit lonely people in prison, and visit people who are sick. It will please me if you serve each other from the heart as I serve you, as you know, from my heart. The story of the Good Samaritan shows us how pleased Jesus is when we help people we don’t know to an extent inconvenient for us.
How different it is if we ask, “What do I have to do?” From “How much can I do?” In the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus teaches impractical things about blessing those who curse us, and all of that, He is talking to the one who asks, “How much can I do?” It is not a new law, a new standard of impossibility like the Pharisees’ laws on keeping the Sabbath. Jesus is pointing at the heart of how grace works for those who are interested. And he so trusts us that He assumes that we will be interested.
The reason why God was disappointed with Israel in wanting a King to force them to live in His way was that God longed for Israel to want to please Him because they loved Him with all their heart, soul, and strength. Jesus tried again, we might say. He poured out His love for us in a massive display. He taught us in such a way that it would engage all our powers of mind and heart to express our love back to Him. Loving God uses every act of mind and heart and body we can offer.
A book review I recently read proposed that Christians today are “wallowing in longing for God instead of grappling with God.” When we love God with all we are we will not continually long for God in a way that wants “worship experiences,” church services that zing. We will not live in the doldrums between “worship experiences” that perk us up for the moment.
Instead, we’ll be grappling with all the guidance we find in Jesus’ teaching. We’ll tug and strain to know all we can and interact with God and people as thoroughly as possible, all impelled with love. Love is the most intense kind of motivator.
In the Bible we see Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul grappling with God. Abraham pleads with God for Sodom. Moses argues with God in Israel’s behalf. Jesus prays in the Garden, “If it be possible take this cup from me.” Paul tells God, “Take my life in exchange for Israel’s.” They are so involved. They did not compartmentalize their lives saying, “So much for God and religion, so much for community, so much for family, so much for country—gosh, I’m tired.” It was all of life, and all I’ve got, and all I am completely wrapped up in loving God—until I die.
This was what God longed for from Israel, but would not force them to have. This is what Jesus offers us, but will not force us to have. “Render to God what belongs to God.” What belongs to God? How do we divide what we have to know God’s share? How tiring math is for most of us. Endless division, multiplication, subtraction, and addition. Then there’s calculus and differential equations. At the end we’ll all realize it all belongs to God, everything. We can see all of life that way now.
Mark Wittig, whom I met in Medellin, is hard at work on a marvelous project that will bring the Gospel in remarkable ways to the neediest sections of the city. Soccer clubs are the medium for his amazing work. He needed money to make his project possible. He flew to Alabama at the invitation of friends there, to talk with some businessmen. Unfortunately, unusually bad weather kept all but three men from coming to that meeting that he flew all the way from Colombia to attend. He gave his pitch. One of the men asked to speak with him afterward. He had succeeded in business. Shortly before he retired he was in a small commuter plane that suddenly started to nose-dive. His life flashed before him. He realized he owned nothing. He had no control over his destiny. The plane crashed. Everyone died except him. He broke his ankles, but hobbled away before the plane exploded. The experience changed his life. It gave him a new outlook on something he’d said often before, “All I own belongs to God.”
This man was impressed with how Mark had poured his life so imaginatively and at such risk into his ministry in Medellin. He asked how much he needed to begin work on the soccer stadium his ministry needed. Mark hesitated because it was a lot. The man insisted. So Mark said, $245,000. Without hesitation the businessman took out his checkbook. What do you think he wrote there? Did he say, “Here’s $10,000. This will help. Maybe Here’s $50,000? Or maybe $100,000!!!? He wrote a check for $245, 000 and gave it to Mark.
He did it happily, as though it was the happiest thing he could do. He saw in a different light words he’d said often before the plane crash, “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee.” Now he said it with love and gratitude. Everything he had, his life itself, belonged to God! And it made him very happy. Mark didn’t pocket a penny of the amount.
God wants us very happy. God’s authority over us reshapes our lives if we let Him. No religious authority can reshape our hearts from within. Only our Creator can. And when we let God govern us, His will becoming ours, He will make us very good and very happy.
Let us pray: O God. Thank you for creating us and then loving us, and teaching us very well. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2004
How Does a Child Learn to Believe in God?
How Does a Child Learn to Believe in God?
Psalm 119: 105-112 / Deuteronomy 6: 1-9
II Timothy 1: 3-7
March 14th, 2004
When a child is born into our family of faith, I think two things. First, I wish the little one were coming into a happier world. This week we were reminded once again that the world can be an unfriendly place. Spain does not seem far away. But second, I think, maybe this little one will be part of a turning of the tide. The Kingdom of God, that will one day displace violence completely, may find in this little child God’s instrument.
It wasn’t hard to find suitable texts for this morning when we welcome little Timothy into the family of the Church. I chose three texts, a psalm that described the benefits to us of the teaching of the Bible, then a passage from Deuteronomy about how to teach a child God’s way of life, and third, a very personal statement from the Apostle Paul to a lad who had the same name as Rich and Jennifer’s second little boy whom we baptize today. Timothy means, “honored of God.”
Timothy obviously meant a great deal to the Apostle Paul. Reading slowly over these few verses in II Timothy we see Paul wearing his heart on his sleeve. I wonder what one of you has ever written so tenderly of your affection to a young person. Paul writes of Timothy’s tears. The affection went both ways. Whom would you tell is on your mind night and day? Whom would you actually tell, “I look forward to seeing you that much?” I suspect that as this letter was circulated it was not seen as excessive. Here we have a striking picture of the kind of love that bonded brothers and sisters in Christ in the early going of the Church. What do you think Timothy thought when he read these words from the great mover and shaker in the early church? “I mean that much to him?!!”
I would hold this before us as an example. There is possibility of very deep friendship among those whose hearts have been tenderized by the love of Christ. In a world that can be very harsh the Church can provide an oasis of affection.
In the Book of Acts Luke tells us that Paul met Timothy in the twin towns of Derbe and Lystra—which was a bit like saying Timothy was from the greater Lafayette area. His mother was a Jew, which made him a Jew. His dad was a Gentile, which perhaps complicated his upbringing. The one thing Luke says of Timothy personally was that he had a good reputation. His good reputation was conspicuous.
Now there are many people we know who don’t have a bad reputation. We sometimes hear something like, “I never heard anyone say a contrary word about him.”
But it is a different thing when the specific positive remark is made, “We cannot forget her gracious ways.” Timothy was this kind of person. His goodness stood out. He was the kind of person mentioned in the Book of Proverbs: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”
Now having everyone speak well of Timothy might give us pause. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” But Jesus spoke this to His disciples who were going to have a prophetic role in the future. False prophets speak a feel-good message. They offer what David Brooks recently described as “heaven lite.” This “soft-core spirituality” strokes the easygoing narcissism that is so much a part of the atmosphere today.
The Gospel tells us Good News of the love of God. But it is tough love, we might say. The Gospel is not soft-core spirituality. It calls for a change of life that’s hard to achieve and that has specifics to it.
Timothy would have a speaking role in the church. When he got to that stage of life, he would need to give the straight goods, the full message of the Gospel. The full message is not just that God loves you, but that Jesus says, “Come, follow me.” That is not an easy message to get across.
But Timothy did not yet have a prophetic role in the church. He was a young man beloved by teachers and fellow students at school. He would be the kind of fellow today who plays high school sports, is an Eagle Scout, is fun to have in youth group and Sunday School, and volunteers at the Homeless Shelter. You wonder how he has time for all this. He’s not just a super-achiever; there’s character that shows through his smile. Timothy came to the notice of those around him because he had high character as well as a charming personality.
All of us wonder when we see extraordinary character form in a child, “What made this happen?” There is a difference between great ability and great character. Heredity has something to do with great ability. Character has to form anew in each generation for everyone. Character forms from a number of ingredients—heredity, upbringing, environment, and the choices a person makes.
So it was for Timothy. Paul particularly calls our attention to Timothy’s heredity and upbringing. The faith he saw in Timothy was first in Lois, his mama, and in Eunice, his mother. I wonder how Paul knew this? When he visited their home, he watched the ways of these two women. He saw how Timothy got on with them. The older lady exuded kindness, a graciousness that stood out in her daughter, Timothy’s mother. Paul looked at this bright, vigorous, gentle young man and he could see the correspondence in character with his mother and grandmother.
We wonder why Paul said nothing about Timothy’s father. Maybe he had a good dad and grandfather too, but they didn’t stand out as his mother and grandmother did. They were quiet men. Maybe they seemed to stand in the shadows by comparison with the women and Timothy. This happens and is not a bad reflection on the men.
Naturally our eyes turn to the parents of an outstanding young person. We assume great parenting stands behind a remarkable child. We may assume unfortunate parenting led to a troubled child. But this is neither fair nor accurate. I’ve known some parents who struck me as extraordinary whose children were disappointments—at least in the short run. I never give up on a person, particularly if they have a solid home. Conversely, I’ve known some negligent parents, busy with everything but parenting, or even living shoddy lives, who have a child like this Timothy.
It is God’s best intention for us that the little ones we bring into the world should be given a sure foundation for life. When the Psalmist wrote, “Thy testimonies are my heritage forever; yes they are the joy of my heart,” he wrote of the fond place God’s ways, taught to him by his parents, had in his heart. Is he telling us his parents did as Moses said? The means they went by the book, that is, by Deuteronomy 6: 1-9?
Some of us grew up in a generation when memorizing the Bible was sometimes used as a way of straightening out a naughty child. Imagine being compelled to memorize Bible verses as a punishment for doing something bad! Not the best way of developing a fondness for the Bible, I’d say.
Moses taught a far better way. Day in and day out children were to be taught to love God. “Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Morning and evening in every home mother and father were to speak of this with their children. Morning and evening it was not mommy and daddy telling junior to say this, but saying it with them, and then discussing it. Jewish homes still are noteworthy for all the discussion that takes place. Moses taught this way of life in the home that welds together the generations and gets the great rules of life deep into the heart and mind.
It was a banner day when a little child was able to say the first word of the shema with her parents. They marked it down in a diary: “Today little Sarah said, ‘Shema Israel’.” It was another banner day when she asked her first question about it, or gave her first idea of what it meant.
This was the first part of the big plan. How do we avoid that odd situation where parents want children to go to church, or at least to Sunday School, but the children see it’s not important for mom and dad? We avoid irrelevance when it is evident to the child that mom and dad teach by doing as well as saying. Morning and evening mother and dad repeat with the children, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
Secondly, the ways of God were the continual subject of conversations in the home. Moses taught how to lead the discussion.
Moses taught four ways a child should learn the ways of God by means of discussion..
First, parents were to repeat these words diligently. Repetition is the best way of teaching. It is the mother of memory. Children learned the words of the Bible as the first step in learning their application to life. Because to know what the words mean, you must know what they are.
“What does it mean to love the Lord?” A good parent might ask, “How is loving God like loving your mom and dad or little brother?” Then a thoughtful parent would look in more detail. “God says we are to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength. What is it to love God with all my heart? What do you think God means that we should love him with all our soul? Is this different from loving God with all our heart? After God told us to love Him with heart and soul, why does He add “all your strength?” What is it to love God only a little bit? ” “Let’s talk about this. What do you think this means?” So little junior starts to think about loving God every day as mother and dad learn with him. Since little children are very direct perhaps they would challenge mother or dad: “Do you think you love God when you act like that, daddy?” Good teachers learn more than they teach. So mom and dad learn more and more to love God as they try to help the little ones understand how to love God.
Second, you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, walk by the way, lie down, and get up. Perhaps you think that the talk in the house would get pretty boring if it was always discussing this one topic in the Bible in all these circumstances. But I don’t think Moses meant this at all. The subject was loving God. Loving God is something we do in many different ways. Jesus taught us that whatever we do for someone in need we’re doing to Him. When we as parents talk with our children about their relationships with other people, we show them how to love God in loving other people. We do this in all the different settings of the home—when we’re lying on the couch, or getting up to get a glass of orange juice, or sitting in the rocking chair, or walking out the front door. This is what Moses was getting at.
In the home we talk about all sorts of things, and usually without any particular method in mind. If gossip about other people is the subject of conversations in your home, it’s hard to love God while gossiping. Our children might notice this before we do. If a child is taught to think well of people, to overlook their oddnesses, to forgive their offenses, to see the best in them, then God is being talked about lovingly in the home.
Paul taught us that we should do all to the glory of God. “All” is pretty inclusive. We don’t have to seem “religious” in talking with our children how to glorify God. We can get to the bottom line of why it is important how we do our homework. It’s not just to get good grades to feel proud of, or even so that someday we can get a good job. Maybe they will be surprised to know that “good work is God’s work.” Doing homework well glorifies God.
Doing “all” to the glory of God includes how we speak to each other in the home. God is glorified when we speak kindly with each other. When we talk about loving God throughout the day, we’ll be talking about a lot of different aspects of life.
Third, Moses said, “Bind [these words] as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes.” In Jesus’ day there were devout Jews who took this literally. Beginning with the second century before Jesus’ day, pious Jews wore tefillin or phylacteries; pieces of parchment containing certain verses from the Torah attached to the head and left arms. The left arm is closest to the heart. Sometimes the tefillin were very conspicuous. It was a way of showing how pious you were. Jesus chided the Pharisees for enlarging their phylacteries to demonstrate their piety.
Somehow I think that Moses had none of this in mind when he said, “Bind them as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes.” I think that he was using a figure of speech. It was like saying tie a string around your finger to remember something. In other words, “Don’t forget!” It was not everything about all the laws and commandments that people were not to forget in the home. It was this one part, the beginning part, and the most important part: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength.
Mother and dad start the process of thinking about all of life in terms of loving God. They pass it along to the children. The children pick up from us what we think is important. If all our conversation is about sports, about the stock market, about buying new cars and new clothes, about making the house spiffier, about all those things we can buy in our prosperity, and we forget the matters of the heart—what it is to love God as you love other people—then our children see matters of faith as extraneous to life.
Perhaps we Christians would do well to devise our own phylacteries if it would help us remember what is really good to talk about in the home.
The fourth way Moses taught us to train our children was to write the love of God on the doorposts of our homes and on our gates. Each devout Jewish home has a mezuzah on the right side of the front door and on the right doorpost of every room except the bathroom. Mezuzah means “doorpost.” The mezuzah would contain Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 and 11: 12-21, which gave the command and the warning about not keeping the command to remember these things.
While I think it may be a good thing to keep these visible reminders at each doorway, and it would provide thought-provoking ornaments in the home, I don’t think the point Moses was making had to do with the mezuzoth themselves. It was just another way of emphasizing that loving God is the most important thing in life. And the best place to learn and teach this is the home.
Now I know that not all of us here have children. For that matter, not all of us are married. We live alone. But when I think of the church, I think of it as a community made up of all our different kinds of homes. The point Moses was making was that our homes are to be saturated with reminders of the love of God in word and deed.
And if what is most truly true about us is our love for God, a love displayed when we “let it all hang out,” in loving our nearest neighbors, that is our spouses, our parents, and our children, then there is bound to be some good effect of this on the next generation.
It has been said, and we know it’s true, that if our children grow up with criticism, they learn to be critical of others. If they grow up nurtured by the love of parents who make it plain that the reason for this is the love of God—brought to mind in many ways in the home, then our children will have a pretty good foundation for moving out into our troubled world.
We are thinking a lot here about the importance of a good youth program. But clearly the place where a child learns most and best is the home. I hope that we may offer a fine program for our young people. I’m grateful for the faithfulness of some of you in keeping on with this. But we can never replace what comes to a child in the place where she spends by far the most time—home.
Our Sunday School adds an exclamation point to what our children learn at home. Our youth fellowship adds a social aspect for our children and offers young folk who may not have strong homes a place to learn by osmosis. Here our children can do fun things together with friends from homes with like idealism. It is good to create a community that re-enforces the teaching of the home. But we cannot replace the home with either Sunday School or Youth Fellowship.
We will do all we can to forge this kind of community here. I’m proud of our Sunday School. I am proud of the faithfulness of you who work with our youth. Our track record is good. I aspire to tomorrows with like blessing.
Perhaps here we will foster the development not only of a young man named Timothy, but we may provide the spawning water in which many young folk may become such as Timothy was in the early church—an encouragement, a leader by example, a source of joy to Paul, to his mother and grandmother, and to all who knew him. To generations yet to come Timothy created a momentum, showing the good effects of the Gospel. We read of him in our New Testament, something he never imagined would happen—to be an important personality in the Bible.
Our Bible has no more parts to be written. But what remains to be written is a letter from God inscribed on our hearts, available to be read by all who are hungry for God. I pray that many such letters will be written in our homes, made more clear to be read by the encouragement we all find in this place. So that we become active agents in God’s blessing extended to this suffering world in which we live. I welcome you to take part in this wonderful life.
Let us pray: O Lord, we thank you for the homes in which we learned to love you. Grant us strength and wisdom to offer this present generation a place into which to learn to love You wholly, with heart, soul, and strength. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2004
Why Christ Alone Must be our King
Why Christ Alone Must be our King
I Samuel 8: 10-22 / Romans 13: 1-7
March 7th, 2004
Something I think about when I take walks in our beautiful Indiana countryside, particularly after coming back from another country, is that we live in a wonderful, free land. How wonderful to feel safe when I walk out on back roads and into the woods.
But despite the delight of our land and our marvelous freedom I see evidence that a lot of people are not very happy. I see more long faces than smiling faces. A lot of people in our free land are not happy. A lot of Christian people are not happy. Why?
Our Declaration of Independence says that among our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When it says, “among,” it means we have other rights too. These are spelled out in the Bill of Rights appended to our Constitution. We have more rights than any other people on earth. Our rights guarantee our pursuit of happiness. Why, when we have so much freedom to pursue happiness, is happiness so rare?
I believe the problem goes way back. What we call Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, found our first parents very happy. They lived in harmony with God and each other. They had everything they needed. Patterns of authority weren’t spelled out so much as simply understood. They needed no Constitution, no Book of Order. God was God. God was the Creator. Adam and Eve were created beings. There was a natural hierarchy. It was all based on love. God loved people. He created them in such a way that they would naturally reflect His love, back to Him and across to each other.
The whole man-woman thing unfolds the mutual attraction God wanted to characterize human life. It would reflect His affection for what He created. “Love” is what we call this attraction that makes a man want to care for a woman and a woman want to care for a man. Love makes people behave well to each other. It could not get better. How happy our first parents must have been.
But, the Bible tells us sin entered the world. It got worse quickly. With sin came death. The first death was violent. A fellow killed his brother. He hated him. Sin messed up love. It turned it on its head. Hate and love are a lot alike, only hate is love turned upside down. What we call “lust” is merely disfigured love. Lust has still all the ingredients that made Eve alluring to Adam and Adam to Eve, but sin messed with the chemistry of love.
Hate caused Cain to murder his brother whereas once he cared for him. In a way anytime we don’t care for each other, it’s a step in the opposite direction. Murder is sin, big time sin, we say.
But sin brought other causes of death too. Sin is why we don’t care for each other. In fact, sin makes us not even like ourselves. Carl Menninger’s book, Man Against Himself is a tragic, realistic story of what prompts suicide.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism that most Presbyterians once had to memorize defines sins as “any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.”
Maybe a less theological but more to the point definition is that sin is the attitude that I am the center of everything. It’s not God. It’s not other people. I am at the center. When everyone says that, there’s a real problem. Sin brought stress and anxiety because everyone said, “I’m at the center.” So I’m angry with you because you stand in the way of me at the center. You’re angry at me for the same reason, only it’s because you are at your center. In fact, I’m afraid and you’re afraid that we don’t intend good to each other. We have hostile centers. That produces stress. Stress tightens our blood vessels and causes heart attacks.
Other physiological effects come from the stress of sin so that the body develops many different ways to get sick and die, perhaps to escape the awful consequences of self-centered living. In heaven the big alteration in us all will be that we’ll lose our self-centeredness, which will remove stress so that living forever won’t be something we fear. Now death can seem a release. Then we’ll need no release.
Sometimes you and I can feel the ill effect on our bodies that anxiety produces. My wife tested me with a little device that registers whether we’re calm or under stress. I won’t tell you how I tested out. But I was surprised at the result. There is much going on in us that we never feel. This is partly why we’re not happy. This is why we get sick. We live burdened with stress that has effects on our bodies.
We are told that every seven years our bodies change completely. God made us so that new tissue replaces old tissue regularly. In this way we are always being renewed. This must be how God planned that we should live forever, always being renewed every seven years, on and on and on.
Then, why don’t we live forever, always being renewed? Why don’t scars disappear after seven years? Why doesn’t heart disease simply disappear every seven years? Why don’t cancer cells simply de-materialize after seven years, gradually weakening before that time, dwindling down to nothing when the clock strikes “seven years at midnight”?
Something happened. That something, I believe, was self-centeredness, or sin which is the cause of all our sadness and may have a lot to do with sickness. I don’t know if they talk about that in medical school.
So God caused the idea of government to rise from within human society. People chose authority figures they called “kings.” It was a survival instinct. It was a way people held themselves in check so they wouldn’t kill each other off.
The situation I learned about in Colombia recently where homicide is the number one problem in the Province of Antioquia points to the disaster of very many people seeing themselves at the center of everything. If I am the center of everything, your life is disposable if it interferes with what I want. Bang. You’re dead. The problem is eliminated.
Paul wrote in Romans 13, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” “He is God’s servant for your good.” Paul wrote this when Nero was emperor of Rome. Nero was a bad man, a cruel man. But still it was not as bad to have an evil emperor holding society under fear than to have a nation of people at war with each other. Where there is no government, it is a worse situation than to have a bad government.
When God chose Israel from all the nations of the world to be His special people, He didn’t want them to have any kind of king. God wanted to be their king.
God gave them a very good and humble man named Moses at the beginning as the intermediary between Himself and Israel. Moses had a speech impediment. He was shy. He was fearful by nature. He wasn’t charming like President Kennedy. He didn’t walk like President Bush does, showing how fit he is. Moses did not have an imposing presence. God chose a humble man to be the go-between between Him and Israel.
Moses had no tendency to be a dictator. He was a public servant through and through. We never read anything in the Bible about Moses using his special position with God to his own advantage. He didn’t boss people around. He didn’t take all the wives he wanted. He didn’t get rich. He lived in a tent like everyone else. When Solomon built the Temple it was after building his palace, which was more imposing than the Temple. Not so Moses. Moses was never anything but a servant to Israel.
Through this humble man, Moses, God set the pattern by which He could rule people from within. God gave them what we call “the Law,” to rule their hearts. The Law was good. God wanted their assent to it. They listened to it and God wanted to hear them say “Amen” after they heard it. Why? Because God wanted then and wants still to rule us from within, with the full agreement of our hearts. This rule means care for each other as well as allegiance to God. How wonderful it is when we live together “under God.” Our currency says that is how it is overall in America. How wonderful when we make it seem so in the church.
Many of the things we do here at Faith Church are for that purpose. We not only worship together on Sunday. We meet to sing together, to study together, to eat together on Thursday evenings. We come together to give shape to what we believe. If you want to be part of us, come take part with us. This is God’s design. It is a tragedy when anyone in the church feels alone, because the purpose of the church is unity among ourselves before God. Come, take part with us. Come, help shape what we are.
In Deuteronomy 26 we read that when the people of Israel came to the Promised Land, there would be a solemn ceremony every one was to enact every year. Each person was to take a basket of produce from their harvest and go to the priest at a place the Lord would choose, and say to the priest, “I declare this day to the Lord your God that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.” The priest would take the basket and bring it to the altar of the Lord. There were a lot of baskets brought together then as a lot of people did this together. They talked together when they came together. They came to know each other. This was part of the purpose of the command.
It was like what we do on Thanksgiving Eve. You come with your sacks of foodstuffs to give to the Food Bank in town. There is something that happens in you when you get up from your seat and walk to the front with others each of whom brings a gift of food. You bring this not only for the sake of other people who need it, but to say thank you TOGETHER to God. This is one of the high points in our life together, I think many of you would say.
Thus, every person, every year remembers that we owe everything to God’s goodness. God, this generous and loving God, gives us life and all that sustains us. How happy a thing it is to remember this--together!
When God gave Israel a Law, He taught them how to live kindly with each other and with their Creator. Actually what we call “the Law,” wasn’t law at all the way you and I think of it. The word we translate “law,” (Torah) actually meant “teaching.” It is based on another word that means “teach.” The whole idea of Law began as teaching how to live rather than as commands.
A good teacher is a wonderful thing. A good teacher loves her students and they know it. And because of the love she has, the teacher can communicate a lot more than information and facts. She molds something in her students’ hearts.
I have in mind a piano teacher who teaches a lot more than music. She gets into the heads and hearts of her students and teaches them about life, about self-discipline, about good manners, about kindness, and about God. This was what God had in mind in the perfect government He planned for Israel. He would teach them how to live.
The longest of the Psalms mentions 176 times how happy a thing is the Law of God. “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path always.” How helpful it is to have a light when you’re walking on a path at night. Life can so often seem like walking on an unlighted path at night. We can’t see the way ahead. God gave us knowledge of His ways so we would know how to keep from stumbling in the dark.
But it didn’t work. God would not force this happy way on people. The condition came where everyone did what was right in his own eyes. When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, something has to give.
Perhaps it was for this reason that the people of Israel came to Samuel and demanded a king to rule over them. “Give us a king like every other nation has,” they demand rather than requested.
God told Samuel, who grieved at this, “they have not rejected you; they have rejected me from being king over them.” Samuel explained to Israel what having a king would mean. Apparently they hadn’t watched what it was like in their neighboring countries. All they saw was the beautiful pageantry. They saw the rich robes and golden crowns. They didn’t see what was underneath the pomp.
Samuel said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you . . .” and he went on to spell out how he would dominate every detail of their lives for his own purposes. He would use them and abuse them. It would be as though the whole nation existed only for the king’s sake. “We don’t care,” they said. “Give us a king like all the other nations have.” An idea called “The Divine Right of Kings” would develop as the centuries moved on which finally had to be checked because it had gotten out of hand.
In the West we still remember the donnybrook between King John of England and his nobles in the early 13th century. Enough was enough already. They forced him to sign the Magna Charta, the first legal document restricting what a king could do. Oddly, the head of the church didn’t like the idea.
Well, let me tell you where all of this is going. When Jesus was crucified, Pontius Pilate had a placard nailed above his head that read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” John’s Gospel tells us that he had this written in three languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, so it was clear to everyone.
God sometimes uses unusual ways to make important lessons clear. Jesus is the King God has provided to rule our hearts from within. In a way we might say Jesus is to us what God wanted to be to Israel. But how differently we look at Jesus than ancient Israel looked at God, surrounded by thunder and lightning up there on Mt. Sinai.
We look at Jesus’ suffering for our sake and it seems the very opposite of power. How totally helpless Jesus seems in the hands of His tormentors. All the while they do what they do only because He lets them. The power of the cross looks pretty weak until you realize that it was the power of love inside Jesus that let it happen. Jesus’ authority over you will be a power that grips you from within. It can never be successfully imposed on you from without. It makes Isaac Watts’ words pertinent to you, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands, my soul, my life, my all.”
But it’s one thing to sing it in church, and another thing to sense its demand in your heart. You must visibly respond to Jesus’ demand or the reign of Jesus in your heart and mine will remain only a theory. If there is no evidence your life is under Jesus’ authority, it probably means you’re the boss. Theories of Christianity are tragic shortfalls of the real thing, no matter how correct they are. Jesus did not reign over creation from the cross in order that we should have theories about Christianity.
I saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” on Monday. I’ve read reports that people sobbed during the movie. No wonder.
But it is a scandal if the only result of this vivid portrayal of Jesus’ suffering for us is that we have momentary spasms of tears. Jesus did not die to make you cry. He does not ask for your pity.
The big question is, “Is Jesus really king in your life? Does He really rule in your heart? Or is He a religious idea precious to you as you live governed fully by the big number one, numero uno, me, myself, and I?
A King rules with absolute authority. Are there any aspects of your life where you deliberately obey what you know is Jesus’ will, because you read it in the Gospels? You do this even though doing it moves against what you want to do? A king isn’t like a president with checks and balances to his authority. A king isn’t like a dictator who rules only by right of power. A king rules, he believes, by Divine right. Only Jesus has Divine right. And He will never impose this right over your will. Jesus wants to rule you from within. You are free to reject His rule, but don’t blame Him that you’re unhappy. If you will let Him rule you from within, you will be happy.
You will live in a way that is a blessing to other people so many of them will like you. You will live in a way that asks to serve rather than to be served; that asks to forgive rather than to be forgiven, that asks to understand rather than to be understood.
You can’t love other people if you have a keen sense of your rights, of what you want, if you are tight with your time, with your abilities, with what you say you own. You can’t be happy that way either. Happiness and loving other people have a lot to do with each other. If you are not happy it is a good clue that you are the Lord of your life, and you don’t like it at all. You say you are a Christian. Then give your life to God. Give Jesus the command of your life, and you will be happy.
Happiness has nothing to do with our rights. It has everything to do with who governs our hearts from within. Christianity has only a little bit to do with what we say. It has a lot to do with what we do. It is a life to be lived more than a creed to be discussed.
Give your heart to Jesus, actually. And you will find happiness creeping in to you. Do it. Begin, if you need to begin, as you take Communion this morning. Continue to do it, if you have begun, as you take Communion. Don’t take Communion if you have no intention of making Jesus Lord of your life. Taking Communion is like a re-enactment ceremony of Jesus’ coronation in our hearts.
Let us pray: O Lord Jesus Christ, whom we call our king, rule our untamed hearts, and make us free indeed. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)