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March 26, 2006
Jesus, the Lamb of God
Psalm 2 / Isaiah 53: 1-7
John 1: 25-34
March 26th, 2006
A few minutes ago I spread before our children two pictures of Jesus in the Bible: as a lamb and as a shepherd. John the Baptist looked at Jesus and said, “Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The lamb lays down His life for the sins of the world.
A lamb is a gentle symbol of the Son of God, but a lamb is an easily confused animal. Isaiah remarked, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” I walked often in the hills behind Stirling Univeristy in Scotland when Bonnie and I were there in 1997. I saw the sheep scattered all over the hillsides. Sheep—like people--wander to wherever they see the next appealing tuft of grass. Look at the course of your own life. Did you not do as I did, go from clump of grass to clump of grass until now, many years later, we are where we find ourselves?
Soon the sheep are scattered everywhere. Then I saw a shepherd come along. In his hand he carried the traditional staff. He had two Border collies with him. Those tireless, completely obedient dogs, extensions of the will of the shepherd, drew the sheep together from all over the hillside at the whistle of the shepherd. It was a clear illustration of the Bible’s description of us people.
We need a good shepherd—who has a good sheepdog. Unlike the animals called sheep, we sheep-like people may or may not respond to the Shepherd’s whistle, or to the nipping at the heels of His Border collies. That’s why the Bible tells us of Jesus that he is both the Lamb and the Shepherd. Jesus is not only our shepherd; He became a lamb to bring us lost sheep back from our wandering. And He died for us to endure our death, the consequence of our wandering, because we will not on our own follow the voice of the Good Shepherd. The images of Jesus blur so wonderfully.
I wonder if we had lived with Jesus the three years of His ministry if it would have seemed He wandered purposelessly from village to village, along countryside paths. But in His wandering there was great purpose.
It matters how we think about Jesus. But it doesn’t matter in the way we often seem to make it matter.
It occurs to me that we sheep tend to think of other sheep in terms of how they think about God—and, anymore, of politics. I see this in the church and it troubles me.
We check out other sheep with narrowed eyes. “Does she think as I do about God? If so, I’ll get chummy. “Does he think as I do about politics? If so, good. If not, I’ll not speak with him except to beat him in argument. And thus we stand proudly cloaked in our rightness, confused about the boundary between what matters and what doesn’t, wandering, scattered over the hillsides of the Church.
I remember a very awkward but amusing situation last year when I went to Goshen to participate in a sad memorial to a dear young friend who committed suicide. I found myself in a Christian home filled with arch-liberals in politics and theology. Books about the goddess were conspicuous on coffee tables. Bush or “W” was used as an expletive. It got around that the new guy in the room was from West Lafayette--Purdue, which meant very conservative. It got worse when it came out that I teach Hebrew—a pro-Israeli loony. I spent a good part of the evening on my heels before I’d been able tell my full name.
I’ve faced similar situations with deep-dyed “conservatives.” Idiologues on one side are so like those on the other.
Is this the benefit of having a point of view? Do we think of God as we do in order to despise those who think differently? Do we think about how society works best in order to despise those who think differently? Or does somehow my view of God compel me to live out the way of God? Does somehow my view of how society works best inwardly regulate me in how to love my neighbor as myself? It’s too bad if we have enough thoughts about God to despise those who have different views, and just enough political ideology to despise those who differ.
These things are in my heart as I think with you about God who was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
When John the Baptist saw Jesus and said with reverence, “Behold the lamb of God,” it made him realize his position before Jesus. “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie his shoe laces.” Instead, John saw his role in life standing away from this One whom he was not worthy to draw near. Humbly and from a distance he would prepare the way of the Lord. From a great distance he made straight in the desert a highway for our God for the benefit of other people. “He must increase and I must decrease.”
Though we are not taught in Scripture to follow John the Baptist, I wonder if it would not be good if we too felt unworthy to untie Jesus shoelaces. Do you think it would do the Church any harm if you and I were to say with conviction, “He must increase; I must decrease.”
What if, instead of speaking of Jesus as though He were our good buddy, we had John’s attitude. We do not worship good buddies. In fact, we insist that good buddies conform themselves to what we are or they are no longer our good buddies. We are to say of Jesus as Thomas finally did after standing away in honest skepticism, “My Lord and my God.” What a difference it makes to have this outlook on Jesus! “My Lord and my God” will never be my good buddy. I’m not worthy of that.
This morning I hope I may lead us all to think about Jesus not so that you’ll discover if you think like I do, but so that we will all be able to put on the attitude of John the Baptist.
This morning I pointed out to the children two pictures of God the Bible gives us as we look at Jesus, the Son of God. Remember, Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” I don’t know how many people back then knew it but when they looked at Jesus they were seeing exactly what God looked like—in human form. I wonder if there were people then who wondered, “If I saw God in human form, what would He look like?” Not everyone recognized God when they saw Jesus who was God in human form. Jesus, God in human form was like a lamb and like a shepherd.
To see God as a lamb was new. To see God as a shepherd was old.
There is a third image of God that we read of this morning in the second psalm that people understood long ago, but we have forgotten. This image equally describes Him as to think of Him as a lamb and as a shepherd. Here we see the Son of God as a King towering in majesty over the kings of the earth. Here we read, “with trembling kiss His feet lest He be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled.” How very different from a lamb or a shepherd this view of God is—or of the Son of God.
How we think of God should include all three of these images. If we neglect any one of them, we think defectively—and will thus act defectively in our practice of our religion.
The lamb is a gentle image. When John said, “Behold the lamb of God,” we might want to hold this lamb in our arms. I think of William Blake’s lovely poem:
Little Lamb, who made thee? _
Dost thou know who made thee? _
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead; _
Gave thee clothing of delight, _
Softest clothing, woolly, bright; _
Gave thee such a tender voice, _
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee? _
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee. _
He is called by thy name, _
For He calls Himself a Lamb. _
He is meek, and He is mild; _
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name. _
Little Lamb, God bless thee! _
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Such a gentle view of God.
In the 23rd Psalm a sheep says of the shepherd, “He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul . . . though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear for thou art with me.” This teaches you and me how to think of Jesus, the Good Shepherd—my guide, the one who takes me by still waters to drink, by green pastures to eat. “He protects me so well that without the will of my father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head,” as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it. Once when I was with one of our people as she died I quoted the 23rd Psalm and it comforted her. She slipped peacefully into the sleep of death.
But in the second Psalm The Son of God is the “Lord,” the King who towers over all the kings of the earth. In fact, the word in the Hebrew of Psalm 2: 11 is the name of God sometimes pronounced “Yahweh.” What happened to the lamb? What happened to the good shepherd? The lamb and the shepherd are still there, but this one is also the Lord of heaven and earth. When John wrote in verse twelve of this first chapter, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,” he gathered into one these images of Jesus, the Son of God.
One of the second-century Church fathers, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in France, saw the eagle as the symbol of the Gospel of John. He didn’t mean for us to think of the eagle as we think of the American Bald Eagle, a powerful bird of prey. Instead he had in mind the clear vision of the eagle. Flying far above the ground he sees clearly the smallest objects below.
Let us see Jesus clearly. See Jesus, the Lamb of God, the gentle One who on Good Friday lay down His life as lambs used to be sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. Lambs were sacrificed unwillingly to atone for human sin. Jesus, the Lamb of God willingly lay down His life, absorbing the natural penalty of human sin, death. Let us be grateful when we see Jesus as the Lamb.
Let us see Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Let us be like the sheep on the hillside who respond when the Shepherd’s Border collies draw them back from distant places where they may be in danger as they wander. The animals we call sheep are unwitting. But you and I are not unwitting. What you and I need is to be willing to hear our Shepherd’s voice and follow. How may the Good Shepherd be guiding you now? How is the Good Shepherd comforting you now, leading you to clear water, to green grass, or away from danger? Are you following this Good Shepherd?
Let us see Jesus as the King towering over all kings. Let us see Jesus as the righteous judge, whose feet we kiss lest He be angry and we perish in the way when His anger is kindled. He is not like ill-humored earthly kings. But don’t let this make you take him lightly. He may gird on His towel to wash the disciples feet. He may feed hungry masses who didn’t take aforethought for bringing their lunch. He may heal lepers, and care for thankless people along the way. But He is the King of kings, the righteous judge before whom you and I will one day stand and give an account of every thought and deed. Think of Him this way now.
And look at John the Baptist in his humility—though great in the Kingdom of God, feeling unworthy to untie Jesus’ shoelaces. Let us think of our relationship to Jesus with this humility lest we be proud that we’ve got it right, and thus destroy everything we might have gained in following Jesus.
Let us pray: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. O Jesus, our Lamb, our Shepherd, our righteous Judge, we would follow you. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
March 19, 2006
The Value of a Faithful Witness
Malachi 4: 1-5 / John 1: 15-24
March 19th, 2006
Let us look at John the Baptist this morning. He was a strange man, but important enough that Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels tell us about him because he was a convincing witness to Jesus.
John was the only son of very old parents, born in a day when children saw their duty to care for aged parents. But he took off from home, into the wilderness, away from every family tie. And in this he did not do wrong. Perhaps since his mother gave birth late in life she and her husband had already made preparations for their old age.
I tried to describe some of John’s strangeness to the children. The reason why Matthew tells how John was dressed and what he ate was because people stared at him because of this. “Look at that wild clothing! Look at what he eats.” He looked like a sideshow in the wilderness.
His hair and beard must have been full and shaggy. Undoubtedly he didn’t use Prell to shampoo his hair or Palmolive soap to bathe, or Gillette deodorant. His clothing was made of the same material Bedouins used to make their tents. His nondescript wrap of camelhair cloth didn’t stay yellow like a camel hair sport’s jacket you buy at a fine clothing store today. It got dirty. It was black with dirt. Around his waste there was a leather thong keeping it from falling off. Who knows where he got that thong.
He ate locusts and wild honey. Locusts were what you think they were, grasshopper-like creatures. In Leviticus we read “winged insects that go on all fours you may eat [if they] have legs above their feet, with which to leap on the earth.” But few Jews ate locusts and reacted as you and I do when we see people crunch down into bugs at Purdue’s famous bug-festival. He had to scavenge to find the wild honey, climbing cliffs, poking behind stones getting stung in the process. Honey didn’t come to him in a plastic bottle, or even from a neat beehive in a box.
But the oddest thing about John was his single-mindedness. His faith wasn’t a part of his life. It was his life. He took to the farthest extreme what most people took in doses. The faith of John the Baptist as it shed light on the life of faith was like the inoculation people take against disease. You take a small dose of polio to ward off polio. You get a small dose of tetanus or small pox or diphtheria to keep from getting the diseases themselves. People were fascinated with such an intense life and it inoculated them against complete faithlessness.
Indeed, John’s witness was like a seed planted in the minds of those who watched him. That seed grew for many. Jesus’ first disciples came from the ranks of John’s disciples. Peter and Andrew were disciples of John the Baptist. The Mandeans of Iraq are vestiges of an old sect of followers of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist said of himself, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’.” And people listened to his voice. Why, I wonder? How different the world would be if what The Gospel of John tells us about John the Baptist could be written on the epitaph on every Christian grave, “People listened when he spoke of the Lord. People listened when he spoke of Jesus.” People came in droves to listen to John. His message ended with, “After me there comes one the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie. He ranks before me. The reason why I came baptizing with water is so that he might be revealed to Israel.”
And it is this aspect of John that grabs me. The believable witness of John. All his oddness is beside the point. Even the remarkable circumstances of his birth are beside the point. What is to the point is that John the Baptist was a believable witness.
Much of the purpose of the New Testament is to inform us about how to be witnesses to Jesus Christ. There is a poem about the effect of Jesus’ life that is beloved to many. It is called “One Solitary Life.”
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in another obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never traveled more than two hundred miles
From the place where he was born
He did none of the things
Usually associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty-three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through the mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he was dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind's progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the parliaments that have ever sat
All the kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.
In a way this is a beautiful poem. It surely honors Jesus. But looking at Jesus in this way has become something of a red herring, a distraction from what you and I are called to be as witnesses to Jesus. We have not been called to recite sentimental poems about Jesus. Any actor can do this with feeling. As John’s life-witness drew people to hear about Jesus, it is our life-witness that is to be a launching point for any verbal witness to Jesus.
Does it sometimes occur to you that the common idea of the life of faith has so little that is unique to it? I find it hard to make myself go into religious bookstores these days because of all the do-dads of religion they sell. We are a very religious land. Religious T-shirts, symbols, stickers and self-help books are everywhere to be seen.
But do you ever ask yourself why with all this outward sloganeering about Christianity why does saying, “I am a Christian” produce such ordinary lives?” All that is common is common for Christians too. The demographics of marital infidelity, of materialism, of grudge bearing in the churches are the same as outside the church. Christianity has considerable appeal these days. But why? It sometimes seems to me Christianity looks like a vast herd of people, but headed where, as witnesses to what, to whom?
I read the Christian magazines that come in the mail and they are filled with what seems like advice to rear-guard soldiers running in retreat from the enemy rather than instructions to the front ranks of soldiers leading the attack. “Backward Christian soldiers running from the war,” we should sing, rather than “onward Christian soldiers marching as to war.” What stuck about John the Baptist was the luminous witness to something remarkable despite the strangeness of his life.
People lined up for him to baptize them even though there was no tradition of doing such a thing. The private Essene communities in Palestine practiced frequent baptism, but nothing like what John was doing. Why did so many people come great distances to hear John’s tongue-lashings and then line up in long queues to await his baptism? His message did not comfort very many people with an ache in their hearts. “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Yet people came to hear him, whatever he had to say.
Pharisees and Sadducees, soldiers, and tax collectors were the extremes of that crowd. But many common people must have come too. Their turn came to step out into the deep water where John stood. They felt themselves go down beneath the water, and then came up from that water feeling like their sins dripped and then evaporated under the hot desert sun.
And all this because of the witness of John the Baptist. Jesus said of him, “Among those born of woman there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” You and I are not asked to look wide-eyed at John or at any of the saints who have grabbed the interest of many Christians. We idolize exemplary people, but Jesus said, “the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than these.”
Jesus was very interested in the ordinary citizen of the Kingdom of heaven, people like you and me. Have you ever thought that you are of as much interest to God as John the Baptist, or St. Paul, or St. Francis? We sometimes sing the prayer of St. Francis, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace,” and find part of our delight in realizing St. Francis wrote those words—though not in English, of course. But the Lord is fascinated with how following Him works out in your life—and mine, just as we are—not as we idealize great saints.
The whole point of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Lord’s Prayer with its “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” of Roman’s 12’s “I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God to make your bodies a living sacrifice to God,” is to make our very ordinary lives extraordinary, but in an ordinary kind of way.
I believe that part of the reason why Matthew’s Gospel lets us know of John the Baptist’s confusion when he was in Herod’s dungeon is to help us with our own disappointment with ourselves. Matthew tells us that “When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”
We read this and remember what John said at Jesus’ baptism, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Did John forget? Did his own life’s difficulties make his faith grow dim with discouragement? Maybe John looked for this Lamb of God to have much greater effects than He did. Why was he in prison—in a prison that makes our modern prisons seem like palaces? Jesus seemed to be failing in his task to introduce the Kingdom of God—where all would be well and God’s enemies defeated.
When Jesus summons us to follow Him He knows full well that you and I would be tempted by doubt. He knew that each of us would be tempted in many ways. Paul wrote to Christians in the church at Corinth, “There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to everyone. But God is faithful. He will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it.” When Paul wrote this he was telling them, “The temptations you’ve had, I’ve had too.”
When you and I are snared with doubt, or if we realize that temptation is getting the best of us, and we’re sinking down, the Gospel to us says, “Look at John the Baptist who doubted. Look what Jesus said about him, “There is none greater in the Kingdom of God, yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
You and I can very easily be convinced that we must be the least if we are in the Kingdom of God at all. It’s good to be modest about ourselves. But it is not good to then reach the conclusion that since I’m so unworthy I’m going to get comfortable with it. Does it seem to you there is a good bit of comfort in our ranks with a modest attempt at being a citizen of the Kingdom of God?
What would help many of us would be to accept that we are not stuck with the way we are. I would recommend to you some very simple disciplines as a start. Begin the day listening to the sound of your own voice giving your life to God for that day. “Lord, as I begin today, I want to walk with you.” Have your Bible near where your breakfast food sits on the counter, by the coffee maker. Read a paragraph and ponder it in the light of the prayer with which you began the day.
Make Friday evening your night out so that when Saturday evening comes you are starting to think of coming to worship the next morning. And then get up on time so that you can be here to hear me invite us all, “Let us worship God,” and sing together that great first hymn of praise together.
Jesus never said any of us should copy John the Baptist, dressing in dirty camelhair clothing, eating a strange diet. But there will be a uniqueness about the life of anyone who is actually a witness to the Lord Jesus.
Many years ago when our daughter turned sixteen, she invited a number of her friends to a party at Noble Roman’s Pizza place. Since her friends didn’t drive yet, she had to put up with her dad driving the station wagon, of all things to pick them up. We could squeeze eight kids in, with the rumble seat in the back. Worst of all, I wore a bow tie. And our daughter was very troubled at this odd dress until one of her friends perkily said to me, “Mr. Robertson, you’re making a fashion statement.” Immediately my bow tie appeared in a different light to my daughter.
Well, you and I are called to make something of a fashion statement about this way of life called Christianity. I can think of many ways we can make this—how we treat those who have offended us, how exuberantly we live together if we are married, how well we do our work, how trustworthy is our word, how graciously we treat people. What a fashion statement. And then, should we say something about this Jesus in whom we believe, do you think there may be some light shined on this One who has lightened our lives?
Let us pray: O Lord, we thank you for the clear witness of your servant John, and ask that by your Holy Spirit you may make of us witnesses who bear witness to the Light of Jesus Christ, that we may attract the notice of others to Him. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
March 12, 2006
The Incarnation: A Revelation of Human Duties
Psalm 1 / Judges 6: 11-24
John 1: 1-14
March 12th, 2006
I have spent the better part of this week in a Catholic seminary north of Chicago reading Presbyterian ordination exams. These exams tested prospective pastors’ ability to use the language of the Old Testament, Hebrew, and the language of the New Testament, Greek.
I also read exams that had the objective of showing if the next wave of pastors knows something about Reformed theology and something about how the Presbyterian Church works, in big and personal kinds of matters. Reading these exams made me think back to when I wrote the same exams many years ago. I wonder what kindness was extended to me when I must have made a daunting exhibition of how little I knew.
I came back to my study Thursday evening and read the texts before us this morning and wondered, “How can I make relevant to a very busy people this amazing message that has nourished the Church for two-thousand years?”
This morning I begin with you a series of studies in the Gospel of John. It is a deep book. It tells us of God, of the Son of God, and how the Son of God blessed and blesses this troubled world He took part in creating. This Gospel breathes a spirit of wonder and of the love of God for this world. I want to follow the contours of the message as we read it.
We’re used to the word “Gospel.” It comes from the Old English word gödspell that meant “good news,” a translation of a Greek word meaning exactly that.
Before this term was attached to the first four books of the New Testament the apostle Paul used it in I Corinthians 15: 1. There he refers to it as “the good news which was good news-ed to you,” a very Hebrew kind of term. He drew this from perhaps his favorite among the Old Testament prophets, the Prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 52: 7 we read, “How beautiful are the feet on the mountains . . . that bring good-tidings, who causes salvation to be heard, saying in Zion, ‘your God reigns.”
Each of the four Gospels tells of this unique reign of God where He presided from the cross over sin and death, conquering them in the Person of His Son, Jesus. So these four books are called “the Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, Luke, and John.” Each of the four Gospels takes a different approach to the triumph of Jesus.
The Gospel of John was written for the benefit of early Christians who wanted to know more deeply how the coming of Jesus changed the shape of human life. They wanted to know more than the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection. They wanted to see behind the plan of God from the very beginning as it was unfolded in Jesus. Because if Jesus conquered sin and death, the two great tragedies of life, there was a lot more to Him than met the eye.
I was tempted to have us listen to the first part of the Book of Genesis as our Old Testament reading this morning because it starts describing the beginning of creation. But the Gospel of John goes back behind Genesis 1: 1. Genesis 1: 1 is probably best translated, “When God began to create heaven and earth . . .” but it does not describe the Beginning itself.
John’s Gospel gets back behind the work of creation to how God existed, as nearly as the human mind can comprehend. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before creation began this is how God existed: there was the Word and there was God, and the Word was God. Before the beginning of this world, this Word, this God was already there. We might expect John to use the word “God” first, and then “Word,” that refers to the Son of God. But he starts by using the using the word that refers to the Son of God—perhaps to make sure we don’t think the Son was less eternal than the One he referred to as God.
You might wonder where the Holy Spirit was in this picture of God. But as yet the doctrine of the Trinity as we understand it from all of Scripture waited to be explained. John gets to this a bit later on.
For now what is important is that we understand that this Jesus about whom Matthew and Luke tell His amazing birth story, was God, the same God who created the world. John wants us to look at Jesus with the awe He merits—though a word deeper than awe is really called for.
Awe, wonder, mystery, and amazement, silence must always be a part of our trust in Jesus. After His name became well known and indeed became a buzz-word in Christianized western culture, Jesus was domesticated. Jesus is sometimes thought of as a long-haired hippi do-gooder, devoid of mystery, a mere counter-culture figure. Somehow Jesus was adopted and given a different kind of domestication by more traditional polite society. It’s remarkable how Christians may put on a long face suggesting they think well of Jesus, while doing the opposite of what He asked of His friends. This is part of Jesus’ domestication.
When we read slowly those opening lines of this Gospel we are reminded that before we start to say anything about Jesus, let’s get in the right frame of mind. Awe. Wonder. Mystery. Amazement. Even speechlessness. Because how does one describe what eye has not seen nor can see?
I chose the Old Testament lesson Mike read for us because it seems to describe an appearance of the Son of God to Gideon, one of the most saintly of the judges of ancient Israel. In Judges 6: 12 we read this “angel” or “messenger” said to Gideon, “the Lord is with you.” Gideon addresses this “angel” as Lord, which makes us wonder if this was an appearance of the Son of God before He entered human history as the baby born to the Virgin Mary. “The Lord is with you,” is what the angel Gabriel said to Mary, Jesus’ mother in Luke 1: 28. In fact, when this heavenly visitor called Gideon a “might man of valor,” it was similar to the angel’s word to Mary, “O favored one.”
This Old Testament story lets us see one glimpse of God’s on-going interest in the human story when His specially chosen people, Israel, was in jeopardy. The Israelites were God’s vehicle to bring the Messiah. Their future had to be preserved when it seemed they were about to be destroyed. When John tells us “the Word became flesh,” the particular flesh that was chosen was important; it was flesh that descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the family line chosen to bless the whole world.
The one who wrote this Gospel is referred to as “the beloved disciple.” He among all the disciples seems to have had that thoughtful disposition that realized most that something far more than met the eye was being unfolded in the life of Jesus. He wrote, “We saw His glory, full of grace and truth.” John seems to have recognized this from the outset so that he was always near Jesus, watching quietly. And at the Last Supper, sensing the extreme awesomeness of the moment he even leaned on Jesus as he ate.
The same disciple of Jesus wrote four other books in our New Testament: I, II, & III John, and the Book of Revelation. Looking at the sweep of these other books alongside the Gospel of John I see the concern of Jesus’ beloved disciple to let all people attracted to Jesus know something of the majesty of Jesus so that they could be open to how wonderful God’s project was and is with this world.
But at the same time John’s Gospel tells what God has done, it puts a huge emphasis on what we must believe and do. Jesus did not come that we should sit and stare at Him. Indeed, let us do that. But we must take to heart the things He taught, and do them. If our faith is simply a matter of staring wide-eyed at Jesus, it is defective. As God gave Adam and Eve something to do at creation—as well as to walk and talk with their Creator, so Jesus gave those who walk and talk with Him something to do. We remember this often as I remind you that Jesus told His disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
But Jesus intended more for us than giving Him due reverence and obeying Him. Jesus came that we could have “abundant life.” That is, life that brims with joy, with goodness, with a radiant delight that goes beyond our idea of happiness. But God will force no one into finding the wonderful life. He dangles it in front of us.
We might think that if God’s project in Jesus was to give us abundant life, He might have compelled us to accept it. When a Donald Trump wants to do something, he bulldozes everything in his way to get it done. Not so God. Having given us the gift of freedom, a taste, a reflection of His unlimited Divine freedom, God wanted our participation in this re-creating act. He wants our trust, our simple trust first. Obedience comes later. And with trust and obedience comes this “abundant life.”
God might have made us like elephants and horses that seem to live by a common code for their species. There are variations of personality among horses and elephants, but there is nothing like the variety of behavior that human beings exhibit.
Elephants don’t produce a few Mother Theresas, lots of indifferent, selfish people, a few Hitlers and Stalins, and then some grumpy dudes that make bombs to strap onto their big tummies to blow-up other elephants they don’t like. Horses don’t devise schemes of enslaving other horses. They don’t torture other horses to make the point clear who’s da boss. Only human beings exhibit these strange varieties of behavior, from doing these horrid things to doing the stuff of sainthood.
This is because we human beings were created in the image of God. The contours of God’s image are there in us all, able to be filled more and more with His goodness, or able to be filled more and more with evil. It is human beings, not elephants or horses that have created the global darkness that both insists on staying dark and cries out for some light to see the way ahead.
Jesus’ day was a dark day. John’s day was a dark day. Ours is a dark day too. This peaceful, restful city of West Lafayette isn’t the measure of this world, you know. Isaiah had written, “The people who walked in deep darkness have seen a great light.” He looked ahead and wrote confidently as though it had already happened.
During the last years of Jesus’ life the worst of the Roman procurators ruled Palestine. It was a period of great darkness when Jesus was born to give light.
John the Baptist spoke of Jesus as a light very different from every other light. Not only was He was the true light, but He was a light that shines into every human being. All other kinds of light have a very limited area they can illuminate. We don’t know how the Son of God illumines every human being born, but we have it here in the Gospel, the Word of God, that this is what the True Light not only did but does. This gives us hope. Jesus’ light still shines into every baby that is born.
Who was John the Baptist? He wasn’t a Baptist, of course, or a Methodist, or a Presbyterian. He was called John the Baptizer or the Baptist because he became well known for all the people he baptized. People then had never heard of this baptism John offered.
His baptism was different from what Christians today do. The baptism we offer is a sign and seal of God’s promise of salvation made to those who have trusted in Jesus, and to their children, if the parents request this. John’s baptism did not have anything specifically to do with Jesus. It was a sign that all sorts of people wanted to identify with, of turning from bad behavior that displeased God and that made a ruin of society. Pharisees and Sadduccees, that is Jewish leaders, as well as Roman soldiers and the legal thieves known as tax-collectors would stand in line for John to dip them beneath the waters of the Jordan River.
How embarrassing to a Pharisee, a strict constructionist of the Law of Moses, to admit that inwardly he was as corrupt as a cruel Roman soldier. How humiliating for a Sadduccee, an aristocrat, a member of the priesthood, to stand behind a thieving tax-collector to get his chance to be baptized by this strange, wild-looking man, John, son of the priest Zachariah.
John carried out a very important preliminary function before Jesus could say, “The Kingdom of God has come.” John leveled out society, bringing down the high and mighty to the level of those who knew they were sinners.
Why? Because in the Kingdom of God there is no one better or higher than another. In the Kingdom of God, Jesus later would say harlots and tax collectors would come before people that thought they did pretty good. In fact in the Kingdom of God there are no grown-ups; we’ve got to become as naïve and trusting as little children, who listen wide-eyed when a pastor tells a children’s sermon.
We don’t know how John got into the business of baptizing. Baptizing like this was something the Essenes did, a reclusive sect of the Jews. But not the kind of Jews around whom John would have grown up. He had an odd birth, much as Isaac, Abraham’s first son did, to a mother, Sarah, who was old and had never given birth to a child. His start was much like the Old Testament prophet Samuel, whose mother too was barren, and like Samson’s, the judge who was susceptible to the wiles of women, and whose death accomplished more for his people than his life. John was this enigmatic kind of person.
He is particularly noteworthy for us because of how he saw his relationship to Jesus, who was his younger cousin. “I am not worthy to untie His shoe strings.” And so the Gospel of John begins. This morning I think all I hope you may carry from these remarks is to sense the wonder of the tale we are about to hear. I want you to look at your life, as I do mine, in the shadow of the light that is cast by Jesus. His light shines on you, giving your life a significance beyond our ability to understand. In verse 12 we read this morning, “As many as received Him, who believed on His name, He gave power to become children of God.”
Public Television recently offered an intriguing story of the sons of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, noting the privileges that are part of being sons in a royal family. Though Prince William may become King of England, you and I have a far higher royal identity in being adopted into the family of Almighty God. What difference does this make in how you see your own life, or how you look at anyone else in this place this morning? Think of that. Remember this: You are a prince, a princess in the family of the King of Kings, not the mixed-up House of Wonder. How then should you live? How then should I live? What a privilege to be a child of God. What dignity. What duties. What privilege. We owe it all to this Jesus, the Son of God—who for our sakes became just as we are that He might raise us up to this new life, unspeakable and full of glory.
Let us pray: O Lord God, impress on us this wonder that you so favored us to take on our human nature and then to give us your Divine, calling us your sons and daughters. And grant that we may live as children of a heavenly Father. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
March 05, 2006
The Marks of a Christian
Exodus 32: 1-10 / Titus 2: 1-8
March 5th, 2006
I was reminded this week of a story told by the 19th century Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. He told of a circus passing through the Danish countryside that stopped at a village. One day the clown was all decked out in his costume, his face painted, big red nose attached, ready to perform; when it was discovered a fire had started in the big-top tent.
The circus manager told the clown to run to the village to get help to put out the fire because it would spread and could engulf the whole village. So the clown ran to the village and used all his energy, waving his arms, pointing, crying, shouting, anything to try to get the villagers to come help put out the fire. The villagers laughed until their sides ached. They thought it the finest advertisement for the circus and planned to come at the scheduled time, so good was the clown’s performance.
Well, the tent burned. It lit the stubble in the field, the winds picked up, blowing the flames. The fire spread and burned down the village.
It may be just a story, but we think ill of the townspeople. How blind not to listen to the clown, just because he had a big red nose, painted face, and floppy shoes. Some thought it was just a publicity act. But maybe some didn’t come not because they didn’t believe the clown that the tent was burning but because they didn’t want a circus in their town. Others criticized the circus management, it serves them right for their carelessness.
Others who heard the clown believed him, but thought it improbable that the fire could spread; it was a problem over there that didn’t affect their town. Such talk was a ruse to get them to help put out the fire for nothing.
Some thought that it was the will of God for that fire to burn the wicked circus, so to put it out was to work against God.
Think of all the ways people respond to about everything, from burning circus fires, to sports, to politics to matters of faith--God. You and I live amidst a swirl of contradicting, strongly held views on everything—including matters of faith. It is hard to sort through the noise. Kierkegaard proposed that we pastors are clowns that nobody hears.
Moses had this problem. His people looked at him as a clown. He grew up different, in the Egyptian king’s palace. He spoke with a speech impediment, and maybe with an Egyptian accent. He was shy, not much of a leader. He responded to problems that arose rather than anticipating them. He was inefficient.
Furthermore he was away so much. This time he’d been up on the mountain 40 days and nights. “Some wondered. Yeah, a likely story, away on a religious retreat!” And Moses came back and said, “There’s a fire on that mountain and it will consume you.” And people laughed at Moses. The more he cried, and shouted, and pointed, the more they laughed at this clown who spoke with a lisp.
So they took things into their own hands. They remembered the power of Egypt, the plenty of food, continuous water supply. They remembered the fascinating temples and the gods of Egypt with all that tantalizing symbolism—cats, dogs, crocodiles, snakes, and the great bull, Apis.
So they told Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us,” and he knew what they had in mind. So Aaron told them, “Give me your gold earrings.” Aaron took this golden offering and melted all those earrings and out came a molten mass. He carved it after it hardened into a golden calf that looked like Apis, the bull. The people saw that beautiful shining calf and said to each other, “These are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” In a way it was a joke on Egypt; their great Apis instead of keeping them in Egypt led them out, and would guide them into the Promised Land.
The identifying mark of Israel was that they had no God but the LORD, the One who created the heavens and the earth. They could never represent God with a statue of something He created. They would see God only in His effects, the pillar of fire, of cloud, the fire and lightning and the earthshaking when He came on Mt. Sinai and His will explained by Moses.
When the clown Moses came down from the mountain angry, Aaron was appalled at his younger brother’s ill humor. He told his little brother, “I tossed their gold earrings into the fire and out came this golden calf. It was a miracle.” Look, Moses, The people are getting religious; they are doing religious acts to the LORD in front of this calf. Isn’t it good? Look, burnt offerings, peace offerings, their faces to the ground in adoration. Isn’t that good? Moses was a clown without a sense of humor.
Time moved on and the promise God made through Abraham was fulfilled, but none of God’s people noticed. After all, the Messiah surely couldn’t be this baby of uncertain parentage—what a joke. A virgin-born man? He was another kind of clown, people thought. “Follow me” he told some fishermen from the Sea of Galilee, “and I will make you fishers of men.” Great play on words, but what did it mean?
Jesus said to the weak and heavy laden, “Come to me and find rest.” He wept as He saw the weak and heavy-laden looking elsewhere to find rest. “How often I would have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her chicks, but you would not.” At the end the religious leaders of Jesus’ people laughed at Him, and demanded that Pilate crucify Him as a common thief. Thus Jesus Christ, The Superstar, was made into a clown.
We take this Jesus a lot more seriously than the Sadduccean high priests did. We call Jesus the Son of God. We call this “faith.” But I wonder, what have we made of the way of life this Jesus taught us to live? “Yes, I know Jesus said that but it’s far too hard to try it. I depend on the grace of God to make up for what I can’t do in following Jesus.” And so we have a profound doctrine of justification that we stand up against the things Jesus said—as though Jesus didn’t really have it straight when He said, “You are my friends if you DO what I command you.”
We don’t exactly laugh at this, nor do we say these are the words of a fool. But neither do we take them seriously, as seriously as we take other interests of life. We have things we take really seriously, and we all know what they are. Some we can get only with gold—what passes for gold today. We discover what is our “ultimate concern” when we look at what is most important to us.
One more clown in the series is the Apostle Paul. He acknowledged that he was seen as a fool—all this concentration on the cross on which Jesus died. To the Greeks he was a clown, to the Jews a scandal—and to many of his fellow Christians a fool for other reasons. He wasn’t eloquent. He wasn’t one of the original twelve. He was a former enemy of the cross. He was too single-minded, indeed a fanatic.
And so when Paul taught us that the cross is the symbol for the Christian life we have misunderstood him. He didn’t mean the cross as a symbol to contemplate, but as the very model for the Christian life. He wrote—“I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of Him who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
And thus Paul understood the distinguishing mark of a Christian. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” And it seems to us excessive, indeed, dare I say it, “foolish.” We have thought a lot about what distinguishes us as Protestants and Catholics, as Presbyterians and Baptists, Reformed, Arminian, etc. Jesus never said anything that bears on this. Indeed, He prayed to the Father against it—that we would be one as He and the Father were One. And St. Paul said nothing that bears on the kinds of things that distinguish the splinter-groups by which Christians distinguish themselves of Christendom.
Paul taught all of us Christians, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your reasonable worship.” This is what marks a Christian; you and I in our common life of sacrifice of our very bodies to God. This is, in fact, our worship. What we do on Sunday is worship only if it is part of the giving of our lives to God.
In your Sunday bulletin each week is a remarkable definition of worship by Archbp. Wm. Temple. Worship is “quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God.”
Going to church no more makes you a Christian than going to a zoo makes you a chimpanzee. Identifying ourselves as Presbyterian, or Catholic, or Baptist means nothing to God. To the world it might mean something—indeed it puzzles our Jewish and Muslim friends who think there is only one Jesus.
What distinguishes you and me as a Christian? Whose notice are we trying to catch? Do we mean as Jesus sees us or as others see us? The answer to the question really is defined very personally. Is my life a living sacrifice to God. “Does what I think, say, and do reflect well on Jesus, whose name I bear in calling myself a Christian? If so, then I bear the mark of a Christian.
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a period of introspection traditionally for Christians. This morning we see before us the spread Table of the Lord with the sacred emblems of Jesus’ body and blood that were given for us. As you partake this morning I ask you to ask yourself, “Are the marks of a Christian evident in me?” Do not ask if they are evident in anyone else, but if they are evident in you. And then as you take that holy bread and wine into you, ask the Holy Spirit to mark you well, and leave this place praying that God will grant you to bear the marks of a Christian well. You may appear to be a clown, a fool to some. But given Moses and Jesus and Paul’s example—you’re in good company.
Let us pray: O Lord God, grant to us who bear the name of Jesus to display the marks of our trust in Him. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM