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March 30, 2003
A Paralytic’s Dilemma
A Paralytic’s Dilemma
Psalter 103: 1-14 / Isaiah 40: 21-31
Luke 5: 17-26
March 30th, 2003
One day, long ago, there was great excitement in the little town of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had come. Jesus who could heal diseases was teaching in a house in one of the neighborhoods.
In those days blind people, and people with leprosy, and people with cancer or diphtheria rarely had any hope of getting well. You got sick, and if it was one of the life-taking sicknesses, you died. If you were a leper, you wasted away in loneliness. If you were paralyzed, hopefully you had people who could do everything for you—for the rest of your life. No sophisticated medical treatment was available then in every town as we have it today. It is no wonder that we so often read in the Gospels that people who were sick or maimed called out to Jesus as He walked by, “Have mercy on me.” Because sickness then was usually the end of the game.
So we read about this fellow in Capernaum who was paralyzed—maybe like Christopher Reeves or Joni Erickson, only we assume he could breathe on his own. Caring for a paralyzed person is a very difficult task. It took several people to care for him.
These care-giver friends brought the paralyzed man to Jesus on a stretcher, only to find they couldn’t get to him because the house where he was teaching was packed solid—wall to wall people. Luke tells us that among the people in the house were Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of the Galilee, Judea, and even Jerusalem. No wonder the house was so full.
Some of these people were there eager to hear Jesus teach. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were there to check him out. I wonder if that made Jesus as nervous as it does me, to think he was being checked out. The one who needed him the most couldn’t even get into the house.
We get an inkling just how desperate this man’s friends were to get the paralytic to Jesus as Luke tells us they went up on the roof and took the tiles off so they could lower him by ropes down in front of Jesus. Debris scattered everywhere over clothes and into their eyes, and then down comes this stretcher with a man lying on it.
Jesus saw more than this needy man on the stretcher before Him. He looked up and saw the four friends who were on the other end of the ropes lowering the stretcher. Luke tells us, “When he saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus understood the dimensions of what was happening.
The room got very quiet. Then Jesus must have heard whispers in the back, as His critics finally heard something they could pounce on. “What kind of blasphemy is this? Who can forgive sins except God?” And the paralytic and his four friends must have had their hearts sink. “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner like everyone else. But please, it was my paralysis I hoped you might do something about!”
I’m reading this into the story, but isn’t this how we think? If I were to ask you what you need most, I wonder how many of you would say you need your sins forgiven? Wouldn’t you say what you need most has something to do with your life-situation, your wellbeing, or your family’s well-being. You would want Jesus to fix your body, or your finances, or your job, or your marriage, or your children’s problems. Because you feel the weight of these problems acutely every day. You’ve somehow gotten used to being a sinner. You know it, and know that you have lots of company in this.
I suspect this is how it must have been for this paralytic and his friends. What a disappointment, “Your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus went on to say, “Take up your bed and walk,” which meant the man was healed. But that was the easy part, and not the most important. The man’s biggest need was forgiveness of sin. So is ours. So is yours and mine.
When the Gospel writers tell us this story I think they were thinking about Psalm 103 as they saw what Jesus did. The great 103rd Psalm, in one of its most beloved lines says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” The Lord forgives first, and heals second. Forgiveness lasts forever. Healing lasts until you get sick next, and eventually we all die.
As pious Jews repeated this psalm generation after generation they would no doubt nod piously. “It is so, because it is written so. But how is it so? Iniquity means sin. How does the Lord forgive all my iniquity? I must atone for every sin with a sacrifice.”
Sometimes the promise is made that God will forgive. Moses and others plead with God to forgive the sin of Israel, but we read that God actually forgave only three times. David says in the 32nd psalm, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.” But forgiveness seemed more a hope, a longing, in ancient times than a reality.
When Jesus told the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” all of this must have rushed to the minds of the pious Jews gathered round. “Who can forgive sins but God? And when will He do it? We have to keep offering sacrifices to atone for our sins. The priests sacrifice those animals we bring, but they never tell us afterward, “your sins are forgiven.” Sacrificing animals was taking out on them the consequences of our sin. It was a kind of revenge; they suffered for us. Where is forgiveness?”
So when Jesus told this man his sins were forgiven it must have been shocking. Who can forgive sins but God? Indeed! We Christians read this and think, “Yes, that’s right. And Jesus was God made flesh. That’s why he could forgive.” But even we, I think, little realize what we are saying. Because you and I do not really understand forgiveness.
Forgiveness is one of the largely unclaimed gifts of God in Christ because we don’t understand it. We say, “I forgive you,” but often cannot forget the offense. Thus we pray the Lord’s Prayer uneasily, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We hope God does better than that.
We live in our homes and in our neighborhoods and churches with many unforgotten offenses troubling us. The tensions that linger among us because of past offenses we cannot forget do a number on the “ties that bind our hearts in Christian love,” about which we delight to sing. You and I do not forgiven ourselves. I still wince when I remember some things I did as a boy.
History brims with remembered offenses that pit nation against nation, ethnic group against ethnic group. Serbs and Albanian Muslims erupted in violence not long ago, because they remembered past offenses. Hindus and Muslims in India erupt in bloody recriminations, as they harbor old grudges. Right now our land is engaged in a war because we remember offenses done to us in the past. Will we ever forget 9/11? It is unpatriotic not to remember 9/11! We are big on remembering and small on forgiving. Indeed, am I not right that forgiveness is considered imprudent. “Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me.”
But we read about God, “He forgives all your iniquity.” If we really saw the panorama of our lives clearly, we’d see that what is most needful is forgiveness. Indeed, there would be fewer sicknesses to heal if our hearts were healed of bitterness, of remembered offenses. What tensions tear at our peace of mind that are due to knowing a grudge is held against us, or because we are clinging to the memory of an offense!
How we think affects our bodies. When a sudden fear overcomes you, your blood vessels contract and can cause a heart attack. Despair can make you feel nauseated. You hear bad news and you may find yourself throwing up. Not being able to give and receive forgiveness is the greatest scourge of the human family. It is like a wound that refuses to heal.
But how is it possible to forgive? Who can forgive sins but God alone? The Pharisees meant this question as an accusation of blasphemy. But it was a fair question to ask for other reasons. How is forgiveness possible?
When we read the story of God’s chosen people, Israel, after they became a nation, the most important moment came when God provided a way to be with them very specifically. We say that God is everywhere present, but He was specifically with Israel. God told Israel to build a Tabernacle, a very elaborate tent, and at the heart of this tent was a room in which they put the Ark of the Covenant. God, the Creator of heaven and earth, for whom Planet Earth was a footstool , occupied the little space between the outstretched wings of the Cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. The very idea of this tiny spot being inhabited by God is hard to imagine. But that’s what God told Israel he would do. He was present with them very specifically.
Thus, when sacrifices were offered in the courtyard outside the Tabernacle, God was near to receive these acts of contrition. Once a year, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and put some blood on top of the Ark of the Covenant where God rested to atone for the sins of Israel as a whole. It was a very scary moment.
When you stop to think about it, it must have been odd for Israel to contemplate God being so reduced as to be in that one place. They believed there was one God, and God inhabited eternity, and was not to be reduced to a graven image. But God rested on top of the Ark of the Covenant. How could this be? And why? How it could be, I don’t know. But why, I think is that God wanted to make clear His presence in a way they could understand. He was in their Tabernacle at the heart of their community. But God never took part in their daily life. God was hidden by the walls of the Holy of Holies, in which only the High Priest came once a year.
The Gospel of John said of Jesus, that He was the Word made flesh, and He “tabernacled among us.” That is, when the Word of God became man, it was God entering a human being the way God entered the ancient Tabernacle and rested between the wings of the Cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant. But there was one great difference. Now God entered the human experience so that He could understand what it was like to be a human being experientially.
The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that “We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Because Jesus was tested in every respect as we are tested, He understands.
A dear friend of mine said to me something the other evening in a different context which illumined for me what Hebrews is telling us about Jesus. “The one who understands everything can forgive everything.” Jesus can forgive us everything because He understands everything about us. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Who can forgive except the one who understands everything?! When God became a man, He learned by experience what our life is like. He understands everything about us and so He can forgive us.
Sometimes you and I understand what made someone do something that offended us, and because we understand, we can forgive them. We may say, “I understand,” which means, “I forgive you.” If you know someone very well, about their childhood, their physical defects, the hardships that have molded them, you can see why they said something, or did something, or a personality quirk. And so you can forgive them. Thus we sing in the song attributed to St. Francis, “Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand.”
Sometimes you may see a critical, unforgiving spirit in someone who holds animosity toward you and you think, “If they understood; if they saw the whole picture, they wouldn’t think this way about me.” We have sayings like, “When you have walked in my moccasins three miles, you’ll understand.” Or, “If I were in your shoes.” Even the courts allow a jury to hear “extenuating circumstances,” that is, to contemplate what made an accused person do what she did.
No doubt the sin nature we inherited is explanation for the fact that we all sin, but very often the particular offenses we commit have a story behind them. A child who is abused develops a personality and character influenced by that abuse. A child who is reared with harsh, critical parents, shows the influence of that harsh up-bringing the rest of his life. Very often our specific offenses are due to sad moments that happened when we were young.
But when we are offended, we seldom understand the scope of the person’s life who has offended us. All we see is the thing they did. All we hear is the word they said. And so, even though we know that we act and think as we do because we were shaped by our experiences, seldom do we extend the same understanding to others who offend us.
But “Jesus knows our every weakness,” as we sing in “What a friend we have in Jesus.” “He knows everything about me, even knows my name. When I make mistakes he loves me still,” we teach our children to sing in VBS. Jesus understand all, so He can forgive all. This is the whole point of the Incarnation, that God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus understands everything, so He forgives everything.”
When the paralytic lay before Jesus, and Jesus looked up and saw the four compassionate friends, He understood everything. And since He understood everything, not only about the man’s paralysis, but about his friends compassion, and all that prompted their compassion, He first gave that most needful gift of forgiveness. He first lifted from them whatever weight there might have been on their consciences. And they sensed it, I imagine. I wonder what connection there might have been between the forgiveness and the man’s physical healing.
Jesus understands your every weakness, and that’s how He can forgive you everything. You don’t need to linger under the weight of guilt because Jesus understands why you did what you did. This doesn’t make it right. It makes it understandable. Jesus already paid the penalty for your sin and mine. And because He understands our every weakness, He forgives us everything.
Two matters follow from this. First, accept your forgiveness. Second, put yourself in Jesus place for the sake of the one whom you are now condemning. She did it for reasons just the same as those that make you say and do things that hurt, or that are wrong. You understand why you offend—because of this or that, that happened when you were growing up. The same thing happens for others. So, forgive them as you want to be understood. How wonderful to know we are un-condemned before God because Jesus understands. How wonderful the community in which we extend to others the benefit of what we have received, God’s understanding and forgiveness.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for Jesus who knows everything about us and loves us still. Amen.
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2003
The Compassion and Privacy of Jesus
The Compassion and Privacy of Jesus
Psalm 14 / Leviticus 13: 45-52
Luke 5: 12-16
March 23rd, 2003
I have been asked by a few people this week if I was going to preach about the war. Perhaps you’ll be relieved and glad to know that today I want to talk about Jesus.
I want to expose as clearly as I can the compassion of Jesus, and His reserve. Compassion and reserve were two aspects of His life that people were grateful for then, that the world needs Christians to mimic now. Compassion and reserve figured so prominently in Jesus’ life. Time and again he cared for someone, then backed away from the limelight. “Say nothing about what I did for you.”
This seems at odds with Jesus’ command to His disciples, “Go and preach the Gospel.” But the Gospel they preached extended Jesus’ compassion and reserve. The Gospel was not to be a “sounding gong, a clanging cymbal,” grating on the ears of a suffering world, but a winsome, welcome word of relief offered with the eloquence of reserve.
Christianity has become very “in your face,” when it was intended most to be “in your heart.” It is to spread “from faith to faith,” from heart to heart. You know what your heart responds to. How impressed you and I are when we see Jesus’ ways in someone!
Today let us see how Luke describes Jesus’ compassion and reserve as He encountered a man with leprosy.
As you can tell from the passage in Leviticus that Chris read, leprosy was a terrible disease, common and dreaded in ancient times. Now called Hanson’s Disease, after a 19th century physician who discovered the range of conditions lumped under the name of leprosy. It was one of the greatest scourges of the ancient world. By the 7th century BC it had spread throughout the world. It was a mystery disease, dreaded and contagious. No wonder so much is said in the Bible about leprosy.
One of the principal duties of the Temple priests in King David’s day, in the 10th century BC, and in Jesus’ day was to diagnose leprosy. Here was sacred medicine at its most tragic. The priests had to make sure lepers were quarantined so as not to infect other people—even if the ones who stood before them were wife, father, son, daughter, or close friend.
In some ways leprosy then was as AIDS is now. In the ancient world it was the common view that people who suffered from any disease or deformity deserved what they got. Do you remember the disciples once asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”
In our day AIDS has had the stigma of deserving bexcause it can be transmitted by sexual contact, and rages in the homosexual community. To be diagnosed with leprosy was to be given a sentence of ostracism, as with modern people with AIDS. Even Ryan White, not a homosexual, who caught the HIV virus from a blood transfusion, found it hard to find a school that would accept him. People were afraid he would spread his disease by touching him, or touching anything he touched, or even by breathing in the vicinity where he was.
The lepers’ problem was even worse. Lepers were automatically banished, no questions asked. No special clinics for lepers. You remember the scenes in the movie “Ben Hur,” where Judea Ben Hur’s mother and sister were condemned to live in the garbage dump of Jerusalem because they were lepers. It didn’t matter that they were of noble birth. A leper was duty bound to call out “Unclean! Unclean!” if people came near.
Luke introduces us to this moment in Jesus’ life, “once, when Jesus was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy.” It was like saying, “Once when Margaret went to the grocery store.” It was a daily occurrence. This man was covered with the disease—not just hands, or feet that could be hidden. It was impossible to hide his leprosy. It looked gross. It smelled gross. He was an outcast.
A consequence of being an outcast was that many a leper lost all dignity. Lepers were identified by their disease—celebrities of disdain. It is painful and off-putting to confront a person who has lost all dignity, and grovels before you. There is an element of loathing many ordinary people feel toward people who have lost all pride. How unattractive it is to have hope crushed.
Luke tells us that on this day the leper begged Jesus, his face bowed to the ground, with an imploring voice, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” Picture that in your mind’s eye—his face to the dirt as he spoke. When he said, “If you choose,” he dared to propose that Jesus was responsible to help him.
One other time the Gospels tell us a desperate father said something like this to Jesus. He said to Jesus, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” This father challenged Jesus’ power, a power he had heard so much about. His son was demon-possessed and was throwing himself into the fire.
It’s an odd feeling when I get a phone call or a letter asking for help from someone who knows I have the ability to help—if I will, if I choose. The moral ball is in my end of the court. The leper hit the ball into Jesus’ end of the court. “If you choose,” when he knew Jesus ability was famous. He said, face in the dirt.
Good people respond in a number of ways when they are faced with this kind of challenge. Jesus might have said, “It’s not my fault you are a leper.” And that was true. Or, “Don’t try to send me on a guilt trip, as if I owe it to you to help you.” Jesus could have passed by with a pious, “There but for the grace of God go I,” relieved that it was the other guy and not him that was the leper. He could have said, “If I help him, then everyone with leprosy will start bugging me.” And that was true. Aren’t these ways that we respond to needy people whose need confronts us too closely for comfort?
But Luke, the beloved physician, tells us that Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him.” Luke knew the healing power of a doctor’s touch. He tells us that Jesus, the great Physician, reached out, touched him and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Jesus chose to help the least elegant of the needy. How personal. How direct. This was essential to the Gospel. This is essential to the Gospel.
Isaiah wrote of Jesus, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a deer, and the tongue of the deaf shall sing.” It was unthinkable, I suppose, that Isaiah should have included lepers in his prophecy. This was too much to expect even of the Messiah.
How dignifying that Jesus stretched out His hand to lepers, as He would reach out His hand to shake the hand of a priest at the Temple, or a Roman centurion, or a personal friend. We customarily touch people who are attractive to us. We avoid touching those who are unattractive to us. Jesus touched lepers, the neediest of the needy, who had lost all dignity. They noticed this. They felt His compassion. There was more than physical healing in Jesus’ touch. He gave lepers back their dignity as other people saw Him touch them.
How important it is for us who want to follow Jesus to treat people, face to face, with compassion, to extend ourselves to them, to give them dignity. As Jesus said, “I choose to help you,” the needy need to hear us say and know it is sincere, “I choose to help you.” And then to feel our touch that raises them from indignity to personhood. This was essential, and still is essential, to proclaiming the Gospel.
It occurred to me that in these days when on either side of the great issues that separate us, whether they be theological divisions in Christendom, religious divisions—Muslim vs Christian, divisions in attitude toward moral issues, divisions over the war, that people on either side are often so outraged that they treat the other like moral lepers. Religious people easily consider it their moral duty, a matter of principle, to loathe those with whom they differ. This attitude has no support from Jesus.
I wonder if you see, as I do, that our present impasse, when the nation is divided, and Christians are divided, when Muslims feel despised by Christians, that you and I must extend our hand and touch the one we may be tempted to loathe. “If you choose,” the leper said to Jesus. He said, “I do choose.” It will change you and me if we will so choose, and that’s at least half the problem today.
What do you choose? What are you able to do, because you choose, because you have recognized Jesus’ compassion?
Second, and last, I call your attention to Jesus’ final remark: He told the leper to tell no one what He had done. Jesus withdrew to a deserted place to pray.
Jesus said this so often to those He healed that we wonder why. Some scholars have come up with the term “the messianic secret.” Jesus thought it important to hide the fact that He was the Messiah. It wasn’t yet time for this to be known.
It seems odd that Jesus should tell His disciples to go into all the world and preach the Gospel when He told nearly everyone He touched to say nothing about it. What’s going on?
I remind you that even though Jesus told people to say nothing about it, they naturally told anyone who would listen. Part of the fascination of Jesus was not only His ability to heal, but His reserve. He didn’t use His healing power as a means to gather fame and a following. He drew attention to Himself by not calling attention to Himself. His fame radiated from what He was and did, not from how He proclaimed Himself.
Back in the 18th century a new wrinkle came into American Christianity. John Wesley had become well known in England by word of mouth as common people spread the word about his preaching in the fields. People learned that they didn’t have to go into the churches to hear the Gospel. The Church of England in those days was stuffy, an enclave of the upper classes. The word got around that they could hear the Gospel out in the fields. Wesley spawned a great revival of the faith of Jesus among the common people.
But George Whitefield, Wesley’s friend, went one step farther. When he came to this country he sent out advance teams to let it be known he was coming. He became, as one of Purdue’s fine historians put it, “a peddler of divinity.” And thus Whitefield not only called attention to the Gospel, but he called attention to himself as a preacher of the Gospel.
In one way we might say that George Whitefield made wise use of the media available to him. But in another way he introduced something that was very different from Jesus’ way. In fact, it was the very opposite of Jesus’ way. The reserve that accentuated the inner beauty of Jesus was displaced by publicity. The idea caught on. And now big-time and small-time preachers seek to get on TV. The medium and the message have become blurred. When many people think of the Christian Gospel they have flash before them the image of a preacher. The wisdom of John the Baptist has been largely lost. “He must increase but I must decrease.”
I wonder if part of the reason why the Church now influences society so meagerly is that we have forgotten the reserve of Jesus. We have forgotten the power of under-statement.
My heart’s longing, that I lay before you this morning, is to see Christians retreat from the noisy, brassy, publicity-conscious ways the Church has adopted, to a quiet exhibit of the compassion and reserve of Jesus. Eliminate the Jesus-T-shirts, the bumper stickers, and all of that. Let them know of Jesus by the genuine display of the ways of Jesus. Speak of Jesus to those who ask you because they have seen the power of your compassion. It will be clear whether you are proclaiming how religious you are, or whether you are just telling another beggar where you have found bread.
The present state of controversy in our land, when anti-war protestors and pro-war protestors are shouting their loathing of the other, and inter-religious conflict is rising to a crescendo, presents you and me with a rare opportunity. You and I who do not all agree on war, and who live in an increasingly pluralistic religious society, can treat others not as lepers to be despised, but as objects of Jesus’ compassion. You are the principal vehicle Jesus has now. Stretch out your hand and touch him. Say, “I do choose.”
And then, having given all the compassion you have, that rescues the leper from his plight, retreat to a deserted place to pray. Pray in your closet, not by the flag pole.
If this were the pattern of our practice of the faith of Jesus, who could resist asking about this Jesus? And then we could say: “This is what Jesus did for me––and that is very persuasive. How different and winsome would seem the faith that we profess. Think on these things.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we thank You for Jesus, for His compassion, and for His reserve. Help us to follow Him. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2003
On Fishing in the Shallows
On Fishing in the Shallows
Psalm 13 / Exodus 18: 13-24
Luke 5: 1-11
March 16th, 2003
When Jesus began His work in our troubled world, He was in a situation somewhat like Moses’ many years before. Moses had the task of leading Israel from a life of bondage in Egypt to a life of freedom in the “Promised Land.” The people of Israel were just like people today, sometimes wonderful and sometimes impossible. He gave them the Ten Commandments and the rest of God’s laws. This was a high responsibility. But he had to settle disputes that came up. This was the toughest job. So, as Hannis just read for us, Moses’ father-in-law told him to select good and wise men to help him. It would be from this cadre of helpers that the future leadership of Israel would come.
Well, Jesus faced a similar task in leading the new Israel to a new life of freedom. The blessing to all nations that God promised to Abraham was about to burst out of the narrow boundaries of one nation, Israel, and start to reach out to the whole world. If Moses found leading one small nation difficult, how much more difficult Jesus’ task was that would embrace the whole world. Jesus would lead by an unseen presence, using these men and their successors to shepherd His people along in this new, world-embracing venture.
So early in His ministry Jesus started to choose the ones to train for the task of extending God’s blessing to Abraham to the whole world. What kind of people should He choose? Surely Jesus should choose the finest leadership possible.
The passage we just read from the Gospel of Luke shows us Jesus choosing the finest leadership possible. Jesus’ choice astounds us.
Jesus came on three very discouraged fishermen, the ideal candidates to lead a world-changing task. They had just spent a whole night toiling, and caught nothing. Toiling is not just going through the motions, but diligently doing everything they knew to do. Our word “copious” comes from the word Luke used here. These were experienced fishermen. They spent the night practicing all the tricks they’d learned from their dads and uncles—fishing lore passed down from generations. Still they had no fish to show for their efforts. I wonder if they had spent only one night without success, or was this the most recent of several unsuccessful nights?
They were so discouraged that when morning came, they pulled the boats up on the shore, and too tired to mend their nets—a continual task, they were washing them. Perhaps this means pulling out seaweed or debris. Fishermen would often have to do this or to mend their nets, but now Luke tells us they were washing them. It may have been a superstitious act to rid them of the fault of not catching fish. It was like casting a good hex, purifying them of the fault that kept them from catching fish. The word for “mend” Luke uses can mean this.
Peter, James, and John, who would later be the pillars of the Church, were three very discouraged fishermen when Jesus chose them. As I pondered this story, a number of the details faded and two revealing facts seemed to arise. Are we to notice that when they threw their nets on the other side of the boat at Jesus’ command, they were successful? Are we to notice that Jesus needed one of their boats from which to teach the people on shore—and Peter willingly let Jesus use his boat? I suppose two other sermons could address these questions. A number of early Church fathers saw a lot of symbolism in this story.
But today I see here first that Jesus chose leaders we probably would not have chosen for the greatest success story in the history of the world. Second, a low point in the lives of these men was the beginning of their greatest usefulness. Let’s think about these two facts that are pertinent to you and me.
When we look at how Jesus chose the twelve men we call Apostles, we can’t help but notice the difference between our Lord’s and our way of choosing leaders for any cause. We look for signs of distinction, evidence of success already. We read of Jesus as a lad that “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” That’s how we want it, rising from success to success. Let our leaders be the cream of the crop.
But look at how Jesus chose the disciples. Luke, “the beloved physician” who seemed to see the details in the story more than the other Gospel writers, informs us that not only did Jesus choose the Twelve from the uneducated sector of His country—Galilean fishermen, but also He chose them at the bottom of their success curve.
The Apostle Paul would later write to his early converts, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters, not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” It’s not that Jesus valued incompetence—there’s nothing of this here, but that in the project of changing the human heart, He needed to find teachable people. Self-confident, successful people are not always the most teachable.
Peter, James, and John had reached bottom, but not because they were lazy. When Luke tells us they had toiled all night, he chose a word letting us know they really tried. These fellows tried very hard—but were catching no fish. Jesus didn’t choose listless people. Perhaps what Jesus was looking for was consistent effort despite discouragement, so that when he found fishermen who kept on trying all night, though they had no success, He found the kind of men who could lead the Church in discouraging times.
When you and I have really tried and not succeeded, it is very different from not trying at all. To try and not succeed may be the best preparation of all for some future task. I spoke with a young man this week who is an excellent student, in his senior year, who didn’t get in to any of the graduate schools he applied to. I thought he would get into them all. After four years of earning a high GPA, and doing very well on his Graduate Record Exam, no welcoming letter from graduate schools where he knew he would do well. I told him of this story in Luke where we see Jesus gathering the cadre of men who would carry the Gospel to the world.
I wonder if Jesus found in these three people just what He was looking for because their hearts were really pliable. Trying without success humbled them. They were contrite, washing their nets because they thought they might have done something wrong that needed cleansing. This might appear a superstitious idea. But, after all, we too are sometimes secretly superstitious when things are going wrong. It’s a common human quirk.
The Lord told Paul, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” So Paul wrote, “I am content with weaknesses . . . for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” No doubt Paul would have been a roaring success in the line of work in which he’d become a leader when he met Jesus. Paul was a rising star in Jewish leadership, a student of Gamaliel, the most esteemed Rabbi is Israel. Had he stayed that course we would no doubt be reading his name in the Mishnah, the book recording Jewish oral tradition. His keen intellect and strong work ethic fitted him for success. But God had to knock him down many notches to find him of use.
Am I talking about anyone here? You’ve been trying hard, but it’s been an up-hill battle all the way, and you aren’t a roaring success? Maybe the years are rolling along, and you’re wondering what’s up. You may be a candidate for something more that God has in mind.
The second fact we see here is that a low point in the lives of these men was the beginning of their greatest usefulness. We are living in a time when people quite easily think they’ve reached the bottom. The ranks of the unemployed are well populated with hard-working people. Events seemingly ahead of us do not offer great promise for economic recovery. But it’s not just that. Even our successes can point toward perilous consequences.
I read about the remarkable successes Purdue and other great institutions are having in advancing the frontiers of science, and I wonder how all of this advanced knowledge is being applied. It is very discouraging to learn of the advanced systems of destruction the nations of the world have developed with all their advanced learning. Nanotechnology is opening up smaller and smaller realms of sophisticated possibilities. Now what are we doing with our cleverness? Is life now better all over the world, spiraling into realms of glory? I put side by side the stories of our technological advances and the soaring rates of starvation in Africa and AIDS epidemics there and far beyond, and I wonder, “So what?” We can now take our pick of ways to destroy the enemy. Nuclear weapons, biological agents, or simply high explosives can be delivered by bombs or guided missiles wherever we want. While the spectacular advances in science impress me, I wonder, to what end?
Then I observe with great discouragement the effects of evangelism. Jesus told us to make disciples of all people. In response to this, there were the great missions efforts that began in the 19th century—William Carey, Henry Martyn, and Reginald Heber in India, Adoniram Judson in Burma and China, and David Livingston in Africa. My parents went to India in a second wave of student involvement in missions. The names of these missionaries from the 19th century were table talk in my home as a boy. What fruit do we see of these labors?
Open the pages of Christianity Today, the most widely read Christian magazine, and you see page after page of seminary advertisements of schools that arose in the 20th century. We have mega-churches galore in every city and many smaller towns. Bible study groups meet all over in homes and businesses. To what end? I look for evidences of the Kingdom of God and find some, but there are many aspects of the Church’s story today that make us all grieve. I think of other tendencies that might have taken over Jesus’ followers during the past two thousand years.
Why doesn’t the Church follow Jesus’ example with the Samaritan woman and the Roman centurion in the way we respond to people of other faiths? How gracious Jesus was to these two who did not share His religion. Why isn’t the Church conspicuously this way toward Muslims?
Why hasn’t Jesus’ attitude toward sinners influenced our system of justice? Why, under the influence of Christians, do not those who make and enforce our laws delight in rescuing the perishing, pulling them out of the miserable bogs of defeated living rather than tossing them into jails for painfully long sentences, crushing hope, destroying their lives along with their families?
Why isn’t the spread of the Gospel, the Good News of eternal life, of freedom from sin and heaven to come producing better effects? Why isn’t there such a radiant light beaming onto the world from all these Christians so that the world nudges steadily toward a fulfillment of the project Jesus began at such cost? Where is the Kingdom of God in all this? It sometimes seems like many good Christians are toiling all night at fishing without any success.
But then this week I pondered this story that shows us three fishermen at a very low moment in life, when they felt like total failures. And it was just then that Jesus found them where he wanted them. They were finally useable for a work much more important than catching fish. Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.”
I remember what one of America’s most beloved pastors of the 19th century wrote of his own experience. After a brilliant academic career as an undergraduate at Harvard, Phillips Brooks failed utterly as a schoolteacher. He simply couldn’t handle the discipline problems. He was powerless to teach when his students didn’t want to learn. He felt useless, a total failure. What was the point of all his student successes when he couldn’t make it in the real world? Largely in discouragement he went to the seminary in his hometown. There he felt inferior in piety to his fellow students. They could preach with great enthusiasm, and were forever leading Gospel teams and holding prayer meetings. He felt a misfit there.
God took this discouraged, hard-working young man and made of him a preacher whose influence was not only strong in his day, but continues today. Phillips Brooks is one of the two most influential people on my own ministry. But he had no inkling of any such usefulness when he had reached life’s shallows. Without hitting bottom would he ever have given the world so much?
It’s as though there is some law of the universe at work here. It is out of failure that God finds the potential for success. It is from the ranks of those who have bottomed-out that God finds pliable hearts that He can turn to best account.
Of course, this does not mean that those who have tried all their lives and found success are useless in God’s hands. But I wonder how many of you who have succeeded very well look back and recognize that your steps forward came after you thought you had fallen. When we come to the end of our lives and look back to see where we have really accomplished something, will we find that it was in the area of our career successes? Or may we discover that it was in the areas of our failures that something seemed to rise up that we are really glad for?
Two people who credit me as the one who led them to faith in Jesus Christ found this influence that turned their lives around in a time I consider among my most difficult in the pastoral ministry. I had no idea at the time I was doing anything of use. Perhaps the greatest good must come when we’re not aware of it because we become so easily proud. When we get proud of ourselves, everything that is good evaporates. God needs really humble people to use for His greatest success stories.
Perhaps you see that your own life has reached a very shallow time. Much that you’ve tried seems to have failed. You’ve been anything but lazy, but what do you have to show for it? You find little comfort in my proposing that this is where God can find you most useable. Yeah! Easy for me to say.
But you cannot deny that when Jesus chose the three men who would later be called the pillars of the Church in Jerusalem, He chose three very discouraged fishermen. And when God chose a man to lead Israel to the Promised Land, He chose Moses, a man with a speech impediment, an orphan not only from his family, but from his people too. He was a convict, a murderer who fled for his life. And it was during a desert experience, while herding the sheep of his father-in-law that God tapped him for arguably the most important leadership any man in history has exercised.
Paul heard it clearly. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Now, don’t give up. Present yourself to God, taking off the limits you have set already. You say, “I’ll do this, but not that.” But God has in mind “that,” rather than “this.”
Perhaps we are in a situation today that is a harbinger of something God is about to do, better than we can ask or think. We see war looming ahead, but God holds something else in store, better than we know to ask. It is good to leave to God what only He can do, and to accept the fact that He will use not necessarily what we find our finest gifts, our strengths, but perhaps best of all, our weaknesses. Keep on trusting. Keep on hoping. Faith, not sight, is our guide. Faith trusts God, and the greater your helplessness the greater the faith possible. Keep on being available for that task that you can’t imagine, that God may need your present state of heart and life as the perfect condition to find you useable.
Let us pray: O Lord, we bless You for the wisdom by which You created this world, and by which You order our lives. We trust You, and ask to be found useful. Take our discouragement and forge whatever You will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2003
Jesus’ Source of Endurance
Jesus’ Source of Endurance
Psalm 11 / I Kings 19: 9b-18
Luke 4: 42-44
March 9th, 2003
Luke tells us that after a remarkably difficult time in His hometown and then a better reception in Capernaum, Jesus departed and went into a deserted place. We think we know what Jesus did there. He prayed alone. Elsewhere in the Gospels we read that Jesus got up a great while before day and went out alone to pray. It was from times like this that Jesus drew His strength to endure. Even though Jesus was God made flesh, He didn’t leave to chance the nourishment of His life. Many of us would confess, we need strength to endure. We need regularity in nurturing our faith as we need regularity in nourishing our bodies. These days we need more inward nurture than food.
Jesus continued a well rehearsed pattern of life before God. Jesus prayed the Psalms. We hear Him praying Psalm 22 as He hung from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” It is a psalm that ends with triumph, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.” The Gospels don’t tell us so, but I wonder if Jesus prayed that whole psalm from the cross, and not just its opening lines.
Every Wednesday morning I begin our time of prayer together with the words of Psalm 51, “Open thou our lips,” and from round the circle I hear the reply, “And our mouths shall show forth Thy praise.” I continue with the words of the 5th Psalm, “In the morning you will hear our voice, O Lord, in the morning we will direct our prayer to you and eagerly watch.”
Psalm 51 suggests that the first words on the tongue in the morning will be words of praise to God. Every morning for 4,000 years, devout Jews and their forebears began the day, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” The 5th Psalm echoes this theme. “In the morning we direct our prayer to You, O God.” Elsewhere in the psalms the same theme pops up. In Psalm 88: 13, the Temple musicians pray: “I cry out to you, O Lord, in the morning my prayer comes before you.”
I began worship today praying Psalm 63 that I put to memory many years ago.
When Jesus went alone to pray in the morning, He carried on a devotional exercise all his devout forbears had practiced. To begin the day with God draws on the nurture God offers. Don’t write yourself off because you are a night owl. We all need to begin our day with God.
A beloved pastor told his congregation more than sixty years ago: “For a long generation a revolt has been in progress against old, familiar techniques of Christian living, such as private prayer, public worship, directed meditation, and family devotions.” I believe an honest pastor would echo this remark in our day.
I wonder if in a time of international crisis such as this, when war is on everyone’s mind, if we may not see a return to the means of grace God has used from ancient times to nourish His people. Might we demonstrate here that God is able to turn evil to our good, and you find this truth demonstrated in your own life?
September 11th, 2001 was a Tuesday. That evening many people looked for a place to go to church, a place to remember God, a place of refuge. I got a lot of phone calls that day, “Are you having a service this evening?” For a day many people turned to God.
I thought that surely we would have a large turnout for morning prayers on the day after the twin towers of the World Trade Center crashed under the impact of those jet liners. But Wednesday, September 12th, was one of our smaller turnouts. 7: 00 AM is pretty early after all.
My impression is that whereas we have not lost the great ideas of our faith, we have lost the power of the Gospel, largely because we have forsaken the means of Grace God has provided for us. Our creeds, our good theology, and our confessions are well protected. Our problem is not a shortage of people who believe in Jesus, but a shortage of people who live well nourished in heart.
We need continual nourishment. Unless we are accustomed to seeking regular nourishment from God, in times of distress we may discover our coping powers are gone.
Last Wednesday many Christians throughout the Western world went to church and part of their worship involved having a spot of ashes placed on their foreheads. Placing ashes on the brow is a spiritual exercise, a humble act, a deed to help the soul. It is good to have times such as this, even though it has not been the practice of this church. Ashes are a sign of humility before God, and humility before God is a good thing. But it is not a seasonal need we have.
What you need, and what I need, is regularity of nourishment. I wish I could unfold for you what Jesus prayed in that morning season of prayer. I can’t. The Gospels mention something of what Jesus said on a couple occasions when He prayed. John 17 tells us that Jesus prayed very earnestly that we who follow Him might be one, even as He was One with the Father. Why did Jesus pray this? Might it be that our oneness, our togetherness is one of the means of Grace God offers that is most effective in keeping us nourished of soul? We cherish our independence, but we need unity.
We noted a few weeks ago in Wednesday morning prayers, as we read Deuteronomy 14: 22 and following, that one of the principal reasons God commanded His people to tithe was to get His people to come together to eat together. The purpose of tithing is not to make the church rich, but to bring God’s people together. They brought a tenth of their crops and ate together and fed widows, orphans and priests. When God’s people eat together, it helps to keep strong our sense of togetherness. We find it is so here. Our pot-luck dinners are fond affairs. You mingle with people you didn’t know before, talking, listening, sharing your best cooking. We see no frozen dinners or fast food at our pot-luck dinners. God ordained for ancient Israel that eating together would be a source of spiritual nourishment. It moved God’s people toward actual unity, rather than toward a theory of unity. We ought to eat together often because this is a means of God’s nourishment. Pot-luck dinners are a means of grace.
Then, I notice that Jesus was regularly in the synagogue on the Sabbath Day. Why? Moses never said a thing about synagogue worship. God just said in the Ten Commandments the Sabbath was for rest. But Jesus accepted the regular practice of synagogue worship because the Jews needed to come together for worship, particularly after they were scattered as a people after the exile.
You and I need to be regularly in worship. You and I need to regularly hear the Scriptures preached, to join our hearts with others in gathered prayer. We need to sing the great hymns that have nourished our forbears, that teach us the great principles of faith as we sing. Generations of our forbears learned much of the wisdom of the Bible and remembered it from singing the great hymns.
At public worship one of the pastor’s duties is to teach the congregation how to pray. The reason I pray extemporaneously, not reading my prayers, is to share with you my heart. I let you see into my heart to know how I pray. It is one of my duties to you when leading worship to show you how I pray when I lead in prayer. You say “Amen” to my prayer, making it our prayer. Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “Lord teach us to pray.” As Jesus’ under-shepherd for your sake, I share with you my prayer at least partially to help you who wonder how to pray. Prayer is a means of God’s nourishment.
If you are not often with fellow Christians and don’t have regular habits of public worship, I suspect you’ll also confess that you don’t feel regularly nourished in your soul.
Jesus didn’t just go to the synagogue on the Sabbath only because He needed to hear the Scriptures read and taught. He was a resource to others when they came to the synagogue. How often it was when He was at the synagogue that he found people needing healing. The reason why Jesus so often collided with those who thought He shouldn’t heal on the Sabbath Day was that He was with needy people in the synagogue on the Sabbath Day.
You and I are not Jesus, but when we are together with others here on the Lord’s Day, we have the opportunity of being God’s channel of blessing to others. You may be a source of God’s blessing to someone else, if you will be regularly with them in worship on the Lord’s Day. Here we find need and the supply of need coming together, with you in your need, and you as the supply of someone elses’ need found in one place. This is part of God’s plan for our nourishment.
Pray alone. Be often in fellowship with others at the dinner table. Worship regularly on the Lord’s Day. Be here as a resource for others as well as to find your own supply.
A fifth means of grace God offers us derives from another function of the synagogue in Jesus’ day. One of the oldest names for the synagogue was bet-ha-midrash, house of study. Jesus would sit down with others in the synagogue to study the Bible. This meant reading it aloud, and then listening to explanations of it from a teacher, and discussing it. From this practice in the local synagogue a whole new body of sacred literature developed, midrashim, commentaries that derived from devout people talking about the pertinence of the Bible. It was a life-long practice that nourished God’s people. It implemented the truth we teach our children, “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
I notice here a general exodus from our building after morning worship. We are forfeiting one of the means of grace that God offers us.
We have not thought through our practice of relegating Sunday School to children. It is a practice that has developed out of neglect. The children’s Sunday School is a beginning point, not the end point of finding nurture in Scripture. A pattern has developed throughout the church of neglect of the Scriptures. In seminary every candidate for the Presbyterian ministry has to start to learn Hebrew and Greek in order to have the background to teach the Bible in the churches. But nearly all pastors have no intention of going past the kindergarten level in Hebrew and Greek. It is a pattern of neglect we have passed along to our churches. A means of nourishment Jesus used, and that you and I need to use, is to re-cultivate the study of Scripture together on the Lord’s Day. You all need to be in Sunday School. I know for a fact that right now we have excellent adult as well as children’s and young people’s classes being offered. I urge you to take advantage of these. It will help to feed your soul.
I wonder if we very deliberately tried to cultivate habits of private prayer in the morning as Jesus did, and of cultivating our oneness, by eating often together, of cultivating our oneness by coming to pray together, and of never missing worship together on the Lord’s Day—so that we can be together under the sound of Scripture, singing, praying, and studying together-and being here a source of help to others in need, if we might find a more robust sense of God’s nurture.
If Jesus needed to nourish His soul, though He was God made flesh, you and I need it too. Where did Jesus find his source of endurance? In praying alone in the morning. In eating often with others. In the synagogue where He heard the Scriptures, heard them explained, explained them Himself, and where He found others who needed Him—and who prayed with Him. All this is available for us. I hope you will use the means of grace God offers you, and that you will find strength in your time of need.
Let us pray: O Lord, we thank you that you have not left us desolate, but that you offer us strength to help in time of need. We thank you for the riches of grace offered us in Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2003
Jesus’ Authority, Then and Now
Psalm 9: 1-10 /Isaiah 33: 2-6
Luke 4: 31-37
March 2nd,2003
This past week America mourned the loss of Mr. Rogers. We learned more about him in the past few days than most of us knew before. I was struck most forcefully by his acceptance speech when he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. He began by saying, "Fame is amour-letter word." He said that with intensity on his gentle face.
Mr. Rogers wasn’t changed by his fame. He used the authority fame gave him in people’s imagination to address the fears children have, to be their friend, looking them in the eye, explaining to them the bewildering things in life. Many of them believed him. One of my Hebrew students, a very bright classics major, told me as class began on Thursday, “Mr.Rogers died. I’ll be OK.” She was serious. It was as if her dad died. She’d grown up on him. I thought of Jesus’ words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
We seldom associate authority with the kind of person whom children are drawn to. Authority is the implement of the powerful, of the presidents of this world who can send hundreds of thousands of troops across the world to die in battle, or push a little red button, obliterate big cities, and change the course of history. Authority is power. Lord Acton said, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and in earth has been given me.” Jesus had absolute power, but the power did not corrupt him.
The Gospels begin their account of Jesus, describing an uncanny authority that radiated from Him. It was not because he was bigger or had a type-A personality. It was not the kind of authority achieved by rank or political position. He held no office. Yet He radiated authority.
Last Sunday we read of an attempt to lynch Him in His hometown. His townsfolk were angry when He used two stories of Elijah’s day to illustrate their hardness of heart that kept Him from healing people in Nazareth. Nobody likes to hear that their religion is bogus. He told them this without malice, even sadly, but it infuriated them. They couldn’t stand His sincerity exposing their insincerity. So they tried to kill Him. He walked through the crowd of His would-be executioners as easily as a hot knife passes through soft butter. His authority made their anger powerless. I visualize their angry faces melting in the face of His serene concentration as He walked through the crowd.
Jesus’ authority defies description. Those who watched Him asked, “What is this word? For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out.” Diseases dissipated at His word. Cholera that makes people loses all their fluids simply dried up on the spot. Leprosy disappeared. Lepers saw their putrid white skin turn a healthy pink. We call Jesus’ healings “miracles,” but it wasn’t magic. It was His authority that numbed the power of sickness. How?
Calvin described the effects of the fall in one place in this way. Citing St. Augustine, he wrote: “Man’s natural gifts were corrupted by sin, and his supernatural gifts were withdrawn.”[1] Jesus had the supernatural gifts inherent in our creation in tact. He was able to use them naturally. It seems that part of Jesus’ intention for His disciples, and then for us, was that we should regain these supernatural gifts, and use them in announcing the penetration of the Kingdom of God into the kingdoms of this world. But as the disciples soon flagged in their capacity to use them, we have followed in their train. We trust that Jesus will one day totally restore us to God’s original design. Of course, at that time there will be no more diseases to conquer, no more demons to exorcise, no more tears to wipe away or death from which to rise.
When Jesus taught, His teaching didn’t have the heavy sense of vast learning, of impeccable logic, as the Scribes did. He didn’t cite authorities, intimidating the ordinary hearer. His was a different kind of authority, utterly sincere, altogether pertinent. He was not an intellectual bully as I sense some widely heard religious teachers are today.
He understood so clearly and believed so deeply what He taught, and it had to do with the simplest, deepest matters of life. He seized peoples’ hearts. He rang true. He told shepherds of a shepherd longing for a lost sheep, and said, “God’s like this.” He told a heart-broken father of a heart-broken Father, longing for his lost son, and said, “That’s how God is.” He told farmers of the ways of planting and harvesting—communicating to each one in the idiom he understood best how God cared for them. “Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.” People could sense that the One telling them the stories loved them as God did. No one else who told such stories made people think they were listening to the voice of God. This was authority. It had the ring of truth.
Where did Jesus get this authority? We are tempted to answer this by saying, “Well, He was God made flesh. What do you expect?” But I remember that Scripture makes clear that “Jesus emptied Himself,” or as the wonderful old KJV puts it, “He made Himself of no reputation.”[2] Charles Wesley’s great hymn has us sing, “He emptied Himself of all but love.” It was so. Could Jesus have passed on His authority to His disciples if it was a function of His God-ness? I don’t think so.
I’m tempted to think that Jesus’ authority did not derive from His God-ness, but was something like we can have if our hearts are available to God. In Isaiah we read this morning, “The Lord . . . will be the stability of your times, abundance of wisdom and knowledge.” Isaiah is describing the fount of Jesus’ authority. I’ve seen analogies of Jesus’ inner strength in other arenas of human endeavor. His mind was fixed, His heart set.
At the great university in our city I’ve met some people who are so single-minded that they have brought to bear their intellect and determination to master their science. Some of these attend Faith Church. Such as these talk, and people listen. The “authority” they have achieved as scientists is due to their focus. When I see this, I have some sense of Jesus’ concentration on His task.
I watched our splendid Purdue wrestlers grapple with Michigan State a week or so ago. Before the match I could see those powerful young men walking around, in intense concentration. They were in a zone, seemingly oblivious of the crowd. They didn’t strut or flex, show-boating. This was pointless. They would soon prove what they really were on the mat. They practiced their moves. When their match time came, they moved quickly to the mat and their concentration exploded. I had the feeling that a few of the matches were won in the mind of the winner before he won on the mat. The authority of single-mindedness is powerful.
It was Jesus’ single-minded devotion to doing the will of the Father that resulted in His authority. In every battle of will, beginning with the famed three temptations in the desert, to the times when He was disappointed with His disciples, to the times when He was weary with caring for the endless stream of needy people who came to Him, what held Jesus together was His determination to do the will of His Father. It was as a man that Jesus did the willow His heavenly Father, not as the Son of God. Yet, He was not a fanatic. There was balance in His life. He was a loving friend, able to give and receive friendship.
This is why, when Jesus called the twelve disciples, He could pass on some of this authority to them. Jesus expected them to do as He did and more. I visualize what can happen here at Faith Church, if we bring to bear on the tasks we have accepted, the concentration of devotion to Jesus. I think we’ve yet to use the authority Jesus offers us in our little corner of His vineyard. Jesus’ authority translates our efforts into His work.
Jesus called men to be with Him, because He needed their friendship, but also to equip them to carryon His task. He gave them authority over unclean spirits.[3] They lived with Jesus day and night, breathing the air He breathed, listening to His every word, watching His responses to every situation. They learned of Him because they had greater things to do. He told them, “Greater things than these you will do because I got to the Father.” (Note: John 14:12.)
Jesus sent them out on brief “internships,” and there were times when they returned saying, “it worked.” When they were filled with Jesus’ concentration on doing the will of God, they found their personal weaknesses overcome. When Thaddeus spoke, it was as if Jesus Himself was commanding sickness to be gone. Bartholomew rebuked the demons, and they abandoned the bodies they tormented. “Doubting Thomas” taught and it had the ring of truth.[4] These learned from Jesus the authority of His devotion.
When they grew complacent, their authority evaporated. Do you remember after Jesus’ “transfiguration,” He came down from the mountain top to find His disciples failing miserably. He told them, “This kind of demon can only come out if you have prayed and fasted first.” I think Jesus meant, “You can not succeed in doing the work of the Father if your hearts are not fixed on it.” It is still the same for you and me here today. If our hearts are not fixed, we have none of Jesus’ authority. It is only available to those intent on doing His work for His sake.
When Jesus left, His disciples He reminded them that all authority had been given Him in heaven and earth. He sent them out equipped with this same authority. The power with which Jesus equipped them came from the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit’s authority could only “work” in people whose hearts were available. Luke tells us that a man named Simon Magus tried to buy the Holy Spirit’s power, and it didn’t work.[5]
What has become of the authority Jesus gave to His disciples? I often have pass through my mind the encounter between Pope Innocent III and St. Thomas Aquinas mentioned in F.F. Bruce’s commentary on The Book of Acts. Historians have reckoned this 13th century pope had more muscle than any other man in Church history. The great philosopher came to the pope as he was admiring a chest filled with gold coins and precious stones, some of the profit of his power pouring into Rome. The Pope said, “We sure can’t say ‘silver and gold have I none’ can we, Thomas.” To which St. Thomas replied, “Neither can we say ‘Take up your bed and walk.’”
The pope could bring a country to its knees with the threat of excommunication, but he had no power over peoples’ hearts, or over sickness. Jesus intended the Church to have authority, but not the power to bully people. Jesus’ power seems largely lost in the teeming multitude of churches today. You have heard me more than once mention my perplexity that the influence of Christians is so meager in the direction that Jesus taught us most clearly.
Jesus told His disciples at the moment when the Church was conceived, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”[6] That’s pretty heady stuff. It’s not exactly clear what Jesus meant. I believe that Jesus meant in particular that the forgiveness we grant to those who offend us is ratified in heaven. It also had to do with the other side of Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness—if we will not forgive people who offend us, neither will our Father in heaven forgive us our offenses.
But the Power of the Keys that had to do with the authority to forgive in Jesus’ name as well as from our hearts, was translated into the kind of power that corrupts. Jesus’ authority that nerved His disciples to teach winsomely, and to loose people from their diseases as well as their despair, got skewed so that it came to resemble a more bullying kind of power. Wealth came to theChurch, and with it the authority of splendor. But lives are not changed toward God by either money or political muscle—or even by the triumph in the battle of ideas about God and His ways.
The Church has lost nearly completely its influence in Europe which once seethed with religious fervor, because the authority of Jesus’ fame was badly used. The corruption of the Church’s authority forced the Protestant Reformation. And the force of arms as a way of settling the battle for truth in the 17th century killed all confidence in Europe’s heartland in the name of Jesus. We read the tale of Christianity in the days since Martin Luther boldly claimed the authority of the Bible over his heart, and it is a sad story.
Again and again I think of Jesus. Owning nothing, with no political power at all, with no weapon in His hand, with no oratorical muscle, He won the hearts of twelve uncultivated men. His authority probed deeply and planted hope and trust in folk accustomed to being trampled by people with power. John’s Gospel tells us, “Whoever trusts in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Trust is not confidence. It’s not that strong. Trust is the response of need. How various are our needs this morning. Some of you here have incredible need, and you’re too proud or despairing to admit it. Oh to learn to submit to Jesus’ authority. What place we forfeit. What needless pain we bear.
I will offer you again the bread and wine of Jesus’ Communion Table. I invite you this morning to trust your heart to Jesus. Your helplessness is accentuated in the fact that you cannot see Him. But look at this bread, and look at this cup of wine that you will hold in your hand, if you are indeed coming to Him, and trust that as surely as you can eat and drink that bread and wine, so surely can you receive the authority of Jesus. With this authority you can focus your life on doing the will of God. You can focus your attention on learning of His will, and then find His authority adequate to create the desire to do it. It is a quiet authority. It works deep within us, if it works at all. I invite you to Jesus. Hear Him say, “Come, trust me. Let me give you a life.”
Let us pray: O Lord God, how meagerly we understand our depths, or how Jesus probes to satisfy our deepest needs. But we don’t ask to understand, but simply to receive. Offer us Your Son, O God, again. And help us to receive Him—in spirit and in truth. Amen.
Stuart D.Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
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[1] Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, 2.12.
[2] Philippians 2: 7.
[3] Mark 3: 15.
[4] Mark 6: 7-13. Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20.
[5] Acts 8: 9-13, 18-24.
[6] Matthew 16: 19.
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