God has Spoken (Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12)

            Who is Jesus?  Pose the question to your neighbor and you’ll get one answer.  Ask someone else and it will be a different answer.  If you ask friend who doesn’t go to church, and she knows you do, she might feel pressure, thinking you’re looking for a “right answer.”  If we went around the room here and had every person write down their response, we’d get a number of different ideas.  Many would be similar to one another, but there would be different points of emphasis.  Even among 80-100 people who worship in the same church every week, the answers to such a basic question, who is Jesus, would vary.

            We won’t get a complete answer to this seemingly short question in the verses we read in Hebrews this morning.  To get a full picture, we’d have to go through the Old Testament, the four Gospels and Acts, Paul’s letters, and the rest of the New Testament to see it.  And we’d have to understand everything we read and have the capacity to hold together all the aspects of who Jesus is.  The short question is bigger than any we could possibly answer.

            But, please try.  Get a pen and the section of your bulletin for comments, and begin writing your definition of who Jesus is.  It might be worth it to spend the entire time this morning writing your understanding of Jesus.  Your faith life might get a boost if you take what you write here this morning and continue working on it throughout the upcoming week.  Who is Jesus?

            Hebrews 1 doesn’t give the complete answer, but it does give an important part. 

            Hebrews is regarded as an epistle, a New Testament letter, but it’s really a theological treatise which begins, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”  For a moment, stop to digest the claim made here.  God has spoken to us.

            The Raiders of the Lost Ark tells of the adventurous World War II era archaeologist Indiana Jones.  He has to fight Nazis and escape from tombs full of poisonous snakes in order to find his way to God.  When he finally gets to the point that the ark is opened, he has to close his eyes.  It’s too much to see.  In one of the Star Trek movies, the Enterprise under the leadership of Captain James T. Kirk flies beyond the reaches of known space in search for God. 

            You and I cannot match the exploits of the great Indiana Jones, and you and I are not even archaeologists.  We’re not starship captains, and in fact there aren’t really starships, and truth be told, there is no edge of known space.  But these and dozens of other fantastic stories tell the same story, one believed by a lot of people, maybe many who here.  We accept this notion that God is “out there,” “inaccessible,” “unreachable.” 

            In a sense, it’s true.  Human beings cannot work their way to God or figure God out.  But, as Hebrews asserts, there have been prophets.  God has spoken through the mouths of those prophets.  We made this point a few months ago as we studied the prophet Hosea.  God wants us to know His heart and mind.  God has sent prophets.  God has given the Bible.  God has given visions to people like Daniel and Peter and Paul.  We don’t need to undertake a harrowing, death-defying quest.  We need to sit and listen because God has spoken to us.  I am not sure people who don’t participate in church or read the Bible know this.   God loves us and wants us to know it. 

            The primary concern[i] of the author of Hebrews is to show that while in the past God has spoken through prophets and scriptures and kings and priests, in the last days, God speaks through the Son.  The New Testament perspective is that the resurrection of Jesus initiates the “last days,” the end times.  The era of the church, which we are now in, is the prelude to the end of history.  We don’t know when Christ will return to initiate the final resurrection, but we believe he will, and we believe we are living in the end times.  There’s no telling how long it might be, but we are in the last days, God is the communicator, and Jesus is the messages and the way the message is communicated. 

As you’re working on your own answer to the question “who is Jesus,” maybe a part of the answer is this.  Jesus is God’s means of communication.  God is the communicator and shares with us truth, and Jesus is the message but also is the medium, the way the communication is conveyed. 

            He is called “the son” in Hebrews 1 and then is named in 2:9.  The Hebrews author declares 7 affirmations, truths about the person, work, and status of God the Son.  First, the Son is heir of all things.  God bequeaths to His Son, the Lord Jesus, possessions of everything in existence. Second, all that God created, the entire universe, every living thing – all of it – was made through the Son.  Third, when we see Jesus, we see God. “He is the reflection of God’s glory, and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (1:3).  Fourth, also in verse 3, Jesus sustains all things.  Colossians 1:17 says, “in him all things hold together.  Jesus is creator and sustainer. 

            A fifth affirmation of Jesus the Son in the opening verses of Hebrews is purification; sin taints God’s good creation, but Jesus purifies us, washing our sin away and putting his holiness on us.  The theme of Jesus’ covering of our sins introduced in 1:3 will develop in much greater detail throughout Hebrews. 

The sixth affirmation follows the sequence of the Gospel story.  Jesus purifies us in his death on the cross, taking the penalty for our sins on himself.  After the cross and burial, he was resurrected.  After resurrection and appearing to the apostles, he ascended and now sits in body at the right hand of God the Father.  God is currently present in the world through God the Spirit.  The Son is currently in Heaven and will return in His glorified body at the end to inaugurate the final resurrection. 

Seventh and finally, the Son is superior to the angels.  They carry God’s messages to human beings.  They are not restrained by the limits of natural law.  Angels seem vastly superior to us, but, we, not angels, are the ones created in the image of God.  And Jesus, God in human flesh – fully man and fully God at the same time – lived the perfect human life.  He goes before us as the superior one, worshiped by and by Angels too.    

·         Heir of all things

·         Agent of Creation for everything that exists

·         Reflection of God

·         Sustainer of all things

·         The one who makes sinful human beings pure and holy

·         Seated at the right hand of the Father

·         Above all supernatural, heavenly beings

This is the Jesus we meet in Hebrews chapter 1, the means of God’s communication.  He is the messenger and the message.  To hear what God is trying to say, we must listen to Jesus. 

Hebrews 2 adds that though Jesus is now crowned with glory, he has gone through suffering and death.  God is immortal; God cannot die.  Yet in Jesus, God shed divinity and took on human flesh and like you and me was vulnerable to disease, hunger, heartbreak, disappointment, and sorrow.  The end of 2:9 says he tasted death for everyone; for you; for me.  The Son completely identifies with our greatest struggles; sometimes people see pain and evil running rampant throughout the world and have a hard time believing a good God could possibly exist.  In Jesus, that good God suffered in every way that humans do. 

This leads to the third part of the conversation in Hebrews.  It’s the old adage: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noisy crash.  It’s a simple equation for sound.   There has to be a sender, a medium, and a receiver.  The sound waves are produced, they travel through something – air, solid material, water – something.  And then the sound is completed when the sound waves are received.  So, God speaks and the sound travels through Jesus.  Who’s the recipient?  God’s church. 

The moments of divine communication in the Bible fall within the bounds of religious practice.  When Peter met the Roman Cornelius, Cornelius had been praying in an attempt to connect to Judaism’s God.  When Philip baptized the eunuch from Ethiopia, the man had been reading Israel’s scriptures.  When Jesus confronted Saul the Pharisee on the road, Saul’s work of arresting Christians for being Christians was an act of the synagogue.    The reason so many people embrace spirituality while rejecting organized religion is we all have a longing for God, but the church, like human institutions, is broken.

Still, Jesus, the holy God, took on frail human flesh.  The Holy Spirit started the church in the synagogue through flawed people like Peter, Philip, and Paul, and non-Jews like the Ethiopian and the centurion.  Yes, our church in particular and churches in general are imperfect, flawed, and broken. But the God Indian Jones battled Nazis and vipers to find has reached to human beings – those in the church.  God has spoken through Jesus to the church.

This is not to say that God ignores people outside the church.  Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world.  God sends us to the world first and foremost to announce that people can have forgiveness of sin and salvation from death when they turn to Jesus.  That is the great commission: go and make disciples of people who don’t know God.  Yes, God loves the world.

God’s starting point is the word He has spoken through Jesus to the church.  Hebrews was a theological essay written for persecuted Christians in order to encourage them by clarifying their knowledge of the Savior, Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Begin developing your answer to the question, “Who is Jesus?”  Read Hebrews.  And for that view of the exalted, divine Son, read Colossians 1 and Revelation and the Gospel of John 1.  To move through the exciting, surprising twists and turns of God walking in human flesh, read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the rest of John.  Jesus is the God who loves you and me, the one who gives us life.  I urge each one of us this to invest time in re-discovering Him.

AMEN

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[i] George Guthrie (1988), The NIV Application Commentary: Hebrews, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), p.54.

Trinity Sunday (John 3:1-16)

Sunday, May 27, 2018

            By the authority vested in me, as minister of the Gospel, an ordained Baptist Pastor, I hereby grant to all present, every one of you, the sanctified permission to say, “I don’t know.”  It’s OK.  It’s alright to not know everything there is to know about God. 

            That’s true all of the time, but this truth is of special import today – Trinity Sunday. 

            Just imagine yourself.  You go to church.  You sing the songs and listen, really listen, to the sermons.  You read the Bible on your own, and attend a midweek Bible study.  You can, in your own words, explain that you know you are a sinner and Jesus died for you.  You can give your own story, of how and when you gave your heart to Jesus and began living life under His rule, with Him as your Lord.

            Then, a non-church going friend, in the course of casual conversation asks that question.  “I get that you believe in God and everything, but what about the trinity?  Can you explain that?”

            Ooh. At that point, the collar gets a little tight, the mouth a little dry.  Beads of sweat appear on the forehead.  Explain the trinity?  Okay.  The trinity is God, 3-in-1; kind of like water, which is ice, liquid water, and steam; solid, liquid, and gas. 

            That explanation doesn’t work!  Those are just different modes of H2O, just different forms.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God, the one God, but distinct from the other two. It’s how Jesus could pray to the Father.  They’re distinct, but also one.  It is how, as we see in Mark 1:12, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.  Jesus does not evaporate and become the Holy Spirit.  The Father does not melt to become Jesus.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct from each other, and the analogy of water fails to explain that. 

            Let’s try again.  How to explain the trinity?  The trinity is like the sun that produces light and heat and gives vitamin D!

            Again, that explanation is a no go!  The Son and the Holy Spirit are not produced by the Father.  Heat and light are things the sun produces as it gives off energy.  God the Son is fully God; so is God the Spirit.  Neither emanates as a product of God.  Both are eternal.  Both are persons existing as personalities, distinct.  And yet, the three together exist as one God and there’s no separating them. 

            We cannot claim the Father, Son, and Spirit are modes of God.  One could make such a claim, but that would not be an orthodox Christian claim.  Nor can we say the Son and the Spirit are produced from the Father, not if we want to align with the traditional claims of Christianity. 

            One more try?  Here goes: just as an apple is the core, the pulp, and the skin – all of the apple – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all equal parts of God. Does that work?

            No!  The Father is not 1/3 of God.  The Father is fully God.  The Son and the Holy Spirit each are fully God.  The three persons of the trinity are not parts.  They are not modes.  They are not emanations.  Each one is distinctly, fully God – the one God; God, 3-in-1.

            Remember!  You have sanctified permission to say, “I don’t know!”  Your unchurched friend says, “Hey, Christian, what about the Trinity?”  Your response?  “The triune nature of God is an unexplainable mystery.  The Father is eternal, fully God, and distinct.  The Son, is eternal, pre-existent, and is fully God.  And the Spirit, is fully God.  The three together are one, existing in a perfect relationship of love and cooperation within the Godhead. 

            Regarding Trinitarian theology, we all have the permission to say, “This is confusing.  I don’t quite understand it.  It’s an incomprehensible mystery.”  However, we do not need to fear the conversation about the trinity.  Don’t be afraid of talking about and thinking about God in this way.  In fact, God as trinity is cause for rejoicing!  How so?

            In our reading, John chapter 3, we meet a great Pharisee, Nicodemus.  Jesus affords him the highest of respect, calling him a “teacher of Israel” (v.10).  Nicodemus also gives Jesus great recognition.  He says to Jesus, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God.  Nicodemus, the “teacher of Israel,” has come to Jesus, the carpenter-rabbi from Nazareth, to be taught.  He’s not prepared for the lesson Jesus will give.  It is as hard for him to understand as it us for us to wrap our brains around the notion of trinity. 

            Jesus tells him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above” (3:3).  All who want to follow Jesus, all who want to go to Heaven and not Hell, and all who want to be Christian must be born again.  All Christians are “born again” Christians.  Any who have not undergone second birth have are not followers of Jesus.

            I know this can be distressing.  I have talked to people desiring to be Christians who have said to me, “Rob, I cannot sense the Holy Spirit in me.”  Or, “I don’t remember a definitive time of being born again.”  People who want to be with Christ, but lack such a clearly identifiable divine encounter, have obvious concern.  Maybe they aren’t truly Christians.  Maybe you have such worries.

            Jesus explains in verse 5 that “No one can enter the Kingdom without being born of water and of Spirit.”  Nicodemus might hear “born of water” and think of a several different things.  There’s natural child birth.  He might remember the Noah story: the world was remade in a flood.  He would definitely call to mind Israel’s defining moment.  The nation escaped slavery in Egypt, and then received the 10 commandments and the written law at Mount Sinai.  The centerpiece of that story comes when God parts the Red Sea and the people pass through those waters. 

Nicodemus would remember that.  He also knew that his own day, John the Baptist and other radical teachers were baptizing in the Jordan River.  He would have known that Jesus himself was baptized by John.  So when he hears Jesus say, “Born of water,” familiar thoughts come to mind.

            What is “born of Spirit?”  Nicodemus is absolutely perplexed.

            Jesus has told him that he cannot enter the Kingdom of God without being born of the Spirit and he doesn’t know what that means.  I insist that this teaching, for us in our time, means each one of us has to be born of the Spirit to be with Christ.  I say that knowing many people who want to be Christians but cannot, in their own story, identify that specific time when they were “born again.”  It’s hard to pinpoint.

            The crux of the matter comes when Jesus talks about the wind in verse 8.  In both Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew, the same word means wind, breath, and Spirit.  As we said a few weeks ago, as the writer of this gospel set pen to parchment, he surely had the prophet Ezekiel on his mind.  Ezekiel tells of a time when God set him down in a valley of dry bones and commanded Ezekiel to tell the bones to come to life.  He obeyed, and the commanded the bones rattled and came together and took on muscle and tissue and skin.  And there before Ezekiel stood a multitude of lifeless people.

            They did not come to life until Ezekiel prophesied a second time, this time to the breath.  He did that, and the multitude came alive.  God told Ezekiel, in exile, the nation of Israel completely destroyed, “Mortal man, these bones are the house of Israel” (37:11).  God told him to tell the people in exile, “I will open up your graves” and restore your life.  “I will put my spirit in you.”  They would not be the people of God until God put God’s spirit in them. 

            Nicodemus may not have thought of Ezekiel when he spoke with Jesus.  But looking back on the encounter, later, after he gained understanding, I imagine he made the association.  God promised to put his spirit in the people, through the mouth of the prophet.  And God the Son, Jesus, told Nicodemus, you must be born of the Spirit to see and enter the Kingdom of God.  I think Nicodemus understood that when Jesus told him this, he, Nicodemus, was having his own Ezekiel moment.  I think he figured this out later, probably with a lot of help from the Holy Spirit.  He’s probably the one who shared the entire story that’s told in John 3 with the writer of the Gospel.

            In the moment, he was thoroughly lost.  “How can these things be?”  Jesus let him ponder.  He didn’t clear it up right away, but rather, he let Nicodemus sit with it.  All he said to Nicodemus was, “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things” (3:10)?  That’s how utterly new and unexpected the Gospel was.  Neither uneducated people nor the most educated of people were ready for what God would do in Jesus.  The only way understanding could come would be by the Spirit.

            Yet, Jesus says in verse 8, “The wind [the spirit] blows where it chooses and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  We have no control over the Holy Spirit.  It seems hardly fair for God the Son to tell us that we need God the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God the Father, when we cannot grab hold of the God the Spirit.  Does that mean that anyone who has not felt the touch of the Spirit is just left out?

            Of course not!  Jesus mentions in verse 13 that he is the one descended from heaven, and then in verse 14, he references another story Nicodemus would have known.  This comes from the book of Numbers and might be less familiar to us.  The people of God were in the wilderness and rebelled against God.  Poisonous snakes came and began biting the people and they were dying.  God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and to display it atop a tall pole.  Anyone who had been bitten should fix his gaze upon this serpent that had been lifted up and he or she would be healed of the poisonous snake bite.

            Jesus tells Nicodemus and all of us, John’s readers, that he must be lifted up like that snake.   If you fear that you lack of that experience with the Holy Spirit that tells you that you’ve been born again, look at Jesus, lifted up on the cross.  Verse 15, “Whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” 

            This illustrates both the beautiful dance of the Trinity and the reason our understanding of God as Trinity is cause for rejoicing.  The Kingdom of God the Father is eternal life, eternal joy, and eternal love.  We all want to be in it.  We need the Spirit to get there.  But we can’t control the Spirit.  However, we can fix our gaze upon the God the Son, who inhabited human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.  We can look at Jesus, believe in him, worship and follow him, and we are saved.  Even if you don’t feel it, per se, the Spirit is working.  Believe in Jesus. 

            The next verse, maybe the most famous in the Bible, ties together God’s love and the salvation of the world.  Remember what we’ve stressed throughout our 9 weeks spent in the Gospel of John.  “The world,” as presented in this Gospel, it opposed to God.  It is the realm of the enemy.  John 3:16 says God loved this world so much, he came – gave his only son – that whoever believes in him may not die, but rather may have eternal life.

            Can’t explain the Trinity?  It’s OK.  The Trinity is a mystery beyond comprehension.  What you can share with friends and what you can count on, if you’re trembling in the shadow of doubts about your own relationship with God, is the Gospel.  We can rest secure in the Gospel. 

God is love.  God’s love is on display in the beautiful dance within God – the perfect love and cooperation between Father, Son, and Spirit.  The Son went to the cross for our sins.  The Spirit is about in the world, convicting people of sin so that they might repent and turn to God.  The Spirit is also residing in your heart and in the body of Christ – his Church.  Instead of trying to reduce this beautiful mystery to an easily contained explanation, live in it.  God invites us to join in the dance and live in relationship with God.  And not just at Pentecost or on Trinity Sunday, but every day.  Every day, His love is real and present for us.  Every day, God walks with us that we might have life and live in His joy.

AMEN

Love, Love, Love

            This morning, a Sunday morning, my Sabbatical continued.  Instead of preaching at HillSong Church, my family and I worshipped for a 4^th week in a row at Citywell Church in Durham, NC.  Pastor Cleve May delivered a remarkable sermon on creation (Genesis 1).  He made the case that the creation account actually comes out of the writings of Jews in the exile, 6^th century BC.  The account is a response to the violent origins story of the Babylonian god Tiamat.  In the Tiamat creation drama, humans are the result of violent conflict among the gods.  In the Genesis story, the universe, the earth, and human beings are all created as expressions of “God’s overflowing abundance.”  A key quality in the creation is relationship.  God is relational.  The Genesis story flows from God’s love and shouts of God’s yearning for relationship.

            Pastor May’s thoughts on Genesis, and more importantly on the relationship of God and human beings, aligns well with the writing of the great author, pastor, and Bible translator Eugene Peterson.  In his sermon on Psalm 116 “Land of the living,” he says, “Every word [from God], every phrase, every sentence, every silence must be received relationally.  God does not reveal himself impersonally.”[i]  Creation is something God does.  Relationship is something God initiates.  We are created, but out of love, not violence.  We are invited, but not coerced. 

            The key is love – love between God and humans and love humans show to one another.  A Common Word (edited by Miroslav Volf, Ghazi bin Muhammad, and Melissa Yarrington) is a compilation of essays written to reflect upon the October 2007 letter written by Muslim leaders to Christian leaders.  The essence of the letter is that Muslims and Christians both have at the center of their respective faiths two central tenets or commands – to love God and to love neighbor.  Mark 12:29-31 is one of many places in scripture that make plain the centrality of these commands for Christians.  The Muslim authors who contribute to the A Common Word letter and essays to the book by the same title exhaustively demonstrate that similar commands are operative in Islam.  While both the Christian and the Muslim authors in the book recognize the likely irreconcilable differences in the two faiths, including nuanced understandings of “love,” both demonstrate that love is the key.  Furthermore, the Christian and Muslim authors make a compelling case that love is the ground upon which Muslims and Christians can meet in friendship and peace. 

            The key is love – in creation, in relationship, in drawing together parties that have experienced mutual enmity.  The theologian Miroslav Volf writes one of the Christian responses.  His essay is a tour de force of theological explanation as he explains the trinity even while demonstrating why the trinity cannot be explained.[ii]  On the love of God Volf writes, “God loves irrespective of the existence or non-existence of creation; … the contingent world is created by a God who is always love and just because God is love” (italics Volf’s).[iii] 

            One of the points of emphasis in my Sabbatical is a study of the differences between people and how those differences can be overcome for the sake of beautiful friendship, and more importantly that differences be overcome because we are family – brothers and sisters in Christ.  Admittedly, I have devoted much of my reading and conversation to the divide between European Americans (white) and African Americans (blacks) while knowing there are other divisions separating people.  I felt the black-white divide demanded my attention.  But, the animus many American Christians feel toward Muslims needs to be abolished too.  And maybe my study of A Common Word will yield reminders of the call of Christ to love that can become identity markers in interracial friendships and encounters in the church I pastor.  We Christians are called to, commanded to love our neighbors.  The church is to be the community that witnesses to the world the unity and diversity of the body of Christ.  We can do this when, within the church body, we see sacred neighbor love so powerfully that all who come in know from the start they are welcome and are at home among people who deeply care for them.

            From Pastor May’s word on God’s love as the basis for creation to Eugene Peterson’s display of God as the supremely relational One to Dr. Volf’s smart, straightforward account of God as God is Love, the point is abundantly made.  The root of who we are is love – God’s love.  My son and I saw Wonder Woman, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but I snickered at the end when her final conclusion was “the most important thing is love.”  I smugly thought, “Well that’s just Hollywood cliché, its vapid fluffiness on full display. Wonder Woman kicks some serious bad guy butt and then in a reflection both hopeful and melancholy concludes, ‘the most important thing is love’?  Seriously?” 

Now, I’m saying the same thing. 

            I am because it’s how I was made.  I was created by love (you know, 1 John 4:16, ‘God is love’).  I was made in the image of the One who is love.  He who made me knows me and in spite of my selfishness and impatience commands me to love my neighbor.  He pours His Spirit and His love into me.  Created and commanded, I must love.  Also, I know that the hope for our church (HillSong) and for the church (Christians everywhere) is that we be the living embodiment of God’s love.  Only then are we truly God’s church.  And for peace and flourishing and joy, the world needs the church to truly be the church. 

            I can’t believe I am going to say it, but I have Cleve May, Eugene Peterson, Miroslav Volf, and Diana Prince’s endorsements (not to mention the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s).  And, seriously, who am I to question Wonder Woman?  The most important thing really is love. 

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[i] E. Peterson (2017), As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Waterbook (New York), p. 74.

[ii] Volf, Muhammad, and Yarrington, editors (2010).  A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor, William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids), p.130.

[iii] Ibid, p.126.  

With God - 2nd Sunday of Lent (John 3:1-21)

Second Sunday of Lent, March 12, 2017

            In any story, there is an antagonist.  This is the person or the force that is against the main character, the protagonist.  Whenever we watch a movie, my kids ask, “OK, who’s the bad guy?”  They need to know, who am I for, and who I am against?

            Sometimes, it is not that simple.  When dealing with history, every side casts themselves as the “good guys.”  From November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, 52 American citizens and diplomats were held hostage in Iran.  We Americans would have called the Iranians the antagonists, “the bad guys” in that story.  But at that time, Iranian families were led to believe America is the ‘Great Satan.’  In their telling of the same story, we, America, would be the “bad guys.”  It is not always simple. 

            Also, in some stories, bad guys turn out to be good guys.  In the Star Wars movies, Anakin Skywalker is the Jedi prodigy, the one who will bring balance to The Force. But then, Anakin becomes Darth Vader, one of the iconic villains of all-time.  He kills everyone, include his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi.  But then, we learn Darth Vader is the father of the new hero, Luke Skywalker.  And in the end, Anakin/Darth, saves Luke by killing evil Emperor Palpatine.  Bad guy or good guy?

            This same confusion over protagonist and antagonist is seen throughout the Bible and especially in Jesus’ life.  In many stories, those antagonistic to Jesus are religious leaders, the sect known as the Pharisees.  Yet, we must remember, they weren’t really the bad guys.  In the New Testament, the true antagonists are our three enemies – sin, death, and Satan, with death being the greatest of our enemies.

            What we see in John 3 is one of these supposed antagonists, the Pharisee Nicodemus, coming to Jesus.  In the conversation between the two, Nicodemus doesn’t come off looking very good.  He’s baffled by what Jesus says, and Jesus seems exasperated that a “legal expert” and a “teacher of Israel” is so confused.  However, this morning, I encourage us to notice something.  Nicodemus came to Jesus.  He calls Jesus ‘Rabbi.’  ‘We know you come from God,’ Nicodemus says.  He did not try to trap Jesus with tricky questions.  He came because he wanted to be closer to God.  Nicodemus took the initiative to seek Jesus out because he wanted to be with God and he was sure Jesus could show him the way.  And throughout John’s gospel, Nicodemus will pop back into the story as one on Jesus’ side.

            Speaking of initiative, we see God’s motives in one of the most quoted verses of scripture following the Jesus-Nicodemus conversation.  John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  Our hope for rescue from our great enemy, death, is in what God has done.  God took the initiative, sent Jesus for us, and God did it because God loves us.

            So in John chapter 3 we have two instances of initiative.  The Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus because he wanted to be with God.  God sent Jesus to rescue all of us from death, because God loves us and wants us with Him in eternal life.

            This is all great, but when we look back at the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, we see a bit of a problem.  Jesus encourages Nicodemus’ action of coming, but then gives him a word that neither Nicodemus nor you nor I could possibly follow.  “You must be born from above,” Jesus tells Nicodemus (3:7).  We cannot see the Kingdom of God without being born from above (3:3).  At some point toward the end of the 20^th century the phrase ‘born-again’ came to describe a movement in American Christianity.  Certain believers were called ‘born-agains.’  And other Christians thought they were kind of weird.  But, according to the words of Jesus here, the only way to see the Kingdom and be with God in the Kingdom is to be born again.

            The problem is we cannot obey the command to be born again.  If a woman has been pregnant for 5 months and she cannot wait any longer, can she just stare at her belly and firmly order the baby inside “Be born?”  Of course not!  Even if the baby could understand and wanted to obey, she would not be able.  It doesn’t work that way.

            Similarly, when Jesus says to Nicodemus and to us, “You must be born again,” well, we can’t.  We can’t control that.  Even if we think understand the concept in a way poor Nicodemus did not, we still cannot force the outcome.  We cannot cause ourselves to be born again. 

            We’re left to wonder if Jesus lured Nicodemus and us into a trap.  Being born again means being born of the Spirit.  Jesus says this in verse 6.  We cannot see the kingdom unless we are born in this way – verse 3.  But then in verse 8 he says, the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.”  In other words, to be with God in the Kingdom, we need to be born in the Spirit, and we can control that about as easily as we can control the wind. 

            Remember, in the Bible, wind, breath, and spirit, are all related concepts.  In Genesis chapter 2 it says God formed the first human from the dirt.  The man was made, but only after God breathed the breath of life into him, God’s spirit, does Genesis say he became a living being (2:7).  In John 20:22, the resurrected Jesus appears to the terrified and amazed disciples, and it says he breathes on them and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. 

            OK, so we need to be born again to be with God in the Kingdom and live eternally.  We want that because death is our last and greatest enemy.  But, we have no control over that.  To be born again, we are completely dependent on God’s action and the Holy Spirit is uncontrollable and unpredictable.  No amount of initiative on our part will get us born again.  Where does that leave us?

            Remember that verse that everyone remembers – verse 16.  God loves the world.  We want to be saved from sin and death.  God wants to save us.  This story ends in victory when we participate in cooperative initiative.  God’s part is to save us from sin and God did that in the incarnation.

            Incarnation is a very theological term, and maybe a churchy term.  Normally, I try to use other words – words that make sense outside of church.  But this one is so important, we all need to understand.  Jesus is the incarnation: God in human flesh.  God the Son, the cosmic Christ, is the second person of the trinity, the divine logos.  I just unloaded a suitcase full of theological terms, I know.  But this is what we need to see.  Jesus is fully God and fully man, and in him, in his death on the cross, sin is covered and we are saved from death.  Our sins are nailed to his cross.

            It is in Jesus that God does God’s part.  He dies for sin and because of sin.  He forgives us.  He rises from death defeating all our enemies in the process: sin, death, and Satan.  Jesus is God’s initiative.

            There is more.  The phrase I used was cooperative initiative.  God has the hard part: the abandonment; the betrayal; and, the taking on himself the death that sin brings.  But we have a part in this too.  In verse 12, 15, 16, and 18, Jesus mentions believe.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”  In John’s Gospel, belief means follow.  To say we believe in Jesus is to say He is absolute Lord over our lives, master of every area of life.  We live every moment under His leadership.  Christianity and church are not just small part of our lives.  When we say we believe, we are saying our lives are not our own. We belong to Jesus. 

            Many of Nicodemus’ colleagues among the Pharisees were ready to challenge Jesus and to oppose him.  For Nicodemus to call Jesus ‘Rabbi,’ and to believe in him, would be costly.  He’d be at odds with his peers and he’d become an outcast in the circles where he had spent his entire life.  We see it in John chapter 7.  There, people are calling Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, and a group of chief priests and Pharisees call for his arrest on charges of blasphemy – a capital crime.  Nicodemus challenges this action and declares them to be in the wrong for trying to detain Jesus.  And his friends among the Pharisees turn on him immediately.

            That can happen when we do our part.  In our own lives, when we believe Jesus is Lord, the forces around us that want to be in charge feel threatened.  Then we have to choose to whom will we listen?  On whose behalf will we speak up?  Nicodemus chose Jesus even when it cost him.  The late Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary wrote a chapter in a volume on the writings John.  In his explanation of belief, he captures what it means when we say, “I believe in Jesus.”  He writes, “To believe is not just to weigh, consider, think about, ponder, reflect on, or entertain the idea of following Jesus.  It is to throw one’s whole life on the side of Jesus.”[i]

            In this idea of cooperative initiative, God has to act first.  Jesus says in verse 13, “No one has ascended into Heaven except the one who has descended from Heaven.”  This point was made a moment ago.  We can’t force this.  We can’t make ourselves be born again.  But God has acted.  Jesus did come.

            Thus in verse 15 he says, “Whoever believes in Him has eternal life.”  We are dependent, yet we must also act.  Our action is fully invested, life-committed belief.  There is no half-way.  We are either all-in with Jesus or we are not with God at all.  And if we choose to not believe, God honors that choice.  Verse 19 says, “This is judgment, that the light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light.”  God will confront us in our sin.  God will not force us to believe.  If we meet Jesus and choose to reject him, God lets us have that option.

            Then we face a godless eternity.  Our sins lead to death.  This is true for all people.  When we die in sin instead of dying in Christ, we face our old enemy, death, without God’s help.  Instead of eternal life, before us is the prospect of eternal death.  It is not a restful sleep.  It is not the end of existence.  It is the process of dying experienced forever.

            As grim as that sounds, there is hope – the greatest of hopes.  In the Gospel of John, before we learn that the second person of the trinity is a man named Jesus, we are told, in chapter, that it is the ‘Logos.’  This Greek term is usually described as “the word.”  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  Logos is actually a deeper concept.  From Logos we get the idea of logic. 

The Baptist theologian James McClendon thinks of Logos as the idea of story.  Each one of us lives a story.  The Logos is the story of a “Divine One who loves and lives to save, who suffers and dies but overcomes; … this is the eternal character of God.”[ii] It is inherent in who God is that God wants to save us from sin and death, that God can save us from sin and death, and that God has acted to save us from sin and death.  That’s the Jesus story.

The hero is Jesus Christ – crucified and resurrected.  The enemy is death.  Death’s tool is sin and death’s ally is Satan.  The plot is our rescue and death’s defeat, both are achieved by God acting on our behalf in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

God has acted and in the Holy Spirit continues to act.

We have heard the story.  Do we continue to hear?  Are we attentive, watching, ready to respond in faith when the Spirit moves in our lives?  I believe God appeals to people throughout their lives.  The Spirit speaks in worship, the Spirit speaks through scripture, the Spirit speaks in the world, in nature, in other people.  My own belief is that we each have numerous opportunities to respond and continue living in God’s grace. 

In the spirit of cooperative initiative, will we, today, do what Nicodemus did?  God has acted.  Will we step to God, throwing our entire lives on the side of Jesus?  Each one of us is invited to step into belief and to step into God’s Love and into life with God.

AMEN

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[i] W. Wink (2001).  “’The Son of the Man’ in the Gospel of John,” chapter 10 in Jesus in the Johannine Tradition, Robert Fortna, Tom Thatcher, editors, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville), p.123.

[ii] J. McClendon (1994).  Systematic Theology: Doctrine, Abingdon Press (Nashville), p.289.

God’s Character (Luke 15:11-32)

Sunday, July 10, 2016

            In last week’s sermon, we focused on the Biblical commands  “weep with those who weep” and “do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” These brilliant words come from the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12.  It’s a message we Christ followers needed the Sunday after a week of tragic shootings in the United States.

            Of course there is no relief to the violence.  Evil keeps finding new ways to break the human spirit as the tragedy in Nice, France on Thursday showed.  In the wake of such horror, some preachers are given to sermons of doom and gloom and judgment and wrath.  And somehow, these are the preachers CNN always tracks down as examples of what Christians think. 

            We do not offer doom and gloom this morning.  However, we cannot ignore that the Bible does speak of God’s wrath.  In fact this comes up in the passage from last week, Romans 12:19. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  That verse certainly portrays a God with serious wrath in Him. 

Is that the God we worship and love and proclaim?  Is wrath a defining characteristic of God?  I think Jesus told parables to show us God’s character.  In the swirl of hate, anger, rhetoric, and reaction happening in the world now, in the face of the violence of this summer, I believe that because of God’s character, we can take refuge in the Holy Spirit.  So, we will look at one of Jesus’ parables – the Prodigal Son – to see God’s character, the quality of God that makes God so inviting to people in pain.

¹¹ Then Jesus^[a] said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. ¹³ A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. ¹⁴ When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ He would gladly have filled himself with^[b] the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ ²⁰ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹ Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’^[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

²⁵ “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷ He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.³⁰ But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹ Then the father^[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

On the cross, God puts Jesus forward as a sacrifice of atonement.  The cross is a brutal instrument of a torturous death designed to show Rome’s absolute power.  Based on the passage from Romans and many other passages, we believe God subverts that Roman torture device by willingly sending his son to die on it in our place.  In this act, our sin is removed and God is satisfied.  This is salvation. 

However, as Jesus bleeds out on the cross, has justice been served?  Why was it necessary to happen that way?  I know Romans mentions God’s wrath, but why?  Is God violent by nature, and is that why a cruel, bloody death like crucifixion was necessary for atonement?  Is there any justice on that cross where Jesus suffers and dies for sins he did not commit?

            Someone who did commit sins was the younger son in Jesus’ story of a man with two sons.  In requesting his inheritance, he declared his father dead to him.  It was a lot of money for his father was wealthy enough to have a lot of land and many servants.  This son who turned his back on his dad and his family, took the money his father had earned through hard work and then generously given him in spite of the outrageous audacity of the request, and he squandered that money through gambling and drinking and wild parties. 

            Than a famine came.  No more gambling.  No more parties.  Friends made when we buy the drinks disappear when we run out of money.  During a famine, neighbors might help each other, but he had no neighbors and no friends and no money.  So he hired himself out to a pig farmer, an unthinkable job for a good Jewish man.  But was it really a job?  He did not make enough money to feed himself.  He would have, it says, gladly filled himself with the pods the pigs ate.  It sounds like he had become a slave. 

That’s where sin leads.  It’s nasty.  It’s desperate.  It’s lonely.  It’s pathetic.  And it is deadly.  He was where he was because of his own choices. Could he call God a bloodthirsty sadist who delights in the way his wrath obliterates sinners?  Is there something in God that demanded the awfulness of the cross and was thus satisfied to see Jesus hang on it? 

In this parable, the father represents God.  Was it the Father’s fault that the younger son was starving as he lived as a slave in a pig pen and literally dreamt of eating pig slop?  Did the father condemn him to that fate?  Not at all.  The Father gave the son what he requested – his share of the inheritance.  He let the son go.  And then, every day, he watched the horizon, hoping the son would return. 

That’s God!  He watches for us.  We’ve wandered off, chasing our epicurean appetites. He allows us to choose that.  God allows us to live with the destruction that comes with our sins.  But, just because God allows our sin to come to its natural conclusion doesn’t mean God has abandoned us.  He is watching, waiting, ready to welcome us with arms of love when we turn back to Him.  God sounds merciful. 

Earlier in this same chapter, Luke 15, Jesus describes God as a shepherd who leaves the flock in safety and ventures into the dangers of the wilderness in order to find one lost sheep.  In the Prodigal Son story, God allows the sinner to suffer the fate of his own bad choices but constantly watches for the sinner to return.  In the lost sheep story, God diligently searches for the lost. 

When Jesus thought of God he thought of love, mercy, and grace.  He didn’t think of wrath.  Jesus knew the cross was coming.  He knew his task was to die.  He knew how horrible it would be.  That’s why in the Garden of Gethsemane he desperately begged God to find another way.  God did not grant that request.  But Jesus never imagined that God put him on the cross.  He never presented the drama as God’s active punishment.  As it says in the Old Testament, God gave humanity over to sin. 

When Jesus is hanging on the cross, it is the ultimate and final judgment on sin.  Sin leads to a cross where God allows us to live with the results of our sinful choices: pain, abandonment, and death.  Except, on the cross, we aren’t living with where our sin leads, God is. 

On the cross, God the Father does not punish God the Son in place of sinners who should be the ones hanging there.  Rather, God the Son affirms that sin leads to death.  But, even though justice is to let us suffer for our sins, God the Son takes our place.  In His love, God the Son determines to spare us by the taking the cross himself.  God the Father honors God the Son’s choice. 

What about that Gethsemane prayer where Jesus begs for another way?  Jesus was fully God and fully human.  As a human being, knowing what was coming, Jesus was scared.  Even though he knew the necessity of it, in his fear, he sought an alternative.  Luke write that his prayer was so intense he sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44).  Mark writes that as he died on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mark 15:34)?  In these moments of doubt and despair, Jesus, a human being, carries the Hell of being separated from God and lost in sin that belongs to all people in history.  It all rests on Jesus and even as God the Son goes through it all willingly as an act of love, Jesus the man expresses the utter desolation humans face when headed to eternity separated from God. 

If we go by our sense of what’s right and what’s fair, this is unjust.  Jesus should not suffer for me or for you.  The younger brother who has gambled away the grace his father gave should not be lovingly welcomed home.  That’s not fair and the older brother expresses this quite forcefully as he confronts his father.

“Listen,” the older brother barks at the father, “for all these years, I have been working like a slave for you.”  Working like a slave.  The father tells him “All that is mine is yours.”  From the Father’s perspective, God’s perspective, this older son shares the life of the Father.  Their hearts are linked.  The Older Son cannot see this because his ultimate standard is the rule book.  In his mind, the rules determine his life.  The ultimate standard should be the relationship he has with his father.  But he’s gotten it confused.

In the Prodigal Son story, the Older Brother represents those Pharisees and legalists who constantly clashed with Jesus.  The Law of the Old Testament was a gift God gave to help people live in relationship with God.  The relationship is what is ultimate and God is the arbiter.  If God decides to override the law, God has the right do that.  When Jesus violated the Sabbath by healing on the Sabbath, he was claiming the right to do so, a right only God has.  When Jesus forgave sins, he was claiming the authority to do so, an authority only God has.  In these actions, Jesus announced, I can do what only God can do.[i] 

The legalists who challenged him felt that God, like human beings, is subject to the law.  They lost sight the fact that because God is the giver of the law, God can supersede the law.  They thought the law was ultimate.  God is ultimate and God’s heart of love leads God to one purpose – relationship with his creation.  We – humans – are the height of God’s creation and the ones most suited to a lasting relationship with God.  The law is to serve God’s purpose.  The law is to help us live in relationship with God.  When it fails to do that, God will do what’s necessary to open the way for us to be in relationship with Him.

The Older Brother, locked in legalism, couldn’t receive the love.  The Older Brother couldn’t see the Father’s ultimate purpose either for himself or for his younger, prodigal brother.  The Older Brother was as far from the Father’s heart as the younger one.  His estrangement came in a different form but the union with the Father was just as broken. 

In the end, we can look at the cross and say, “Justice is served,” because God chose it to be this way and God is the source of justice.  Jesus is on it in order to unite with us in our suffering.  Jesus embraces it so He can be where we are.  By our standards, the cross of Jesus is not just, is not fair.  But we don’t go by our standards, not when we have chosen to repent of sin and follow Jesus. 

Look once more at the parable.  The younger son tries to set his own identity.  “Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  But we don’t set our identity.  God sets our identity.  God runs to the younger son, tackles him in an embrace, puts a ring on his finger, a robe on his shoulders, and throws a party. 

The older son tries to set his own identity.  “All these years, I have been working like a slave for you.”  A slave?  No, we don’t set our own identity, not when we give ourselves to Jesus.  He sets our identity.  A slave?  The Father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

God is welcoming and loving and grace-giving by nature.  What comes between you and God? What lies are you believing about yourself this morning?  Do you see yourself as unworthy?  The Father God is running to you with arms open wide.  Do you see yourself as a slave to rules?  The Father God invites you to His heart.  Are you crushed under the weight of sin?  God the Son joins you right where you are.  In fact, he has taken your burden to the cross.  He has lifted it off your shoulders.  Receive his gift of grace, his forgiveness, his love, his welcome.  Is it too hard to imagine this could be true?  God the Holy Spirit is here now to help each us understand this story of Him reaching to us.  The Holy Spirit is here to guide us into the arms of God.

However you see yourself, right now, come to God.  Let God determine who you are.  He starts by calling you beloved.  Come to Him.

AMEN

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[i] Fiddes (1989), Past Event and Present Salvation, p.91-91.