Sunday,
June 12, 2016
(On this Sunday, we baptized J_______).
As Jeremy went under the
water, I pronounced him “dead.” This is
not only about J______. Recall your baptism. I or another pastor took you down under the
water, dead and buried in sin. Then you
are raised and we say, “Raised to new life in Jesus Christ.” Sin leads to death, but because of Jesus, his
death on the cross and his resurrection, we have new life. We become new creations. We do not remain
buried in the ground to return to ashes.
We are raised.
For
what? Jeremy has entrusted himself to
Jesus. You and I, if we have put our
faith in Christ, also have entrusted ourselves to Him. We are saved, born again, bound for
resurrection. Our baptism shows
this. What about our lives? For what are we saved?
In
the 16th century in Europe, a group of Christians called Anabaptists
insisted that babies could not be baptized.
Baptism was for people who were able to consciously choose to follow
Jesus and when baptism happened it had to be by immersion. In the reformation, Protestant Christians
separated from the Catholic Church.
Anabaptists, the ones denying the acceptability of infant baptism
separated from other Protestants like Lutherans and the Reformed Church.
As
a result, over 1000 Anabaptists were arrested and killed by both Catholics and
by other Protestants. Their main crime was
they allowed themselves to be re-baptized.
Women were drowned for this, and men burned at the stake for doing what
Jeremy did today, undergoing immersion, believer’s baptism.
Dirk
Willem was one such Christian, an Anabaptist follower of Jesus. Imprisoned, awaiting execution in his home
town of Asperen, Netherlands, he escaped.
He made a rope of cloths tied together, and fled over the wintry
countryside as a guard gave chase. He
risked running right across a frozen pond.
The ice held, but when the guard followed, it gave way dooming him to a
certain, frozen death.
Raised to new life in Christ. For what?
Dirk Willem stopped
running, turned around, and helped the man who a moment ago had been chasing
him. Dirk had escaped and was in the
clear, but he believed what Jesus said when Jesus said to love our
enemies. He pulled that man from the
frigid waters and the man was ready to let him go, but this all took long
enough for others to catch up. For
living as a part of new creation, as one who is of the Kingdom of God, Dirk
Willem was burned at the stake on May 16, 1569.
Near
the end of his letter to the Corinthian Church, the Apostle Paul zeroed on the
core Gospel. Chapter begins, “Now I
would remind you brothers and sisters, of the gospel … [on] which you stand”
(15:1). It all comes down to this. Paul’s final word for them in this letter is the
essential Gospel.
Competing
narratives vie for our soul. Every one of
us lives under the covering of a dominant story. Maybe it is a national story or a social
class story or a race story. Whatever it
is, this was true of the Corinthians; it was true for Dirk Willem which is why
he was willing to go to his own death to save the man who represented the
powers that killed him; and, it is true for you and me. Competing stories position themselves to be
the dominant story of our lives. Paul
wanted the Gospel to be the dominant story for all who would read this letter.
Verse
2, we are saved if we believe. Verse 3,
Christ died for our sins, was buried, and raised. Please note that each portion is equally
critical in our story. There is not more
weight on the cross. The cross is
essential. The burial is and so is the
resurrection. The gospel includes all of
it. Later in this chapter, Paul declares
that if Jesus was not raised in a bodily resurrection, it’s all for nothing. Without the resurrection, the cross is just a
torture device. Without the cross, the
resurrection never happens.
And
in beginning in verse 5 and running through verse 11 is another, equally
essential element of the Gospel: the appearances of the risen Lord Jesus. This testimony is here because Paul wants the
original readers of this letter and every subsequent generation of readers to
know that there were multiple eye-witnesses who attested to a literal, bodily
resurrection.
New
Testament writers worked to place the resurrection as an event history,
something that literally happened. In
the opening verses of his Gospel, Luke asserts that he is writing history. He took the same approach in the book of
Acts. In John’s gospel, the author
claims to be an eye-witness to all that has been described including the
resurrection (John 21:24). A similar
claim is made in Second Peter (1:5) and here in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul names
several eyewitness.
Theologian Paul Fiddes labels
this approach to knowledge of Jesus as ‘scientific,’ affixing to the discipline
of historical research the same standards of inquiry used in science (see Past Event and Present Salvation,
chapter 3). Fiddes thinks the
resurrection cannot be determined by means of scientific inquiry because it is
an event that cannot be reproduced within the boundaries of the laws of
nature. It is a supernatural event so
the fact that it happened cannot be established by historical research. Fiddes is not denying a bodily
resurrection. He just denies that we can
prove it by the conventions historians use.
Rather, we know the resurrection happened because we know it by
faith. Fiddes believes this approach to
knowing is as valid and as important as the knowledge we gain by scientific
inquire. In dealing with salvation, he
feels both ways of knowing – by faith and by scientific inquiry - are essential.
While he doesn’t delve
into how we know, theologian James McClendon accepts the resurrection as an
event in history. Two theologian-historians,
N.T. Wright and Mike Licona, have written lengthy volumes explaining why the
best conclusion to be drawn from the available evidence is that Jesus actually
did rise from the grave. Whether that is
enough to say that inquiry can establish the historicity of the resurrection, I
cannot say. But all the scholars I
mentioned, Fiddes, Wright, Licona, and McClendon along with many others would
agree that scientific inquiry cannot establish what the original followers of
Jesus thought the cross and resurrection meant.
To understand meaning, we
have to live in that other sphere of understanding Fiddes name – knowledge that
comes by faith. Fiddes says, “the living
and incomparable Lord cannot be pinned down under the microscope of scientific
investigation. [We] need the eye of faith,
and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring matters into focus before we can say
[and believe] that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’”
(p.37). Paul and the other New Testament
writers always operated with the eye of faith.
Even when they tried to establish hard, objective facts by way of
insisting upon the eye-witness nature of their reports, those reports were
packaged persuasively in an attempt to lead the reader to faith. The apostle was at the same time objective,
faith-based, and evangelistic.
We understand the events
of salvation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the appearances of the
risen Lord Jesus both by science and by faith.
I have spent a bit time explaining both ways of understanding
specifically because we live in a post-enlightenment era. We are science and technology dependent. There are individuals who are happy to let
science take care of our healing at the hospital and our entertainment with
1000 devices and our banking and our shopping and our military defense. In all these ways, some individuals trust in
technology, but when it comes to heaven, then switch and trust in God. And never do the science and the faith
meet.
For others, that won’t
do. When everything rides on the next
scientific advance, to then rely on something outside of science for the
afterlife is just superstition. Science
has to have a say in our faith understanding.
However, science (including historical proof as science) cannot have the
final say. The resurrection is outside
the parameters of science. God is outside
the parameters of science. So is
meaning. Thus when we, as followers of the
crucified/risen Lord who come from the scientific age, express our faith we
need to do so in a way that is rooted in faith but understood by those rooted
in science. We have to talk about
salvation in a way makes that makes sense to people today.
Jesus lived in first
century Palestine. Fact.
He was crucified when
Jewish leaders collaborated with Romans leaders. He was crucified, dead, and buried. Fact.
He rose from death and
appeared to his followers. Call this
fact or belief, but it happened. Jesus
literally rose in a bodily resurrection and first century people saw him.
What we believe about God
and salvation rest on these facts which we declare to be irrefutable. What
these things mean has to do with the relationship that comes when the Holy
Spirit reaches out to us and we respond.
This is faith knowledge and faith-living. We declare both, what we know and the life we
will commit to live in believer’s baptism by immersion.
But then, what this all
means, is only seen in how we live.
Prior to the resurrection, it was hard.
Jesus repeatedly told his followers that like him, they needed to walk
the hard road, persevere through persecution, and endure in godliness and
faith. They just wanted to jump ahead straight
to the New Age, bypassing hardship. McClendon
observes that if the disciples had had their way, there would have been no
cross. If Jesus had his way, there would
have been 13 crosses (McClendon, p.235).
And we have to take up our cross and follow Him. When we do that, when we’ve evaluated the
evidence and responded to the Holy Spirit and we decide that because of what we’ve
found and what we’ve felt we should then walk the footsteps of Jesus, then we
have a full-bodied, lived salvation.
So, we study and pray. We
think and feel. We calculate, evaluate,
and meditate. All of it is done in hope and
trust, believing that God will make us ready when our moment comes and our
pursuer is about to fall through the ice.
Remember the opening
story of the Dirk Willem who stop his escape to rescue the guard falling
through thin ice. In that moment, he was
not engaged in deep theological analysis.
He was not moved by a deep warmth from God, I don’t think. He was scared and running for his life. But he stopped because deep inside himself he
could hear the voice of Jesus telling him to love his enemy. This enemy would drag him to the stake where
he would be slow-roasted to death.
When we are attacked verbally
or relationally or maybe physically, when we are hit, do we hear Jesus telling
us to love our enemies and do we obey?
When it gets really hard,
do we run as fast as we can to safer ground, or do we stand and point to the
crucified, risen Lord and declare, I am
standing with Him and trusting in Him, no matter what?
When being a Christ-follower
is costly, do we backtrack and settle for a watered down faith indistinguishable
from any other worldview, or do we pay the cost, carry our cross, and follow
Him?
The gospel is salvation:
through the cross and the resurrection, Jesus saves us from sin and death and
saves us to life eternal in His kingdom.
We know this salvation that we have through measured, reasoned study of
the facts. We know this salvation that
we have through our deeply personal, emotional response to the Holy Spirit who
whispers to our hearts that we are forgiven and beloved. And our salvation is known when the watching
world sees our lives and sees Jesus.
AMEN
