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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 March 5, 2006 09:30 AM