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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 March 21, 2004 09:30 AM