July 17, 2005
The Holy Spirit: The Lord, the Giver of Life
Isaiah 32: 9-20 / Galatians 5: 13-26
July 17th, 2005
I’m glad to be standing here this morning. We pulled into town last evening around 7PM, so don’t go to our house now for an exhibit of perfect housekeeping. As things turned out my being in the pulpit today is a bit of an island in being away from the pulpit more than ever before in my years in the ministry.
We have just been off for two weeks to visit our aging mothers and grab a bit of R & R—a time sandwiched in between hurricanes as it turned out. We rode bicycles around the circumference of Key West, Florida last week and saw what havoc Hurricane Dennis inflicted on this beautiful little island. The beaches were piled high with rotting seaweed. Trees were uprooted. The debris stacked along the streets made it precarious to ride bikes. We told our hosts at Nassau House that thankfully we only have tornadoes and blizzards in Indiana.
Beginning next Sunday I’ll be off for at least a couple weeks more. On Thursday I’m getting new knees, and tough as I am, it will take a week or so for me to be able to get around with my new apparatus.
Last Sunday I worshipped with a very small C & MA congregation in Ft. Myers. It was so good to hear another pastor preach the Bible’s message as found in the prophet Jonah. When the pastor discovered I was a Presbyterian pastor I think it un-nerved him, but it needn’t have. I discover that when I get to hear preaching I’m a bit like the deer referred to in Psalm 42 that “pants” after flowing streams in a dry forest. I prepared this morning’s sermon in the wee hours of the morning over the past couple weeks. In my trade it is impossible to escape the sense of duty I feel in preaching.
Today I return to the Nicene Creed, which I began to explore with you a few months ago. We dive in mid-stream on the final section of the Nicene Creed that describes the Holy Spirit. “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.”
We read this morning the prophet Isaiah’s comforting promise to the nation of Judah that after a time of national suffering for sin, the Spirit of God would be poured out on her. When things bottomed out morally and religiously God withheld His hand of care. The nation collapsed in on itself in injustice and every other kind of immorality. It went spiritually bankrupt. Its priests and prophets lied and stole and preyed on the people they were to serve in God’s behalf. So God let the nation have its way. He did not forget His covenant with them, but He removed Himself. As Isaiah said, “God hid His face.” It seemed as if more than this had happened. It seemed God had withdrawn completely from His people. They were abandoned in a world of powerful and cruel enemies. But Isaiah peered through the mists of time and saw that God would pour out His Spirit on the entire people.
The word for “poured” here in the Hebrew Bible is astounding. Its root meaning actually is “be naked,” and is used nowhere else in this way. The Spirit would be made naked on Israel. It is a very revealing word, we might say. Is the prophet telling us that the Spirit of God would be revealed more vividly to the whole of God’s people than ever before even to prophets, priests, artisans, and kings? They were given this special personal attention from God, but never before the whole nation. But the time would come when God would “expose” His Spirit to His people as never before.
This is actually the second promise found in this chapter. Isaiah 32 begins with the promise of a righteous king whose princes would be “like a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, like streams of water in a dry place, like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.” So here we have Isaiah describing God not only as Father, but as King and Spirit.
It’s as though the prophet saw the manifestation of the second two persons of the Holy Trinity, the King of kings and the Holy Spirit—the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. This Triune God is the subject of the Nicene Creed. The Holy Trinity is not a uniquely Christian doctrine. It is there in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
Now I must back up a bit and remind you that we are trying to understand the Nicene Creed. The Creed isn’t scripture, but it has been of great blessing in keeping Christians on track about the teachings essential to Scripture. It was the first deliberate statement of faith that Christians from all over the world composed because of a threat to the faith that popped up in one of the most important Christian centers in the first quarter of the fourth century.
Actually, the statement of the Creed before us this morning was not composed at the Council of Nicea. It was added to the Nicene Creed later perhaps after the Council of Constantinople that took place in AD 381. This was sixty-one years after the close of the Council of Nicea. Those who composed the Nicene Creed were dead. A whole new body of Church leaders met at Constantinople to address new challenges to the Church.
When we read what the Scriptures teach about the Son and the Holy Spirit it is evident that they are in some mysterious way at one with the Father. They were equal in eternity, equal in power, equal in dignity—yet distinct.
The first thing this expanded Creed said of the Holy Spirit was, “[He is] the Lord, the giver of life.”
It is interesting that they called Him “the Lord.” The Greek word kyrios, “Lord,” was the word the Greek translation of the Old Testament used consistently to translate the unpronounceable name of God in the Hebrew Bible—that is often pronounced today Yahweh. Jesus had been called “Lord” in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul also wrote of the Holy Spirit, “The Spirit is the Lord.” In calling Him “the Lord,” the Holy Spirit was treated with the full respect given to God the Father and God the Son. The Apostle Paul did not quote the Old Testament in describing the Holy Spirit in this way, but I wonder if one of the passages he had in mind was the passage from Isaiah we have read today.
Then the Creed described the Spirit as “The Giver of life.” Perhaps these early Church teachers had in mind the work of the Spirit of God in creation. Genesis 1 tells of the start of creation when the ruah elohim, the wind of God, the Spirit of God blew over the surface of the waters. It was God’s Spirit that preceded everything that follows—the separation of light from darkness, the separation of dry land from water and sky. Are we to assume that every other act of creation was also the product of God’s wind hovering on this planet?
These are mysteries beyond us—how physical life unfurled. But when we turn to the New Testament, and particularly to Paul’s letters we learn details of the kind of inner life the Holy Spirit gives. This is our concern. In his letter to the Galatians he explains that there is a kind of life produced by the untamed flesh. Its result is to make us bite and devour one another. All of the trouble now afflicting every place of conflict on this planet is the result of the kind of life spawned by the untamed flesh.
But the Spirit of God gives a different kind of life. Let us read aloud together Galatians 5: 26. We’ll need to open our Bibles to read this whole passage because our bulletins go only as far as verse 23. Here is a summary of the kind of life given by the Spirit of God.
When we read this and then survey our own lives we may wonder why the Holy Spirit is not more powerful. If the Holy Spirit has been exposed fully to us how can we resist being altogether loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, gentle, good, adaptable, and full of trust? One of the paradoxes of the Bible is that the God who can create galaxies chooses to present Himself before us helpless in us apart from our welcome. You and I have the choice of submitting deliberately to the Spirit of God, or saying “I will be religious in my own way.”
As this has happened in the story of Christianity, the Church has often been a ruthless, cruel oppressor. During the Middle Ages the Church in the Western world was engaged in a power struggle with kings and emperors. When the Church was winning, it was hardly a model of grace. It argued tragically, that the Pope was the Vicar of Christ—who was King of kings. But Jesus never flexed His muscles to dominate people. He never asserted power over Caesar.
This is not the kind of power God exercises over His people. When God’s Spirit is in control, He graciously empowers from within. But what has to happen is a deliberate submission of your will and mine, thoughtfully, reasonably, with understanding, to the will of God. Being a Christian is a thoughtful discipline. God’s will is spelled out so carefully about how we are to live together, how we are to think of ourselves, how we are to love Him. But neither God nor we who have leadership in the Church have a ghost of a chance of imposing God’s will on you. You and I must freely submit our wills, thoughtfully, day after day, to the will of God. It is a kind of discipline we all find hard.
It is here that the Holy Spirit exposes Himself to us in His weakness and power. When you and I are pliable in spirit, the Holy Spirit does His work. We enjoy a kind of inward reward when the Spirit of God is alive in us. I don’t believe in a “feel good” Christianity, but beyond dispute the Bible shows us that when the Spirit of God is at work in us, we will, dare I say it, “feel good.” This is borne out by personal experience.
But when we are hard and strong-willed, the Holy Spirit politely waits. He is the very model of courtesy. The Bible gives you and me a litmus test by which we can know if the Holy Spirit has been given access to us.
Are you and I filled with love for others? Are you and I at peace? Do you and I have joy? Are you and I patient? Are you and I gentle? Are you and I adaptable? Are you and I good? Are you and I trustworthy? In all our range of personalities we display these traits if the Holy Spirit has control of us? If we are otherwise, we may be religious. We may even be Reformed. We may say with conviction, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” but it’s only theory. And nobody is right before God and other people theoretically. We are or we aren’t submitted to the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit of God is the measure of our standing before God and others.
As the miles rolled by yesterday, I was chewing on this last idea and wondering why it is so hard to submit to the gracious Holy Spirit. And I thought of the demands we place as a society on people who have been seduced by drugs and alcohol. How inflexible the County Correction System is with those who have been caught. Tests are given regularly to see if those who were terribly hooked have dabbled at all in drugs and alcohol. And if they have, they are tossed back in jail.
And yet all of us who are hooked with our various personality limitations—high irritability, anger, impatience, sexual temptation, temptation to lie, temptations to think life is good when we own lots of stuff (self absorption)—when we continue to be hooked by this we plead, “It’s only natural.” This is the battle the Holy Spirit gently fights with us—to overwhelm what is “only natural” with what is good. And for the Spirit to win this battle, that He fights gently, you and I must submit our wills as fully as our court system demands that people snared in drugs and alcohol submit. We’re often hard and harsh on people who have been caught with problems we may not have, but very soft on our own problems.
“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life.” So we say. And indeed, He is the Lord and the Giver of outer and inward life. But He is this to us at our invitation. I pray you and I are good hosts to the Holy Spirit. I pray He has been invited to sit on the thrones that we have in our hearts, the place from which we are ruled in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Let us pray: O Lord God, grant to us to welcome your Holy Spirit that He may be Lord indeed, and the Giver of the kind of life that we live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2005
Jesus Arose As the Bible Said
Psalm 16 / Isaiah 53: 10-12
I Corinthians 15: 3-4
May 8th, 2005
Today is Mother’s Day. Few ideals can touch the heart like “mother.” I wonder how many soldiers have had “MOM” tattooed on their arms when far from home. They look down and see those three letters and think of the one who holds them in her heart no matter what.
How did Mother’s Day get started? In the 17th century in England the practice began of keeping the fourth Sunday in Lent as “Mothering Sunday.” The working poor folk who lived away from home serving in the homes of the wealthy got to return home for Mothering Sunday.
In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” helped organize Mother’s Day meetings in Boston. Thirty-five years later, Ann Jarvis from Philadelphia persuaded her mother’s church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother’s Day on the second anniversary of her mother’s death, which happened to fall on the second Sunday in May. She began writing to pastors, legislators, governors, and to others who could spread the idea. It caught on.
By 1911, Mother’s Day was an established day in most of our states. Three years later President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May national Mother’s Day. We bless you mothers who gave us life! Bless you all who were born to mothers. You reflect not only the features you inherited from your parents. You are made in the image of God.
This Mother’s Day our theme is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter and Mother’s Day have this in common that they both call our attention to a burst of new life. You came from your mother a baby human being. You will rise from the grave a new being never to die again.
The reason I draw Easter into our thoughts this morning is because you may remember the Nicene Creed is guiding our thoughts. We have come to the phrase in the Nicene Creed, “The third day he arose according to the Scriptures.”
It is a nearly exact quote from part of the passage in I Corinthians we just heard. Paul wrote, “I delivered to you of first importance, and that I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
The whole Gospel is summed up here. It is the primary interest of every Christian. It is the bond and glue that holds us together. Here is the look to the past that gives us hope for the future. It is no wonder that Paul wrote, “I delivered to you what is of first importance,” because the church to which he wrote was being torn apart by matters that were not of first importance. These words leaped out at me. It was and intentional emphasis.
The chapter just before this contains the most Presbyterian verse in the Bible. In the last verse Paul tells us, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” He wrote this because of two matters that had gotten out of hand. Both of these things have modern counterparts. The first was speaking in tongues, something not too many Presbyterians do, but which a lot of Christians do in some sectors of the Church. The second matter had to do with the role of women in the Church.
Speaking in tongues became a very important part of early Christian experience after Pentecost. Before that, in the fifty days since Jesus was crucified, the only issue was that Jesus died and rose again. These two concluding events in Jesus’ ministry were the glue that held His followers together. Jesus insured they would actually stay together by telling them to wait in Jerusalem until they received the promise of the Father. They didn’t know what that meant, but they found out in no uncertain terms.
On Pentecost morning the room in which they were together was filled with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. The usual word “wind” and the word “Spirit” are the same in the language of the New Testament. But here we find a different word for “wind” (biaios) which means a strong or violent wind, not just a breath-like wind, which is the word used for the Holy Spirit.
Looking around then each saw what looked like fire on each other’s heads. They burst from that room into the streets of Jerusalem speaking the Gospel in languages they’d never even heard. Some people in the city thought they were drunk when they heard language not their own. They were, in a sense--drunk with the Holy Spirit. How their hearts must have burst with this new wine, this Divine energy surging in them!
It is no wonder that after this ecstatic speaking should have found some place in the church. The speaking in tongues that happened on Pentecost was the speaking of actual languages. But these languages came with feelings of great enthusiasm as people spoke. The church grew in a huge thrust. Three thousand people in Jerusalem were baptized that first Pentecost.
But as often happens among people, some got side-tracked and thought of the tongues-speaking, the ecstatic speech, as the thing of importance. So speaking in tongues became a problem. It got out of hand. Speaking in tongues became a sort of test of spirituality. If I can do it and you can’t, guess who’s the better Christian? Not everyone could speak in tongues. In I Corinthians 14 Paul set down rules for speaking in tongues during church. There has to be an interpreter or it would only sound like gibberish to the rest. One should speak at a time (14: 27) and only two or three at most should do it during a service. Just because it got out of hand, let no one for that reason forbid it in the church.
Speaking in tongues was dividing the Church instead of building it up. Paul needed to remind them what was of first importance.
We don’t understand what Paul was getting at when he wrote that women should keep silence in the churches. In other places in the New Testament women had speaking roles. He must have been addressing a particular problem at Corinth.
In 14: 36 he asks some women who were causing difficulty, “What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?” Sometimes when people have a moving experience they are so fascinated with their experience that they impose it on others, expecting them to see right away how specially anointed by God they are. When others don’t recognize this immediately, things can get sticky.
Both of these issues could have risen to the top of the heap, making Corinth a seething church, seething not with the power of the Holy Spirit but with tension and division. So Paul wrote, “Here is the Gospel in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—I delivered to you as of first importance—Christ died, was buried and was raised on the third day all according to the Scriptures.”
This church, so important to the spread of the Gospel, so privileged to receive some of the most basic ideas of the Christian faith, fought a lot. This is one of the great puzzles of early Christianity. They had received so much. They were squandering their good fortune by divisiveness. Each said the other was the reason.
Internal strife was the first problem Paul addressed in this church. Why speak to the problem of strife, which is only natural when people have different points of view? Because if Jesus taught anything that should characterize His followers it was this, that they should be known by their love for each other. Continuing to love doesn’t happen easily. If anything makes this teaching of Jesus seem out of place, we have a problem.
Jesus prayed to the Father that we would be one even as He was one with the Father. Jesus prayed this referring to those who were yet to come, that is to you and me, and not only with regard to His twelve disciples—one of whom would betray Him.
So Paul appealed to these folk, “I appeal to you brothers and sisters by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same judgment (1: 10).” It seems an unreasonable expectation. How is it possible to get people with different and very earnest points of view to agree.
“OK,” some seem to have said, “We’ll all agree so long as we follow Peter.” Peter was one of the twelve. Paul was not. Perhaps Peter had come to Corinth too and impressed some of the folk who had become Christians more than they were impressed with Paul. Paul probably rubbed some people the wrong way. So they went to hear a “real apostle” speak when Paul was speaking in another assembly in the city. They liked him better. “Peter’s the one,” they said. Others disagreed. They would follow Paul. He was the one who got the whole thing going. He was their spiritual father. Besides, Peter had botched things pretty badly when Jesus needed him most.
Still others said, “No, do you not see that we’ve been blessed with this great orator from Alexandria, Egypt—Apollos? He is God’s fresh gift to us. Paul and Peter are of the old school. Apollos has the fresh anointing of God’s Spirit. When he speaks the air is alive. People could not help but call out “Amen, brother!” when he spoke. They would break out in applause, interrupting his eloquent message. They went home feeling electrified after church. No one ever felt like that when Paul spoke.
Perhaps the most divisive of all were those who said, “Jesus only.” They were impossible. They wouldn’t listen to anyone, only their own fertile imaginations as they thought of Jesus. All who fostered strife in the church in Corinth had a spiritual reason for doing it.
In the second chapter we discover that the church had become sophisticated. The city of Corinth had inherited the wisdom of the great Greek philosophers. Greek paideia, the educational system that formed the character of every well-established Greek person, rubbed against the simplicity of the Gospel.
I remember in seminary trying to figure out how to apply Whitehead’s idea of “process in history” to the Gospel as was popular in those days of Process Theology. I remember trying to get the hang of Paul Tillich’s existential theology. Karl Barth’s very appealing theology of crisis seemed to collide with the commonsense, logic-based ideas about the Bible that dominated in the surging evangelical community. And thus the church stumbled over its own cleverness during the years I was in seminary. We were lured into identifying ourselves by which school of theology we agreed with.
This is how it was in Corinth. So Paul, though highly educated, poured out his soul. “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
It is quite something to imagine this courageous man who could stand up to Roman authorities fearlessly, now tongue-tied before the people in Corinth to whom he had introduced the Gospel. “I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom.” This hardly sounds like the Paul we have in mind. It can be very odd to try to preach the Gospel into strife. I have sometimes found that nothing is quite so inhospitably received as the clearest things Jesus taught, when this message collides with a different spirit at work in the church. This was Paul’s experience long before me.
What did he mean when he spoke of his message being reduced to “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power?” He had been like the birth-mother of this church. Perhaps in his quietness, his tongue-tied silence, it was evident that what surged in his heart was authentic, and the tense lines of controversy in the church could then appear as simply human contentiousness.
It seems that a significant number of those at Corinth must have recognized their problem. They saw themselves as others saw them and were alarmed with themselves more than with others. They were again hungry for the truth that was at the heart of their faith. And thus this letter which Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth came to be a treasure to share. They did not tear it up and throw it away. They preserved it so that every church afterward that faced the problems that had rendered their fellowship and worship sterile could find an antidote and get back on track.
I hear very often these days about the problem in our denomination. People are transferring to non-Presbyterian churches in bunches. Our rolls dwindle every year. Why, our leaders ask? We think of this or that remedy. Let’s go modern. Drums and guitars will replace the classic organ. Our songs will be like the songs popular in secular culture, only with Christian words. We’ll cut out the formality. We must appeal to the youth. They are our future. So many answers address particular problems.
But the secret to our success, the secret to the success of the Body of Christ in this tormented world, is for us to remember what is of first importance. So long as anything but what is of first importance is at the focus of our attention, we will be focusing on what is secondary or maybe even not important to the cause of Christ at all. For sure, the moment humility and a contrite heart evaporate, God does not find us a homey place to be.
When what is of first importance grabs our hearts, we are filled with gratitude. Gratitude is a wonderful stimulus to a kind of life that cannot be planned. Gratitude incites to a kind of action that no program can bring. Gratitude is very liberating. It moves the imagination. We love to sing, “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s a grateful song. Sometimes I freshly encounter a person whose life seems to be moved by gratitude and it is beautiful.
Last Sunday I helped to ordain three deacons at the Korean Presbyterian Church. One of these I have had occasion to watch for quite a while. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry and has done first-rate research. But I didn’t learn this of her right away, and it was clearly not important to her. She is happiest when doing what you and I would consider menial service in the church. I felt so privileged to take part in her ordination, to preach and then to lay my hand on her head as Pastor Kim prayed.
I met her one day down on the floor laying tile in the bathrooms of their new facility. I’ll not soon forget that picture in my mind. She had such a radiant face. She bursts with kindness. She is happiest, her pastor told me, when doing something for someone. She is first on the doorstep when someone is ill and needs a meal. She delivers it giving the sense that she is lucky to get to do this. Why? Somehow I hope you may come to know this remarkable, simple lady. There seethes in her heart a spirit of gratitude to God. This is the real thing. It is so beautiful.
Paul wrote, “I have delivered to you what is of first importance, which I have received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Because of this you and I have hope in this life. And we know that when we trust in Jesus, when we die we will go to heaven. And that’s a pretty good deal—“Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” That’s a happy song.
Charles Wesley put it equally touchingly: “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood? Died He for me who caused His pain? Amazing love! How can it be that Thou my God should’st die for me.” A pretty good deal, I’d say.
My people, my friends, my fellow Christians, this is of first importance.
Let us pray: O Lord God, heavenly Father, thank you that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2005
Jesus Suffered Death and Was Buried
Q. 60, Heidelberg Catechism / Isaiah 53: 1-6/Matthew 27: 57-61
May 1st, 2005
This morning I would like to speak about why Jesus suffered death and was buried. I think that we customarily think of Jesus’ death as the means God used to take care of the problem of sin—as far as He was concerned. We may fail to see how Jesus died to take care of the problem of sin as far as we are concerned. I would much rather stand before the bar of God’s justice than to stand before a human court. God’s mercy, after all, is everlasting on those who fear Him.
The holy God looks at your sin and mine and says to us who ask forgiveness, “I forgive you for Jesus’ sake.” He bore in His body on the cross your sins and mine. But a human court looks on the offending person and thinks one thing: punishment.
We carry this outlook over into ordinary life. We notice one another’s faults and find it very hard to forgive. We who sin are hard on the sins of others. How keen and indiscriminate is the gift of memory. We who are forgiven live maintaining crossfires of condemnation that can make of life a very painful experience. Depression and anxiety are major causes of physical illness because we have perpetuated guilt before one another.
Jesus died not only to grant us peace with God, but also in order to give us peace with one another. After God has cared for sin at such cost, have we not tried to perpetuate the sense of being offended?! This is why Jesus suffered death—to put an end to this problem between people as well as before God.
In a way it seems odd to say Jesus “suffered” death because probably nothing is less painful than death itself. But I have taken this term, “He suffered death” from the Nicene Creed as we have it in our Book of Confessions. In the sentence before this in the Nicene Creed we read that Jesus was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. The crucifixion was the painful part.
Again we heard today the stark words of Isaiah 53 that remind us of the ancient prophet’s words that it was “incredible” it was that this perfect One should suffer. “Who can believe our report?” The Gospel of Matthew lays out the details of the incredibly grim day of Jesus’ suffering and death. From noon until 3: 00 o’clock PM there was darkness enshrouding Jerusalem. At 3 o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Then, after refusing a sip of vinegar from a sponge—offered, some think, to relieve the pain, but perhaps it was pressed to His parched mouth when He had no longer the energy to turn His head away from it to revive Him and prolong His pain, Jesus cried out again and yielded up His spirit.” That is, He died.
At that moment the veil in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. There was an earthquake and many tombs were opened in the city. A number of us here have seen those ancient graveyards in Jerusalem, one of which has the tomb of King David. Did he rise that day? I wonder. Many bodies of holy people came to life and walked into the city. Imagine the consternation in those who saw this! The centurion who administered Jesus’ crucifixion was filled with awe. He said, “Truly this was the Son of God. A number of women watched this from some distance. We don’t know how long these events took to unfold. Perhaps within the space of a few minutes. And then silence settled over Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. Three hours or more passed with Jesus hanging there dead.
Evening came and a rich man from the city named Joseph a follower of Jesus who Mark’s Gospel tells us was a member of the Sanhedrin went to Pilate asking to care for Jesus’ body. Perhaps it was a guilty conscience that compelled Pilate to command that this rich man be given Jesus’ body. I wonder how Joseph and his servants cared for Jesus’ body. Did they lift the cross out of the hole in which it was planted, laying it flat on the ground. Or did they use ladders to reach his hands? They had to get those spikes out of his hands and feet—which must have been hard to do because they were pounded deep through His hands into the wood.
Joseph wrapped Jesus’ body in a clean linen shroud and had it carried to his own tomb which had been carved from rock in a hillside. He had a large stone rolled in front of the tomb, perhaps to keep Jesus’ enemies from desecrating it. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary stayed behind, sitting in front of the sepulcher. We don’t know when they left to go home. Perhaps they stayed through the night till the Temple guards arrived the next day. They were sent to guard the tomb so Jesus’ disciples wouldn’t steal it and then say He was risen.
Why all of this? During Holy Week we pass through these details so fast, mostly remembering the general effect of that dreadful Friday before Easter’s joyous victory. But the Gospels spell out the details of Jesus’ death first. Why did Jesus suffer like this? We think the answer is theological—to satisfy a holy God who so hates sin that the only way He could love us was to expunge our sin at this kind of cost—the Incarnate Son of God’s body.
I have many questions. Our questions are legitimate.
Why all of this? God could have taken care of the chaos of sin as swiftly as He took care of the chaos before creation, with a word. “Let there be a separation of sin from humanity,” and instantly Pilate and the Sanhedrin would have been changed to become saints, as holy as St. Francis of Assissi. Jerusalem would have changed into a gracious city with all the wealthy people immediately caring for the street people, inviting them home, sharing those extra rooms that stood vacant, letting them feast in their dining rooms. And all who were in prison released—the criminals instantly reformed, the political prisoners no longer with the cause that made them hostile to Rome. Why did God not accomplish this reordering of society with a Word?
God made His Son suffer, die, and be buried so as to include the sequence of life to its end as miserably as any human being can endure it. Because God, for reasons known only to Him, needed to take on Himself the sin and its full misery that afflicted the human race. He recapitulated in the life of Jesus the full possible misery of human life—injustice, abandonment by friends, physical pain, and then death.
The Apostle Paul summed it up: “God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” We usually think of sin as category of offense to God, little realizing how offensive you and I find sin too. Jesus died to take care of the sin problem that bothers us as well as the sin problem that bothers God. Because it is the sins that bother us that are the cause of so much distress in this life.
We imagine God to be angry with sinners. But are you and I not angry with the sins of others?! And how many are the categories of offenses that we maintain!
Paul Tournier, a Swiss Christian psychiatrist, wrote a report of his clinical experience with this problem in a book he called Guilt and Grace. He wrote, “All people are continually making mutual accusations.” “A guilty conscience is the seasoning of our daily life.” He summarized how burdened we are with guilt for so many “sins,” many of which are not sins at all.
A child who grows up in a home with parents who were sharply critical carries with her through life a feeling of guilt for not measuring up to their expectations. She is eating at the dinner table. She asks for the butter, and when it is passed to her, rather than cutting from the end that has already been cut, she cuts from the uncut end. And father chides her, “You should cut from the other end.” Then silence. No happy conversation. And so meal time breeds indigestion.
For some young people it comes naturally to study and to do well. But not for all. It may surprise you to know I was not at first a good student. I know I’m perceived as a scholar with this spiffy doctoral robe and all that—but that came later. I’m grateful that in America we have an educational process that gives second chances.
For reasons I think had something to do with moving from one culture to another, from one school to another the first fourteen years of my life, I never found stride in grade school and high school. It was hard for me. So I can sympathize with those who are afraid of report-card time. While some are getting their valedictorian pins and National Honor Society commendations, you lurk in embarrassment at Cs and Ds on your report card, maybe even an F or two. But you don’t know how to do better. And in a society that rewards achievers, you feel guilty.
I have known young people who feel guilty simply for showing up, so accused do they feel. They hug the shadows, desiring not to be seen. Their complexions embarrass them. They cannot love themselves because they have learned to feel condemned—not by God, but by their peers and by grown-ups. Some children so cringe before criticism that they never find their way in life. They imagine criticism to add to their burden. Other children rebel. They are protesting against the guilt they can stand no longer.
What is the source of eating disorders? I feel guilty because I’m fat. Even if I am lean as a beanpole I may be suspicious I’m fat, so I eat and purge. I feel guilty for not looking like the model of good looks established by society. Or I am taught to feel guilty for being of the “wrong” race. In our religious differences we hold others to account for not seeing things as we do. Sometimes we speak to each other in ways that we intend to arouse guilt as a means of making them do what we think they should do. All of this should not be!
There is valid guilt, of course. It is a wholesome guilt that comes in response to doing wrong—violating trust, telling lies, hurting someone by word or deed. But even for legitimate guilt God offers us such a simple solution: confess your sin. Acknowledge you did it. Be forgiven. That’s it, accept that you are forgiven, then pass along the forgiveness and be on with life.
But all guilt is not valid guilt. And in so far as we maintain a society of false guilt, as Christians, we have failed to enjoy the benefit to us of Jesus death on the cross. He died that we could live to Him who loves us that much, in order to create a community of forgiveness in which we embrace one another.
There are times when I think the Christian faith and the Church are the most wonderful things possible in life. I certainly had this in mind thirty-three years ago when the idea hit me that I should spend some time serving in the church. I thought it would maybe last two years, a sort of tithe of my life the way Mormon missionaries do.
The Christian faith, after all hovers under the spell of the Gospel. The Gospel is God’s love poured out for the world. The Gospel provides you and me a context in which to think about everything and everyone. God’s love at huge cost—on His part. His love in me—on my part. The Christian faith is spelled out vividly by the Apostle Paul when he wrote, “He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” What a possibility. The perfect goodness that God approves and that you and I long for, given to us—handed to me on a golden platter of grace. All you and I have to do is to accept it with a grateful heart.
The Church is the society of those who have received this grace. It is the community of all people throughout time who have received the favor of God. It is homes like this. It is Bible studies like this. It is congregations like this.
But you and I have not always found it this way. How often we live accused, and accusing. And each of us is right. When I am found wanting, I must agree. The one who accuses me has hit the target. If only that one knew the full extent of my fault!
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Who shall lay any charge against God’s elect?/ It is God—but then God justifies, declares us to be as though we had never committed a single sin or ever been sinful, having fulfilled myself all the obedience which Christ has carried out for me.” We live unforgiving, and unforgiven, accused and accusing. How far this is from the Gospel life!
Why did Jesus suffer death and was then buried? To take on Himself the complete burden of our real guilt, to take it to the grave where it could decay. Jesus bore our sins in His body to free us from them, to make it unmistakably clear how much God loves us. He did this to create in us a clean heart and to renew a right spirit. And it is the Christian way to live basking in this forgiveness, and then spreading to others the blessedness of this way of life.
Thus may our children be nurtured in such a way that they know how God loves them because of how we love them. Thus may we nurture each other, building up one another. Let us lure each other into the grace in which we believe we stand before God. Here is the antidote to false guilt, to that insidious disease that makes of life such a miserable thing for so many. Here is the love of God manifested in a way that we can see it and feel it. This prods us to good works, to works of mercy, to works of blessing—all out of gratitude for the grace of God shed abroad in our hearts.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we are astounded at the magnificence of your mercy. Give us the grace, now, to accept your mercy, and to enjoy it fully. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2005
Jesus, Crucified for our Sake
Jesus, Crucified for our Sake
Psalm 22 / Isaiah 53
Matthew 27: 11-26
April 24th, 2005
Good Friday came just last month but it is time to think again of the cross. I chose to preach on the cross today because we have come to that part of the Nicene Creed, which tells us, “Jesus was crucified for us also under Pontius Pilate.” But it wouldn’t matter if I had preached on this for the past fifty-two Sundays in a row because Jesus crucified is at the heart of our faith.
In fact the Apostle told the people in Corinth, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Nothing but this? Wouldn’t this get a bit old? Paul knew the Old Testament well. He said it was written for our benefit. What about “the whole council of God,” good expositional sermons that we were taught in seminary were needful for the nourishment of the faith of our people? “Unlock the treasures of the whole Bible,” we were taught.
Yes, but if we all become encyclopedias of knowledge about the Bible and miss the message of the cross, the Bible has become a red herring to us. The heart of our faith is found in Jesus Christ crucified—for me. This message is at the core of my faith, or our faith.
If you and I remember that Jesus was crucified for our sake we may well be overcome with horror at the brutality of His death. This is a natural feeling. But the lasting response I need is to remember it was my sin that put Him there. The great Swedish New Testament scholar, Kristor Stendahl responded to Jews who believed Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” incited anti-Judaism: “No, what that movie stirred in me was awareness of my sin that made Jesus suffer on that cross.”
What is my sin? The Westminster Catechism defines sin as “any transgression of or violation of the law of God.” And so it is. But sin lurks in that unconquerable view of the centrality of myself that now presides in the Western world. Hidden under our demand for rights and personal gratification that we protect with great determination is a self-centeredness that undermines the effect of the Gospel. Let me take stock of this self-centeredness in me, this insistence on being personally gratified, so that I do not deliberately hang on to what compelled Jesus to hang on the cross.
Thus, from person to person a church can be made up of people aware of why Jesus died, and grateful for His grace so lavishly displayed—so that we may lavishly live under the spell of grace. Grace should be on dominant exhibit in the life of a congregation.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me.” It is the only workable foundation for the Christian life. It tells of what God has done that we could not do, but also of what we can do as a consequence. “The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Here is the Christian life explained, a life lived in gratitude for the love of God to us exhibited at such cost on the cross.
We don’t have a cross in this sanctuary not because we don’t believe the cross is relevant to our faith, but because it is at the heart of our faith.
Our Reformed forebears lived in a day when images festooned the churches. There were crosses with garish statues of a dead Jesus in every church. Statues of saints stood on pedestals everywhere. And all at great expense paid for by poor people who gave their meager income, afraid of hell. The cross was a magic shape for them to be traced in the air, across the chest, or worn around the neck.
Perhaps in over-reaction, the Reformers in whose heritage we come set out to cure the problem cold turkey. No crosses. No images. Nothing ornamental to distract from the majesty of the grace of God that operates within the human heart. Though the cross has deep attraction to me, and to many of you, this is the reason why there is no cross prominent in this sanctuary.
The Reformers who launched our sector of the Reformation were convinced the cross was so important it should never become a religious ornament. The meaning of symbols easily fades when they become commonplace. Perhaps there will be a cross in this sanctuary some day, but not because it is a popular ornament for churches.
The cross was God’s antidote for sin. Sin has been a dreadful blight on humanity since the beginning. Before the foundation of the world God planned to send His Son to absorb the sin of all people of all time. The Son of God spent His short life on this earth experiencing the sin of people. He saw it. He saw its effects on personality, on communities, on synagogues, on religious leaders, on nations. He experienced it in its most cold and brutal form in the ways of the Romans who occupied Palestine. And then, having experienced the sin of others, fellow Jews and Romans, He died by crucifixion as though He were guilty of having committed all those sins, even though He never did, said, or thought one wrongful thing.
Today sin is a dreadful problem. We have airbrushed it but behind nearly every problem you and I have personally, or in society, or in the home, or in our communities, or between nations, or in church sin is the cause. It is a disease of the soul spread by unprotected self.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth words that have kept echoing down through the ages of the church. “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” That simple message has echoed down through time’s corridors as the great corrective when Christian community life lost focus. If this were the subject of every sermon, maybe we’d catch on eventually.
Let me trace the line from the prophet Isaiah, through the Gospels, the life of the Apostle Paul, and the Creed so that it may find its way into my heart and yours.
Isaiah 53 at first lured many people to Jesus in the days after He suffered and died. Jewish people who knew their Bibles read this chapter, wondering what it meant. Then the disciples of Jesus pointed out that what happened on that Passover during the tenure of Pontius Pilate was foretold by Isaiah. We don’t read in the Gospels that Jesus ever called this to their attention before He died. Sometimes Jesus told how He was fulfilling a prophecy, but He let the most forceful prophecy speak for itself at the time it was fulfilled.
The prophet began by asking a question I read from the Jewish Publication Society translation: “Who can believe what we have heard?” It was a question laden with shock. “I can’t believe it!” We sometimes say this in shock.
The prophet went on: “He was despised, shunned by men.” Who was so despised and shunned? Why was he despised and shunned? What terrible offense made him a disgrace to the nation? Was this one a traitor perhaps?
Nobody, not even the prophet knew to whom he referred. Isaiah was treated badly by his people, but it wasn’t him. So was Jeremiah but he wasn’t the one. The prophet repeats himself, sick at heart, “He was despised, we held him of no account. Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, our suffering that he endured.”
The picture painted by Isaiah brims with injustice. “It was for our sickness that this one suffered?” What kind of sickness? Not cancer or leprosy; something much deeper. It was a deep sickness of soul, a disease infecting the soul.
When the disciples of Jesus pointed out these words to people in light of what all knew happened to Jesus, it hit home. In Acts 8 we read of a Jewish visitor from Ethiopia reading Isaiah’s words as he rode in a chariot. He asked Philip what it meant. When he realized the prophet spoke of Jesus who was crucified not long before, he trusted his life to Jesus and was baptized on the spot.
Those words that Isaiah wrote about Jesus echo in my mind. “He was wounded because of our sins, crushed because of our iniquities.” Such correspondence between a specific prophesy in the Hebrew Bible and the life of Jesus!
All four Gospels have been called Passion narratives with long introductions. The Gospel of Matthew from which we read this morning shows us Jesus standing before Pilate. Pilate asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” We cannot hear his tone of voice. Was he mocking? Was he curious? His wife had dreamed nightmares about this moment. She told him, “Have nothing to do with this just man!” Pilate tried to wriggle out of the problem by offering to release another man named Jesus, whose last name was Barabas, a well-known very bad man. Perhaps they would for their own safety choose this Jesus instead of the Jesus of Nazareth. When they wouldn’t allow this he tried to wash his hands of responsibility. He claimed innocence by washing his hands. The people yelled, “His blood be on us and on our children,” in the frenzy of a moment as political appointees among the Jews who hated Jesus incited them.
Many Jews have been tormented because of that line. But Christians who persecuted the Jews diverted their attention from their own sin that put Jesus on the cross. They violated the Gospel in turning on the Jews, forgetting the warning of Scripture addressed to Christians that in doing this they “crucified the Son of God afresh.”
The Apostle Paul wrote Christians in Corinth who had given him fits, ““I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Forget this and the fabric of the faith dissolves. Forget the cross and the Christian faith dissolves into just another philosophy, a world-view about which all sorts of clever, opinionated people can express an opinion.
The church in Corinth was ridden with strife and immorality. It reflected the life of the bustling city in which it found itself. It was a sports-conscious city, well to do, a great trading center situated on an isthmus with an overland route to pull ships across. It was intellectually alive. Paul had to warn the Christians there, “The wisdom of God is the wisdom of the cross that is foolish to people who think they are wise.” In the church there folk sure had their opinions—about speaking in tongues, about who was the best leader, about how to keep one another in their place, even about how deeply one could go into sexual sin and get away with it.
Things had become so distracted from the basic fact without which Christianity is nothing at all that Paul confessed to being afraid, feeling weak. He felt tongue-tied. “How did it come to this, when it began with the simple preaching of the cross to which you were drawn because of the sheer grandeur of the love of God poured out in Jesus?” “He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” And you want to concentrate on the things that are tearing you apart, shredding your character, and destroying your credibility in Corinth?!!
A like setting faced the Christians in Alexandria, Egypt three hundred years later. One of the clever and out-spoken elders named Arius claimed to know better than the historic teaching about Jesus. The One on the cross on Good Friday was not really God at all. He was a good man, to be sure, a very honorable man, in fact, given a high task by God. But he was just a man. The divisiveness of this unruly elder who had lost the irreplaceable quality of humility, stopped listening, and began speculating on things no one can comprehend, led to a crisis that reached far beyond the city. And so the emperor had to call a worldwide council to solve the problem.
But thank God at this Council of Nicea they pieced together the Bible’s teaching and claimed again its teaching that the Jesus who died for our sins on the cross was indeed God, indeed man. Here was the capstone of God’s remedy for the problem of human sin. And thus Christians ever since have confessed, “He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate.”
One of the questions from the Heidelberg Catechism we ask often here during our morning worship is, “What is true faith?” And the answer to that question pinpoints that true faith applies to me, to you, to each of us personally the truth of the gift of salvation. This salvation offers my life now that re-ordering grace that it needs, so that I can live my life exhibiting the kindness, the mercy, the justice, goodness, and truth of God.
I pray that each of us may not only stand looking up at that cross, aghast at the cost of God’s love displayed there, or even that it was our sin that put Jesus there. Rather let us probe with all our hearts to understand the wisdom the Apostle Paul understood when he said, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
O Lord God, how do I speak adequately of the wonder of Your Holy Son Crucified for me? Take and seal to us this great message of love, and grant that its claim on us may not be lost. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2005
Jesus: How much God? How much Man?
Jesus: How much God? How much Man?
(For us and for our salvation he . . . became truly human.)
Daniel 7: 9-10 / Revelation 1: 9-18
April 17th, 2005
These are really remarkable times. I’m tempted to keep each copy of Newsweek because in ten years I’ll wish I had done so. “These are the best of times and the worst of times.” A Scottish novelist wrote those words in the 19th century about an earlier time.
Has there been any period in the story of humanity when it was otherwise, the worst and the best of times? Augustine of Hippo thought the end of the world was at hand as the Barbarians crushed the last breaths of life out of the Roman Empire in the early fifth century. In the thirteenth century Thomas (Aquinas) was writing his masterpiece about God while “Tarter hordes” were galloping on their ponies through Europe’s heartland slaughtering every man, woman, and child. My mother will ask me when we talk on Saturday mornings in this twenty-first century, “What is the world coming to? Surely the Lord will come soon.”
Well, it was into such a world that the Lord was born. He was this one “whose raiment was white as snow,” who was served by thousands, of whom Daniel wrote in pre-recognition of days to come. In the days this Son of Man was born things were pretty raw too. Crucifixion was as common then as jail terms are today. Seventy-three years before Jesus was born, a slave named Spartacus led an unsuccessful revolt of slaves against Rome. He was defeated. The Romans lined the Apian Way leading into Rome with six thousand of Spartacus’ followers, nailed to crosses to remind anyone who needed reminding not to meddle with Rome. On crosses these wretched men ended their lives in agony without mercy.
It was at such a time, into such a world that God did something most wonderful. He became part of human existence. He became a man. Why? “For us and for our salvation.”
The Nicene Creed was composed about three hundred years later. Then the triumph of the cross of Jesus Christ finally seemed to give promise of a Kingdom of God on earth. The emperor was a Christian. He put an end to crucifixions and other legal torture. His mother, Helena, who loved Jesus and was largely responsible for her son’s becoming a Christian, searched everywhere to find every last splinter of the old rugged cross on which Prince of glory died. It was said she found enough splinters of the true cross to build Noah’s Ark. She had churches built in many places throughout the empire where people could worship Jesus.
But in one of the oldest churches in Christendom a tempest started to blow. An elder with a strong personality in Alexandria, Egypt was teaching that Jesus was only a great man. The elder’s name was Arius. He didn’t listen to his teachers. He told them, “Listen to me.” His attitude turned his speculation into a great problem that divided Christendom.
Though the Gospel of John said of Jesus that “He was in the beginning with God and was God,” Arius said this could not be because, after all, wasn’t Jesus born as everyone is born?
He may have read what we just read of the exalted Jesus of whom John wrote in the first chapter of Revelation. Jesus, as John saw Him in this vision, looked far different from the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Palestine. Arius was annoyed by those who had so played up this image of Jesus Christ that they forgot He was a real man, Things had gotten out of hand in thinking about Jesus after He left them.
Some influential and pious Christians, desiring to honor Jesus, taught that Jesus had only the God nature, and no human nature. Others said He only seemed to be a man. Some thought that the very idea of God going through the birth process was a horrid and evil idea.
As often happens, one mistake bred another mistake that tried to fix the first one. Arius emphasized that Jesus was just a human being. He argued that to say Jesus was divine was only an honor ascribed to Him, a bit like saying Pope John Paul II is a saint. But this understanding of Jesus rejected everything that the Bible teaches about Jesus’ God-ness. “Before Him every knee will bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” “Lord” was the name of God. What God is Jesus is, the New Testament makes so clear.
So the thoughtful and wise pastors and bishops who met at the Council of Nicea hammered out words to make sure we understand that Jesus was really God. He was “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made.” It very nearly seems they tried too hard to make the idea clear, but it was a truth that could not be too clear. It is half the heart of the Gospel.
The other half of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ was really man too. He did not just seem to be a man. He was really and truly and fully a man. Human nature and the Divine nature were both in Jesus, not all mixed together like some Divine-human dish of scrambled eggs, but distinct in His humanity and in His Deity. Does that sound pretty impossible to you? Well, maybe paradoxical, but not impossible.
Actually, it was just one word in the Greek language in which this creed was written. The Son of God was enanthropesanta. That sounds like Greek to you, but it sounded to them like English does to you and me. Some know the phrase from the English word formed from the Latin translation, incarnatus est, which means, “He was in flesh.” Our word “Incarnation” comes from this simple, stark statement. The Latin is more stark than the Greek. He became flesh sounds more radical than “having been made human.”
(I feel self-conscious to use Greek, Latin, or Hebrew words as though I’m showing off. But remember that over the centuries the Gospel was taught in many languages. Once Greek and Latin were as ordinary as English. It was in these languages that people first heard these great truths. And we do well to remember as clearly as we can how they understood the great truths, and then passed them on to us.)
This is a remarkable truth. God became a human being. David asked in the 8th Psalm, long before Jesus was born, “What is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that thou visitest him?” It is a good question. David asked this question, it might be, because he saw the dark side of human nature, and not just the wonder that human beings are created in the image of God.
He knew his own heart. At one time he could write rhapsodic psalms praising God, and at another time he drooled with raw lust, leering at the body of his neighbor’s wife—to the point that he had her husband killed to claim her for himself. Maybe this was in his mind when he asked, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?”
But humanity is pretty grand too. What you and I know of humanity is a flawed creature. We see the double-mindedness of our own hearts that contributes to our suspicion of other people. People who have the capacity for amazing acts of self-sacrifice may live driven by greed, never being happy with what they have because they suppress their God-like nature to share. People who have the capacity to love suppress their love because they are fearful. People who yearn for acceptance judge others for the silliest things. People who are equipped in body, mind, and spirit for the greatest happiness, cling to ways guaranteed to make them unhappy. They major on what is minor and treat as least important things of the heart.
I flick the channels on the television when my coffee is brewing in the early morning and I see program after program about how to get in shape, how to eat right, how to have a great sex life, how to get rich. And all the while the people who watch the programs live so as to make sure they stay overweight, use their money badly, and are loveless towards their spouses. These programs flaunt their misery before miserable people who can’t sleep.
It was because of what we can be that the Son of God actually became a human being. “It was for us and for our salvation.” Salvation is not just being rescued from eternal hell. Salvation is being healed to the very core. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and He is not willing to consign what is made in His image to the trash-bin of this life or of eternity. God became a human being so we could be lifted to claim the fullness of what God intended in creating us in His image. He took our image to restore this image.
If only all who claim to be “born again” were as saved as God intended! Turn your thoughts inward and see what Jesus came to remake! See inside where a gracious heart lurks, longing to infect your mind. Look inside at that generous person who longs to act. Look at yourself as you are disappointed with yourself and have turned that disappointment against other people. Look at your fears, at the dreams you are gradually thinking cannot ever be realized. Accept that Jesus came to dissolve those fears and help you to aspire to and fulfill your best self.
There are aspects of God reflected in every part of creation. The beauty of God is reflected in flowers. How intricate is the beauty of the lilies and phlox and roses that surround the homes in which we live. How lavish is the beauty of a magnolia tree in the full bloom of spring. How fragrant are the gardenia and lemon blossoms. The elegance of the dolphins as they swim through the oceans reflects the power, symmetry and elegance of their Creator. Think of the soaring eagle, strong and beautiful. We could go on and on describing the majesty of the tiger “burning bright in the forests of the night” whose fearful symmetry proclaims God’s handiwork.
But nothing in all creation compares with a human being. God became a human being to show what a human being is as God intended. For some reason people hated that beauty when they saw it in Jesus. They couldn’t stand Jesus. He was too good, too kind, too noble, too forgiving. So they killed Him. We say we love Jesus. People just like we are sometimes despised what they saw Him.
We are so confused. We don’t know whether to desire beauty or ugliness. We are torn between admiring decency and being drawn by the culture we live in to what is indecent. The privacy and opportunity we have lures us to do in secret what we would claim to despise. I see the young people on campus wearing T-shirts that read on the back, “Go Ugly Early,” and know it has to do with a popular spot for hanging out. But I muse on the idea that such a term could be so intriguing for them. Why not, “Come Beautiful Early and Late?” Every co-ed that has on her back “Go Ugly Early” wants to be thought beautiful.
How grand a thing it is to be a human being, but we miss seeing it. God doesn’t, and that’s why He sent His Son as a complete human being. We cannot comprehend that God could ever stoop to taking on our botched humanity. But I remember that we represent God’s finest creative impulse. We are the capstone of creation. And it matters to God what happens to the finest exhibit of His creative impulse—the part onto which He stamped His image and likeness.
This is why God became a human being. Jesus was completely human first, to bear the consequences in His body of what we have done in distorting the Divine image in us, and then, second, to lead the way to our reclaiming all the wonder of being created in the image of God. That’s why we sing, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.”
Ponder this. Thing on this as you think of yourself. You are a promise, a possibility, as our children have sung in days past. Think on this as you think of others—if you are more impressed with their flaws than of the wonder that they are created in God’s image.
I remember that C.S. Lewis wrote of what he thought when he looked at people—candidates for divination. One day I will look at you and remember what I knew of you in this life. I will be amazed. “So that was what God had in mind when He created you,” I will think. Why then did I not treat you with greater regard? We will wonder, “Why didn’t our life together blossom with all our possibilities for God-likeness?” It still can.
I pray God will, by His Holy Spirit, remind us as we look at Jesus, the author of our faith, what it is that He created us to be. And then I pray we may press on to enjoy to the fullest, in the way of Jesus, this life for which the Son of God was born a baby, suffered death, and rose again.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we cannot comprehend the mechanics of how you sent us Your Son to become a man for us, to become even sin for us, that we could truly live. But we thank You that You did. Help us to accept this favor with a trusting heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2005
The Scandal or the Wonder of Jesus?
The Scandal or the Wonder of Jesus?
Psalm 100 / Isaiah 7: 9-11
Matthew 1: 18-25
April 10th, 2005
I would guess that the season that warms our hearts the most is Springtime. Winter can be beautiful when the ground is covered with snow and the air is crisp. Summer can be wonderful, particularly when you are swimming or canoeing at a lake, or enjoying the smell after a summer rain. Autumn for me is a close competitor to Spring.
But Springtime! Life bursts out all over, and it happens gradually. Each morning I go out to inspect the trees I planted seven years ago, to see how the buds are coming. Rabbits are running all over. Finches are at the bird feeder again. Life bursts during the Spring.
I think there must have been more than one thing in God’s mind in having Jesus’ death and resurrection take place at springtime. First, God wanted us to see and feel the burst of new life in nature itself as we remember that Jesus came out of the tomb alive on Easter morning. Maybe it would not have gripped our hearts nearly so much if it happened in the cold of winter, or as leaves were falling from the trees, or when the days were hot and humid during summer.
Second, Jesus rose from death at springtime because the Jewish Feast of Passover described in the Bible came during the Spring of the year. Then the sacrifice of a lamb prefigured Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
It was a miraculous event we say when Jesus came alive on Easter morning. Each of the ways that God interacts with us for our good involves both a very ordinary aspect of life and something extraordinary.
Two weeks ago we thought of the extraordinary event on Easter. This morning I want us to think particularly about Christmas when Jesus’ life began on this earth. As the resurrection of Jesus’ body took place when all of life was bursting forth at springtime, so Jesus was born as every baby is born, but with strange, miraculous new twists.
The first Christian statement of faith described Jesus’ earthly beginning this way: “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” There are four parts to this statement. First, it was for us and for our salvation. Second, Jesus was in heaven before He was born on earth. Third, this happened by a special work of the Holy Spirit of God. Fourth, Jesus was born of a virgin mother. These are the four unique aspects of Jesus’ birth.
Jesus was born because you and I who were born needed to be rescued from a predicament that starts at birth. This predicament is called sin. How do we know about sin? Look at how we hurt each other. We say things we shouldn’t. We forget to say what we should. And that’s just the start of how we hurt others.
We offend God by misusing His wonderful gifts. For some people their misuse of these gifts result in very unhappy lives. Sin is a total yuk! Jesus was born, died, and came to life again to lead the way in undoing the curse of sin. This is what salvation means. It was for our salvation that Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again.
Second, Jesus came down from heaven. Before you and I began we may have been a twinkle in our parents’ eyes, as they say, but we did not exist. We were a hope, a dream. When we get married and think of having children we imagine having a little girl or a little boy and dream of what that little one will become. But there is nothing there until we came together in that loving embrace that begins a human life. Wonder fills our hearts as young parents when we realize that we have done something very God-like. Our love “created” a new human being where there was no one before.
I remember so well when Bonnie and I were told we were going to be the parents of our first child. We had been married four months and fully intended to have no children until I’d finished school and we could afford the expense of all those diapers and formula and all the other expensive paraphernalia that goes with having babies. I worked from mid-night to eight in the morning to earn our keep, while carrying a full load of graduate school credits. We were scraping to make ends meet. Now this!
We lived in a tiny one-room efficiency student apartment. Our couch pulled out to make a bed, and the kitchen was so slight that only two newly weds could fit into it at the same time comfortably. Now, we learned we were to add a third person to our little nest, someone much smaller than we were who would occupy a lot more space than we did!
But we forgot the hurdles to be overcome. We were ecstatically happy. All the complications this little being would bring could not compare to the joy he would bring—not only in his birth, I might add. It seemed a miracle when Bonnie gave birth and I held this little guy in my arms. And it was a miracle, but one that takes place very often. He didn’t exist before. Now he existed—as he reminded us every hour of the day and night.
But before Jesus was born and made Mary and Joseph happy, He already existed. He was the Son of God, existing before time began with the Father and the Holy Spirit in heaven. The Creed says He “came down from heaven,” because we always think of heaven as up. We may as well say that heaven is up because it is a mysterious realm inaccessible to us just now. We have cartoon-like images of angels sitting on fluffy clouds in heaven, strumming harps, but these are only ethereal ideas suggesting how heaven is different from earth.
The Apostle Paul tells us that, “God is not far from each of us. In Him we live and move and have our being.” Heaven is where God lives, and He is not far from us. This makes me think that heaven is not nearly so much a place far away as it is a perfect state of existence that inter-penetrates this world and who knows, perhaps all space. Because God isn’t limited by space and time as we are.
When the Son of God started to form into a human baby in Mary’s womb, He didn’t have very far to go. He was “in the world, and the world was made by Him,” and “in Him all things were holding together.” In a mysterious Divine act the Holy Spirit moved the Son of God at the loving will of the Father so that He entered our time and space in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
From there on Jesus’ birth was like every birth.
The passage from Matthew’s Gospel tells us how things looked from Joseph’s perspective. I wish there were time to look through Joseph’s and Mary’s eyes and follow the course of this extraordinary birth. There were some who thought it a scandal because they weren’t married. Others realized the pertinence of what the prophet Isaiah wrote--that Ken Wark read for us--this was a wonderful new act of God, who was doing something good beyond our ability to understand—something with long-range effects. This morning we celebrate something very wonderful that God is doing many years later as we baptize a dear young man, Cory Wettshurack.
What happened in the birth of Jesus is like what has happened in Cory’s heart and life. What happened when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit was a figure of what happens inside of us when faith is born in our hearts.
There is nothing harder to change than the human heart. We call people “stubborn” who will not change from some terrible behavior or attitude. But when we see a person change from being a bitter, cynical, angry sort of person into a person filled with kindness, cheerfulness, and goodwill, we recognize that something has happened inside. But there is more to it than this.
Naturally, since we can’t see God, we’re tempted to think that God doesn’t exist. Naturally, since we did not see Jesus born and were not witnesses to the miraculous events surrounding His birth, we are tempted to think that Jesus was not the extraordinary person the Gospels tell us, even born in a unique way. Naturally, since we didn’t see Jesus die for us and rise again, and since there is no way we can imagine that such a thing should mean that God was taking care of the problem of sin in this way, how are we to believe it?
But when our natural Inability to trust that these things are true somehow changes and our hearts are filled with trust, it is because the Holy Spirit has caused something to happen in us. The Holy Spirit doesn’t force us. He simply makes it very plain to us that there is something to all of this to which we feel compelled inwardly to respond.
The Holy Spirit uses various means to give faith to us. If you were born into a home with parents who trusted in Jesus, who were loving to you, the Holy Spirit used them to teach your heart about Jesus. Or sometimes God the Holy Spirit lets us be in the company of people who show us in how they live and by what they say to us that there is something mysteriously more to life. And they become the means to trusting in Jesus, and being “born again.”
We’ve all heard that term, “born again.” Jesus used it in speaking to a Jewish teacher who was as puzzled at the idea as you and I might be. He thought it meant something physical, like a grown up climbing back into his mother’s womb and then coming out again.
Jesus used this term because what happens when our hearts are changed is every bit as unique and radical as being born the first time. When God changes our hearts, it starts very small, the way a baby begins very small it her mother’s body. And gradually, over time that little human zygote turns out to be a full-fledged human being. And after God plants the seed of faith in our hearts, it grows until we discover we are “new creations in Christ.” It is the Holy Spirit who makes this happen in us—as He made Jesus start in the body of His mother, the Virgin Mary.
When Cory stands before us and confesses his faith in Jesus, and I place the waters of Baptism on him, we are celebrating the work of God’s Holy Spirit who put the seed of faith in His heart. And Cory is publicly baptized to claim that what God’s Holy Spirit planted in his heart has grown so that he trusts in Jesus.
Trusting in Jesus brings to us God’s gift of eternal life in a mysterious way we can’t understand. But this shouldn’t surprise us since all of life, physical and otherwise, is mysterious to us. But this is a mystery of a different kind because it has to do with what we do and what we let God do with our lives afterward.
We read in the Bible, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and again, “You are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.” From now on, Cory, like each of us who has been baptized and confessed our faith in Jesus Christ, has a new purpose in life. Our purpose is to use whatever we are, whatever God has given us as gifts of mind and body, to please Him. God is pleased when we enjoy His gifts in thankfulness to Him.
Baptism and trust in Jesus is only a beginning, like a new birth. Every Sunday morning at the close of our worship service you see me raise my right hand, place my fingers in an ancient sign of the Holy Trinity, and pronounce a charge and blessing to you that is drawn from the Bible. “Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight.”
Here are the marching orders of every baptized child of God. Let God work in you what is well pleasing in His sight. Let God perfect in you and me every good work. Let go and let God. God’s goal with you and me is like the aspirations we parents have when we are granted a little one into our home. We aspire that our children will be healthy, happy, good, and useful. We want them to know we love them, and that this love will be like a wind in their sails, as they sail through life joyfully.
Jesus said, “I am come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” Jesus plans for you, Cory, and for each of us who has come to Him in trust, an abundant life—a good life, better than we can imagine. Let us then thoughtfully plan to live our lives to the glory of God, loving Him with all our hearts, loving one another with a full heart, faithfully, and all our neighbors as ourselves.
If any of you know you have not begun this new life perhaps God is stirring in you this morning the desire to find for yourself this new life He promises to those who trust in Him. Please speak to me if I can help show you the way. In any case, don’t let pass the moment when you recognize something new tugging at your heart. It’s probably God whispering to you, “Come to me and I will give you a new life.” God has put a certain twinkle of light in the heart of everyone who is born, by which we can see that life is more than a physical event. God promises you and me, “I will give my Holy Spirit to plant the seed of faith in your heart—and you will know what that “something more” is. Now respond, let that seed grow until you find the abundant life.
Let us pray: We are amazed at the wonder of a newborn child, Lord. But we are more amazed at the wonder of Jesus’ birth, and to know it was for our sake, that we could enjoy the kind of life that gives most joy. Help us to trust in Jesus, and to live in trust, day after day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2005
Jesus Christ—from Heaven
Jesus Christ—from Heaven
Psalm 104: 1-4 / Hebrews 1: 1-8
February 6th, 2005
This morning we again partake of the Lord’s Supper. We don’t do this as often as some churches do but more often than others. But nearly all churches remember Jesus with some regularity in this way because we must remember that Christianity is about Jesus. Jesus told His disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Things we don’t remember regularly we forget. Students review before writing an exam. Reviewing is practice in remembering. The best students refresh their memories often as they go along.
Christians who don’t remember Jesus often forget that Christianity is about Jesus. We say of Him, He is the head, and we are the body. Cut the head from the body and you know what happens—a dead body. It matters what we remember of the Head, of Jesus Christ. This is why we say we should read the Bible often as well as take the Lord’s Supper often. They remind us of Jesus.
Over the past twenty years or so there has been a lively discussion about Jesus prompted by a group of New Testament scholars called “the Jesus Seminar.” The Jesus Seminar is interested to discover what we can know for sure about the Jesus who worked in a carpenter shop in Nazareth, who walked the dusty roads of Palestine, taught, healed, and in the end was crucified and then was reported to have been seen by numerous people afterward. This seminar has pressed very hard on a challenge that arose after the Enlightenment of the 18th century.
This challenge was that there is a difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. This challenge raised a big question: Did Jesus grow in peoples’ imaginations so that He changed from being a wise, inspirational faith-healer, but just an ordinary man, into a God? In other words, have Christians remembered Jesus all wrong?
The movie Mel Gibson created about the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life tried to turn the clock back two thousand years so we could visualize as precisely as possible Jesus’ last twelve hours. Even Martin Scorscese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” tries less reverently to bridge the gap between the One in whom Christians believe and the Jesus of Nazareth.
The Jesus Seminar has walked across this bridge in a way that specifically challenges what the New Testament tells us about Jesus. On the basis of the vote of twenty-four committee members, the things Jesus actually said have been whittled down to about eighteen percent of the words the New Testament tells us Jesus said. The rest, they say, was made up and put into Jesus’ mouth.
Similarly, the Jesus Seminar assumes that Jesus’ reputation has swelled from the peasant sage of Nazareth who was born in the ordinary way and crucified by Pontius Pilate into the Son of God and King of Kings and Lord of Lords born to the Virgin Mary—who could literally walk on water.
Who was this Man, Jesus? In past weeks we have remembered the words of the Nicene Creed that was written three hundred years after Jesus left the visible scene. It says, “For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven.” Did He really? If the astrophysicists and even ordinary people now know that the words “down” and “up” don’t really fit when talking about the universe, what does it mean to say Jesus “came down from heaven?”
There are no bad questions. But it matters if we ask questions with the assumption that we won’t accept the answers unless they fit within boundaries we understand, that we’ve set before hand.
And it matters if we understand something of the larger picture within which the answer can fit. One of my good tennis friends is a sub-atomic physicist. I asked him one evening in the locker room what he studies. He chuckled and told me, it’s sort of like following rabbit tracks in the snow to find a rabbit when you don’t actually see the tracks but know they are there. I may not have got his answer quite right. But he wanted me to know his work wasn’t all make-believe. After all, he’s paid good money for snooping into those unseen rabbit tracks. And money is tight for universities these days.
This morning we read together the opening lines of a letter written nearly two thousand years ago that describes Jesus with these words: “He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.” I have the inkling that what the writer is telling us is a bit like what my physicist friend was trying to tell me about his work. Only, the rabbit tracks in the snow in studying Jesus are His footprints in the dusty roads of Palestine, and the memory of his words to the people He met on those roads.
But the “rabbit” making these tracks in the snow is far more amazing than the intricacies of the physical world that my friend studies so brilliantly.
We don’t know who wrote this letter we call “The Epistle to the Hebrews.” At first they thought it was the Apostle Paul, but now almost nobody thinks this. Some think it might have been written by Priscilla, a very wise woman well known to Paul. But more than human wisdom was needed to penetrate the “space” between the ordinary and the extraordinary source of our creation and salvation.
The author begins with what all devout Jews and Christians knew from reading the Bible. They knew about the prophets, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. These were strange men often enough. But their strangeness was due to their extraordinary task, to speak from God. Often their messages were cryptic, hard to understand.
But there came this one in the prophetic heritage, of whom they spoke and wrote, who was different from them all. “In these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.” Jesus lived as close in time to those who read these words as John F. Kennedy lived to our time. My grandchildren will learn the details of this president’s life as I learned the details of the First World War. But there was this difference. There was something about Jesus more mysterious than President Kennedy or World War I. With Him it wasn’t just a matter of remembering what He said and did. There was something more about Jesus, something connected not only to the history of the Jews, but even beyond that.
The author of this letter wrote more explicitly than any other New Testament writer in describing the link between Jesus and Israel’s sacred history. We are lured back, not just beyond, but also behind the words of the prophets to the realm of God. You might think that people would have tossed out this letter as imaginative nonsense for saying of Jesus, “When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” They knew about the crucifixion, and that Jesus died for our sins. But now they read of grandeur beyond what they could have dreamed.
What did it mean to say that Jesus “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high?” It is the language of mystery we would say, but to write such things in actual words plunged into the fog of mystery to describe something like real facts. The right side was the side of honor. In some way, Jesus who was crucified, the greatest human indignity, not only had a place of honor with God, but He was the one “through whom God created the world.” And by “the world” they didn’t just mean our planet.
We read in the 104th Psalm, that the Creator “stretched out the heavens like a tent.” If we follow the rabbit tracks doubling back through the forest of this New Testament book of Hebrews, to the Old Testament book of Psalms, we get images of unspeakable grandeur. God is one who “covers Himself with light as with a garment.” We don’t see light itself. We see by means of light. Light begins to break on the world in the morning. As we say “the morning light breaks on the eastern sky, or the crack of dawn.” I look out the window in the wee hours of the morning and gradually I can see the outline of trees out there and the shape of houses, whereas before I could “see” only darkness. God, whom we can’t see, wears the light.
Our minds drift to Psalm 8 with its sound of wonder, describing the heavens as “the work of God’s fingers.” We say this is metaphor. God has no fingers as we do. But the idea is there that the grandest things that we can see, the sky, for example, are small potatoes to God.
And when we think of Jesus, we have to go far beyond the tiny metaphor of the things He did with his fingers in breaking and distributing five small loaves and two small fishes to feed 5,000 men plus women and children, to His real greatness. By metaphor I don’t mean just a figure of speech. Jesus, I believe, actually turned water into wine, and actually fed multitudes with a tiny lunch, but these were merely the fringes of His compassion and power. They were all anyone could see and recognize. But they pointed to something far greater even more than a metaphor refers to a great idea.
And so we read that Jesus is superior to angels. Some people today think that angels are imaginary creatures. I don’t. All of us believe there are some things that really exist that we can’t see. Some things are too small, like quarks, for even electron microscopes to see, but we trust the scientists who say they are there. Some things can’t be seen for other reasons—like angels. We know that animals are aware of things we humans are not aware. There is an invisible realm of the spirit that far from being merely imaginary is beyond the imagination. Who Jesus was exceeds this imaginary realm.
We read in the Bible of the connection between Jesus and this beyond-the-imagination realm. Hebrews 1 reminded us this morning of the second Psalm, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee,” as though they are written to an Israelite king. But even the great (adulterous) King David didn’t qualify—though in a way he did. The prophet Nathan told David that God said to him, “I will raise up your offspring after you . . .and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.”
But these words never fit with anything in the boundaries of David’s lifetime or even the lifetime of his descendants. David’s dynasty seemed to end in 597 BC. The words of the psalm pointed to something beyond. But nobody dreamed how far or much beyond it pointed.
When my physicist friend tells me about rabbit tracks in the snow it’s a bit like what the Bible is telling us of Jesus. All that the Bible tells us of God as the ancient Israelites knew of Him it tells us of Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth.
The second chapter of Hebrews begins, “Therefore we must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” How easy it is to drift away from remembering who this Jesus is who is represented in the bread and wine before us on this table. Some well-meaning scholars tell us that what the New Testament tells us about Jesus is pious imagination. And thus they mysteriously reduce Jesus to the creation of pious folklore. And in doing so, they step away from the One of whom an eyewitness said, “We saw His glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
There are some things no science can study. There is a point at which questions fail to find the right words and faith has to take over. Faith does not believe in spite of the evidence. It trusts as true what no evidence is capable of showing. We do the Christian faith no disservice when we admit that we have arrived at a boundary we cannot cross by inspecting the records of the past with even devout skepticism. With Thomas who doubted we either will say “My Lord and my God,” or we will dally all our lives in whimsical dithering.
I present to you this morning Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” He invites you, “trust in me and I will save you in every way that matters.”
Let us pray: O Lord, enlighten our hearts to trust what our minds cannot possibly know, that out of great love You sent for us and for our salvation Jesus Christ; that He came down from heaven to be born of the Virgin Mary, to live for us, and to die for our sins, and to rise again on the third day according to the Scriptures. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2005
Jesus Christ—of the same essence of the Father
Jesus Christ—of the same essence of the Father
Isaiah 35: 1-4 / John 14: 8-11
January 23rd, 2005
This past week President Bush took his oath of office for a second term. Part of the interest of this was seeing his dad in the background. Because his father was also a president we cannot help comparing them.
We call a boy “a chip off the old block,” meaning he sure reminds us of his dad. I have a niece who is so much like her mother—a mother we all love to bits that we eagerly look forward to the kind of woman she will become. But there is an ebb and flow from one generation to the next. As Samuel Butler remarked quaintly in his novel, The Way of All Flesh,
We are as days and have had our parents for our yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of a clear parental sky the eye of Fortune can discern the coming storm, and she laughs as she places her favourites it may be in a London alley or those whom she is resolved to ruin in king's palaces.
While we are all interested in this kind of thing as we watch the generations unfold, there’s not a lot at stake in what we discover.
Now I have a point in all this talk about parents and children. And it goes beyond encouraging all us parents to live well before our children. The Bible tells us that Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is “the author and finisher of our faith.” That means Jesus was the model that we look at and He and the Father were one.
Jesus was not just a man who lived an exemplary life. Jesus was also God. Even though Jesus was God made flesh, He prayed to One whom He called, “Father.” In fact, Jesus called this One to whom He prayed, “Abba,” which was an intimate term like our term “Daddy.” What was the relationship between Jesus and this One to whom He prayed? Jesus said to His disciple, Philip, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.”
This morning I want to speak to the question of the relationship between Jesus, who was God the Son, to the One to whom He prayed, to God the Father.
What does it matter to understand this, you may wonder. Is this just another word-game? Or does it matter for some practical reason? I believe it matters for very practical reasons.
First, perhaps is that to think about this is to elevate our minds and hearts simply by focusing on Jesus. If all you and I think about is the day to day grind of life, stuff about home, about work, about money, about sports, about our health, about who said what to whom, about what we’re going to do when we grow up or retire, or the like, then our lives will focus only on our own little world. And you and I are reduced as people. We become small.
We become larger by thinking of Jesus. It’s part of loving God to think about Jesus. We become in some small way consciously a part of God’s enterprise when we expose our minds deliberately to God.
But there is more to thinking about Jesus than this. I use the name Jesus and God interchangeably on purpose. Our faith needs to know it has a sure anchor in truth. Truth may not be entirely within our grasp when it comes to matters about God, that is, God is much greater than we can understand. But what we do understand we want to be true. And we have to work to try to understand what is true about the big stuff.
The reason why Sunday School matters, why such activities as Confirmation class for young people matters, and why Inquirer’s Class for membership matters, and Bible studies matter is that we are training our minds to think about the “big stuff.” It’s not beside the point that we also get to know and care for each other.
A day is coming to each of us when it will be clear that it has never really mattered what kind of house we live in, or how large or small our financial resources are, or what our education is, or whether the Boilermakers are winning or not.
Every now and then we come to moments when there flashes before us that we’re playing in a much bigger arena than the little world of every day life in West Lafayette, Indiana. This week I met a man I’d not seen in a while. He looked strangely different. I asked him what it was. He told me he had only a few months to live. He asked me to pray for him. Or perhaps you are driving along and you realize you’re about to be hit by another car, and thought flashes before you, “I might be in tomorrow’s obituary.”
When two jet airliners plunged into the twin towers of the World Trade Center four years ago, suddenly a lot of self-confident people felt very vulnerable. I used to think 911 was a number that represented help in time of emergency need. Now I think of it as a number spelling “how totally vulnerable the strongest nation in the world is.”
When safety is no longer possible, what lies beyond the present life? We need to feel that our faith is anchored in truth and not in some fashionable religion. I’m convinced that what we “know” about Jesus is influenced by what we “feel” as well as by the ideas we think. And what we feel is nurtured by coming together often to study together the great matters. And Jesus Christ is the greatest subject we can study together. I am fortified in what I feel by seeing the deep interest of others in the group with which I meet on Wednesday evenings. I am fortified in my faith by being in the presence of those I get to pray with on Wednesday morning. The feelings we have help us to appropriate the big stuff. Our feeling of trust in God grows in community.
So what about Jesus, God the Son, and God the Father?
When Jesus was born and lived out His brief life here, the Bible teaches us “in Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” This means that Jesus was all that God is. God became a human being for a reason: in order to rescue us from a terrible predicament, the predicament of sin—the human blemish that is a fatal flaw. Sin wrecks everything. Sin makes ugly what is beautiful. Sin ruins friendships. It destroys trust between people. Sin pollutes personality. Sin is a principle of corruption that sours the sweetness of life. Sin isn’t fun at all. Sin is total yuk.
The Apostle Paul told us, “He became sin for us who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” This seems impossible, but it is true.
It was obvious to those who saw Him that Jesus was a man. It gradually dawned on those who saw Him that something was going on in Jesus that defied definition. Jesus’ disciple, Phillip, said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus replied, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Phillip and others who cared about these things knew about God the Father only in bits and pieces. Israel in Moses’ day saw the lightning and thunder and dark clouds surrounding Mt. Sinai when God spoke to Israel the Ten Commandments. They saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led them through the wilderness. They knew this meant God was with them. Phillip knew about all of this from his Bible.
In Exodus 24: 10 we even read that Moses, Aaron, and seventy elders of Israel saw the God of Israel.
Later on we read that Moses set up the Tabernacle outside the camp of Israel in the wilderness. The people saw a pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle. People would kneel at the opening of their own tents and look at that distant tent where Moses met with God. We read: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to a friend.” It is a strange and awesome passage. Moses actually says to God, “You have found favor in my sight.” What an odd thing for a man to say to God, “You’re doing OK, God.”
Moses then asked God to go with them. “Is it not in thy going with us, so that we are distinct, I and thy people, from all other people that are upon the face of the earth? God was with them, but they could not identify with God personally.
Four hundred years later the prophet Isaiah told Moses’ descendants who were clutching for survival, “Behold your God will come and save you.” You and I read this and think this means something like “God will take care of you.” But when Jesus lived those thirty or so remarkable years here, there were those who realized that what Isaiah wrote was no remark about God’s general care. “God will come,” meant just that. God would show up.
People in Jesus’ day knew the rest of the passage from Isaiah from which we read the first few words this morning. It went on to say, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb will sing for joy.”
They had seen Jesus literally open the eyes of blind people. They watched as he fixed the ears of someone that didn’t hear. They heard Jesus tell a man crippled from birth, “Get up and walk.” He did every detail of these words from the prophet Isaiah—which the prophet said after saying, “Your God will come and save you.”
How was this Jesus one with the God mentioned in the Old Testament, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?
At the Counsel of Nicea in AD 325 they debated this question because an elder from the church in Alexandria was teaching that Jesus, though divine, that is, God-like in some uncanny way, was only a man. Jesus had a beginning like every other person had a beginning. “There was when He was not,” this man said boldly. His name was Arius.
Arius taught before Jesus was born he did not exist as God the Son.
When we say Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father we’re talking about a relationship unlike the earthly relationship between fathers and sons. Arius taught that the Son was not only subordinate in function—as Jesus told us, but that He came into existence at the will of the Father, just as every child is the result of an act of the parents. Jesus was not the eternal God born to human mother.
Arius didn’t talk about this over coffee in private conversations with friends as some of us might discuss a big theological problem. He taught it boldly, even arrogantly. Arius had an aggressive personality. He is an example of how to think badly, without submission, without listening. He showed us how NOT to discuss great matters. How we listen is as important as how we speak. Attitude matters in how we talk of God.
In the debate that followed in the Council nearly everyone realized there was something fundamentally wrong with Arius’ position. If Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” then what described the Father also described the Son. Since the Father was eternal, the Son too was eternal. Isaiah had given among the names of this Son who would be given, “everlasting father.” “He was in the beginning with God and was God,” as John’s Gospel put it.
This was hard to understand. Some said Jesus was like the Father, not the same. But others remembered Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” This meant that they were not just alike, but “the same.”
In the end when they voted, the only way to settle the problem, the majority realized that to say the Son was only of “like” the Father could be interpreted to mean there was only seeming unity in the Godhead. But Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” This doesn’t mean that the Father is the Son. It means, as Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Of Jesus, the Son, it was said as it was said of God the Father, “He was full of grace and truth.”
So what? you ask. So everything. Because Jesus was actually God, He represented the deepest investment in humanity that our Creator could make. When God became man we see in Jesus God’s idea of humanity, image of God reflects on God. Our idea of humanity is a flawed idea. Our ideas from watching each other allow us a lot of slack that messes things up for us. We copy flawed models. Study Jesus, God made flesh.
I have tried to understand with you today the truth that what God is, Jesus is. If you and I will study Jesus we will come to know God better—the God who loves us, before whom we live every day, and before whom we will all stand one day. It matters then, to ask not only what is God like, but how can I come to be more like His Son, Jesus—so that when we stand before God, as we all will, God the Father will recognize in us the ways of the family of God.
I urge you all to study Jesus together. It will strengthen your feelings that help you appropriate the truth that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. If we study God we will come to know Him, and thus become our God-designed selves. Jesus said, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.” And He gave us the challenge, “Let it be that when people see you, they see me.” We can become God’s message of hope and in the process find hope ourselves.
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we think you for showing us what you are in showing us Jesus. Help us to know Him. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2005
God and the Tsunami/Jesus Christ, Begotten not Created
God and the Tsunami
Jesus Christ, Begotten not Created
Psalm 32 / Psalm 2
Luke 2: 26-27, 30-31, 34-35
January 16th, 2005
The theme of my message this morning hovers around a statement in that very old Christian document, the Nicene Creed. It describes Jesus Christ, the Son of God as “begotten not created.” There is an exclamation point after this phrase. The big issue for those who hammered out the Nicene Creed was, who was this Jesus of Nazareth?
If Jesus was just another man, a great religious teacher, His whole benefit was as a role model or teacher. But nothing was done about the human condition. All the miseries of life are unaffected. We’re no better off than a common oyster, as a great cynical Scots philosopher put it. Life has no significance beyond trying to make it through with as little misery as possible.
But the Gospels made clear Jesus was not just a great teacher and prophet. He was God fully entered into the human predicament as a man.
But how can God become a man? Nobody can say how. But when Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” and “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” and when the events surrounding His birth and death were filled with such mystery and majesty, it’s clear something too marvelous for exact description was going on. It mattered that those who trusted in Jesus know “in whom they believed.” This is why we find in the Nicene Creed this string of strange statements describing Jesus, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, and now, “begotten not created.”
Only the Creator was uncreated. This fit too. Of Jesus the Gospel says, “By Him all things were made that were made.” The New Testament goes on to say of Him, “In Him all things hold together.” This is the stuff God does. Jesus Christ was God entering His creation.
This was the idea behind Mark Twain’s story “The Prince and the Pauper.” Prince Edward Tudor, son of Henry VIII, sees Tom Canty, a poor boy living in squalor in London’s Offal Court in Pudding Lane, being roughed up by palace guards. The prince stops them. To make a long story short, they trade places. The Prince says to Tom Canty, “Doff thy rags, and don these splendors, lad! It is a brief happiness, but will be not less keen for that. We will have it while we may, and change again.” They can pull it off because they look so much alike that nobody can tell the difference from appearances. And so the prince wanders in London’s unfamiliar streets, to the degraded slums of Offal Court on Pudding Lane. And there the noble lad discovers what life is like as the poorest of the poor in his city, while the pauper discovers how out of place he is in the palace.
Many of you know the story, but had you thought of it as an illustration of what happened when Jesus was born? Now the Son of God did not trade places with man on the spot but made it possible for us to be children of God. But on the spot the Son of God came to Offal Court in Pudding Lane, only it was called Bethlehem. Now a great mystery found full expression. The Immortal One became mortal, the Author of Life could see and feel what life for us was like, and what death was like and the fear of death, in fact, the worst kind of death—full of humiliation and pain.
Why? To rescue us from the full human predicament. The human race was reeling in the grips of a natural disaster—a disaster that hit human nature worse than anything happening outside “in nature.” Something was terribly wrong that needed repairing. God should do something about nature. God went to see the disaster personally.
When a natural disaster hits we expect our high government officials to go on location. Very often a president will go to see the flooding to see in person the mud slides, to stand amid the ruins after a series of tornados. It is an encouragement to know he cares.
But a president or a governor can go only so far. The most powerful man in the most powerful country on earth cannot bring back to life one person who drowned in a Tsunami. I wonder if this sense of futility made President Bush pause before responding recently.
The most recent Tsunami killed at least 155,000 people. The earthquake that caused it, exploded with destructive energy comparable to 23,000 atomic bombs the National Geographic reported. A lot of people think this was not only an unfriendly act of God, but also irresponsible, if not criminal.
When someone has been drinking and gets into her car and drives straight towards some motorcycles coming down the other side of the road, maiming two people for life, the courts throw the book at her. Many people would like to throw the book at God now for permitting the monster tsunami that wrecked havoc beyond what we can imagine on December 26th.
The shock of this sudden disaster leaves us numb in more ways than one. If God is good and in control of the universe, why such dereliction of duty? Others think God had nothing to do with it because tsunamis are beyond God’s control, if indeed there is a God.
John Wesley preached a sermon after a similar earthquake and tsunami hit Lisbon, Portugal on November 1st, 1755. Some reports were that 60,000 people died in Lisbon out of a population of 230,000. Ten thousand more died in Morocco from the tsunami it caused. Seven years earlier a monster earthquake and tsunami hit Lima, Peru. Wesley spoke to a London congregation:
“Why should we not now, before London is as Lisbon, Lima, or Catanea, acknowledge the hand of the Almighty, arising to maintain his own cause? Why, we have a general answer always ready, to screen us from any such conviction: “All these things are purely natural and accidental; the result of natural causes.” But there are two objections to this answer: First, it is untrue: Secondly, it is uncomfortable.
First. If by affirming, “All this is purely natural,” you mean, it is not providential, or that God has nothing to do with it, this is not true, that is, supposing the Bible to be true. For supposing this, you may descant ever so long on the natural causes of diseases, winds, thunder, lightning, and yet you are altogether wide of the mark; you prove nothing at all, unless you can prove that God never works in or by natural causes. But this you cannot prove . . . Therefore, allowing there are natural causes of all these, they are still under the direction of the Lord of nature: Nay, what is nature itself, but the art of God, or God's method of acting in the material world? ...
A Second objection to your answer is; It is extremely uncomfortable. For if things really be as you affirm; if all these afflictive incidents entirely depend on the fortuitous concourse and agency of blind, material causes; what hope, what help, what resource is left for the poor sufferers by them?
What defense do you find from thousands of gold and silver? You cannot fly, for you cannot quit the earth, unless you will leave your dear body behind you. And while you are on the earth, you know not where to flee to, neither where to flee from. You may by intelligence, know where the shock was yesterday, but not where it will be to-morrow,-to-day. It comes! The roof trembles! The beams crack! The ground rocks to and fro! Hoarse thunder resounds from the bowels of the earth! And all these are but the beginning of sorrows. Now, what help? What wisdom can prevent, what strength resist, the blow? What money can purchase, I will not say deliverance, but an hour's reprieve? Poor honourable fool, where are now thy titles? Wealthy fool, where is now thy golden god? If any thing can help, it must be prayer. But what wilt thou pray to? Not to the God of heaven; you suppose him to have nothing to do with earthquakes.... But how shall we secure the favour of this great God? How, but by worshipping him in spirit and in truth; by uniformly imitating Him we worship, in all his imitable perfections? Without which the most accurate systems of opinions, all external modes of religion, are idle cobwebs of the brain, dull farce and empty show. Now, God is love: Love God then, and you are a true worshipper. Love mankind, and God is your God, your Father, and your Friend. But see that you deceive not your own soul; for this is not a point of small importance.
I wish I might have been there to hear Wesley preach that sermon. But other matters come to mind having to do with that realm of nature we call “human nature.” What are our expectations of God with regard to human nature?
I find it remarkable that we are accustomed to the millions of people in sub-Sahara Africa whose lives have been devastated by AIDS for many years now. Their situation is made worse by famine, and by governments that oppress them instead of helping them. But who is asking about God’s role in this immense disaster—because we know how AIDS is transmitted?
We respond with questions for a while when disasters on a large scale happen suddenly, or when tragedy hits close to home, but we become numb to on-going disasters that cruelly crush far more people elsewhere, for generations.
Or think of this: Each time I am with someone whose freedom has been taken away by the courts for some misdeed, I am struck by what an awful thing it is to lose freedom. To be locked in a small space for years on end, or for a lifetime—what a hell! Yet I don’t hear people asking, “Why did God let that person commit that crime?”
I don’t hear people asking, “Why has God allowed alcohol to become a menace to society so that even “respectable people” get drunk and get behind the wheel and make their cars into weapons of mass destruction. Instead we sell alcoholic drinks by the case in our grocery stores. People can, if they want, pop a lid and drink on the way home. The very one who arrests or tries in court someone else caught drinking and driving may do it himself. If anyone suggests prohibition, we scorn the idea. Let me be free! Is God to blame for how we use our freedom?
I never hear people asking why God permits various kinds of habits that destroy the body? I have stood by the bed in a hospital more than once watching someone die of suffocation after years of polluting his/her lungs. Nobody asked, “Why did God allow this?” The one dying and I both knew the connection between the cause and the effect of death. Where is God in all that we do in which we insist on the freedom to make choices we know are bad? People seldom challenge God’s responsibility even though far more people die more miserably every year than died suddenly during the recent tsunami.
Or when I follow the course of marriages after they begin before me in front of a church, and discover that the many pairs who pledged their life-long love to each other and then went to expensive receptions, have exchanged that brief fond attitude for life-long selfishness, so now multiple married pairs live in misery, who challenges God for letting this happen? Who asks “How can God allow this?” when people freely choose to act with gross incivility to each other in the home and society? We have freedom of speech – but how tragically we freely use our freedom! We insist on separation of God from real life except as we choose His role.
Who can calculate the damage done by untamed tongues, or by untamed tempers, or so many other foibles we defend as “human nature,” that in their consequences far exceed the damage of a tornado, a flood, or a tsunami.
We so easily ask questions of God related to nature “out there,” but don’t ask questions about God’s control of human nature. Oh, we may ask about God’s responsibility when a great tyrant like Hitler unleashes the Holocaust against all whom he hates, but who asks the question of God when, from person to person, whole populations of people live in painful desperation, the result of their own choices?
We see so selectively the misery of life. We see large or momentary tragedies and lay the blame on God, and fail to see how far larger the scale of damage is from the ordinary miseries we inflict on ourselves and on one another. Is God to blame for these miseries too?
So we pastors preach monotonously, “Submit your life to your loving Creator. Accept Jesus as the Lord of your life. Acknowledge and confess your sins. Accept the forgiveness of your sin and then move on claiming Jesus’ authority over your often foolish will. Let His loving authority govern your impetuous and unreasonable will.” And people may yawn and ask for more interesting thoughts on a Sunday morning, and claim their right to do as they please.
I believe that God has something to do with natural disasters that happen, but I have no means to know what or why. Did God send the tsunami that hit Indonesia and countries all around the Indian Ocean? I believe God is the Lord of creation. Perhaps he sent this tsunami for a purpose. Why there? Why not elsewhere? If God did, is it our place to challenge the Almighty God’s morality, particularly when all the damage of that tsunami was only to the body? Jesus said to His followers, “Don’t fear the one who can kill the body, fear the one who can do in your soul.”
God is merciful. I don’t know, neither can anyone, how merciful God has cared for the invisible souls of all those who suffered death and destruction this past month. All we can see is what took place outwardly.
I believe you and I are to be reminded how altogether fragile is physical life so that we respond wisely. If in the death of 155,000 people, and in the destruction of the means of life for millions more, more multiplied millions of those who remain find their lives re-ordered in wisdom, we might even say the sacrifice was worth it.
After all, we send thousands of young soldiers, in the flower of their youth to the battlefield to defend the freedom of millions with their bodies. In our world wars all nations cruelly sacrificed millions of their young people for the sake of the freedom of older and younger who stayed at home. For sake of freedom soldiers obey the order of their superior.
If we waste our thought on impossible-to-answer questions accusing God, while clinging to the imprudence of selfish living, we show our hypocrisy and waste much of the good that might come of this recent tragedy.
In the New Testament we read, “It is appointed unto people once to die and after this the judgment.” We know we will die, everyone of us. For some it will happen sooner, for others, later. When death approaches we realize that all of life has been a preparation for this moment.
I can offer you no better wisdom than to freely give your life to God, who created you, who cares for you at the deepest part of you. Jesus was God become a human being to take the rap for my sin and yours, and then to give us life better than we can dream of. But you and I must accept this gift of life, and then turn over our lives to the loving authority of Jesus to receive the benefit.
You and I must study Jesus to know how he governs us, because Jesus will never violate the freedom we claim. I invite you to begin this life, if you have not, by freely giving your life to Jesus. And if you have begun, but have lost sight of what it is to want to follow Jesus, begin again and keep on. Let those who have died and suffered in the tsunami not suffer in vain. Wake to the serious meaning of life.
Let us pray: O Lord, we pray for those who still suffer in the lands hit by the tsunami. We pray for that greater multitude that suffer from natural disaster within. Help us, O God, to accept your relief, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette,