« How to Build a Worthy Legacy | Main | Faithfulness »
June 20, 2004
The Plight of Our Humanity
The Plight of Our Humanity
I Samuel 12: 6-12 / Hebrews 10: 19-25
June 20th, 2004
One of our favorite miracles Jesus performed was to take a shepherd boy’s lunch of five small barley pita breads and two small fish and feed five thousand men plus women and children. More was left after Jesus fed this huge crowd than what he had to begin with. Philip had asked Jesus, “What are these when we must feed so many?” Jesus said, “Just watch!’
We all love it when we see small abilities turn into magnificent achievement in a person. Ben Carson was an African American born in a Baltimore tenement housing project. Like everyone else there, his family was poor. It was a typically rough neighborhood where boys entertained themselves with petty crime. Violence could and did erupt on the spur of the moment. He nearly killed another boy who made him mad, but the knife blade was deflected by the boy’s belt buckle. Immediately he realized what he’d almost done to his friend, and it was the start of his change of life. Carson might have gone to prison as a murderer. Instead, he is now chief of pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He is in demand around the world to separate Siamese twins joined in complicated ways. How much he made of so little. We love stories like this.
We become more thoughtful and quiet when we read the opposite kind of story. Someone born into a good home, great parents, every opportunity, good education, takes a path that leads to homelessness. He finds himself on the streets eating the husks of life. Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son tells of this kind of life. And in this story the younger son, in coming to the Father is returning not only to a decent way of life, but also to God who is the very image of the welcoming Father.
We little realize the scope of the problem that the great 17th century French mathematician and earnest Christian, Blaise Pascal, called “the misery and grandeur of man.” What is it about our species that can move either from circumstances of great misery to high success and goodness, or from great opportunity to the depths of misery? It is a bi-polar tendency that operates on more than one level. We are apt to notice some levels better than others.
You who teach school notice it when a student with great ability wastes it. This distresses you no end. The semester started well but ended badly. What a waste, you thought. Conversely, you see students with modest ability that through hard work, excel. I had such a student in Hebrew who enters seminary this year after learning more about the Hebrew Bible than I think any other student I’ve had. He did not stand out to me early on. He gradually caught my attention.
We notice it when great promise is squandered in the financial arena. I know someone who literally squandered more than a million dollars on frivolous spending so that this person went from financial security to barely scraping along, and it had nothing to do with the volatile stock market.
We watch with rapt attention when men and women with great business leadership ability tumble from richly paid CEOs, living in luxury into prisoners. Deceitful financial decisions prompted by greed send them off not into the sunset in comfort, but off to prison in handcuffs. Tabloid and newspaper photographers capture their misery eagerly and editors splash the story on the front pages. I am intrigued why people delight to see the fall of others from high positions of various kinds into misery.
The Scriptures before us this morning remind us that there is another level on which this squandering of riches may and often does happen.
Christians love to take comfort in looking at the history of Israel, which illustrates this kind of fall.
In our Old Testament reading we see the old prophet Samuel looking at this people God claimed for his own, He scratches his head in bewilderment. “God brought you out of bondage in Egypt. He cared for you, fed you, fought for you, and then you said, ‘It never happened’. So God treated you briefly as though He was not part of your life, and you got into big trouble with powerful neighbors beating up on you. You cried to God, “Help!” And God helped. Then you repeated the cycle. You got tired of God being your special King and asked for an ordinary king. God gave you a king, even though this meant you rejected Him from being your King.
But that was not the end of Samuel’s words—on the threshold of old age. Even though he was crestfallen with a sense of being personally rejected by people whom he had served faithfully and well, he reminded them of the goodness of God. “Now, if you will fear the Lord and serve him, all will still go well. But if not, then watch out, the hand of the Lord will be against you.”
I wonder if you have tried to picture in your mind’s eye how the story of Israel might have spun out. God wrote Israel’s constitution. How opposite everything might have turned out, leading somehow naturally to the coming of the Messiah who was the blessing to the world promised to Abraham. Might they have skipped over periods of exile, their Temple destroyed? Might they never have lived under foreign nations’ control? No Babylon, no Persia, no Greeks, no Romans over them? Samuel envisioned how it might have been. He offered his people a deal. “If you will fear the Lord and serve him and hearken to his voice . . . it will be well.” They still had a chance. Their history could have taken another course.
Let us turn our thoughts to our own situation. We know that there was a close connection between Israel’s political and national fortunes and their spiritual condition. The “spiritual” aspect of life, the relationship we have with God, is a basic factor in our fortunes too. But it is harder for us to recognize because somehow things have gone so well for us in this land. Our prosperity and apparent security give us a kind of confidence that minimizes the importance of matters spiritual.
We read together from the Epistle to the Hebrews some delicately given counsel to our early Christian forbears. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” This refers to the beginning of life as a follower of Jesus at Baptism. He goes on to say, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering . . . let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
We stopped reading at that point. But in the lines that follow the author of this letter goes on to say some startling things that may well give us pause—who live in a day when we stress so much freedom to choose whether or not we will be faithful.
“For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth there remains no longer a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment.” I’ll stop reading there, but you can check it out for yourself.
Already when the Church was very young a drift was underway that was much like the story of Israel. Great beginnings with Jesus, but forgetfulness, little realizing what was going on inside the heart.
A downward drift begins in moments they didn’t notice. How did faith start to be dissociated from works? How did it happen that rich Christians, who called poor Christians “brother and sister,” thought that it was enough to say, “Have a nice day,” but left them without food to eat, while their own refrigerators and freezers were packed full? How did faith ever get separated from doing what Jesus said his followers do? How did they forget Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats in which he taught that caring for the hungry, the naked, the imprisoned, and the sick was caring for him? A drift began that made “faith” turn into mere “belief.”
Paul, and James, and John wrote to remind Christians that faith was not only something that happens unseen in the heart. Paul as well as Jesus’ brother James reminded Christians that how we live, how we behave, what we do, is an inseparable part of faith. What is “dead faith?” Is “dead faith” alive? If not, well, what is it?
The author of Hebrews put a punch to the connection between faith and what we do that remembered some of the stronger things Jesus said. He asked if it is possible after falling away to be restored because in falling away it is like saying Jesus’ death on the cross for us didn’t matter. Falling away? What did that mean? Well, I think it had something to do with behavior as well as what a person said he believed. There was a kind of falling away, which said the wrong things about Jesus—which he never really came as a man. And there was a falling away that looked like luke-warmness, a tepid, so-so kind of drifting, and scarcely noticeable way of life. It was claiming the name, “Christian,” with nothing about the life that suggested being a Christian was following Jesus.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that such a life, claiming to be a Christian but acting like whatever is like crucifying the Son of God afresh. How? I think he means that in treating lightly how Jesus told his followers to live means that Jesus doesn’t really matter. He’s just a religious idea. As the story of the Church unfolded this was a kind of slipping that took place often.
This tendency to slip away from Jesus is a theme Jonathan Edwards amplified in a famous sermon that he actually preached on an Old Testament text, Deuteronomy 32: 35, “Their foot shall slide in due time.” At Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741, he calmly set forth the theme of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The panic he stirred among those who listened to him spread so that there was a noticeable effect in our country referred to by the term “the great awakenings.” But emotional explosions never last.
Now there is something in human nature that responds, at least for the moment, more to fear than to gentle encouragement. Such gentle and kindly encouragement we read in Hebrews, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” It sounds so reasonable, such a good idea. Of course, let us positively re-enforce all that is best in one another. It is good counsel.
But there is so little punch to the good counsel. And we dread any punch at all coming to the counsel given to us either in Scripture or from the institution of the Church. Abuse riddles the story of the Church as it has often exercised spiritual authority in tragic ways. As a consequence, mistrust of the abuse of authority has led to an opposite kind of problem. Faithfulness is entirely an optional thing.
A matter I wrestle with is how we escape the predicament that we have slipped into that we call Jesus “Lord,” but feel no sense of imperative from his authority.
In the second century a devout Christian whom we know as Hermas, wrote a story that raised the question, “How many times can we sin after we are baptized and still be saved?” This story revealed how seriously this fellow took Jesus’ words, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Whereas we treat Baptism as a public rite of acceptance into the Church, our early Christian forebears thought it was a lot more than that. Baptism meant a deliberate new way of life.
We have an opposite outlook. Martin Luther’s collision with the corrupt medieval church centered on Paul’s application of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. We are justified totally by faith, not of works. We cannot ever boast before God that we were good enough.
But what has become of this doctrine of justification by faith? How has it lulled us into the point of view that we don’t even have to try very hard to follow Jesus? We are saved by faith. Faith is something that goes on unseen in the heart, isn’t it? All that needs to happen is something inside our hearts, to which we are asked to give acknowledgement with a public statement, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” God does the rest.
Can you see as I think I do how in this use of Scripture we have slipped away from Jesus’ intentions for us? A process is always at work like the process that made Israel forget God’s care for them, his commandments to them, and the blessed way of life that made them distinct from other nations.
One of my favorite hymns was written by a man who realized that his life had slipped from the days he first realized the goodness of God in sending us Jesus. Perhaps it is the resemblance of his name to mine that keeps in mind that Robert Robinson was pleading to God when he wrote, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” His life had wandered far from his original devotion, so that he was in the bondage of alcohol. I wish our hymnbook had not discarded his plaintive lines:
Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come,
And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.
He to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood.
But I have read that he didn’t make it back, but remained far away. Those lines were a confession, “
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.
So he implored God, “
Here’s my heart, O takes and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
We are apt to think God will take our hearts and seal them for his courts above as though this is God’s finest intention for us. Our theology gets in the way of our obedience to our Lord Jesus. Justification as God’s sole sovereign act in our behalf is easily misconstrued.
As the Church has disintegrated into many competing churches we may have lost sight of where we could be in Christ. We have emphasized pride in good theology, in thinking better about God and Jesus and the Bible than others think. We have emphasized where our behavior is unlike the errant behavior of others. We have complimented ourselves on our outstanding citizenship cum Christianity. And in all of these self-congratulations we have slipped from the way of Jesus—and don’t realize it.
Something we struggle with in church leadership is realizing that church growth and keeping our people depends providing the goods and services that people expect from the church. We ask, “What can the church do for me?” when the whole foundation of our faith is gratitude for what Jesus has done for us—that results in the question, “How can I give thanks for all the things He has done for me, things so undeserved?” And gratitude leads us to a life of service that does not ask how much or how long or for whom.
Perhaps you recognize a drift in your own life. You know that if all Christians were as you are, there would be some pretty serious problems with the Church. It is not evident that you are grateful to God, a gratitude that leads you to a life of steadfast devotion and selfless service. What should you do?
Rome was not built in a day, the old adage says. Nor is a life of gratitude. A life of gratitude to Jesus begins with the first step and continues with the second, third, etc. It is important to begin. It is important to continue. As I see the Christian life it centers on full confidence in the grace of God lavished on us in Jesus Christ. As recipients of the love of God lavished on us in Christ, it is our privilege; it is my privilege, to give my life, our lives to an expression of gratitude to God. Now how does gratitude act?
This is a question you must answer and I must answer. The hymn we sometimes sing says to God, “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. Take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise.” The hymn goes on to itemize how fully we want to give ourselves to God. “Take my hands . . . take my feet . . . take my voice . . . take my lips . . . take my silver and my gold . . . take my will . . . take my heart . . . take my love . . . take myself and I will be ever, only, all for thee.”
I’m hesitant to sing this because it is a very personal prayer of devotion. To sing this without meaning it is to walk on a spiritual banana peel. It is to treat devotion and gratitude as matters of words and not matters of life.
God said to ancient Israel that he wanted their hearts, not their sacrifices. Jesus said, “If you love me do the things that I say.” You and I expect of one another, “If you care for me, show it, and don’t just talk about it.”
How wonderful to know that God accepts us just the way we are, and offers to make us from what we are to what we can be. But he will never do this against our will, without placing our selves deliberately in his hands. I hope that in gratitude to God, thankful for Jesus, you may make your way of life a life of deliberate outworking of gratitude. May the thank you for our lips be coordinate with the thank you of our way of life.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we bless you for this rich gift of life, and for all that you offer us in it. We bless you for your ceaseless love for us and this world you created. Now give to us your Holy Spirit so we may receive and use your gifts to your glory and our joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at June 20, 2004 09:30 AM