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February 11, 2007
Jesus and the Good Life
Ruth 1: 1-18/John 12: 20-26
February 11th, 2007
Isaac Watts, the great 18th century hymn-writer, was pastor of a dissenting congregation in London. Dissenting congregations broke away from the Church of England in the trying days when the bishops were authoritarian in ways that stifled the church. Watts is well known for his Communion hymn,
“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”
But Watts wrote another hymn I must have sung often when I was young. It has been running through my mind this week though I have not heard this song in decades. Here are three stanzas of this hymn.
Am I a soldier of the cross,
a follower of the Lamb?_
And shall I fear to own His cause
or blush to speak His name?_
Must I be carried to the skies_
on flowery beds of ease,_
While others fought to win the prize
and sailed through bloody seas?
Sure I must fight, if I would reign; _
increase my courage, Lord;_
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, _
supported by Thy Word.
I think this old hymn came to mind because I’ve been chewing on a question: “what did Jesus expect of His followers two thousand years later?” It’s a question that arises from my work as a pastor.
Isaac Watts served as pastor for fifty years, many of these years in a London congregation during one of the most decadent centuries of the Church in England. Its problems were both like and unlike the acids now at work in the American Episcopal Church and in our own denomination.
Some earnest Christians like the family of Charles and John Wesley remained within the Church of England, striving for reform. Their kind, dubbed “Methodists”—were eventually forced out of the Church of England. Others like the family into which Isaac Watts was born at great cost to themselves separated from the established Church.
I have thought of these two kinds of response to the troubled 18th century English Church as I have thought of the two responses now evident in a number of denominations in our troubled century: to remain and work for reform or to dissent and leave. How similar were the high and low levels of life in the 18th and 21st centuries. Some great saints, men and women, then and now rise above the ordinary. But violence and decadence then as violence and decadence now have grasped the popular imagination even of Christians. The issues today are not exactly the same as in the 18th century, but in both the same human weaknesses prevail.
Within the vast and vibrant sector of protest today, within the ranks of independent-minded evangelical Protestantism, grave and embarrassing problems persist. There are desperate moral problems in the ranks of pastors and people that ought not to be. The sin of pride raises its dreary head among us. Matters of right thought and behavior are as important as issues of belief.
Part of the cause of this distress is what has been made of the great Bible doctrine of justification by faith alone. The New Testament teaches clearly that we are saved by God’s grace alone, through faith in Jesus alone, and not of our own virtuous deeds.
But the kind of emphasis this doctrine has received has made it seem that it takes very little effort to be a “follower of the Lamb.” We may be lured to Jesus with the question, “Do you want a happy life?” Of course! And then the answer, “Jesus is the answer.” As an old Gospel song put it, “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.” Indeed, it seems inappropriate to try very hard. “What do you think you’re doing, earning your salvation?”
I’m so grateful for our heritage as Presbyterians. Our roots reach deep into the Church of the apostles and martyrs who gave their lives to preserve for us the Gospel. With such a wonderful heritage, what has happened? There are several factors in our distress whose effects we lament but whose causes we cherish.
We are victims of our prosperity—of our lack of material need. We are victims of our political clout just now. We are victims of our freedom and of our passion for freedom. Obedience to any authority beyond personal choice is out of fashion.
What is the cure? The cure will come, one by one, as we ask what Isaac Watts asked, “Am I a follower of the Lamb?” And then look for a true answer.
St. Paul reminded us that without grace we’re all lost. But he wrote this while “working out his own salvation with fear and trembling.” He taught about grace while concerned that after having preached to others he might be disqualified, or a castaway, as the KJV puts it so vividly.
I don’t perceive this kind of concern nowadays. Our concern is much much about that disobedient THEM. It is not clear what is the unique goodness of a Christian for having become a follower of the Lamb.
Without intending in any way to introduce a dreary, introspective, and morose kind of religion, I hear Isaac Watts asking himself, “Am I a follower of the Lamb?” And I think it is a pertinent question to revive today.
I say this to you because it is my duty to do so, but it is a question I ask myself. I wonder what might happen if we were all to declare a moratorium on noticing the under-achieving going on beyond us, and one by one took issue with our own achievement as followers of the Lamb.
What ambition is appropriate to a follower of the Lamb? David’s words in the psalm we read this morning haunt me.
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to enjoy the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.”
This is a thought-provoking verse, rather mystical. “One thing I have asked of the Lord?” Is it not a bit narrow to have that one thing be “to dwell in the house of the Lord the rest of my life?” Maybe a bit passive?
Would it not be more productive to ask God to use His considerable gifts to me in such a way that He is glorified? Should David not have desired to make Israel glorious beyond compare as a harbinger of the Kingdom of God? No. It was a seemingly passive quest, to “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” Sometimes when the deep matters are put into words they don’t sound very “productive.”
David admitted the same kind of thing St. Augustine did when he confessed that his heart was restless unless it found repose in God. As David put it in another psalm, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” And again “my flesh longs for thee as in a dry and thirsty land where no water is.” This does not mean that things were idle at Jerusalem’s worship center. Priests were busy with their sacrifices. David’s issue was what was in Isaac Watts’ mind when he asked, “Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb?”
It was for David a rudder adjustment he needed in the voyage of life. Regardless of what’s going on out there, the major battle is what’s going on in here.
This train of thought was stirred further in me this week as I thought of Jesus’ words in our Gospel
lesson. “The one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” This is a very individual matter. My life. Your life. Just two chapters earlier we read Jesus’ words about His sheep, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.” What then is this abundant life?
Jesus’ words about losing and keeping life come at the close of a section that begins with some Greek fellows approaching His disciple, Philip, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Maybe they’d seen Jesus but knew there was more to Him than met the eye. Greeks were deep thinkers. They wanted to see into Jesus’ depths.
Andrew and Philip told Jesus about these Greek fellows’ interest in Him. Jesus seemed oblivious of them, or maybe he meant, “It’s the best of times to look at me because the time has come for the Son of man to be glorified.” Here is my great moment. But what kind of great moment was this? It was as though Jesus had Isaac Watts’ ideal in mind:
Sure I must fight, if I would reign; _
increase my courage, Lord;_
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, _
supported by Thy Word.
Jesus went on to explain His moment, “Truly, truly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus’ goal was to bear a lot of fruit. Indeed, a whole world of fruit. What is this fruit like? I ask, what is that fruit like today? Eventually it will look like, “every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
Does this mean a vast throng of groveling humanity? I don’t think so. I think it will be more like what takes place after a great musical performance. In the packed music hall everyone’s heart has been grasped by the beauty of sound, the virtuosity of the performers who are lost in their music. The Bach partita is finished and there is a moment of rapt silence. And then throughout the massive hall people stand, unselfconsciously, tears in their eyes, applauding and calling out “Bravo!” Such scenes are a faint harbinger of what it will be like when every knee spontaneously bends at the sight of Jesus, and no lip can restrain the response that wells up within the heart, “Jesus is Lord,” the fondest words a person can imagine. We live in the time between.
This is a vision that has got lost in the shuffle of Christianity. Jesus showed Himself as a good Shepherd. He wanted abundant life for His sheep. So He tells them: “the one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life?”
Life’s bounty comes a bit differently than the ordinary person expects. I’ve read one explanation of Jesus’ meaning in this odd remark that makes very good sense but is probably wrong. The writer proposed that the modern application of this teaching is that anyone who goes after a large ambition must sacrifice to get there. If you want to be great in your field, you can’t get to greatness without self-sacrifice. You must sacrifice sleep and social life. But this is not what Jesus meant.
I have the hunch that the attitude of Ruth that we saw this morning reflected to her mother-in-law Naomi gives us something of the beauty and passion Jesus had in mind.
Ruth said to Naomi, her mother-in-law, “Only one thing I want, to go where you go, to let your God be my God, to let your people be my people.” As it turned out Ruth’s devotion had a remarkable outcome. But that’s beside the point. She had no idea she would be great-grandmother of Israel’s greatest King, and in the family line in which the Messiah was born. She forgot her own well-being. In losing her life she was finding it. She had no idea that she was prefiguring the attitude of her distant descendant, Jesus, who gave His life in order that you and I might have life abundant.
You and I will find life if we are, one by one followers of the Lamb. We will not find this life so long as we try to find it in all the ways that are common in a prosperous, free society. You may get your own way, willy nilly, and lose your life. No matter what Christian gloss we give to our self-seeking, we need to become followers of the Lamb.
I suppose it’s appropriate that we don’t know who the author of the song was, who wrote her or his confession, “I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back; no turning back. Though none should join me, still I will follow. No turning back; no turning back.”
Let us pray: O Lamb of God, we want to follow You. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at February 11, 2007 09:29 AM