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May 28, 2006
What is it to Believe in Jesus?
Psalm 24 / Isaiah 51: 1-6
John 3: 17-21
May 28th, 2006
Maybe you noticed yesterday’s New York Times editorial headline: “God and Man on Screen: Big Questions as Entertainment.” The media keeps trumpeting the Da Vinci Code and has created a market for this novel that a lot of people believe portrays facts not fiction. But this fascination is possible because matters of faith are very interesting to people. See Newsweek articles, May 22nd, “Belief watch…” Indeed, matters of faith today are like pictures in an art gallery that people love to look at. When the Art Institute in Chicago advertised that it had a special exhibit of van Gogh and Monet paintings, you had to make reservations to go and look. Bonnie and I flew up there with the Thompson’s to see this. You only have to go to the theater or bookstore to look at matters of faith.
Christianity Today devoted the cover story of the last issue to Dan Brown’s book, followed up by an article on the interest in Bart Ehrman’s books, Misquoting Jesus, and Lost Scriptures that call into question the Christianity represented in the New Testament—and a piece on the second-century work from which our Prayer of Consecration comes after taking the Lord’s Supper together, the Didache. There were other wrinkles in the developing religious world before and after Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again—all in one small corner of the world. And some of these old wrinkles are finding new interest.
I am tempted to get into the issue of why our New Testament survived and the many other responses to Jesus faded away—but won’t just now.
Equally interesting is why belief itself has faded away from much of Europe’s heartland while it seems to be thriving on our shores. Pope Benedict XVI wrote for his fellow Europeans Introduction to Christianity before he became pope that begins with exploring the crisis of belief in Europe. The first major section of his remarkable book tries to explain what belief is to his country people. They have forgotten.
And I wonder if part of the reason for this is that in the centuries since Jesus awoke faith in God and in Himself as the Son of God something happened like what He described in the Parable of the Sower. You remember it.
When the farmer went to plant seed some of the seed fell on the road and the birds ate it or it got crushed. Some fell among the rocks at the side of the road and initially sprouted but then since there was no dirt the fledgling plants burned up. Other seed fell among the weeds and the roots got choked by the weed-roots that got tangled with the roots of the good seed so that though these seeds grew, they remained bare stalks. They produced no grain. But some seed fell on good ground, grew, and produced a harvest.
This has how it has been in many places where the good seed of the Gospel has been heard. Some people hear the Gospel and it has no effect, like seed on the sidewalk. Other people hear the Gospel, respond quickly, but tough times come and it never takes root, so that their response is short-lived. Others hear the Gospel, respond for a while, but then the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of money, and other distractions come along so they become what we call “nominal Christians,” Christians in name but not in fruitfulness.
Then there are those who hear and the seed grows in their hearts so that they produce results. Their lives change. Other people see and hear them and catch on too. Some in whom the Gospel takes effect produce thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some a hundred-fold.
The reason why we still have the Bible, and the reason why there is that gnawing sense of most of us that there is something enormously powerful for good in the Gospel is that there have been those along the way in whom the seed of the Gospel took root and produced a harvest. These people passed along to us the Gospel and in our generation we who hear it respond in the ways Jesus told in His parable. Only some who hear it respond in a fruitful way.
We may reasonably wonder if the reason why the Gnostic Gospels and other books that were not accepted into the Bible faded away was because they were not the kind of seed that is of any use. Every spring Bonnie and I plant a garden and every spring some seeds simply don’t germinate. You see spots in the rows of beans where nothing comes up. These dead seeds are like the lost books newly being found. They are of interest, but only as a witness to what did not rightly reflect the truth of God in Jesus Christ—not because they were suppressed, because the New Testament books too were the target of many enemies, but because they had no life in them.
I have spoken of these things because they bear upon the theme that Jesus taught in the few verses we read from John’s Gospel this morning. The passage actually begins with John 3: 16, that glorious announcement of God’s love for the world shown in sending His only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him has eternal life. The next verse tells us God’s Son did not come here to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. Jesus did not come to condemn the world because sin brings with it its own condemnation. We reap what we sow. Jesus came to interrupt this principle, so that we may reap what we did not sow.
But there was a hitch. Something did not take, not because God’s Son was not effective in providing a cure for the desperate problem of reaping what we sow, but because God does not impose on people this solution to the problem of sin. God will not impose something so precious as eternal life. Some who saw Jesus did not believe in Him. Why? Because when Jesus came it was like a ray of light shining into a room in which all sorts of things were happening in the dark.
It reminds me of how so many places where people go for entertainment the lights are dim. And it’s not just the “romantic” kind of dimness as some nice restaurants provide with soft candle glow and pleasing music that stirs the heart, but a darkness with flashing strobe lighting stabbing the dark from many angles, that hides your face; keeps you from recognizing people and that distracts others from what you might be doing. If the lights were turned on and cameras were to flash in some of these places, the next day there would be a lot of embarrassed people. The media loves to print embarrassing pictures.
Jesus was like this bright light that flooded the world. People could see themselves in this light. People could see Him. And they could see themselves. And they turned away from Him, hating the light, preferring the darkness, because their deeds were evil but familiar and appealing. Not all “evil deeds” are glaringly wicked—the kind described in kinky magazines and movies glamorizing evil. Some evil deeds are like those being exposed in the trials of some corporation executives these days. How minutely courts are now looking for evil in the windfalls of rich CEO’s. This evil lurks behind in the shadows, with respectability bought by the glamour of wealth, “success,” and the glow of celebrity status. This glamorous sin make impossible any serious regard of the Gospel, while claiming the veneer of the Gospel as suggesting an appearance of goodness.
John tells us it is because their deeds are evil that some did not come to that light and sunbathe in His glow. But all who do, the truth come to the light in order that their works might reveal that their works are the works of God.
Here we find a snapshot photograph of faith from one angle. Here we see the word “works” brought in, in a way that may confuse us. It almost seems as though John is telling us that Jesus is a light that reveals some peoples’ works as already the works of God. This is why they come to the light because they are not ashamed of their works.
How can this be when Paul tells us we are saved by grace, through faith, and it is not of works, lest anyone should brag, “I pleased God on my own by my own good deeds?” I remind you this is one snapshot of faith. We read on in the New Testament and we see faith exposed in a more rounded way. We will see in John 3: 36 two phrases in parallel: “Those who believe in the Son have eternal life; those who do not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests on them.” Faith is not something that happens only in our heads, or hearts; it occupies the energy of the whole body.
The Apostle Paul took many photographs of faith. His letters are like a photo-album of faith. His letters in the New Testament illustrate how faith and obedience are two sides of the same thing. In Romans 1: 8, for example he tells the Christians in the empire’s great capital, “Your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” Then in 16: 19 as he wraps up this letter he writes, “Your obedience is known to all.” In Romans 15: 18 he writes, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles.” To the Corinthians he describes faith as “obedience in acknowledging the Gospel of Christ.”
Looking more broadly at the glimpses of faith that we see in the New Testament we discover that faith, though essentially seen in obedience, is not an accomplishment in which a person who has faith would want to boast. Because the good works done by a person who has faith in Jesus are the result of a will that has been submitted to Him. But this surrendered will asserts itself. James wrote, “Faith without works is dead.” Faith loves to live vibrantly. We are all sensitive to the principle of walk the walk or don’t talk the talk. But walking the walk, doing the works of faith does not earn God’s favor. Rather, if we are doing the works of faith it is because we have been lured into life with God.
One thoughtful Christian put it this way, “Faith is the experience of being rightwised, fellowship with Christ.” And when we have been rightwised in step with Jesus Christ, our faith produces hope, and peace, and patience, and self-control, and many other characteristics that you and I notice when we inspect closely the life of someone in whom the Gospel has really taken root.
What Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit” does not get harvested in a Christian automatically. But it is remarkable how across the range of personality types of people who come to Jesus, across the spectrum of backgrounds from which we come, when people have come to the light of the Gospel and bask in its brightness rather than running from it—there is similarity in the Gospel’s effects.
I get the feeling when I think of Jesus’ parable of the sower in light of how the Gospel is popular today, it’s as though there is a great bin full of seed that is fascinating as a museum piece is fascinating. You go to the Art Institute in Chicago and you are expected to look, and certainly NOT to touch. But when you go to a restaurant, if you only look, and do not only touch but also take into your mouth and into your tummy the good-looking food you see, you would be thought very odd.
I get the feeling that the Gospel, if received by faith, by true faith, by what faith really is, is like eating good food. Indeed, when we take the Lord’s Super we illustrate this. We eat the bread and drink the cup. Then what happens to what we eat?
What one of us who eats good food would brag at the good health we enjoy as a result of eating good food rather than junk food? Great crowds will flock to hear the Gospel, and it can be presented with entertaining accoutrements that can compete with a rock concert. But it is when that Gospel finds a place in your heart and mine, and is allowed to germinate, that faith has happened. Because faith is not just interest in the Gospel. Faith is the result of taking the Gospel into our hearts as we take food into our bodies—with this difference.
What happens in our bodies with food happens without needing us to say, “Stomach, digest that food, or kidneys, process what I drink, or intestines, absorb the nutrition the stomach has made available in a form we can absorb.” But when we have received the Gospel by faith, though God will do something beyond what we will and choose, we must choose to do something motivated by the faith we claim.
In good times such as these it seems that faith may operate without our having to make many life-interrupting decisions. But when we only believe in our minds or hearts and do not then choose to apply to our lives what we say we believe, the belief does us no good. If because you believe in, that is, want to obey Jesus Christ you cultivate your thoughts toward knowing God, and if you take assessment of the gifts God has given you to use, and choose to use them for the good of others, then you are doing what faith does.
On Wednesday evenings a number of folk have been gathering in our family room to discuss Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship. We have been stirred as we think of how many Christians in Germany in the 1930s, Hitler’s era, were satisfied with cheap grace, that is, receiving the good news of God’s grace in Christ with no cost to themselves. They thought they could bask in the glow of God’s unmerited favor while great evils incubated in their land. Indeed, the church in Germany in those days did nothing to impede the growing evil and sometimes furthered Hitler’s cause—prying God’s blessing on it!
So an underground church developed where Christians realized that following Jesus must cost them something, perhaps even their lives. Because what they did and what they believed had to agree. Bonhoeffer was hanged, a young man of 39, for his role in this movement of costly grace.
You and I don’t seem to be caught in a situation quite like Germany’s in those days, though one of the insidious things about deep evil is that it is often not recognized as evil. But in our prosperity and safety we are lured into cheap reception of grace as though all that mattered was that we say we believe the right ideas. We may become piously defensive of the New Testament against the challenges of the Da Vinci Code and Bart Ehrman’s books, while all along our lives continue to be lived by principles of convenience and self-centered values.
What difference has believing in Jesus made in your life?
Here is the challenge. The one who believes in the Son of God has eternal life. Those who do not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on them. Faith is obedience. Obedience is faith.
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we bless you for the Gospel of Your Holy Son, Jesus. Grant that we may believe it with all our hearts, and that the fruit of our belief may be beautiful in your sight. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
May 21, 2006
God Loves the World
Numbers 21: 4-9 / John 3: 1-16
May 21st, 2006
This morning very early I went out the front door of our home and looked up at the clear, star-filled sky. And again it struck me how odd and remarkable a thing it is to preach, to speak on behalf of Almighty God, the Creator of this vast sky with all its stars, to people like myself.
I’ve been thinking about the two passages before us this morning over the past week—two passages that come to us by the will of this God who created that great star-filled sky. Written a long time ago they still speak to you and me. They are timeless, given by the eternal God.
The first of these Scriptures tells of a disastrous span of time late in Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness. God had just delivered them from Canaanite enemies, but led them around the land of Edom, instead of conquering Edom too, perhaps because the Edomites were descendants of Esau—brother of their patriarch Jacob.
The people became impatient with this detour. They spoke against God and against Moses. They loathed the worthless food God was giving them. They thought it worthless. God did not. They loathed Moses for not supplying them better—when he apparently had the ability to make God give them what they wanted—or at least better than this.
So God sent venomous snakes that bit many of them. They crawled about everywhere. It was a far worse case of what happens in Arizona these days as housing developments are built out into the desert, the natural home of rattlesnakes.
The people couldn’t escape them. Avert your eyes one minute from looking down at the ground and you’ll be bitten. The people recognized the connection between this onslaught of snakes and their complaining. They begged Moses to pray to the Lord to take the plague of poisonous snakes away. So Moses prayed, but instead of simply taking away the snakes, as He conquered the lethal Canaanites, God told Moses to make a fiery serpent and set it up on a pole. Moses couldn’t make a snake so he made a bronze serpent that looked like these deadly snakes and set it up on a pole, and everyone who had been bitten would live if he looked up at that snake.
That bronze serpent had an afterlife in Israel. Understandably it was preserved as a relic of great significance because it granted a new lease on life to people who thought they were as good as dead. “Only look up and you will live,” was a word that desperate people were glad to follow. But a problem developed when people forgot that bronze snake was only useful because God was teaching His people how completely dependent they were on Him for life. It was not the snake but God. Ironically, it was a snake in the Garden of Eden that was the cause of death to Adam and Eve. And it was a snake God used to bring life to His sin-bitten people. I sometimes think we miss God’s sense of humor.
Israel didn’t catch the humor. They took that snake very seriously for far too long. It was preserved and found its way into the Temple in Jerusalem as an object of worship. But good King Hezekiah took it down and broke it in pieces “because he trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel.”
But we just read of this snake again as Jesus brought it up in speaking to Nicodemas, a Pharisee, a man learned in the law of God. Jesus uses that snake as a symbol of Himself, to whom all can look to find eternal life. Those who looked up at the bronze snake in the wilderness would all die eventually. But those who look up to Jesus find eternal life.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. Seldom do we read of conversations Jesus had with particular people. Here we read of a friendly conversation with Nicodemas, a Pharisee, a ruler among the Jewish people, which means, a member of the Sanhedrin. I wish we might read this together in the Greek because John tells us of this conversation so suggestively. Nicodemas came at night—maybe in order not to be seen by others, or maybe because he’d been studying the law late into the night and realized he’d come to the end of his possibilities. So he came to Jesus, finally, after having labored in his studies into the night.
Nicodemas is speaking for more than himself. “Rabbi, we know you have come from God, a teacher.” How did those for whom he spoke know this? Because nobody could do the signs Jesus did if he were not from God.
Someone has proposed that John is here showing us not just a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemas, but more than this, a conversation between the Church and the synagogue. That is, between God’s chosen forerunner and God’s chosen fulfillment of His plan from of old. Nicodemas comes to Jesus in a friendly manner to learn the secret of life after studying late into the night. We don’t know what passage of Scripture he had been studying. Might it have been the passage from Numbers we read together a few moments ago?
It seems that Jesus changes the subject. Nicodemas says good things about Jesus. He recognizes that Jesus could not do the signs which he had heard about unless God was with him. Jesus leaps from this to speak of the Kingdom of God. “Unless someone is born from above he is not able to see the kingdom of God.” Heaven is up. The Kingdom of God is where His will is done. Jesus would later teach His disciples to pray, “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Nicodemas recognized that Jesus is doing here on earth something only God can do. He must have been puzzled at Jesus’ reply.
The word Jesus spoke in replying to Nicodemas can have two meanings. The Greek words gennethe anothen can mean either “born from above,” which suggests where heaven is, or it can mean “born again.” Nicodemas took it the second way, maybe because he was thinking of how God gave a second lease on life to those who looked up at the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness.
He pressed the question taking “born again” very literally. “How can an old person enter his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus replied still more cryptically: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless someone is born of water and spirit he is not able to enter the Kingdom of God.” Nicodemas last word is a question: “How can these things be?” Jesus seems to scold him for not being able to understand.
But we too labor to understand. It seems Jesus expected Nicodemas to understand what he meant when he said, “Unless someone is born of water and spirit he is not able to enter the Kingdom of God.” What did Jesus mean, “Born of water and spirit?”
Perhaps “born of water” referred to the new thing John the Baptist introduced, where baptism was a sign of repentance and cleansing from sin. But some who have thought about this have proposed that Jesus may have been speaking of something more “earthly” than this. God’s first act of creation was to separate water from earth. Take away water and what are we? We’re a tiny little bit of minerals that can fit in the palm of your hand. We are born with water as our most constituent part.
Not only that, but the first clue that a child is about to be born is when “the water breaks.” Maybe this was the “earthly thing” which Jesus expected Nicodemas to understand. Maybe John’s baptism; maybe the basic element of all living things as water; maybe being born physically out of the water in our mother’s womb.
Being born of spirit suggests the first thing that happens once we are born—in an earthly sense. When you were born the first thing you had to do was breathe. The word for wind and spirit is the same in several ancient languages—Greek and Hebrew among them. Jesus expected Nicodemas to understand this earthly description about birth. This because the heavenly sense follows from the earthly sense.
The clue to the heavenly sense Jesus was teaching He found in the story of the bronze serpent. Because here the new lease on life not only depended on an act of God, but also on the will of the person who wanted to live. No baby that is born chooses to exist. When you and I were born it was altogether as a result of the love of our parents.
But if we are to be born again, born from above, we must look at the One signified by the bronze serpent that was lifted up on a pole in the wilderness. That act was so small, so helpless, but it had to happen. A person who was bitten by a snake might know all about that bronze snake on a pole and say humbug!, refusing to look. And that person died. But the one who swallowed his pride and looked at the snake got a new lease on life.
That look is the earthly symbol of the faith by which we look to Jesus to get eternal life. The faith by which we find the “new birth,” that gets for us eternal life, the life of God, is as helpless as a look up at the bronze serpent in the wilderness.
But we should not rest on that realization because if we have been born again it means we have entered into a new kind of life. It is very obvious that this new life does not just happen of its own. The Apostle Paul never uses the term, “Born again,” but he does tell us that if anyone is “in Christ that person is a new creation. The old has passed, the new has come.” Or as the KJV puts it, “All things have become new.”
He goes on to tell us how this new becoming happens. In a passage I often read at the funeral of a beloved Christian brother or sister we remember that Paul tells us, “Our inner nature is being renewed every day . . . we walk by faith and not by sight.” In the famed Romans 12 Paul beseeches us “by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.” He is writing about the same thing that Jesus had in mind in speaking of being “born again.” The impulse has a beginning point, as when a baby is begun when a part from the mother and a part from the father come together. Until the time of birth the baby is a helpless participant in a process. But once born, the baby that thrives must have a will to live.
There are babies born who do not thrive because they lack that inner impulse. They may simply die because of a lack of a will to live that is natural to most babies that are born. This earthly fact has a heavenly pertinence.
I think of how Billy Graham has made that term, “born again” to echo throughout the world. How often he has invited people to come down the aisles of great stadiums to receive Christ and be born again to “Just as I Am, without One Plea”. Hundreds of thousands of people have left their seats and streamed to the front before that humble man of God. And they trust that the emotions that moved them to leave their seats were at the prompting of the Spirit of God, by which they were born again. And thank God, often this has been the case.
But as I look at the state of Christian humanity I wonder if somehow we have treated that term “born again” somewhat the way ancient Israel treated the bronze serpent Moses set on a pole in the wilderness. We look at the term itself, and have made it an icon.
I included the beloved John 3: 16 in our reading this morning, when ordinarily the section ends with verse 15. I included John 3: 16 because in it we read of the love of God for the world, so great that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
This verse seems to follow Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemas. Now John is writing. It is not Jesus speaking to Nicodemas. John is writing for the benefit of all of us who have eavesdropped on the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemas. God told Moses to set the bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness because, despite their incessant complaining, God still loved Israel. And God let His Son be hung up on a cross outside Jerusalem so that we could look up at Him and live because God not only loved Israel, but also the whole world.
But which truth should we emphasize most? The directive to be “born again,” or the information that God loves the world so much that He gave His Son?
My concern is this. If we are born again it is something that God alone can do; we cannot make it happen any more than a baby can bring about its own birth. We often hear the term, “Born again Christian” a term that often sounds like an in-group claim. A “born again Christian” is my kind of Christian. A born again Christian thinks as I do. And so there is the danger of looking to a humanly devised kind of system with an element of pride that we have the right goods.
And in stressing the love of God for the world there is the temptation to forget that the picture Jesus would have us see in the story about Israel and the bronze snake on a pole means that we must not only think of it as a symbol of God’s love for the world, but also must look at it to live.
I am concerned that it is possible to be a part of a system in which we know the Bible stories, and can quote John 3: 7 about being born again, and 3: 16 about God’s love for the world, while continuing to live as though we have no demand put on us in having come to Jesus by faith. Without the love of God we are hopeless. Without the possibility of God taking these broken lives of ours and fashioning a new creation from them, we have no hope. But once we have thankfully believed God’s love, and have looked up to the Son of God hanging on the cross—but now risen again, God expects us to “walk in newness of life.”
We are so made that we don’t much like it when others point out to us where we fail to walk in this newness of life. We respond by saying, “Mind your own business” to whomever proposes to help us reform our ways. But if you and I have put ourselves at the foot of the cross and looked up at the “dying form of One who suffered there for me,” and then looked at ourselves, perhaps we can find that new path of life. Did Jesus die so I would continue behaving like this—in a way which when I see it in others I despise it? Did Jesus give me only a new label on the old life? When the question forms inside your own heart, you are more apt to answer it truthfully.
And so I ask you this morning to eavesdrop again on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemas. Take a lesson from earthly things, about the miracle of birth and the total dependence of the child on powers beyond itself. But once born, that child must choose the path it will walk in life. And you and I, if we have looked up at Jesus by faith, are promised a new birth, newness of life. But it is then our task to walk in newness of life. Are you walking the old way with a Christian label? Or are you walking in newness of life?
I wish we would all think often of John 3: 16 and be amazed at God’s love, given at such cost. And then let us live gratefully—certainly an uncommon instinct in this world where we are taught to cling to ourselves as the center of everything important. Live gratefully to God, and you will be living out this new life, this “born again” thing of which Jesus spoke not only to Nicodemas, but to you and me.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for the wonders of this earthly life. But thank you still more for the wonders of your love that offers us the hope of eternal life, and a new birth, a new life in Jesus Christ. Grant us this life, and the wisdom to walk in it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
May 14, 2006
Keeping God’s House Pure
Psalm 118: 19-29 / I Kings 8: 14-21
John 2: 12-25
May 14th, 2006
Today is Mother’s Day. A little over a week ago a kindly older pastor from Omaha asked me what I was going to preach about on Mother’s Day. I told him I was preaching through the Gospel of John and would come to the passage we just read together a few moments ago. He said, “Oh.”
I loved my mother. I honor you who are mothers. And I hope this is evident to you day after day throughout the year, though I hope this is a special day for all you mothers.
As many of you are aware, Stephanie has been sending out by email the gist of each coming Lord’s Day sermon. A few of those who got the message this past week took special interest in the second point I proposed because next month our General Assembly will be considering the Peace, Unity, and Purity Task Force’s report that has far-reaching implications for our denomination. I have received some advice as to what I should say this morning, applying light from the story from the Gospel of John we just read. I hope that we may have the mind of Christ on this matter as on other aspects of life—and be wise to follow it.
There are three matters I hope you will think with me about this morning, not just one. First, I hope you will understand what was going on when Jesus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. Second, in light of what Jesus did then we need to reflect on challenges to the purity of our life together. But there is a third issue involved in this that we do not think about quite as much. You and I are called to purity of life as Christians. What is it to live as Temples of the Holy Spirit—which Paul tells us we are?
But first things first. What was going on when Jesus cleansed the Temple? Maybe you’ve noticed that the Gospel of John reports this event differently from the other Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke put this event almost at the end of Jesus’ ministry right after Palm Sunday, while John puts it at the beginning. Luke shows us Jesus weeping over Jerusalem before clearing out the Temple. Soon after Jesus’ prophetic act of driving out the merchants and moneychangers His enemies got serious about bringing Him to trial. In between this and Jesus’ passion Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell many of Jesus’ most important teachings.
But here in John it is a few days after changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee that Jesus goes to Jerusalem and discovers the Temple being desecrated.
Apparently this took place in the year 30, when Caiaphas was the high priest. He was in conflict with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court that met in the Temple. The Sanhedrin in rejection of Caiaphas moved its court to the market place that was usually in the Kidron Valley or on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. To get even with the merchants for welcoming his enemies, the Sanhedrin, into their market area, Caiaphas invited rival merchants into the Temple, perhaps into the Women’s Court.
So the Temple, rather than being a place where the most sacred life of the Jewish people found its focus, became a center of strife and commerce. Buying and selling sacrificial victims and changing coins with the image of Caesar on them for coins with no graven image on them was supposed to happen outside the Temple. At this dramatic moment of conflict between the High Priest and the Jewish court Jesus came along and saw this sacrilege. He made a whip of small pieces of rope and cleaned house. “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade,” Jesus must have shouted.
In Matthew we read that Jesus also quoted the prophet Isaiah, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people; but you make it a den of robbers.”
Christians have thought about this moment and recognized that a number of things were going on. First, Jesus was acting like the prophets of the Old Testament who pulled no punches when they found Israel desecrating holy things. Second, when He predicted the destruction of the Temple He pointed to a new “Temple,” yet to come.
Jeremiah, you may remember lashed out 700 years before this: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings and let me dwell with in this place.” The prophets would say strange things about God despising the very sacrifices He commanded them to offer because God desired obedience rather than sacrifices. And people must have been puzzled and hurt as they listened to the prophets.
Because it was with ancient Israel and with the people of Jesus’ day as with us, that impurity of life and worship always comes creeping in gradually. It does not explode on one day, but comes gradually. People in Jeremiah and Jesus’ day probably were not aware how they had become offensive to God.
We are used to the change of clothing fashions, music, and of 78 RPM records to CD’s. We have seen worship change in remarkable ways—the reason why some of you are here rather than elsewhere. A lot of change does not matter, indeed is justified. But there is some change that is inappropriate. In Jesus’ day as in ancient Israel, people domesticated God; they forgot that God is a holy God. This kind of change of outlook is disastrous.
People forgot what it is to feel awe in the presence of God. When Jesus cleansed the Temple it no doubt seemed an outrageous act, because people had forgotten that the Temple was more than a national shrine; that it was the shrine of Almighty God. They might have remembered that the first Temple built by Solomon was destroyed after years of desecration that came gradually. They didn’t realize the same consequence would come to their own present desecration of the Temple.
There were other Jews in Jesus’ day who realized how the Temple had been changed into a place of casual religion. The Essenes, those purist reformers who isolated themselves from the rest of their fellow Jews saw the High Priest as an enemy of God. Indeed, the rival sects of the Jews, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Zealots lived in tension over the Temple. Four decades later that Temple was destroyed.
Before this happened, the Apostle Paul taught Christians that they were the Temple of God. Back when King David wanted to build a Temple for God in Jerusalem the prophet Nathan told him that God could not be contained in a Temple built by human hands. The prophets said that God was pleased to dwell in humble and contrite hearts. It is with this background that Paul said, “Don’t you know that you are God’s Temple, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you all?”
Shortly after Paul tells us that our bodies are members of Christ. The Church is the gathering together of humble and contrite hearts in which God lives.
A lot of time has passed since Jesus began to form that nucleus of believers who would be the Temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And with the passing of time there has come much change.
For centuries it was unthinkable that there would be disunity in the Church. Jesus agonized in prayer before the Father that we might be one as He and the Father were one. But the East broke with the West in the 11th century, and now there were two bodies that said, “We are the real Church of God.” Five hundred years later the Western Church broke up, and soon the Church in the West would shatter into smithereens. In 1984 the IVCF Encyclopedia of Religion in America reported that there were 20,800 different Protestant bodies. Every one of these broke off for reasons that seemed sufficient for it. Sometimes major issues were the reason for splitting off; sometimes the issues were very small.
This summer the General Assembly of our denomination will be asked to vote on accepting the proposal of the Task Force of Peace, Unity, and Purity, created at the last General Assembly. This report proposes that authoritative interpretation of the ordination standards of our denomination be left to the bodies in which the ordination takes place. Each governing body, it is proposed, will have the duty to determine “whether a candidate being examined for ordination and/or installation as elder, deacon, or minister of Word and Sacrament has departed from scriptural and constitutional standards for fitness for office.”
This is really nothing new. Except for the fact that it over-rides a very important principle spelled out in the Book of Order that we exercise our freedom of conscience within certain bounds. When this is not possible candidates for the ministry should peaceably withdraw without creating a split within the church.
The focus of what is at issue now is the standards of ordination of deacons, elders, and pastors—and in particular, pastors who will not abide by the so-called “Fidelity and Chastity Amendment.” This amendment makes clear that we pastors, deacons, and elders are either to live faithfully with our wives or husbands, or chaste if we are not married. It makes clear that marriage is between a man and a woman.
So if the recommendation is adopted by our General Assembly without the possible endorsement of all the presbyteries, it will effectively take away the intent of the Fidelity and Chastity Amendment. Congregations will decide for themselves whether candidates for deacon or elder meet with their approval, and presbyteries will decide for themselves whether pastor candidates meet with their approval. If this report passes we will effectively not have a common standard of ordination in the PCUSA. And this is a cause of great concern.
Before drawing a conclusion from the story of Jesus’ cleansing the Temple and from the present distress in our denomination, let me briefly remind you of a third arena in which we are called to live pure and holy lives.
The Apostle Paul teaches us the great and wonderful corollary to the Old Testament’s teaching that God is pleased to live in the hearts of those who are humble and contrite. “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” The word “your” here is plural. It means that all of us together make up the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
You have heard the old saying, “A chain is as strong as its weakest link.” The principle is the same for the Church, that it is as pure as its building parts are pure. This means that you and I are called to live holy lives. Holy means “separated for God.”
A holy life includes many characteristics. In our day it seems that holiness has often been thought of mainly in terms of orthodox theology and sexual behavior. In sexual behavior we have followed the lead of our culture pretty much. Our relationships to each other as men and women are important. Indeed, on a positive note that might be pertinent to mother’s day is that we husbands and wives ought to live together far more exuberantly than we do—for our joy and as an example to our children—of where the man-woman bond ought to be celebrated gloriously in marriage.
But a holy life is far more than this. It has to do with how Christians do their business, how they speak to each other, how they mingle in their neighborhoods and work places, how they respond to offenses they feel others inflict on them. Holiness of life has to do with every thought being brought into captivity to the obedience to Christ. It has to do with a humble spirit. It has to do with asking continually, “what is the mind of Christ?” All this while knowing we are saved only by God’s grace, and not by any amount of good that we might do.
In Jesus’ day I notice that He did not begin a new sect of Jews when He saw the desecration of the Temple. Instead, he cleaned house, and in doing so He pointed to what God would soon do in changing the whole direction of His people, which included taking in the Gentiles, that is, people like you and me, into His family. When the Temple was destroyed forty years later many Jews and Gentiles who trusted in Jesus recognized that God was building another kind of Temple—like the one Nathan described to King David, a Temple not made with human hands. You and I are parts of this Temple of God.
And the PCUSA is part of that Temple. And it needs some house cleaning right now that God will accomplish in His own way. I see that the membership loss and the financial difficulties that result from this are a wake-up call to our denomination. This crumbling of a spiritual body that has noble roots is a reminder that God will not bless us if we do not live holy lives. God expects us to be fit blocks in His Temple walls.
I am deeply concerned that in the ranks of those who hold to theological orthodoxy there is great evidence of unholy living. And if I read things correctly, what you and I need to do is to examine with great care our place in the Temple of God. The temptation overtakes us in difficult times to scrutinize other people, particularly those with whom we disagree. You and I are tempted to do the very thing Jesus reproved when He saw a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the Temple.
The Pharisee prayed, “I thank you that I am not like other people are.” And the tax collector prayed, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” I wonder what purifying effect we would see in our denomination that would have sweeping effects beyond us, if you and I were to pray, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
I feel very sorry when I see some of the lingering tensions in our congregation. Some of us cling to attitudes Jesus would not bless. If we will take care of that sector of the Kingdom of God in which we find ourselves, and other Presbyterians will do likewise, with humble and contrite hearts, I wonder what blessing God will bring to us.
And we must be careful about taking things into our own hands in a political way. All God’s works happen deeply and gradually. I hope this congregation will let the present distress move us to greater contrition before God personally, to greater love of one another, to greater faithfulness in our participation together in this place. And then let us see what the Holy Spirit may do, using us in the greater arena of our denomination.
I pray that you and I in this congregation will use the present distress as a goad to examine our own hearts before God, and to examine our life together to see if we are well pleasing to Him. Let us persist in trying to lend such good influence as we can, with a humble and loving spirit—as Paul urges us, “lest we too be overtaken in a fault.”
Let us pray: O Lord, our God, in whom we live, move, and have our being, be pleased to make of us what you will, and to use us for your glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
May 07, 2006
The Sign of Joy and Sorrow
Amos 9: 11-15
John 2: 1-11
May 7th, 2006
Over the course of my short life I’ve discovered very different attitudes toward wine out there. I grew up thinking wine was a liquid that virtually bubbled up from hell; an agent of the devil. “Wine is treacherous,” the prophet Habakkuk wrote. But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out its treachery after tasting it once as a child. Give me my daily dose of shark’s liver oil any day!
I grew up not knowing what to do with the 104th Psalm’s statement that God gave wine to make the heart glad—and oil to make the face shine. Both were odd blessings. Wine was yuk! and I watched my mother take a little round case out of her purse to put powder on her face to keep it from shining. Who would put oil on her face? The blessing of wine was explained: it was just “good” unfermented grape juice, not “good” in the way Nappa Valley means “good.”
Well, with all this as a background, it was awkward to know what to do with Jesus’ first miracle. Jesus turned water into wine. How could Jesus make this mocking drink, this disgusting, treacherous beverage that has been the downfall of so many people? Well, God had very good reasons. And it was real wine—fermented—the kind that would burst old wineskins.
We read from the prophet Amos this morning of a time when God would raise up the booth of David, that is, rebuild Jerusalem after it was destroyed. In that happy day “the one who treads grapes will overtake the one planting grape vines.” That means the supply of grapes won’t be able to keep up with the need for wine to celebrate the joy of God’s restoration of His people.
And then there was the last supper which we will commemorate this morning, in which Jesus used wine as the sign of the most precious gift He had to offer, His very life’s blood shed for the sins of the world.
But wine at the Lord’s final Supper was a mixed symbol. First it was the good dinner beverage at the close of the day. But then Jesus used it as a symbol of sorrow. How puzzled they were to hear Jesus say it was His blood soon to be shed. Then at the conclusion of that last meal with His disciples Jesus said, “I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my father’s kingdom.” So wine ended up as a sign of joy yet to come.
Turning water into wine was Jesus first “sign” in the Gospel of John. This was so clearly a joyous sign. Why did John call this a sign and not a miracle? Because it points us toward something beyond the water turned into wine. A miracle makes us momentarily amazed. A sign tells us to look beyond the moment to something more. A stop sign is not just a pretty red shape. It says STOP!! Let me refresh you on the story of Jesus’ first sign. Let’s look at a few of the details closely.
On the third day there was a marriage at Cana, a town near the Sea of Galilee. What does John mean in saying, “The third day?” Three times before this we read, “The next day,” which suggests that Jesus’ first sign took place on the fifth day.
I wonder if John writes, “On the third day” because the first two “days” didn’t refer to a sequence of three actual days in Jesus’ life—since He obviously was born more than three days before this. Instead, John is telling us of three significant moments in the relationship of the Son of God to the world He came to save.
The first “day” refers to when “He was in the beginning with God and was God (1: 1).” The second day was when He specifically identified Himself with sinners at His baptism. The third day was when Jesus first revealed His glory at this wedding feast.
In the Book of Exodus God revealed Himself to Israel on Mt. Sinai “on the third day” after telling Moses to have the people get ready. On the morning of that third day, “there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain. It was a frightening event. The people were afraid and trembled and stood afar off. They asked Moses to speak to them, and not God, because they were afraid if God spoke to them they would die.
On that first “third day,” God showed His glory fearfully on Mt. Sinai. At the end of our story of Jesus turning the water into wine ”on the third day,” John tells us, “This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory.” Do you see a connection in this?
This Gospel starts by telling us of Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word,” but this Word was different from the word God gave through Moses. The word given through Moses was the law. In the Hebrew form of Exodus 20; the Ten Commandments are called ten words. The word given in Jesus was full of grace and truth. This is part of what we are to see in this story. The third day was a clue that God was about to show His glory. But how different God’s glory looked at Cana of Galilee from Mt. Sinai.
Let us still look at Jesus with awe and wonder—though not with fright.
Second, I remind you that Jesus’ first sign took place in a time that the host of a wedding feast was very embarrassed. The wine had run out. I have read there was a custom then for wedding guests to bring wine with them, but Jesus and His disciples were poor and didn’t have any wine to bring. This is why Mary told Jesus they had run out of wine. In effect, “It’s our fault.”
Remember, John tells us this was Jesus’ first sign; that is, Mary had not before seen her Son miraculously take care of a problem. But she had pondered many things in her heart from before Jesus’ birth. And she remembered His name was “Jesus, “ or Yeshuah, which means “The Lord delivers.”
Many people come to Jesus out of a feeling of need. In fact, those who come to Jesus without a sense of need don’t really think they need Him at all. In Jesus’ day the most religious people thought they didn’t need him. It was the poor, the needy who came to Him. So at this early dramatic moment Mary understood that if there was to be any deliverance, any supply of the need it had to come from Him, the present need was obvious…wine.
But this shortage of wine that made the host embarrassed was not the kind of need that was most important of all—hardly the kind of need that made the Son of God come in human form. If people had left that feast not having drunk as much wine as they were accustomed to drinking at a wedding reception, they would have gotten over it. Maybe for a while there would have been some gossip about the inadequate supply of wine. When the bride and groom were old they’d think back with a chuckle to when Uncle Levi didn’t get as drunk as he expected to at their wedding. But it was not a major need when seen on the grand scale.
So when Jesus replied to His mother’s request that He do something about the problem, “Woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come,” he at first seems to be saying, “This is not the kind of need I came to help.”
I see the apparent tension between Mary, Jesus’ mother, whom He refers to politely as “woman,” ishah, in light of the Hebrew word in Genesis that Adam used to refer to the mother of the human race. Adam called her first ishah —which means “woman.” Later he named her, Eve (havah Gen. 3: 20) a name that looks like the Hebrew word for “living” (hayah).
We might think of Eve, the first woman, the first mother looking out for the needs of her sons, Cain, Able, and then Seth. When they were hungry they needed food right then--for breakfast, lunch, or supper. And Eve would look to God and say, “They’re hungry, Lord.” And God would feed them food as He does all His creatures.
When this second Eve, Mary, came to Jesus to supply a momentary need He had to tell her, “Ishah, it’s a whole new ball game now.”
Jesus came to supply life’s deepest need rather than just the momentary apparent need. Some “needs” we don’t really need. We can get by very well without them. But there was something Jesus would supply on another “third day” that we really need. This need is to be saved from sin and death. This He supplied on another “third day” after He was crucified.
But now, at this wedding feast it was a third day of ordinary need. It was a day in which Jesus would bring deliverance to the very ordinary predicament of a host of a wedding feast. And so Jesus told the waiters to fill six stone jars standing by with water. Stone jars were associated with purity, by contrast with jars made of clay. These stone jars probably had been full of water to wash the hands of dinner guests before they ate and drank. But now they were empty, ready to be filled again.
It was only a temporary need, but Jesus lets us know in this first sign that He cares for temporary needs as well as for our need of salvation and eternal life. He would teach His disciples to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.” And his mother here asks Jesus, “Give us today our present need.”
Ever after people have found themselves praying, “Help me, Jesus” in all sorts of trials. In danger, “Help me, Jesus.” In sadness, “Help me, Jesus.” In humiliation, “Help me, Jesus.” “Give us today our daily need.” The first sign Jesus did teaches us, “I came to bring life and life more abundant” not just in the hereafter, but also now.
Third, it seems clear to me that we are to see the significance of the good wine, the best wine that Jesus supplied at the end of the wedding feast. It reminds me of what I mentioned in the last Faith Family News about the kind of ointment the woman put on Jesus’ feet at the dinner to which she came uninvited. It was expensive ointment; it was the most fragrant ointment; it was the best she could buy. It was a gift befitting God offered out of a heart filled with love.
And here we see the Son of God making a gift to people of the very best wine—out of a heart full of love. It was better than money could buy. This was a sign of God’s generosity. This generosity cut two ways.
First, at the moment it made everyone glad who drank it. Second, it pointed to a time beyond time when we will be invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb.
At the moment, when Jesus turned the water into wine the waiters had no idea how good the wine was that they took around to fill the empty glasses. But they soon saw how good it was from the look on peoples’ faces. People who sat around may have seen what was going on: the lack of wine; Mary whispering to Jesus and the look on His face as He replied; the waiters busily filling the six stone jars. They were curious when the waiters brought to them this final wine of the feast. What would it be like, so oddly made? When they tasted it, did they look at Jesus with amazement?
I remember the 65th Psalm in which David remembers God’s supply. “Thou visitest the earth and waterest it, thou greatly enrichest it . . . Thou crownest the year with thy bounty.” The delight of this psalm is not just in the things that God gives, but also in the realization that it is God who gives everything.
If you and I in the course of life look to God as the wedding guests looked at the One whom they saw change that water into the best of wines, and live with gratitude to Him for His supply of our daily need, we are on to an abundant way of life. Remarkably, whether we are poor or rich, when we see what we have as God’s daily supply, what a rich perspective it puts on life. “A cheerful heart has a continual feast,” we read in the Book of Proverbs. This is true of rich or poor. One reason why the Bible so often says good things about the poor is because the poor are in a position to realize their need of God’s supply. Jesus at this feast showed God’s supply.
But second, and in conclusion, when Jesus turned the water into wine, He turned it into the beverage that at the last He would say, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
I don’t know what to make of the fact that John does not tell of the Last Supper as do Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Instead John tells of the last meal Jesus had with His disciples when the central and most noticeable act was Jesus’ washing the feet of His disciples. He told them to do this to each other, as in the other Gospels Jesus tells His disciples to remember His death until He come by the breaking of bread and drinking of wine together in the Eucharist.
Maybe John wants us to see how from the very start of His ministry, Jesus was pointing to the pouring out of the most excellent wine of all—his red blood poured out in love for our sakes. He didn’t need to give Jesus’ explanation of this in a final meal. It had already been displayed at a wedding feast.
How very much our happiness in life depends on how we look at it. Some of us tend to see through dark glasses. Even a sunny day can look gray if the glasses are dark enough. I wonder if Jesus’ first sign—not miracle, but sign—took place at a wedding feast because we need to see Him in both these ways. “Give us this day our daily bread,” as well as, “Lord, give me eternal life.” We say we “believe” in Him. Faith is essentially looking at life through lenses Jesus gives trust.
Some of us are better off than others, but how soon a rich person may discover herself penniless. Our paper assets easily burn. Each of us is equally weak at the moment of death. But if we trust in Jesus and look at life in that sense of trust in Him, we have all that we need—and that’s quite enough.
I began noticing how wine is a sign of joy and sorrow. It may intoxicate to the point of stupefaction. It may also bring a sense of joy. This is God’s intent. But the color red reminds us of suffering too, not just as in the suffering of Jesus for our sake, but the suffering that wine may bring. God mysteriously weaves together joy and sorrow in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
As we take the Lord’s Supper this morning, let us remember with gratitude God’s supply of our daily need—and that it is indeed God who provides this supply; and let us remember that God has cared for our far greater need which we associate usually with life’s end. It is God’s intent for us to live and to face death remembering that on “the third day” He has cared for all our need.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we thank you that You have graciously supplied all that we need, in life and in death. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM