To Live a Public Faith

January 4, 2015

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
    and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
    and weighed the mountains in scales
    and the hills in a balance?
¹³ Who has directed the spirit of the Lord,
    or as his counselor has instructed him?
¹⁴ Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
    and who taught him the path of justice?
Who taught him knowledge,
    and showed him the way of understanding?
¹⁵ Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
    and are accounted as dust on the scales;
    see, he takes up the isles like fine dust.
¹⁶ Lebanon would not provide fuel enough,
    nor are its animals enough for a burnt offering.
¹⁷ All the nations are as nothing before him;
    they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

          The Lord measured the earth’s waters in the hollow of his hand?  Weighed the mountains on a scale?  Can anyone reasonably-minded person believe such claims?

          But wait, someone says.  This is poetry, not to be read literally.  Of course, of course.  The speaker here, the prophet referred to as Second Isaiah, is an artist and words are his colors.  Still, his poetry points to what he claims as reality – the reality of an able, powerful, interested God.  He says ‘all nations are as nothing’ before him.

          All nations seem to be more than ‘nothing.’  He spoke and wrote in Babylon, a nation so big and powerful it enslaved entire peoples, the people of Judah being just one to fall under the Babylonian might.  How can he say Babylon is nothing before God? It sounds nice but does not appear rooted in reality.  How many American men and women have died in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?  They are all much smaller countries than America, but I bet the families of the fallen soldiers would not consider these small countries nothing, countries some might refer to as ‘backwater.’

          The claims about God made by the prophets and especially in Isaiah 40-66 are so audacious, they sound unbelievable.  There is a lack of physical evidence.  We cannot scientifically research whether or not God can measure the depths of the ocean in the hollow of His hand.  How would we go about verifying that sort of thing?  The church today – the group of people who claim to represent this God – often appears no more righteous or helpful than other human institutions.  We’re supposed to be a holy body, but we are so infested by sin, we do not serve as evidence to God’s sovereignty. 

          Other religions make grandiose claims about God just as we do.  This scripture we rely upon, Isaiah 40, is something we inherited from our Jewish cousins.  They do not believe Jesus is the Messiah.  We cannot believe the scriptures that come from them could ever be fulfilled unless Jesus is the Messiah and Savior.  Muslims, the third relative in monotheistic faith also tell many of the Old Testament stories revered by Jews and Christians, and Muslims also talk about Jesus.  But for them, he cannot be the Son of God, and for them the stories of scripture only make sense when understood in the interpretation of the prophet Muhammad whom we do not recognize as a prophet.

          How can believe what we read in Isaiah 40?  How can we claim that God is the source of all wisdom, justice, and knowledge?  How dare we assert that this is true not just for us, but is universally true and defines the way the world really is?  But we do dare to make such claims.  We would not be a church of Jesus’ disciples if we didn’t.

          Isaiah 40 says the Lord sits above the circle of the earth (v. 21), not as a distant observes, but as a God who sustains everything.  The world would not spin were it not for God’s constant, active, involvement.  Do we believe it?  Of course!  We are all sitting in church.  It is Sunday morning.  Here, with great enthusiasm, we shout, yes, we believe!

          What about the rest of the time?  Away from church, in the normal places of our lives, do we believe this stuff about God that we find in the Bible and our songs and our tradition?  Do we believe in a way that is seen in the choices we make every day in life?  Do we make decisions based on our rock-solid assurance that God is real, is pay attention and is truly in charge?  Does this belief we claim reveal itself in how we manage our lives?  Does our faith determine how we see the world?  Does our “Yes, we believe” define us to the core?

         

          In 2015, we as a church body will explore what it looks like to live a public faith.  We live our Christianity out in the open.  None of us will be a secret, under cover disciple.  By this I do not mean we announce every time walk in a room, “Alert, alert, Christ-follower on board.”  I do not mean we constantly wear “Jesus saves” t-shirts.  I do not mean we throw away our CD’s and replace them with recordings of hymns.  If you enjoy hymns, great.  If you want to listen to Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift, do so.  I wear shirts that might described as ‘witness wear,’ or ‘spirit wear.’  I also wear shirts that have message about my favorite sports teams.  And sometimes I have conversations with people away from church and I am not trying to convince them of Christianity.  I am trying to convince them the Lions will win a playoff game. 

          When I say we are to spend significant time exploring what it looks like to live a public faith, I mean we will attempt to live in our Christianity so that it defines us.  Through prayer, through conversation with fellow believers and with nonbelievers, through reading and study, through worship and missions, and in numerous other ways, we are going to examine and try to live out a Christianity that is essential to who we are.  You could not be you apart from who you are in Christ.  I could not be who I am apart from Him. 

          We will live for this in 2015 and additionally, and this is a natural development of living a public faith, we will explore how to live in such a way that our lives are pointers.  People see us and come to us and realize that our lives are pointing them to Jesus.  They discover through us – through our witness – that in Jesus there is comfort, forgiveness, joy, healing, abundant life, and eternal life.  A public faith is a life that bears witness to God as we know God in Jesus.

          One source among many that will be a helpful guide is Yale Divinity School theologian Miroslav Volf.  He offers several thoughts on how a public faith interacts with the broader culture.  Another way of saying this is how we live in the world – a world disinterested in the Christian testimony about God.  Here are four of his observations[i]:

1.    Christian Faith that is Public Faith is prophetic.  It seeks to mend the world by being active in every arena of public life.  Arts, business, production, science, education, government – Christians participate in all arenas seeking to mend the world which is most certainly broken.

2.    Christian Faith that is Public Faith brings grace and is marked by the way we give grace.

3.    A Christian living a public faith cares for others and works for their flourishing.

4.    A concern for human flourishing is what brings the Christian into the public conversation.  Our mission is to announce that Jesus Christ is Lord, that with him comes the eternal Kingdom of God, and that salvation for all is found in him.  What propels us into public debates is our commitment to human flourishing – humans living as God intended, as God’s image-bearers. 

Volf’s writings would serve as a guide as will other theologians and Christian writers and thinkers.  Our primary source for our living as witnesses to Jesus is the Holy Spirit.  First and foremost we are guided by the Spirit. 

We encounter the Spirit is within the Christian community, the church and the traditions of the church.  The Spirit is present in all places and speaks at God’s initiative.  We cannot predict when or where the Spirit will shout, when the Spirit will whisper, or where the Spirit will remain silent.  We seek, we listen, and live in acknowledgement that we are Spirit-dependent people.

We are connected people.  Not a one of us is a solitary Christian.  We live in relationship with one another.

The third essential primary source besides Spirit and Church is the Bible.  A lot of evangelicals put the Bible at the top of the list.  The great man of the reformation, Martin Luther, declared we are informed by sola scriptura – scripture alone.  Of course his own followers were not informed by scripture alone.  They met God in the Bible as Luther taught the Bible.  Evangelicals today, who furiously declare that their authority is the Bible and only the Bible, read the Bible through an interpretive lens.  They read as they have received from Augustine, Martin Luther, John, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and many others. 

In our quest to live as Jesus’ disciples publically, as witnesses, our primary sources are the Spirit, the church community (including tradition), and the Word (the Bible).  These three primary sources of guidance and truth are interconnected.  We understand each by way of the others. 

In January 2015, our focus at HillSong will be on Second Isaiah.  Some readers of the book of Isaiah believe one man named Isaiah wrote every chapter, 1-66.  Other readers look at the difference in themes and in life situations, and they believe the prophet named Isaiah is responsible for chapters 1-39, written before the exile.  Then an anonymous writes chapters 40-55 during the exile.  Then after the exile a third author, sometimes called 3^rd Isaiah, writes chapters 56-66.  The Word of God does not change whether you think one man is responsible for the entire book Isaiah, or you are open to the possibility that there is a first, second, and third Isaiah. 

Either way, what we find in this incredible witness, is a person who follows God and lives his faith publically.  He makes incredible claims about God.  We are going to spend this month looking at those claims, deciding whether or not we can believe them, and whether or not we are willing to live our lives in complete worship and surrender to the God who is the subject of those claims. 

So, we see where we are headed.  In 2015, we are going to as individuals and as a body of believers strive to contribute to human flourishing as we announce the kingdom of God and salvation in Jesus in the everyday places of our lives.  We will do this by living a public faith. 

To set the challenge, we hear a bit more from Second Isaiah 40. 

²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see:
    Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
    calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
    mighty in power,
    not one is missing.

²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹ He gives power to the faint,
    and strengthens the powerless.
³⁰ Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted;
³¹ but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
    they shall walk and not faint.

          This week, read this chapter over and over.  In the depths of the soul ask, do I believe it? Ask, can I look into my own life and say, yes, right there, that’s where the belief I speak actually defines who I am?

          Also this week, acknowledge if you have doubts.  If you’re not sure if you believe it or not, go there, and name your doubts. 

          If you know someone who doubts the reality of God or the ability of God or the goodness of God, think about that person this week.  Pray for him or her and consider how your public faith can point him or her to Jesus. 

          Ask …

-         Do I believe it?

-         What are some signs from my life that show I believe it?

-         Do I have doubts

-         Do I know someone who has doubts?

-         How can I bear witness to the one I know who doubts?

I pray for all us that this week we begin in new ways to understand how to live our faith in the world. 

AMEN

---

[i] Volf (2011).  A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good Brazos Press (Grand Rapids, MI), p.xv-xvi.

Isaiah 40:1-11 2nd Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent – December 7, 2014

          She hasn’t eaten in days.  Her son, 10, and daughter, 5 look at her with sunken, hungry eyes.  The Babylonian army has marched around Jerusalem for weeks.  Supplies have long run out. 

          Then, the assault begins.  It does not take long.  They break through the city walls.  There is no resistance.  The few soldiers who put up a defense are quickly impaled on Babylonian spears.  Families are dragged from their homes, kicked into the dust of the streets that flow with Israelite blood.  They are forced to watch as the Babylonians burn Solomon’s temple. 

          Then, the march.  Mile after mile, in chains, they walk to their new home, their new normal as slaves in Babylon.  She does not survive the journey.  Her son and daughter do. 

Now they live as people without rights on the bottom rung of the social ladder in Babylon.  The little boy and the little girl are now in their 70’s, the elder generation of Jews in this foreign place.  They must do what they can to keep memories of Israel alive.

          They have to tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Joseph and the amazing things he accomplished when he was in slavery in Egypt only lives on as they tell the stories.  They remember Moses and the Exodus through the Red Sea.  They tell of Joshua and settling the Promised Land.  They remember the victories of David and the golden age of King Solomon.  But now the brother and sister are old, tired, broken people – people who have spent their lives under heel in Babylon.  For decades they have listened to their Babylonian overlords mock their God. 

          Is it true?  Are the Gods of Babylon superior to Yahweh, the God of Moses, the God of David?  Is their God as dead as they feel?

          A rumor spreads.  A new young prophetic voice is rising in the Jewish quarter.  Young people are talking about what he has said and written.  At a make-shift gathering where one of the few available scrolls of the Torah is read on the Sabbath (thank goodness the Babylonians allow this), people are saying a Jewish prophet has something new to say. 

          This old man and old woman are too tired to hope.  Their dreams were shattered decades ago, a thousand miles way.  Everything they hoped for was violently ripped from them.  Still, they go.  Why not?  What else is there to do?

          It is the largest crowd of Jews they have ever seen and there is a buzz.  The young prophet is there and speaks.  The people who have lived in slavery for so long are overwhelmed by this prophet’s words. 

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

          Can there be comfort?  The people of God have been swallowed by the sands of history, buried under the force of an enemy too powerful for God.  No, says the prophet.  What happened did not come about because Babylon was so strong.  Mighty Babylon; don’t buy it for a moment.  In dragging Israel off to exile in 586 BC, Babylon was simply a tool in the hands of the Almighty God, so says the prophet. 

          Exile did not happen because of Babylon’s strength but because of Israel’s sin.  Now the prophet says the penalty for that sin has been paid.  The Lord’s punishment has happened and now a new day begins.  The Lord Almighty allowed Jerusalem to be destroyed because Israel abandoned the conditions of her covenant with God.  God did not abandon them.  God does not do that.  God has always been and always will be faithful and sovereign. 

          To the Jews in Babylon, people stuck in their grief and their loss, Isaiah offers a new word from God. 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

          The prophet gives three commands.  The first is “comfort.”  Heavenly beings are ordered by the most-high God to give solace to His people.  No second rate Babylonian deity has defeated Yahweh, Jehovah, the God of the Bible. 

Scripture gives glimpses of a heavenly realm that is full of creatures we cannot understand or imagine.  There is no organizational chart.  The one clearly stated truth is God is supreme.  The heavenly beings mentioned in Genesis, Job, Daniel, Revelation and other places are superior to us, but subject to God.  This includes whatever otherworldly beings there were that oversaw Babylon.  “Comfort” – the word we see in Isaiah 40:1 – is a verb in the imperative form.  The heavenly beings must obey God’s order to comfort his people. 

A second command is “prepare.” The prophet prepares the way of the Lord – the way God will lead His people back to the Promised Land.  King Cyrus who will lead Persia to overthrow Babylon is to prepare the Jews by freeing them, sending them home in a second Exodus.  Centuries later, a wild eyed prophet named John prepares the world for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and baptizing those who come to him. 

And we who read the Bible and worship the Lord and believe God is real and is all powerful and does love us – we are commanded to prepare the world for Jesus’ return.  We do this when we bear witness to His grace and the salvation we have in Jesus.  We help clear the path into the hearts of friends who will listen to our testimony.  The clutter that obstructs the way into the heart is removed and they are made ready to meet God.

Comfort.  Prepare.  The third command is “Cry out.”  Proclaim God’s word.  The prophet knows this is to Him directly.  But, what he asks, is He to cry out? 

All people are grass,
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades,
    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades;
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

All people are grass.  The King of Babylon is grass just like the blind beggar who lives in the ally mud, day after day, hoping someone will spare a bit of bread.  All people are grass. Eric Garner, Darren Wilson, Michael Brown, Bill O’Reilly – all people are equal.  All wither and fade.  What am I to “cry out,” Isaiah asks.  All people are grass. The wealthy slumlord and the tenant trapped in poverty stand before God in the same condition.  Right now one has it easy and the other suffers, but that inequality will not last.  Inequality and injustice will not stand, not before the almighty God.  Suffering happens for a season, but God will put all things right.

The tears that suffering brings are real and should be shed.  Maybe some here today have dealt with serious hurt and loss.  Tears pour forth from shattered hearts.  God sees.  God knows pain is on the prowl and death is claiming victims in our country, in our world right now.  God hears our cries. 

Isaiah does not whimsically dismiss the pain of right now as if it were not real.  Isaiah knows suffering.  The Old Testament knows disillusionment, defeat, and death.  And most of the Jews of the 6^th century BC were ready to give in as would people of any nation at any time.  But the prophet saw beyond the immediate dire circumstances.  The prophet was given God’s view.  The prophet knew and we can know that God is a deliverer. 

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;^[a]
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,^[b]
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
    and his recompense before him.
¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

Living as we do in the age of the church, we know the ultimate fulfillment of their words.  Isaiah knew God would gather his lambs in his arms.  We know how God did it.  We know Jesus. 

The birth of Jesus reminds us that God sees the inequalities and injustices that show how broken the world is.  God sees and has done something about it.  In Jesus, God empathizes with us and takes upon himself the worst of us and nails it to a cross.  Our sins, our pain, our grief, our loss – it has been crucified with Christ.  In Him, we are no longer slaves to sin.  We are new creations.  While we linger in the fallen world, we serve as today’s pointers.

We aren’t prophets.  From time to time, prophetic words must be spoken.  But we are not prophets like Isaiah.  We are witnesses.  In this age, the people of God, all who are in Christ, bear witness to what God has done, to the truth of His kingdom, and to the salvation we have in Jesus.

Withering grass and fading flowers reminded Isaiah that in the end, all are equal before God – equally small, equally sinful, equally lost.  The greatest athlete, the president of the United States, the handicapped homeless child, you, and me – we all fade.  But, Isaiah tells us that God gathers in his shepherd arms.  God holds us, feeds us, and lifts us up to where God is. 

Jesus uses different metaphors, a table, and a cross.  At that cross, we are all dead.  He invites we who are dead to the table – all of us.  The famous physician has a seat right next to the unemployed alcoholic.  The imperfect, the defective, the broken – we sit together in a community of love. 

We serve each other bread – his body broken, our sins covered.  We serve each other wine – his blood shed, eternal life given to us. 

As we walk in the promises of Isaiah, acknowledging that pain is real but has been defeated by the power of Christ, we walk to the table.  We walk arm-in-arm in a family of love – the love of God.  We dare to believe that God is real, can be trusted, and will make the world right.  We dare to live in that belief.  And then we go out and testify to life, life in Christ.  In this age – the age of the church – we walk as those who are in the light and we spend our lives bearing witness, telling of the God who gathers us in His shepherd arms and gives us comfort.

AMEN