What Glorifies God? (Matthew 5:13-16)

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvj9cOrAOcg&t=160s

Sunday, June 7, 2020

            Am I a follower of Jesus?  Ask yourself that question.  Sit with it.

Jesus doesn’t want believers or admirers.  He’s looking for disciples.  He assumes belief and has no interest in flattery or admiration.  He wants followers. Do I believe Jesus is Lord?  Yes?  An I submitting all my plans, ideas, words, thoughts, and actions to Him?  With these questions, examine your own life. 

            Now, ask this.  What brings glory to the Heavenly Father?  In Matthew 5, Jesus is giving his most well-known message, the Sermon on the Mount.  In this message he says “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:16).  What brings glory to God?

            In historic moments, like our current times, Biblical truth gets hijacked by partisanship and identity politics.  What brings glory to God?  Christians rattle off things they think don’t bring glory to God. 

            Antifa and violent protests and looting don’t bring glory to God.

            Police officers using deadly chokeholds against unarmed, subdued suspects, doesn’t bring glory to God.

            Abortion doesn’t bring glory to God.  Liberals don’t bring glory to God.

            Using the Bible for a photo op doesn’t bring glory to God.

            Shutting down the economy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 doesn’t bring glory to God. 

            Re-opening too quickly and risking everyone’s health doesn’t bring glory to God.

            I am pleading with you – don’t do that.  When we shine the light and see what’s going on, look for what does glorify God?  Please, don’t, with the efficiency of an auctioneer, list your personal political bugaboos, things you think don’t bring glory to God.

            We avoid opening our hearts to God and being convicted by His Gospel when we blame others are for failing to live up to Jesus’ teaching.  When our response to a question about God’s will or God’s glory is to immediately critique those with different politics than ourselves, we don’t allow the red letters – Jesus’ actual teaching – to be a mirror that exposes the ugly truth about ourselves. 

Let Jesus’ words be a mirror in which you examine your own soul.  He said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:16). Where in the world today, in the public square, in our personal lives is God glorified?

Look for God in every news story you see.  Set aside the instinct to defend your identity and your national pride.  Chances are, the person you’re arguing against also believes in country, freedom and good.  Confronted by God’s word from the mouth of Jesus, allow yourself to be taken to uncomfortable places.  We squirm under God’s glare, but not because God isn’t loving.  God is love.  We squirm because in His light, we see ourselves, we see the world, and we don’t like everything we see.  And we know God doesn’t like those parts we don’t like.    

Stanley Hauerwas calls the Sermon on the Mount a description of the life of a people gathered around Jesus.[i]  Are you among the people gathered Jesus?  Before we talk about the devastation of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, before we talk about the George Floyd choked in a humiliating, undignified, deadly way, before we talk about Breonna Taylor shot by police in her home, before we rush to defend the good police officers we know, before we condemn the bad actors who turn peaceful protests into violent riots – before all that; examine your heart.  When you imagine the life you’re living, are you a part of those gathered around Jesus?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and a giant among Christian theologians in the 20^th century.  He opposed Hitler and was executed in a concentration camp.  He could have fled to England or America.  But he stayed to confront evil and shine the light of Jesus in dark days.  God was glorified on the cross as his son took the sins of the world on himself and defeated them in his death.  God is glorified as a German disciple of Jesus hangs from a Nazi rope. 

In his remarks on the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer said “disciples are summoned to follow the crucified in the life of grace.”[ii]  The words we live by at Hillside are, “We follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.”  Considering that Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others that they may see … and give glory to [God]”, and considering that Jesus is the supreme example of glory in his death on the cross, we accept Bonhoeffer’s vision of discipleship.  When we pledge to follow Jesus, we put ourselves in eternal debt to the crucified one, and we commit to spend our lives walking the path he trod.  God was glorified when Bonhoeffer followed Jesus to the noose.  God is glorified when we do the same. 

We won’t all be executed, unjustly.  But hopefully, we all see where Jesus is.  Jesus was weeping with George Floyd, gasping with him, sustaining him for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.  As his followers, that’s where we have to be.  We confront racism, maybe by protesting (peacefully and forcefully), speaking out against racism, using our platforms to dismantle white privilege and empower others; maybe we do all these things; always, we show that in Christ, black, white, and brown are united as a family. 

From our church family, Tim Pressley, a former member, is committed to Jesus, and served honorably in his law enforcement career.  Carlin Jordan, husband of our former youth pastor, is a black man and a proud, committed police officer.  He honors God in the way he approaches policing.  While he may be known as Father, Husband, black man, officer, the way Carlin to be known is as a disciple submitted to the rule of His Lord, Jesus Christ.

When I insist that following Jesus means following the crucified one and following the crucified means we stand with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, with Eric Garner and Michael Brown, I am not damning the police.  Soldiers were among the people gathered around Jesus.  Pharisees, people with disabilities, and prostitutes were among the people gathered around Jesus.  From every corner of society, many ignored Jesus and mocked his followers, but a few turned to Him, gave themselves to him, and became disciples. 

We are among the disciples.  We obey him and thus shine our light.  Following the crucified one, we find ourselves embracing the downtrodden, and holding the hand of the executed.  One of the ways we announce the new age in the coming Kingdom is we fight injustice.  Because Jesus has come, a new reality is actually breaking in, invading our current fallen, dying world.

Attending rallies and writing a letter to a congressman are good works, social actions anyone of any faith could take.  We follow Jesus, and therefore love others, and in our love of others and in the promise of salvation, we share hope.  Our solidarity with the poor and the persecuted is Gospel work when we draw people to Jesus.

Within our community, we tell a story that’s better than the violent one news outlets constantly repeat.  Ours is a story of love, told in the ways we love each other, welcome others in, and help the world around us.  In this kind of story, we give extra love and attention to those who hurt the most. 

My family gave me sympathy and space and extra doses of kindness in the days right after my ankle surgery.  They didn’t do that because I matter more than other family members.  They did it because I was hurting.  Their love told a beautiful story.

Over the course of this past week, I reached out to my friends who might be especially hurt by what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.  I called, texted, or emailed friends who understand the pain more deeply than me.  I contacted a dozen of my black friends.  Some got back to me, happy that I reached out.  Great!  Some didn’t need to hear from or talk to a white guy at that moment.  They ignored me.  That’s OK too.  I was pretty sure I’d find Jesus in the tears of my black friends.  All tears matter, but Jesus sits in the tears of broken people.  I wanted to be near him so that’s where I went. 

Look around the world.  Look at our community.  Look at your life. 

Are you summoned to follow the crucified one?     

When the light shines, is God glorified in you?

Where do you see Jesus?  Will you join him there?

AMEN 

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[i] S. Hauerwas (2006), Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Matthew, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids), p.61.

[ii] D. Bonhoeffer (1963), The Cost of Discipleship, MacMillan Publishing Company (New York), p.129.

“Seeking the Unknowable God” (Isaiah 55:6-9)

New Year’s Day, January 1, 2017

            My New Year’s goal: I am going to go up to Greenland or somewhere north of there, and I am going to swim under an iceberg.  If above the water is 50 feet high and 200 or 300 hundred feet in width and length, then under the water it is much, much bigger, running hundreds of feet deep.  Swimming under that, what will kill me first, the hypothermia, or the drowning? 

            Before we think about getting a pastor search committee ready, I have already thought this out and I’ve decided to tackle something bigger than this, but less fatal.   And you’re coming with me. 

            I actually Googled it and found a guy who does explore icebergs by swimming under them.  So, yes, I know it can be done.  I also know I would die in under a minute if I tried.  What I am attempting – what we will attempt – in 2017 is more unreachable than the iceberg-swim, but the attempt itself, is life-changing.  In a good way.

            I think God is like an iceberg.  In photos of icebergs – photos that show both above and below the water’s surface, it is clear how much more is under the water; this is what we don’t see – except in those special photos.  There literally is a lot more than meets the eye.  We see less of the iceberg than the submerged portion we can’t see.  And there is more of God we do not know and cannot know than what we do know – immeasurably more. 

            That word, ‘immeasurable,’ is often used as hyperbole, to express how big something is.  In this case, I am using the word literally.  God’s expanse goes beyond our physical universe and when God so pleases, he occupies space in our universe.  God operates within the bounds of the laws of nature, but God can at times, God can defy the laws of nature.  Furthermore, God cannot be measured.

We want to try to see more God knowing that we can never see all of God and in all likelihood there will always be more of God that we cannot see than what we can see.  There will always be more of God we do not know.  In our quest we will use logic and rational thought.  We will appeal to experience – the experience of people in the Bible, of the great theologians in history, and the experience of everyday believers.  Our quest is rooted scripture, yet our individual stories are extremely important as we try to grow our God knowledge.  Your sense of God and your understanding within the arc of your own life matters in this quest to see God because the Bible repeatedly shows that God revealed God’s self to everyday people at least as often as to religious scholars.  Moses was a shepherd.  Joseph, the son of Jacob, was a slave.  The prophet Amos was a farmer.  Mary was a peasant.  Matthew a tax collector.  The experiences everyday people have with God have a privileged place at the table of theological discussion.  However, even as we seek God by way study of scripture, by prayer, by means of sophisticated inquiry, and by hearing one another’s stories, even as we together attempt to swim under the iceberg just to see what it’s like down there, we accept at the beginning that God cannot be known.

            So why do it at all?  Our scripture reading for this morning might discourage us.  The latter two verses, Isaiah 55:8-9, say,

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Additional scripture passages deepen this sense of Holiness and otherness of God. 

Romans 11:33 says, “O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.  How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways.”

And in Deuteronomy, the people of Israel were so aware of God’s holiness, they felt themselves unworthy to even exist in God’s presence.  The text of Deuteronomy is a recounting of the journey of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land.  Moses reiterates the entire law for the people before they prepare to crossover into the land and live as God’s people.  In Deuteronomy 5, the people tell Moses, “If the Lord our God speaks to us again, we will certainly die and be consumed by his awesome fire.”  Then they tell Moses, you be the one to risk death by continuing to speak to God.  Then you come out and tell us what God says.  They had no desire to get any closer to God.  They wanted a safe distance.

Those Israelites on the banks of the Jordan River had experiences with God we never will.  They saw the Red Sea parted and walked through it.  They saw the ground open up and swallow groups of people.  They saw these and many other works of wonder, and they wanted no part of God.  Moses, you be the one who knows God more deeply, sees more of God.  We’ll keep our distance.  Would we be wiser to follow their lead and keep our distance?  Why seek the one whose judgments are unsearchable?  Why try to know the God whose ways are higher than ours, whose own chosen people feared Him? 

The reason seeking God is of enormous importance to us is our context - America, Chapel Hill, the year 2017.  Many – I believe – most people have lost a sense of the fear of God.  We feel free to be casual when we talk about.  On a popular TV show, one of the characters rejected the idea that God is all powerful and that God has authority over our lives.  Instead, using her own ideas as her source of authority, she said, “I like to think that God is love and that all who love are close to God.”  Of course she had no real sense of the Biblical understanding of love, and she had no interest in the Bible as an authority.  But in the show, she was the hero and her view was the one celebrated: a vague notion that love, undefined, is the supreme value, so God, whatever God is, must be love.  I have heard that sentiment from that TV show over and over in casual conversation. 

In our cultural landscape, I sense a lack of real knowledge of God, and a lack of reverence.  People don’t really know God and don’t feel the strong need to know God.  God is a luxury or an interest, but not a necessity.  Why, in our worship, would we try to do what our Hebrew ancestors in faith feared to do and what the prophet said was impossible?  Why try to know God? 

First, we reach to the unreachable God because we claim to be his church.  We claim this God is the only God and we claim to know this God by way of His revelation in Jesus Christ.  If we are going to be emissaries of God and if we want to show the world that worshiping this God matters, we have to know the God we’re representing.  We have to be able to talk about God knowledgeably and convincingly in a cultural climate where a lot of people think knowledge of God is impossible and unnecessary.  We have to be able to tell what we know and why knowing it is important.  We develop knowledge and articulation as we seek God.

Second, the Bible bids us invitation to seek God.  Our text for today is Isaiah 55.   We’ve already seen that this passage declares God’s ways are higher than our ways.  And yet, here is what it says in verses 6 & 7.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

God wants us to seek him because God is relational.  “Seek the Lord,” Isaiah says.  “Call upon him.”  The next instruction has to do with how we live and think.  “Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts.”  We proceed in life, in the decisions we make, based on our thoughts, on our view of the world.  We act out of our perception of reality.  What if our perception of reality is based on a sense that God is always present, all powerful, and all loving?  In Isaiah’s view, to intentionally, proactively seek God is to change one’s outlook.  The Biblical word is repent.  Turn around, away from immorality and sin, turn away from destructive thoughts and harmful activities and life-destroying words, and turn toward God. 

Isaiah says this is possible because God is merciful and will abundantly pardon.  Even as we talk about seeking God, we learn something about God.  It’s not something we can weigh or describe in visual terms or affix to a law.  Rather we learn that God is relational and is willing to forgive for the sake of relationship.  

A third reason to attempt to know God is preparation.  A major piece of our Christian belief is that when we die if we are in relationship with God in Jesus Christ, we will spend eternity as a son or daughter of God, in God’s presence, and in resurrected bodies.  That eternity is spent in God’s kingdom.  We prepare for life in God’s presence by growing in knowledge of and relationship with God now.  Dallas Williard has suggested that some believers never grow in their lives as Jesus-followers.  They never grow spiritually, so when they enter resurrection, they find the Kingdom of God very unfamiliar.  Conversely, if we spend our lives seeking God, expanding our knowledge of God, and growing in relationship with God, when we enter the Kingdom in resurrection, it will feel like going home.  It will be entirely new and entirely familiar.  It will be both. 

We seek God to know God because as Christians we need to be prepared to talk about God.

We seek God because Isaiah tells us to and tells us God will welcome us. 

We seek God in order to prepare to spend eternity with God. 

As we enter 2017, our worship at HillSong will be about the quest.  We’re exploring the portion of the iceberg that’s beneath the surface.  I read an article in which the author was eager to bid farewell to 2016.  She cited all the beloved celebrities who died this past year – and many more died in the week after she wrote that article.  She cited the acrimony over the election.  It is hard to find people who are happy with the direction of our nation.  She cited the rise in shootings, often leading to heightened racial tension.  She pointed to the seemingly endless war in Syria that has created a refugee crisis felt all across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.  For these and numerous other reasons, she was eager to bid 2016 adieu.

I see her points, but I don’t want to overlook the positives.  We saw new life – new babies born in 2016.  We had new members come into our church family.  We participated in some beautiful ministries, the mission trip to Kombolcha and the Vacation Bible School in June to mention a few.  Our church welcomed a new youth pastor onto our staff.  While I acknowledge the rough patches in 2016, there were things to celebrate too.

However, I also know that a lot people feel the way author of the article feels.  It was a rough year. That feeling and the malaise that comes with it, is a final reason I want us to begin 2017 earnestly seeking God.  Our ability to talk about God will increase.  We will meet the God Isaiah introduces, a merciful, forgiving, loving God.  We will grow in relationship and thus be prepared to spend eternity in the resurrection in God’s presence.  And, we can shift our focus from the pain and tension in our own lives and in the world around us.  We are all small before the Holy God.  In that way, all people are the same.  And all need God.  We can unite in our quest to meet this God.  In Him, we can be one people. 

So, we enter 2017 with the words of Isaiah.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

It’s something we do together. 

This morning we close with the promise that comes at the end of the chapter – the end goal of seeking God.

[We] shall go out in joy,
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before [us]
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

AMEN